We like to think we know a lot about the NFL teams that make it to the postseason. There’s a full year of tape and numbers to go by.
Wild Card weekend — this year featuring two extra games, thanks to the seventh team added in each conference — always manages to upend what we thought we knew. Because it’s football, and bizarre things happen.
Still, there are matchups that dictate how each team approaches this first step toward what they hope will be a long run toward the Super Bowl. We’ve tried to focus on those battles and how they’ll dictate the flow of these games.
(Games are listed chronologically.)