Bleacher Report's Expert Consensus Wild-Card Picks
The NFL's second season is underway.
Or at least it will be on Saturday. This weekend brings with it the first round of the 2016-17 NFL playoffs.
Wild Card Weekend.
It's been a little while since the first round of the playoffs produced a Super Bowl participant. Each of the last three Super Bowls were chalk all the way—No. 1 seed vs. No. 1 seed.
However, that isn't to say the Wild Card Round doesn't matter. The last time a team that played in the Wild Card Round made it all the way to the biggest game in sports, the Baltimore Ravens wound up lifting the Lombardi Trophy as the champions of Super Bowl XLVII.
Still, we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Before any of the wild-card teams can start making plans for Houston, they first must accomplish their most immediate goal.
Winning this week.
Then they can worry about hitting the road in the divisional round to face the big boys of the AFC and NFC.
With that in mind, we've gathered the NFL gang here at Bleacher Report to take a stab at predicting which teams will be making travel plans next week.
Don't forget your toothbrush.
Roll Call/Standings
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Before we get to this week's games, here is a quick introduction to the scribes who will be making picks:
As we move deeper into the postseason, we'll also be using this page to keep score, because really—what's the point if no one's keeping score?
No. 5 Oakland Raiders (12-4) at No. 4 Houston Texans (9-7)
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When: Saturday, January 7, 4:35 p.m. ET
Where: NRG Stadium, Houston
TV: ESPN/ABC
Line: Houston -3.5
Raise your hand if you thought when the season began that the first playoff game of 2017 would feature the Herculean duel of rookie Connor Cook battling Brock Osweiler at quarterback.
Now put your hand down. No one likes a fibber.
Still, that's the reality of the situation facing the Oakland Raiders and Houston Texans as they prepare for Saturday's first Wild Card Game.
After leading the AFC West for much of the season, the Raiders enter the playoffs a reeling football team. Starting quarterback Derek Carr is likely lost for the season after breaking his leg. Backup Matt McGloin didn't make it through a half at Denver last week before exiting with a shoulder injury.
Enter Cook, who will be the first rookie in NFL history to make the first start of his career in the postseason, per Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle.
"We trust him to go out there and lead us," Oakland head coach Jack Del Rio told reporters via conference call.
Bleacher Report's Brad Gagnon thinks the Raiders' best chance at victory lies with Cook, if only because Houston would have very little tape to prepare for him.
"Cook might not be their savior," Gagnon wrote, "but the Raiders would be better off crashing and burning with him at the helm. That way, they won't be left wondering about the height of his ceiling while they watch the rest of the playoffs from home."
Things aren't much better at the position for the Texans. After he was benched in favor of the immortal Tom Savage (no relation to Randy), Brock Osweiler was back in action for the Texans in last week's loss to the Tennessee Titans after Savage suffered a concussion.
As ESPN.com's Sarah Barshop reported, Texans coach Bill O'Brien named Osweiler the starter for the Wild Card Round on Tuesday.
"I thought Brock did some really good things on Sunday with his teammates and almost brought us all the way back," O'Brien said. "So I thought he did a nice job, and we have a lot of confidence in him that he's going to go out there and play well on Saturday."
I suppose he had about 37 million reasons to make that decision—the amount of guaranteed coin in the abomination that is Osweiler's contract.
It should be a battle for the ages.
Assuming that we're talking about the age of awful quarterback play, that is.
The Pick: Houston Texans (7-5)
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A month ago, this would likely have been a 12-0 call in favor of the Raiders.
After all, we've seen that movie already this year. The Carr-led Raiders downed the Texans 27-20 back in Week 11 in a game where he tossed a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to key a comeback win.
However, where the Raiders are concerned, that might as well have been a million years ago.
Last week in Denver, a Raiders offense that ranked fifth in the NFL entering Week 17 managed all of 50 total yards of offense in the first half. Cook was marginally better in the second half, but as Jimmy Durkin of the Mercury News wrote, Cook admitted that Oakland called plays in that game he had literally never run before in his life.
Before you discount that by saying that Denver has arguably the NFL's stoutest defense, consider this: From a yards-allowed standpoint, the Texans were actually better than the Broncos in 2016.
It's simple, really. Without Carr, the Oakland offense is no better than Houston's. Both teams have talent at tailback and star wide receivers. But a receiver is only as good as the quarterback throwing him the ball, and Osweiler, Savage, McGloin and Cook share one thing in common...
