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Skins are done and this has been a long season for the Wizards.

Right now, I'm still excited about the NFL playoffs this weekend. (Dallas is out, so I'm happy!)

Anybody else who wil be watching NFL playoffs, here's my predictions for this weekend:

1. Arizona over Atlanta, let's say 24-20.

I'm going with the home team Cardinals. I like Kurt Warner this season. Falcons are 4-4 on the road and Ryan's a rook. Got to go with experience, despite the record.

2. SAN DIEGO over Indianapolis. 38-27.

Monumental upset but to me it's not that monumental. Despite the Colts' 9-game win streak and their 6-2 road record, I'm going again with the home team. The Chargers have themselves won 4 in a row. They got Mike Shanahan fired. This time, Philip Rivers IMO will show that he put up 4000 yards just like Peyton Manning plus he had a higher passer rating for the seaason (105.5).

I think the Chargers might hammer Indy, who's due for a loss IMO. Philip Rivers will be the man, not Peyton.

3. Baltimore over Miami, 16-10.

This is the game I'm really looking forward to. I think the Ravens' defense will pull them through, even with a rookie QB on the road at Miami. I like Penningon and Ronnie Brown. Maybe they pull it out. Really should be a good game.

4. Philadelphia over Minnesota, 27-17.

I belieev the Eagles have all the momentum in the world. Won't shock me if they end up in the Super Bowl, as the wild card. Minny will miss Pat Williams on the D line. I also think Philly might force at least one fumble from Adrian Peterson. On this one, I could be way off if Adrian Peterson has a big game. I'm thinking Philly's been there before. We'll see.

Anybody else care to play along? Feel free to make your predictions. Mine are just off the top of my head and I bet a lot of you watch the NFL more closely than I have.

Chocolate City Jordanaire wrote:Skins are done and this has been a long season for the Wizards.

Right now, I'm still excited about the NFL playoffs this weekend. (Dallas is out, so I'm happy!)

Anybody else who wil be watching NFL playoffs, here's my predictions for this weekend:

1. Arizona over Atlanta, lets say 24-20.

I'm going with the home team Cardinals. I like Kurt Warner this season. Falcons are 4-4 on the road and Ryan's a rook. Got to go with experience, despite the record.

2. SAN DIEGO over Indianapolis. 38-27.

Monumental upset but to me it's not that monutmental. Despite the Colts' 9-game win streak and their 6-2 record, I'm going again with the home team. The Chargers have themselves won 4 in a row. They got Mike Shanahan fired. This time, Philip Rivers IMO will show that he put up 4000 yards just like Peyton Manning plus he had a higher passer rating for the seaason (105.5).

I think the Chargers might hammer Indy, who's due for a loss IMO. Philip Rivers will be the man, not Peyton.

3. Baltimore over Miami, 16-10.

This is the game I'm really looking forward to. I think the Ravens' defense will pull them through, even with a rookie QB on the road at Miami. I like Penningon and Ronnie Brown. Maybe they pull it out. Really should be a good game.

4. Philadelphia over Minnesota, 27-17.

I belieev the Eagles have all the momentum in the world. Won't shock me if they end up in the Super Bowl, as the wild card. Minny will miss Pat Williams on the D line. I also think Philly might force at least one fumble from Adrian Peterson. On this one, I could be way off if Adrian Peterson has a big game. I'm thinking Philly's been there before. We'll see.

Anybody else care to play along? Feel free to make your predicitons. Mine are just off the top of my head and I bet a lot of you watch the NFL more closely than I have.

I agree with you on the Philly game but that's it. I like the Falcons over the Cardinals Arizona isn't very good they played in a **** division. I think Miami can upset the ravens even though they have a great D Flacco will make many rookie mistakes. No way in hell the Colts lose to an 8-8 Chargers team who also played in a weak division and have to major offensive threats banged up.

I can't wait to see what my Steelers can do. I don't think they will make it all the way but they defiantly have the team to do it.

I'm a very casual NFL watcher. I'll watch 2-3 games per week during the season, but don't really pay attention beyond that. I've got a vague idea of who is good and bad at what, but that's about it. So, I'll offer up predictions for the fun of it, but don't ask me to back them up with any sort of detailed reasoning:

+ Arizona d. Atlanta, 20-14
+ Indianapolis d. San Diego, 34-13
+ Miami d. Baltimore, 14-13
+ Minnesota d. Philadelphia, 17-10

MJG wrote:I'm a very casual NFL watcher. I'll watch 2-3 games per week during the season, but don't really pay attention beyond that. I've got a vague idea of who is good and bad at what, but that's about it. So, I'll offer up predictions for the fun of it, but don't ask me to back them up with any sort of detailed reasoning:

+ Arizona d. Atlanta, 20-14
+ Indianapolis d. San Diego, 34-13
+ Miami d. Baltimore, 14-13
+ Minnesota d. Philadelphia, 17-10

Atlanta 35 - Arizona 28
Indy 38 - SD 17
Baltimore 17 - Miami 7
Philly 24 - Minnesota 10

Uh, imo 2-3 games a week is a lot of games.

