Last week I started my annual NFL playoff series on the latest trends in the wildcard round. I revealed a number of street, outsider, and under-the-total systems that have been very successful lately. Much of that pattern continued last weekend, when visiting teams won four of the six games. So, like the league itself, I’ll move into the divisional round this week.
The six winners from last weekend want to take a big step towards the Super Bowl together with Green Bay and Kansas City. The top seeds bring superior talent to their games, including arguably the top two quarterbacks in the business, and apparently anyone can make it to Tampa for the Super Bowl next month.
Last year three of the four home teams leave the division round. Home games are rare, and if this season is like last season, not all top teams will continue, although it’s a good bet that at least three will. Looking back on the last nine playoff seasons, the hosts have won this round twice – 2016 and 2019. They split in 2017. In the other six years they went 3-1 for a cumulative record of 28: 8 or 78 percent in this one Period of time. If the pattern applies, expect a host to be eliminated this weekend. On paper this would be Team Buffalo, the smallest favorite of the four visiting teams.
The past few years have seen some wild action in this round. The most exciting game of the year was the Kansas City Rally after trailing Houston 24-0 (51-31), and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. Surely you remember Jacksonville’s 45:42 win at Pittsburgh in 2018 or the Minnesota Miracle that same season. Instead of looking back at specific games, we’ll instead look back at some general trends, hoping to find nuggets to benefit from in this year’s competitions.
One trend to get us started: the divisional playoffs have scooped a lot lately, with 26 of the 40 games (65 percent) exceeding the total in the last 10 years.
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