Wild Card Weekend is the best weekend in all of football. It’s five straight days of win-or-die games in both college and the NFL. It’s awesome. Thursday was Ole Miss and Miami, and Friday was Indiana and Oregon. Saturday, we get the Rams vs. Panthers and the Packers vs. Bears. Sunday is Bills vs. Jaguars, 49ers vs. Eagles, and Chargers vs. Patriots. Monday wraps it all up with Texans vs. Steelers.
It’s the last time until September that we get football all weekend, and it’s the beginning of the most important part of the year.
These are the best football teams that the world has to offer, BUT it’s also the most wide open the playoffs have ever been. A lot of that is due to there not being a single team that is complete on both offense and defense. That means there’s a significant difference in how much fun each offensive and defensive matchup will be. This is the power ranking for that.
12. Eagles offense vs. 49ers defense
The Eagles offense is ‘defensively agnostic.’ If they play the best defense in the playoffs, they’re going to score 10 to 17 points. If they play the worst defense in the playoffs, they’re going to score 10 to 17 points…
That is, unless Jalen Hurts turns on postseason-God Mode again. There’s no reason to think that he won’t, but until we see it, the Eagles offense is officially NFTWAA (Not Fun To Watch At All).
As for the 49ers defense… Buddy, it’s just sad. Did you know Eric Kendricks is still in the NFL? Did you know that he’s going to be San Francisco’s starting linebacker on Sunday? Gross.
11. Texans offense vs. Steelers defense
The Steelers' defense is as bad as it’s been in years. Sure, they’ve got a defensive line that can be fun, but it’s not really backed up a whole lot by the secondary.
As for the Texans’ offense? It’s not great. It’s certainly better than it was at the beginning of the season, and that’s mostly due to the offensive line playing infinitely better, but it’s still not great.
10. Chargers offense vs. Patriots defense
The Chargers’ offense is fun, but it’s so draining to actually watch them.
Justin Herbert is going to throw bombs that should be catchable. Some of them will be caught, most of them won’t. He will, however, be under an insane amount of pressure on every single play.
On one hand, it’s fun to see him do cool stuff with his arm… but dude… It’s exhausting watching him get beaten up over and over and over and over and over and over again.
On top of that, Omarion Hampton is coming back from another injury. Having him is going to be huge, but watching injured guys run is stressful too.
As for the Patriots' defense? Meh. It’s not all that entertaining to watch a defensive line abuse a bad offensive line.
9. Jaguars offense vs. Bills defense
The Jaguars' offense has been absolutely nails for most of the season, and they’re peaking at the right time. Trevor Lawrence is piecing teams up, throwing the ball at a really high level, and not throwing interceptions. That last part is what makes this matchup significantly less fun.
He’s thrown one interception in the last six games, which is the best he’s done with not turning the ball over since Weeks 9 through 16 of the 2022 season (he then went on to throw four interceptions in the Wild Card game against the Chargers).
I’m sure he’ll still make some of those high-level throws this game, but that’s not really the way that you beat this Bills defense. They are brutally bad against the run, and they have been all season.
They’ve allowed five different running backs to rush for over 100 yards, allowed the second most rushes of 10 or more yards (65), and are tied with the Cowboys in allowing the most rushing touchdowns (24). The way that you kill that defense is by gashing them on the ground.
The Jaguars' problem is that they don’t have a good or consistent running game. There have been a couple of games where Travis Etienne has exploded, but it’s not really enough to think, ‘This team is going to win on the ground easily against a bad defense.’
This has the makings of a Trevor Lawrence check-down fest and a running game that is banging its head against a wall.
8. Steelers offense vs. Texans defense
For the most part, this is a boring matchup. We’ve seen a lot of Aaron Rodgers in the playoffs. Specifically, we’ve seen him start in 22 games… but that last one was four seasons ago. He’s a much different quarterback now, but in some ways, he’s still the same.
The thing that you’re looking forward to in this game is DK Metcalf coming back from his suspension. He was starting to get a little bit hotter near the end of the season, and it’ll be interesting to see how that leviathan of a man matches up with the Texans' brutalizing defense.
As far as that defense goes, it’s not super fun to watch. They don’t do anything special; they just do normal stuff at an incredibly high level.
They rush four and get sacks. There’s no fun blitzes or crazy stunts. It’s just four guys beating five guys every single play. There aren’t many super fun coverages. It’s just guys lining up and shooting everything out of the air.
Is that an impressive defense? Absolutely. Yes. Definitely. Is it all that fun? I mean… Kind of, but not really.
7. Panthers offense vs. Rams defense
For the most part, Bryce Young is good… But there's a point in almost every game when he turns into a Navy SEAL. He gets out of every bad situation, launches bullets, and assassinates a defense before they know what hits them. It’s a lot of fun to watch when he gets there.
The problem is that his SEAL mode can last for an entire game, or it can last for a drive. For the most part, he’s been hitting that gear near the end of games this season.
Maybe, just maybe, he comes into this game ready to hunt… Could he potentially be a guy with the Clutch Gene? If that’s the case, then this game is going to rock.
If it doesn’t happen, then we’re going to see the monsters on the Rams' defensive line make a mess out of things; that’s also a lot of fun to watch.