Anyway my go at the predictions:
I agree with toughjuice. The dirty birds will beat the cards easily. Solid running game, solid defense, tough division, conservative play calling compounded with a disgruntled Edgerrin James and an overrated Hightower for the Cardinals... I'm taking the Falcons even with their rookie qb.

The SD defensive line is weak sauce. Peyton will have all day to throw and I think Dallas Clark will have a pro bowl-snub revenge game and go nuts. They'll probably lose to the stillers eventually but the Chargers? no problem.

As hyped up as the ravens D is, Miami's defense is right there with them with a lot less buzz. With the defense being slightly in favor of Baltimore and the Miami offense being way better than the Ravens, Miami will win this one too.

Philly over Minny is a no brainer. I agree with CCJ that the iggles are catching fire at the right time and can make a giants-esque run at the title especially with the g-men losing momentum at a repeat.

With predictions out of the way, none of these matchups are especially intriguing to me except for the Indy/SD game. That's ironic since that's the game that got most watered down because of the divisional champs clause. An Indy/Pats wildcard game would've been one of the greatest wild card matchups ever, and instead it's only a so-so matchup.

SB prediction: Steelers over Eagles 17-13

Atlanta over Arizona - Running game wins in the playoffs, Cards have none. John Abraham will also get to Warner all day, plus Boldin is banged up if he's even playing. I'll say 31-21.

Indy defeats SD - Again running game wins. While the Chargers run game is better, it's not good enough to take full advantage of the Colts weakness in stopping it. San Diego's only shot is to get an early lead and keep it a low scoring game. Yet, I see the opposite happening with Peyton making enough plays and the Indy pass rush disrupting the SD passing game. 27 - 20.

Ravens over Dolphins - Again I'm going with the road team strangely(shows you how screwed up the nfl playoff seedings are). I could be seriously underrating the Dolphins but I've also done the same with the Ravens this year and I think the defense is too good and the offense will also surprise you this year. 21 - 10.

Philly over the Vikings - Keeping the theme going I'm picking all road teams this weekend. I really want Minny to pull this one out so my Panthers have an easier game next week but I just don't see it happening with Tarvaris Jackson against this Eagles defense. They are built to wreak havoc and force TO's and that's exactly what TJ and adrian peterson do. This one could get out of hand or it could be a grind it out field position battle all day. I'll go with the latter, 17-13.


As for my overall picture, it's hard to say given that the matchups aren't set in a Pitt plays the winner of game A sort of way. I see the Titans getting upset by either the Colts or Ravens and then meeting the Steelers in the AFC championship. I think the Steelers will beat the Ravens but lose to the Colts if it comes to that.
In the NFC I see it coming down to Carolina and New York with Atlanta as my dark horse. I'll go with Carolina due to personal bias and the fact that they thoroughly outplayed the Giants only a couple weeks ago. We were without both starting DT's that game which allowed them to break off some big runs in the 4th quarter. Don't look for that to happen again.
Finally in the super bowl I will say the Panthers beat the Colts. 34-31. If the Steelers play the Panthers I see Pitt taking it down in more of a defensive battle. Ah k.

pancakes3 wrote:Uh, imo 2-3 games a week is a lot of games.

It could be, I don't know. I was just saying that that's just about the entirety of my NFL knowledge. I don't do fantasy, or read articles during the week, or pay a lick of attention to anything at all during the offseason, or anything else like that, as I do for the NBA.

To summarize, here's our predictions for the first weekend's games:

CCJ - Arizona, San Diego, BMore, Philly
tj03 - Atlanta, Indy, Miami, Philly
MJG - Arizona, Indy, Miami, Minnesota
lsbf - Atlanta, Indy, Baltimore, Philadelphia
pancakes3 - Atlanta, Indy, Miami, Philadelphia
space-E - Atlanta, Indy, Baltimore, Philadelphia

GAME 1 FINAL -- ARIZONA 30 ATLANTA 24

Who would have thought Edgerrin James would run well? No domination on the line for Abraham at all. Matty Ice did okay, but did make rookie mistakes.

