NFL Wild Card Picks

Will Sunday be the end for Ray Lewis?

I'm back after a two month hiatus to bring you my picks for the first week of the NFL playoffs.* It's been one of the more interesting seasons in recent memory dominated by a half dozen different stories throughout the year. We had the undefeated Cardinals & then we had the regular Cardinals.** There were the replacement refs who ranged from surprisingly solid to Golden-Gate bad, an argument over which rookie QB was the best*** that began with two guys & expanded to include a surprising third, two historic comebacks by all-time greats & two historic individual seasons with Adrian Peterson somehow being involved in both.**** Luckily among all of these crazy happenings we still had the Dallas Cowboys there to help keep our bearings as they stumbled out of the gate, rebounded strongly in the second half just to get their fans hopes up, & then lost the last game of the season to blow a playoff spot in favor of a third place finish in the division, just as they had the year before. Now though the true season begins...

*Hopefully I'll be able to both redeem myself for my horrible (at least on the AFC side) preseason picks & continue my playoff prediction hot streak from last year when I correctly predicted 9 of the 11 games  & beat the spread 8 of 11 times. 

**Last season I would occasionally get into arguments with people over how bad John Skelton was. Those I opposed put forth he had promise & was probably better than Kolb, I said Skelton was a giant pile of crap trying to pass himself off as an NFL quarterback. I think it's safe to say I'll never have to argue that again. 

***It's Luck. The stats don't back me up, but they also don't tell you how much more dependent the Colts are on Luck than the Skins or Hawks are on their rookie signal callers. As good as RG3 was Kirk Cousins finished off one game saving drive & won another game with Griffin out, Wilson has by far the best team around him, & they both have great running games to support them. Luck had Reggie Wayne &... Yea. 

****My MVP ballot: 
1. AP-2,097 yards on 6.0 YPC while dragging Christian Ponder into the playoffs.
2. Brady-The Patriots scored 76 points more than any other team even with their best offensive weapon, Gronkowski, out much of the year.
3. Peyton-Looked even sharper than in his last year with the Colts as he took the Broncos from overachievers to legit contenders. 

Third Annual NFL Preview!

Can Brady & Gronk lead the Patriots back to the Super Bowl?

It's finally here, the NFL season. After a long wait I got to see my Giants lose the season opener to everyone's favorite team to hate, the Cowboys. Hopefully my picks go better than that game. And there's reason to believe they will! As I'm fond of telling people last year was the third consecutive season I've correctly predicted the AFC Champion,* & I got the the Super Bowl entirely right two years ago. Of course last season I also picked the Browns to make the playoffs, but let's not talk about that. It's going to be a fascinating season as an unprecedented five rookie QBs are set to start week one, the Saints continue to deal with bounty-gate (the players suspensions were overturned but the coach's suspensions have not, & that's more important), Peyton Manning's suiting up for the Broncos, & TIM TEBOW! So let's get on to the picks...