Get ready. You’re about to experience the big payoff for following 17 weeks of NFL football. And let’s be honest, Redskins fans — you deserve it after such a miserable season. We’ve got two wild-card playoff games on Saturday and another pair on Sunday. Sports weekends don’t get much better than this.
“The thing that gets us all going is to expect the unexpected,” said NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth. “This game changes so quickly. I’m always amazed when you put on the tape at three different points in the season just how different these teams look as you go along. In some ways it’s like one of those cliffhanger series. If you don’t stay up with it week-to-week and you don’t follow it week-to-week, you really lose touch.”
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Three of this week’s games — Cincinnati-New York Jets, Arizona-Green Bay and Dallas-Philadelphia — are rematches of last weekend’s regular-season finales. But whether it’s one week later or eight weeks later adjustments are crucial. Which coaching staff hides its original weaknesses best — and finds new and subtle ways of exploiting its opponent — will advance to the conference semifinals.
“I think one of the things evident about the NFL is diminishing returns,” said former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, an analyst for the Bengals-Jets game. “In other words, when a team sees something that you’ve done against them generally the second go-around they have a way of taking care of that.”
Gibbs mentioned the Jets’ repeated use of the corner blitz in last week’s 37-0 win over the Bengals. Cincinnati’s staff has a week to figure out ways to either block those blitzes or employ more hot routes to get the ball out of quarterback Carson Palmer‘s hands quickly. But there are other questions. New York’s offensive line dominated the Bengals. But does Cincinnati need to make adjustments? Or will actually playing for something tangible this week — the Bengals had already clinched a playoff spot — make a difference by itself.
“The NFL does have wild emotional turns between one game and another,” Gibbs cautioned. “Particularly when they were so lopsided.”