They all stink.
That leaves it to the defenses to be the deciding factor in this game. And while the Texans were first in total defense, second against the pass and 12th against the run, the Raiders didn't rank inside the top 20 in any of those categories.
It's a rotten end to Oakland's resurgent season, and the vote's far from unanimous. But against a Houston team that won seven of eight at home this year, the majority believe the Raiders' season will end in unceremonious fashion.
And then the Texans will all but surely get waxed by Kansas City or New England.
Raiders: Dunne, Freeman, Miller, Pompei, Tomlinson
Texans: Cole, Davenport, Farrar, Gagnon, Simms, Sobleski, Tanier
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No. 6 Detroit Lions (9-7) at No. 3 Seattle Seahawks (10-5-1)
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When: Saturday, January 7, 8:15 p.m. ET
Where: CenturyLink Field, Seattle
TV: NBC
Line: Seattle -8
The Detroit Lions, more than any other team in this year's playoff field, need to have a short memory. The Lions don't have time to dwell on the fact they are limping into the postseason on a three-game losing streak against teams that are all in the NFC bracket with them.
Or that the Lions squandered the opportunity to win the NFC North and host a playoff game when they fell to the Green Bay Packers in the regular-season finale.
Still, as Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press reported, Detroit head coach Jim Caldwell isn't hearing talk of his club "backing in" to the playoffs.
"I don't know what that means," Caldwell said. "That's sort of a media-driven phrase. A coach won't tell you that because they know how hard it is to get in no matter how it happens. If you're one of those 12, it's a difficult task. You had to do something right, a lot of things right in order to get there and I believe our guys did that."
If the Lions are limping into the NFL's second season, the Seattle Seahawks are lurching. In recent years, Seattle's playoff runs have been keyed by second-half surges from the team. Not this year's iteration. One week, Seattle looks like the class of the NFC. The next, the Seahawks struggle to beat the league's bottom-feeders.
Many of Seattle's issues in 2016 can be traced to an offensive line that has struggled all season long. But as Gregg Bell of the Tacoma News Tribune reported, quarterback Russell Wilson is confident that line can push the Seahawks all the way to Houston.
"I have no doubt in what they can do," Wilson said. "I have all the confidence in the world in those guys."
Wilson was then blasted by a photographer who opened the press conference by blitzing from the weak side.
Per Geoffrey C. Arnold of OregonLive, head coach Pete Carroll admitted that consistency has been an issue for the Seahawks as a whole of late, although he's seen improvement over the past couple of months.
"We've shown a lot of good stuff over the last seven or eight weeks. There's been a couple of halves in there, there's been a quarter-and-a-half in there in some games where we haven't been as sharp," Carroll said. "It's shows [sic] that we're still young and that the consistency to be nailed is still out there for us. That's our challenge."
There may not be a harder team to peg in this year's tournament. Equal parts powerhouse and pretender, depending on the week.
The Pick: Seattle Seahawks (12-0)
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The AFC bracket is a fairly clear picture, at least in the opinion of this writer. With due respect to the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers, there doesn't appear to be a team that can go into Foxborough and beat the 14-2 New England Patriots.
The NFC, however, is a muddy mess. The Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons are talented but untested. The Seahawks and Green Bay Packers are veteran teams with loads of playoff experience, but each has at least one glaring weakness. The Giants are a Jekyll and Hyde No. 5 seed—a scenario they've parlayed into two Super Bowl wins over the past decade.
The NFC representative in Super Bowl LI is anyone's guess, but I can say one thing with certainty—something my colleagues agree with unanimously.
It isn't going to be the Detroit Lions.
There are any number of factors working against the Lions this week. A Lions line that ranked 18th in pass protection, per Football Outsiders, will have its hands full and then some with a Seattle pass rush that piled up 42 sacks in 2016.
Detroit's 18th-ranked defense was just shredded by a mobile quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. This week it draws Russell Wilson.
Then there's the matter of playing in the league's most hostile environment. Or the fact that Detroit only beat one team with a winning record in 2016: the 8-7-1 Washington Redskins. Or that three-game skid against NFC playoff teams.
A skid that's about to be four.
The Seahawks win this one by two scores, setting up a very interesting divisional-round game in Atlanta.
