Wildcard weekend kicks off with the Kansas City Chiefs, winners of 10 straight games, traveling to take on the AFC South winners, the Houston Texans.
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BC: “In his two games against the Bengals this season, he had one with six receptions for 47 yards and seven receptions for 87 yards”. Along the way, he engineered a 38-7 victory over the Vikings in Minnesota on December 6. I still think they’re the team to beat going into this one. The Panthers, Cardinals and Seahawks all appear to be viable Super Bowl contenders in the NFC. While second-year backup AJ McCarron is expected to play on Saturday, Andy Dalton is inching toward a return – perhaps as early as next week should Cincinnati advance – after fracturing his thumb in the Bengals’ 33-20 loss to Pittsburgh on December 13.TV: 8:15 p.m. ET, CBS. The team that is playing their best football in January is the team that will host the Lombardi Trophy in February. With a solid running game that’s averaging 112 yards per game with Jeremy Hill and Gio Bernard, the pressure is somewhat off of McCarron to carry the team. “These are a couple of mercurial teams that might be viewed as the weakest in the NFC”, Lester said.
The Washington Redskins (9-7) played poorly through the first three quarters of the season, but were not buried because they played in the struggling NFC East. The Redskins deserve credit, because they closed the season with a four-game winning streak to earn the division title. Their four losses have all been to playoff teams. The injury stemmed from a hit by linebacker Vontaze Burfict that spurred a war of words with Steelers linebacker Vince Williams that spilled over into social media and pregame warmups last month. The Steelers and Bengals split their regular season meetings, with both winning on the road. Cousins will be making his first playoff start, which could bring on some jitters. “We opened Steelers -3 due to the fact that we’ve got Ben Roethlisberger against a second-string quarterback”, he said. If the Bengals make it to the next round, it’s a wait and see how they played on whether Dalton goes in or not.
“AFC North ball, ” guard Ramon Foster called it. “We know how it’s going to go down”. Avello said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Dalton at some point. I’ll probably be wrong, but I’m not the only one!
The Green Bay Packers (10-6) limped home by losing six of their final 10 games, as their once-formidable passing game slumped badly this season. In other words, the Steelers offense will need to play lights-out starting Saturday against the Bengals if they intend on bucking history as I don’t believe their defense will improve much, if any, moving forward. “I suspect the house needs the Bengals at kickoff”. The Bengals defense is allowing 17.4 points and 340.8 yards per game with 21 interceptions, 42 sacks, and 10 fumble recoveries.
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Generalizations from Lewis are especially tight-lipped with questions about himself, particularly his 0-6 playoff record. The Bengals enter the contest as the number three seed in the conference with a 12-4 record as the AFC North division champions. With Roethlisberger and the NFL’s best wide receiver in Brown, Pittsburgh is capable of scoring 40 points in any given game. “The Texans may be a very different team now, but so are the Chiefs, who lost five straight after that win and haven’t lost since”, Avello said.