I think the weak division thing got overruled by the Cards being at home. Warner was outstanding. The Cardinal defense did real well at home.

I think Flacco is being underrated by some in this thread. He started off slow this year but fared surprisingly well against some of the best teams in some of the bigger games in some of the tougher situations. He really is different than most rookies in that pressure situations don't really get to him as much as you would think. Very calm, cool and collected kid he is.

Not saying he's going to light up the Dolphins' defense or anything but I don't think he'll struggle.

Should be a great game. Both teams were last in their division last season and were huge surprises this year.

GAME 2 FINAL -- SAN DIEGO 23 INDIANAPOLIS 17

Darren Sproles!

Darren Sproles!!

And did I mention Darren Sproles?

Kudos to Norv Turner for going to LaDanian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates early, just to keep the Colts honest.

Refs made a lot of calls at the end but I think every one of them was correct. Indy might argue the defensive holding on the screen play. That NEVER gets called but did tonight.

Story of this game ... Darren Sproles.

EDITED TO ADD ... That darned punter Scifres! (sp?)

I have NEVER seen a guy punt like that. He's the one who kept Indianapolis having to go 90 yards each time they got the ball. The punter was AWESOME!

I think fate was with the Chargers. They got ripped early in the season by some bad calls and bad luck. Now, at home, they got more than lucky tonight. Gates played. LT played. The punter was unreal. Sproles dropped it in the end zone but has the most all-purpose yards of any player ever in the playoffs (I believe). And ... most important, the Chargers won the coin toss.

If Manning had gotten to play in OT I have no doubts Indianapolis wins.

Wow, what a game!

Mike Sciphres might have been the most valuable player tonight. Sproles was ridiculous as well.

At least I got 1 right.

miller31time wrote:I think Flacco is being underrated by some in this thread. He started off slow this year but fared surprisingly well against some of the best teams in some of the bigger games in some of the tougher situations. He really is different than most rookies in that pressure situations don't really get to him as much as you would think. Very calm, cool and collected kid he is.

Not saying he's going to light up the Dolphins' defense or anything but I don't think he'll struggle.

Pretty much what transpired. He never needed to make a huge play but didn't turn it over and ran for a TD. A very calm-under-pressure kid who played a good game.

On to the Titans!

Titans-Ravens

Couldn't have asked for a more boring game.

Gilbert0Arenas wrote:Titans-Ravens

Couldn't have asked for a more boring game.

Amen to that.

Guys, I had a great day at church ... didn't get to see one second of either Sunday game but definitely glad I had my priorities straight. I'll recap second hand.

Baltimore 27 Miami 9

I see from the box that Flacco was bad but threw no INTS. However, in Miami, Pennington threw 4 picks. Guess the Ravens D must have rocked. Miami outgained Baltimore and had more time of possessions but looks like the TOs were devastating.

Philadelphia 26 Minnesota 14

Judging from the box score looks like a real tight game until late. McNabb was effective. Tavaris Jackson was not. Looks like Peterson did okay stat-wise but Jackson had low completion rate and threw an INT returned for a TD. See that Westbrook caught a game breaker late for the Eagles.

So, how'd we each do on this weekends games?

CCJ - Arizona, San Diego, BMore, Philly
tj03 - Atlanta, Indy, Miami, Philly
MJG - Arizona, Indy, Miami, Minnesota
lsbf - Atlanta, Indy, Baltimore, Philadelphia
pancakes3 - Atlanta, Indy, Miami, Philadelphia
space-E - Atlanta, Indy, Baltimore, Philadelphia

The day I made my predictions, I should have bought a lottery ticket.

HEY LET'S DO IT AGAIN THIS WEEKEND, only this time those of you who didn't put up predictions before are more than welcomed to join in.

Those who played and didn't fare well this past weekend (you guys with red by your picks) I'm going to give you the opportunity to redeem yourselves, gentlemen.

Redemption is sweet. Just ask the Wizards!

I'm so happy they beat Cleveland and the crab-dribbling crybaby!

To them and all others who want in on the predicting, here's the next games:

Divisional Matchups

Saturday, Jamuary 10
Baltimore at Tennessee, 4:30 EST
Arizona at Carolina, 8:15 EST

Sunday, January 11
Philadelphia at New York, 1:00 EST
San Diego at Pittsburgh, 4:15 EST

I'll post my predictions later in the week. Feel free to post yours when you've got your mojo working.

AS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - If you want to know more about the teams playing this weekend you might want to check message board posts of various teams (like the Baltimore Ravens) on RealGMs NFL Team Forums. Honestly, the boards over there could use some posts.

How was that millertime31?