Let The NFL Playoffs Begin!

Earlier this evening, long after they should already have been eliminated, the hated Steelers finally had the stake driven solidly through their hearts and any hope they had of defending last year's travesty was dashed. It certainly shouldn't have taken this long to knock them out of the postseason picture after they lost to the lowly Browns to go 6-7 three weeks ago, and yet it did, thanks to a comedy of errors in the AFC that saw teams like Jacksonville and Denver lose 4 straight to waste earlier records of 7-5 and 8-4, respectively. At least Houston (Houston!) and Baltimore were both able to pull off victories today, which made everything good as far as my enjoyment of the NFL is concerned.

It's already guaranteed that 2 matchups today will be repeated next week on Wildcard Weekend (Dallas-Philadelphia and Green Bay-Arizona) and there may be a 3rd such rematch if the Jets beat the Bengals tonight (those 2 teams would battle again next weekend). That's a pretty weird coincidence, considering that there are 16 teams in each conference. One of the sentimental favourite stories to follow will be Brett Favre's run for the Vikings in this, his second comeback season. I'm personally looking forward to seeing whether the Chargers can be for real this time around, as they've under-delivered several years in a row now. And then there are the Saints and Colts, both of whom flirted with perfect seasons until just a couple weeks back. What will they have left for the big games?

There are still a few more college football bowl games to check out before the NFL playoffs start, but it won't be long now!

[Update: The Jets won, in a blowout, meaning that they will indeed play the Bengals again next weekend. In fact, theirs is the early game next Saturday, meaning that two teams (NYJ and Cin) will play consecutive NFL games, with no other games in between or concurrent... has that ever happened before?]