Lions: Fontes, Millen
Seahawks: Cole, Davenport, Dunne, Farrar, Freeman, Gagnon, Miller, Pompei, Simms, Sobleski, Tanier, Tomlinson
No. 6 Miami Dolphins (10-6) at No. 3 Pittsburgh Steelers (11-5)
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When: Sunday, January 8, 1:05 p.m. ET
Where: Heinz Field, Pittsburgh
TV: CBS
Line: Pittsburgh -10
There isn't a more surprising team in this year's postseason tournament than the Miami Dolphins. On October 9, the Dolphins were a 1-4 football team headed nowhere at light speed. Then the Dolphins turned things around just as quickly, going 9-2 the rest of the way.
Suddenly, Miami was in the postseason and first-year head coach Adam Gase was a leading candidate to bring home Coach of the Year honors.
However, the Dolphins' hopes of a deep playoff run appeared to take a serious hit when starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill sprained his knee a few weeks ago.
Tannehill didn't practice Wednesday, but there was some optimism that he might return Sunday in Pittsburgh. According to James Walker of ESPN.com, Gase said as much earlier this week, while allowing that such a quick return from his injury is in no way guaranteed.
"I don't want to say yes or no," Gase said. "The guy, as you guys all know, is a freak of nature. ... His body is unique, and the way he heals is the same way. We'll kind of take it one step at a time."
"I need to know what his movement skills are, where we are as far as the structure of his knee and things like that," Gase continued. "Once I get that update, I will have a better idea of what we're going to do moving forward."
That optimism lasted all the way until Thursday. Per Alain Pouport of the team's website, It's going to be Matt Moore under center against the Steelers.
While the Dolphins enter the playoffs beat up, Pittsburgh is headed into the postseason relatively healthy—a welcome change of pace for them after offensive stars like wideout Antonio Brown and tailback Le'Veon Bell sat out recent playoff setbacks.
In fact, this will be the first playoff game of Bell's four-year NFL career. In 2013, the Steelers missed the postseason, and Bell watched the last two years from the sidelines as Pittsburgh was sent packing.
As Bryan DeArdo of 247Sports reported, Brown told NBC Sports that having Bell in the fold may be what makes this season's playoff run a deep one.
"We saw how Juice came back (from last year's injury)," Brown said. "One of the greatest players on our team. One of the best running backs in the world. He's also a great wide out. It's an honor to play with him, and we got a great team."
He's right. The Dolphins' situation under center is a problem for Miami in Sunday's game. But the Dolphins defense has an even bigger problem: stopping Pittsburgh's three-headed offensive monster of Bell, Brown and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
The Pick: Pittsburgh Steelers (12-0)
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And that's not going to happen.
Yes, Miami's turnaround began when the Dolphins doubled up the Steelers 30-15 in Miami in Week 6. Tailback Jay Ajayi torched the Steelers for over 200 yards on the ground. It was a contest that spurred the Dolphins to a six-game winning streak and the Steelers to the first of four consecutive losses.
Cornerback Ross Cockrell told Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the loss (and the slump that followed) was an eye-opener for the Steelers, especially defensively.
"I believe we learned a lot about ourselves in that game," Cockrell said. "It was an eye-opener, especially the way they ran against us and it got us on the right track."
"Although the scheme hasn't really changed," Cockrell continued, "our mindset has been different and it's been beneficial for us to have guys like James (Harrison) and Willie Gay, guys who have won Super Bowls, to just sit us down, get us relaxed and get us doing the job."
Now, the Dolphins badly need a wake-up call. Miami allowed 35 points in a blowout loss to the Patriots last week, the second time since December 1 they've surrendered five or more touchdowns in a game.
Gase admitted to the Miami Herald's Barry Jackson that isn't going to come close to getting it done against one of the NFL's most explosive offenses:
"We have to play better team defense. We've been a little off here the last couple games. Misfitting on certain things. We're using the wrong technique. We're not getting the call in where Vance calls the defense, we're not getting it communicated fast enough or correctly. We have to be smoother in what our operation is and make sure we're doing the right things.
"
The Miami defense is stuck in a Kobayashi Maru. Stack the box to stop Bell, and Roethlisberger will shred the Fins over the top. Leave the safeties deep to help against Brown, and Bell will gash them all day long. And the Dolphins don't have a cornerback who can come close to slowing Brown down in man coverage.
