NFL Playoffs: Divisional round picks and predictions

Here are Don Banks of Sports Illustrated’s picks for the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.

Don Banks of Sports Illustrated has been teaming up with ScoreBig all season long to make his NFL predicitions and he has done some with fairly tremendous accuracy. In the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs Banks went a meager 2-2, but to be fair he made some bold picks.

One of those losses was Banks picking the Washington Redskins to beat the Green Bay Packers at home to move on. The other was Banks picking the Cincinnati Bengals to knock off the Pittsburgh Steelers without Andy Dalton under center. Bold picks and not all egregious, but ones that didn’t come to fruition thanks in part to the Bengals meltdown in one of the two games.

This week Banks is back and making picks for the Divisional Round, here is how he sees it playing out.

Banks predicted the Chiefs to get a narrow win over the Texans and boy was he wrong there. The Chiefs won but by a significant margin. While it would be hard to envision the Chiefs getting past a remarkable New England Patriots team led by Tom Brady, he does see it being a close game.

Banks leans on the Patriots success in the postseason when making this pick, citing their four straight appearances in the AFC Championship game.

Banks said towards the end of the season that the Arizona Cardinals were his favorites to win the Super Bowl. He is staying true to that prediction here but picking them in a tough battle against the Green Bay Packers, a team he had losing to the Washington Redskins last week.

Given how their first matchup played out near the end of the regular season, it isn’t hard to find confidence in the Cardinals.

The Carolina Panthers enter the NFL playoffs in the Divisional Round after earning a first-round bye because of their tremendous regular season and face an immediately difficult test in the Seattle Seahawks, a team who has won the last two NFC Championship games. This is far away a tough test for the Panthers and I don’t think anyone can envision this not being a close game, and neither does Banks. He is predicting the Panthers to edge the Seahawks in a close game where he sees Carolina exploiting Seattle’s struggles against tight ends.

The Denver Broncos have Peyton Manning back under center, but can he lead the Broncos to a victory over the surging Pittsburgh Steelers, who also happened to knock off the Cincinnati Bengals, albeit with some help from the Bengals themselves? Banks thinks so and cites the absence of Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown as a reason.