I just like watching Dallas beat the Giants, that game had me more hyped than when we beat New Orleans earlier in the season. Now let us hope Dallas can actually win a couple of playoff games, so tired of being one and done when we do get to the playoffs.

When Zeke is missing which is the best player on Cowboys offense and the center of Cowboys offense, it is impressive.

It really isn't. If Dallas blew them out, then maybe that would've looked impressive. But Elliott or not, a playoff team should probably be more than one point better than the Giants.

Well my regular season picks could have been a bit better but my prediction bracket turned out pretty good. Can't wait for the Cowboys to get roasted by the Seahawks this weekend all the other games should be fairly close.

Giants are not as bad as you think they are. And rival teams play harder. Looks how close it was for Arizona vs Seattle at  Seattle.

Patriots beat the Jets by 35. Chiefs beat the Raiders by 32. Texans beat the Jags by 17. Rams beat the 49ers by 16 while resting many of their starters. Chargers beat the Broncos by 14. Out of the eight divisional games on Sunday where one team had a better record than their opponent by at least 3 games coming in, the team with the better record went 7-1, and won by at least 14 points in 5 of those games. The single loss was the Saints, who sat their starters the entire game.

The notion that division rivals play each other close regardless of record is just a myth. Close games inevitably happen in the NFL because the disparity in skill is relatively small compared to something like college football. Having a close game against an inferior opponent is nothing to be ashamed of; it happens. However, it's not really something to brag about either.

Miami beat the Patriots, Cleveland beat the Ravens, Redksins beat the Cowboys, Jacksonville beat the Colts, Tampa beat the Saints and more where quite a few weaker rival teams won. It isn't a myth because these teams purposely draft players to match their rivals and know a lost against them can bite them at the end.

The Jags, Lions, Titans, and Steelers also beat the Patriots. The Panthers and Titans beat the Cowboys. The Bills pulled off the largest upset in the history of the league by point spread this season on the road in Minnesota. Upsets happen in the league.

The point is that they don't happen at any higher of a rate inside of the division than outside. As a Dallas fan this year, you should be aware of this; the Cowboys were 5-1 inside of their division this year, but just 5-5 outside of it. New England was 5-1 in the AFC East this season and 6-4 outside of it. The Rams were 6-0 inside their division and 7-3 outside of it. The Bears were 5-1 in the NFC North and 7-3 outside of it. Of the eight division winners this year, only one had a division record that was worse than their out of division record (New Orleans).

Besides, most of your examples are extremely cherry picked. Miami needed a last second lateral craze to win, which hardly suggests some kind of deep personnel knowledge. The Browns are by no means a bad team, and the Ravens were still starting Joe Flacco when Cleveland beat them. Washington beat Dallas when the latter was terrible and didn't yet have Amari Cooper. The Bucs beat the Saints in Week 1, which means next to nothing as both teams are still figuring out how good they are. The only one that stands is the Colts losing to the Jags, and even then, upsets happen. It's the NFL. Someone's going to lose to a team they're better than eventually.

Playoff Announcement

By a 5-4 vote, the playoff system has been chosen. Which means we'll move on to a 12 person playoff.

I'm keeping all the rules the same from previous seasons, which means HFA and the bracket readjusting so higher seeds go up against lower seeds in later rounds are all still intact. HFA will be out for the Super Bowl and it will just be one on one, whoever picks right (or is closest to the margin of victory if picks are the same).

If you want to read up more on the rules, you can look at last season's post here, but the general idea is thus: Everyone (who is playing) will predict the games for that week PLUS how much they think the winner will win by, similar to MNF games in the regular season. So, for instance, if I think the Bears will beat the Eagles by a score of 34-20, I would predict Bears by 14. It is not required, but highly recommended, that you PM me your picks, as your opponent can easily game their predictions around it if they see them and so desire.

Unlike the regular season, your predictions will be directly compared to whoever your opponent is. The person with the "better" predictions moves on to the next round, while the person with the "worse" predictions is eliminated. Predictions will first be measured by how many games each person predicted correctly, and if that number is tied, the total margin of victory.

There is one very important point to note, and that is HFA. People who performed better in the regular season will have an edge if the competition goes to the margin of victory tiebreaker (when both players predicted the same number of winners correctly). The formula for HFA is the same as seasons past:

Home field advantage = (correct picks of the higher seed in the regular season - correct picks of the lower seed in the regular season) + ([PP of the higher seed - PP of the lower seed] /2)

That number essentially gets subtracted from how far off the higher seed was in their overall margin of victory predictions. There are a couple of qualifications for this, but these are all mentioned on Rol's old post so you're welcome to view them there.

With that out of the way, here are the Wild Card matchups. TheGoldenBoy, Level1Death, cycychris, and burninmylight all have byes to the second round.

You should send your predictions for the following four games to me (except for BlowoverKing, you and I will send our picks to Rol). They are ordered by start time. The first two games are on Saturday, the latter two are on Sunday.

Colts @ Texans

Seahawks @ Cowboys

Chargers @ Ravens

Eagles @ Bears

If PM doesn't work for some reason, feel free to email me with your predictions at ogvernment@gmail.com. Additionally, please let me know if you use that route, in case your email ends up in spam or something.

I believe that covers everything. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask away.

Yeah, I looked at the divide by 2 and thought the entire equation was divided by such. We'll go with those values, then.