The NFL’s elite eight will convene this weekend with the divisional playoffs, and after a relatively upset-free wild-card round (sorry, Cowboys — I said relatively), we have some titanic matchups to look forward to here. Both conferences’ No. 1 seeds will be in action Saturday; the defending champions will look to keep rolling Sunday afternoon; […]
sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Though only a third of the games were competitive on the first weekend of the NFL playoffs, we still got plenty of weirdness across the board. An inadvertent whistle! A tight end throwing a touchdown! Players forgetting that a ref needs to place the ball! Lots to talk about before […]
Twitter was rooting for Las Vegas to end its 2021 regular season on Sunday with a quarterback kneel and tie, but the Raiders had a business decision to make: Tie, and open the playoffs against the No. 2 seed Kansas City Chiefs, who’ve outscored them 89-23 this season? Or win and face the No. 4 […]
Advanced football analysis indicates that it’s difficult to make the playoffs while allowing more points than you score. Prior to this year, 564 teams had made the playoffs since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, and just 46 (8.2 percent) did it with a negative point differential. Of those, just 10 allowed regular-season opponents to outscore […]
After an exhilarating week of games closed out the NFL’s extra-long 2021 regular season, the playoff bracket could deliver another helping of chaos. Most (though not all) of the teams left standing have a decent shot at the Super Bowl, and everyone but the respective No. 1 seeds in each conference will be in action […]