I’d love to tell you that there are spoilers below for the 2020 NFL playoffs, but I know that’s not true. It’s incredibly difficult to predict how 13 NFL games will go. Last season, three of the four teams favored to win the wildcard round lost. The world was expecting a Ravens-Chiefs battle in the AFC Championship, but Baltimore was easily sent by Tennessee to the divisional round. If you had the perfect support for the playoffs when the Chiefs beat the 49ers in Miami, well, you did.
This year, as a preview for the playoffs, I will be distributing the box of 13 games and predicting the winners until the Super Bowl LV. It will almost definitely be bad and ruined by the time we spend the first three games on Saturday, which is fine. Hopefully, here’s an idea that will give you things to look for before games, no matter how the results go.
Let’s start with the NFC and the first set-set in the history of the playoffs:
Jump to a playoff round:
Wildcard Weekend: NFC | AFC
Divisional round: NFC | AFC
Conference Championships: NFC | AFC
Super Bowl LV
NFC wildcard weekend
The four-game stretch from Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky that sparked the hearts of NFL executives in December pitted teams ranked 14th (Vikings), 29th (Texans), 31st (Jaguars) and 32nd (Lions) in Defensive DVOA. In the game against the Vikings, Trubisky passed 15 of 21 passing 202 yards with a touchdown and a selection. A Trubisky delay cost Chicago the game against the Lions. The fourth-year passer began and finished his career with games against the Packers, a team with a competent passing defense that requires the other team to pitch to stay in the game. Trubisky averaged 5.6 yards per try, threw three interceptions and scattered three times in those two games.