Friday, January 7, 2011

This weekend's picks

Saints 35, Seahawks 10. Somehow I don't think we'll be hearing a lot of nonsense about "the moment being too big" for New Orleans up in Dopily-Spelled Telecom Field. Additional bad news for Seattle: they'll face a team with actual wide receivers this week; a lot of them. Colston and Graham's injuries bear watching, but on the other hand, I don't think the Saints get enough credit for how their defense wins games. I don't expect they'll have any trouble shutting the anemic Seattle offense down. I'd put even money the Saint defense outscores the Seahawk offense.

Colts 24, Jets 23. A Jet win would not surprise me at all but I'm too chicken to pick against Indy at home. The Jets nearly won there last year and the Colts needed clutch performances by Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon to survive after Darrelle Revis made Reggie Wayne disappear. Now Collie's out for the season and Garcon's been pretty lousy. I think some unfamiliar strengths pop up for the Colts. They've gotten their running game going lately and their defense is playing well. Look for them to pressure the Sanchise into a game-winning amount of mistakes.

Ravens 27, Chiefs 24. The Chiefs are always a good team to bet against in the playoffs for some reason. However, their running game can give the Ravens fits and Joe Flacco's been a deer in the headlights in past postseason appearances. Bet the over in this one - both teams are going to run well. KC's run D was awful against the Raiders last week and Ray Rice ought to run wild. Deciding factor: Baltimore's play-action ought to work better than KC's, since the Ravens have several legitimate targets and the Chiefs have mainly Dwayne Bowe.

Eggles 30, Packers 27. Doubt the old axiom of having to run to win in the postseason will be proven in this game. Michael Vick may be the leading rusher. Philly will give the Packer defense much more to worry about than the Bears did last week. I can see Green Bay getting into a situation where they have the lead but can't protect it because they can't run a lick.

Technology permitting, I'll try to do live blogs of all the games this weekend.

-$-

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