That's no slight. Very few teams do.
It's going to take 30 points to win this game. And on what's supposed to be a bitterly cold day in Pittsburgh, I just don't think the Dolphins can score that many...
Whether Tannehill was under center or not.
Dolphins: Finkle
Steelers: Cole, Davenport, Dunne, Farrar, Freeman, Gagnon, Miller, Pompei, Simms, Sobleski, Tanier, Tomlinson
No. 5 New York Giants (11-5) at No. 4 Green Bay Packers (10-6)
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When: Sunday, January 8, 4:40 p.m. ET
Where: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, WI
TV: Fox
Line: Green Bay -4.5
Like two of the other wild-card matchups this weekend, the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers have already met this season. Back in Week 5, the Packers downed the Giants 23-16. It was a win created by a stifling defensive effort, with the Packers holding the Giants to only 221 net yards of offense.
That isn't the only thing familiar about the final game of Wild Card Weekend. When the Giants last made the playoffs in 2011, they traveled to Titletown in the postseason. Ditto for 2007.
Both times, the Giants prevailed on the way to a victory in the Super Bowl.
New York head coach Ben McAdoo downplayed the significance of those upsets while speaking with ESPN.com's Jordan Ranaan:
"Both organizations have rich history and tradition. It's exciting to be a part of it. I think if you have tradition, history and a chance, I think it will be one heck of a battle on Sunday. I don't think that the 2007 or 2011 experience really helps us out one way or another, other than that there are some players that have played in those games. They know what it's going to be like pressurewise and conditionwise [sic]. The experience part of things will help some guys out. Other than that, we need to prepare to go play a good football team and go win a ballgame.
"
McAdoo also said to Seth Walder of the New York Daily News that he doesn't have a magic answer for how to slow down Aaron Rodgers, who put the Packers on his back and willed them to an NFC North title over the second half of this season.
"I don't have any kryptonite," McAdoo said. "Aaron is playing out of his mind right now. He's on fire, taking care of the ball, and is moving very well in and out of the pocket making all the throws."
It's worth noting, however, that the Giants have been as effective as any team in the NFL in slowing Rodgers down in 2016. Rodgers passed for 259 yards and a pair of touchdowns against the G-Men, but he also tossed two of his seven interceptions this year in the game.
The Pick: Green Bay Packers (9-3)
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I will freely admit that I was one of three pundits who picked the Giants to win this game. And the logic surrounding the decision is as much speculative as empirical.
Partly, it's called Wild Card Weekend for a reason, and I'd gone with the higher-seeded teams in every game but this.
But mostly, it's because New York is a flawed, up-and-down, 11-win No. 5 seed expected to get bounced in the first round of the playoffs.
Sound familiar?
The Giants apparently reject the idea of doing things the easy way on general principle. Both of Eli Manning's runs to the Lombardi were under similar circumstances. The 2007 Giants were a wild-card team. The 2011 Giants were 9-7 division "champions."
That said, I'm hardly flabbergasted that I'm in the minority. It's not difficult to picture the Packers winning this game, for one primary reason.
Aaron Charles Freaking Rodgers.
As a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (stop laughing, I really am), I have a vote for that organization's MVP award. And as distasteful as I find the notion of bowing at the MVP altar of all things quarterback, I'll be voting for Rodgers.
When the Packers had their backs against the wall at 4-6 and needed to win out, Rodgers calmly told ESPN.com's Rob Demovsky that they were going to do just that.
"I feel like we can run the table, I really do," Rodgers said. "The offense is starting to click a little bit more; we've just got to put together a game where we're more consistent from the first snap to the last. We've been, I think, getting closer to that. We've really been clicking, at times, in the last few games."
Then he backed it up. On a team with an injury-ravaged secondary and running game, Rodgers stood on his head and dragged Green Bay kicking and screaming into the playoffs.
Now, Ty Montgomery has blossomed into a legitimate tailback and the Green Bay secondary is getting healthy. If Rodgers keeps it up, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see him carry this team all the way to Houston.
Or it could lose this week. This much is certain...
The last game of Wild Card Weekend has the makings of being the best of the bunch.
Giants: Cole, Davenport, Tanier
Packers: Dunne, Farrar, Freeman, Gagnon, Miller, Pompei, Simms, Sobleski, Tomlinson
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