NFL fans, are you ready for some serious, well-played football this weekend? Let's hope that the games are better than "Wild Card weekend," which provided the greatest body of evidence yet that any expansion the playoff pool would be ill-advised.
Here we go with a breakdown of the games, listed in order of potential entertainment value:
Green Bay at San Francisco
This is by far the best game of the weekend on paper. The Niners are the #2 seed in the NFC, only because the Packers couldn't stop Adrian Peterson on the last day of the season and lost on the last play of the game, kicking them down to the #3 seed and forcing them to play the Vikings again last Saturday night.
There's a reason why teams want that week off at this time of year — especially if you're a physical team like the Niners, and you desperately needed the rest. I contend the Niners are still Super Bowl contenders, based in part that they received a bye last weekend. If they had to have played last week their odds were shot, since they seemed to be playing on fumes in their last couple of games (actually going back to the second half of the high-water mark of the season, their victory over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots on a cold, rainy Sunday night in December, the Pats first loss at home in December in a decade).
