NFL Playoffs: Predicting Sunday Winners on Wild Card Weekend

There are two games on Sunday during Wild Card Weekend. We will know the winners of Saturday’s games when the night concludes, so Sunday’s games will finalize the Divisional Round.

The New York Giants host the Atlanta Falcons in the early game, and Denver Broncos host the Pittsburgh Steelers in the late game.

Here are my predictions for Sunday’s games.

New York Giants

Atlanta is about due to make some noise in the postseason, right? Not quite.

The Falcons have a great offense capable of scoring with anybody in the league, but their mediocre defense won’t be able to stop Eli Manning and his playoff magic.

Ahmad Bradshaw has been running extremely hard in the past few weeks. He and Victor Cruz have given the Giants an even more explosive offense. Cruz has emerged with his 82 receptions and nine touchdowns.

Atlanta is a dome team. It has to be worrisome about traveling to New York and playing outside in January. I think being outdoors will have a bit to do with the outcome.

New York is a team that gets up for games and plays down to their competition. They lost to Washington twice and Seattle once—losses that are considered poor. But they get up to play teams like the Dallas Cowboys, New York Jets and Green Bay Packers.

It’s all about motivation and focus. They should have their focus because this is officially the postseason.

New York may be ready for another run. Will they look over Atlanta? They shouldn’t, but they are hard to figure out sometimes. I’ll say that they don’t overlook Atlanta and win convincingly.

Prediction: New York 31, Atlanta 17.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers enter eight-point favorites on certain spreads. That’s saying something, especially because the game is on the road.

That doesn’t mean a thing in the NFL, however. Ask New Orleans how being a favorite on the road works.

I do believe that the Steelers should be able to win this game decisively if they come out with a quality effort. They have a ton of injuries and players who can’t perform for precautionary reasons, like Ryan Clark.

Rashard Mendenhall is done for the year, Ben Roethlisberger is gimpy and Maurkice Pouncey is still unavailable.

Sounds like the Broncos have a great chance of pulling the upset. They absolutely do.

But I don’t see it happening.

Denver rushes the ball better than any team in the NFL. Pittsburgh is known for stopping the rush, even though this season that hasn’t exactly been true. The pedigree of the 3-4 defense and stuffing the rush is still there though and I believe we will see it.

Sure, Denver will get their yards, probably over 100, but as long as Pittsburgh can limit them on third down I think they will be fine.

Roethlisberger’s health may determine the game. If he can’t escape pressure, Pittsburgh may have a short-term NFL postseason. I think he’ll be OK if he can at least move around in the pocket.

We’ll see how that high-ankle sprain is come game time.

Pittsburgh gets it done, winning their third straight game. Maybe it’s time to talk about these guys catching fire at the right time? Usually it’s a quiet winning streak before an explosion in the playoffs that creates buzz. They have done just that.

Prediction: Pittsburgh 24, Denver 10