6. Rams offense vs. Panthers defense
When the Rams and the Panthers played in Week 13, Matthew Stafford turned the ball over three times.
One was a red zone interception that probably should’ve been batted down at the line, but it zonked off a defensive lineman’s head and popped up into the air. The second one was a pick-six from Mike Jackson. And the third was a strip sack in the last three minutes of the game.
If the Panthers are going to win this game, the defense is going to need to bide their time and keep the score close until Bryce Young goes into his SEAL mode. Stafford’s not the kind of cat to lay off a throw just because he made a mistake once, so the interceptions could be there again.
Jaycee Horn didn’t play in that Week 13 game because of a concussion. Having him back is going to do a whole lot in stopping that passing game and potentially getting those turnovers. He’s had the second-most interceptions this season (5) behind only Kevin Byard (7). When he gets picks, they rock, and they’re almost always the most athletic thing that you’ll see that day.
5. Bears offense vs. Packers defense
This has nothing to do with the Packers’ defense; it’s all about the story lines behind the Bears’ offense.
It would probably be good for Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams, and Bears fans to not have their first playoff game be against a team that they’ve already played twice… But for the rest of us? Buddy, this is cinema.
This season, we’ve seen this offense and the coaches all develop into a real functional football team for the first time since 2018. And now they get thrown directly into a game with the highest stakes for the franchise since the NFC Championship game in 2010. It’s beautiful.
4. Packers offense vs. Bears defense
If you’re not a Packers fan, you understand that the sole purpose the Packers serve in the playoffs this season is to end the Bears' season. The best way for them to do that is to assault the Bears’ defense without getting too much dip on their chip.
Chicago leads the NFL in takeaways (33) and interceptions (23). That’s the only reason that their defense is any good. Offenses will walk up and down the field on them, but they get turnovers and steal possessions; it’s a wildly unhealthy, unreliable, and unsustainable way to go through life.
However, if there’s a quarterback that you can count on to throw interceptions in the postseason, it’s Jordan Love. He’s played in three postseason games, and he’s thrown five interceptions.
To be fair, his first-ever playoff game was the Wild Card game in 2023, where the Packers beat the Cowboys 48-16. In that game, Love was almost perfect. After that, he threw two to the 49ers in the divisional round and three to the Eagles in the Wild Card round in 2024.
All of those came when he was in a tough spot, whether it be third-and-long, trying to steal points before halftime, or trying to make a comeback. Whenever he starts forcing things in do-or-die time, well… he dies.
So to say that this is ‘Packers offense vs. Bears defense’ might be wrong. It’s more of a ‘Jordan Love vs. Green Bay Offense vs. Bears defense.’
As big a game as this is for the Bears, it's right up there with Love showing that he can win postseason games where his team isn’t bullying some dumb-slug franchise like the Cowboys.
3. Bills offense vs. Jaguars defense
Passing game be damned. It hasn’t consistently clicked for the Bills all season, and the Jaguars are good enough at taking passing games away. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to change this week.
This is a heavyweight fight on the ground. The Jaguars have a defense that smashes your hopes of moving the ball on the ground, and the Bills' best non-Josh Allen playmaker is the NFL rushing leader, James Cook.
The Bills are going to use heavy personnel to get a good push, and the Jaguars are going to have to find a way to stop it. So as much as this is about two teams physically imposing their will on each other, the brains behind everything are going to be wildly important too.
This game is two sentient Triceratops doing a dead sprint at each other, and somebody’s going to come out on top. It’s going to be awesome.
2. Patriots offense vs. Chargers defense
The Patriots have had a pretty easy path to their 14-3 record. The best defense that they’ve played this season was the Cleveland Browns, and that was before Halloween. We haven’t seen them really get tested this season.
Jessie Minter’s defense is going to be that test, and that’s where the fun is.
We’re either going to see Drake Maye piece apart a pretty good and pretty creative Chargers’ defense, which will be awesome football… Or we’re going to see him struggle with pressure and have trouble seeing the field, which means everyone who doesn’t want the Patriots to have another postseason-monster of a quarterback will have fun watching him get crushed. It’s a win-win.
1. 49ers offense vs. Eagles defense
This is the strength-on-strength matchup of Wild Card weekend. The Eagles’ defense plays a particularly physical and violent brand of football, whereas the 49ers' offense plays a very tactful and scheme-heavy brand of football.
That’s not to say the Eagles’ defense doesn’t have any tact; Vic Fangio is probably the most tactical defensive coordinator in the NFL… but violence is the result of the tact.
If San Francisco’s offense is playing at its highest level, a defense is out of position, and the weakest player is constantly getting put in a mental blender. If Philadelphia’s defense is playing at its highest level, the offense is running the ball, or a quarterback goes blind from confusion and gets hammered by a four-man rush.
On top of that, both of these units are chock-full of talent. The 49ers have Christian McCaffrey, Trent Williams, George Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, and Brock Purdy. The Eagles have Zack Baun, Quinyon Mitchell, Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Cooper DeJean, and Nakobe Dean.
That means there are more than 17 combined seasons of All-Pro players and more than 40 combined seasons of Pro-Bowl players when these two units are on the field. That’s hard to top.