In today’s world, sports means so much to millions around the world, stopping everything they are doing just to watch a game to see if their favorite team may win. Well, what higher stakes than the playoffs?
How Do The Playoffs work?
In the NFL there are 2 conferences with 32 teams in total, and as playoffs roll in, the good is strained away from the mediocre where the top 16 teams face off against their conferences. After this grueling process of upsets and crazy wins, the great is strained away from the good, and the top 4 teams face off in what is called, The Conference Championship. The final 2 AFC and NFC finalists face off in The Super Bowl. In this final game the two Final teams from both conferences face off for the Lombardi Trophy. On the side, every player from the team gets a Super Bowl Ring. These rings are typically made of yellow or rose gold with diamonds. They usually include the team name, team logo, with the phrase, World Champions, and the Super Bowl number is usually in roman numeral numbers. Every year it varies and sometimes is completely different, but it always is in the same format.
As we can tell they are playing for a lot, the team’s pride, their cities pride, and the Lombardi trophy. Now let’s finally move on to the playoff picture. By the time you are reading this, many teams have already lost in divisional and wild card rounds, which is why we are going over the NFC and Super Bowl Championships. Right now the top 4 finalists are the San Francisco 49ers, The Detroit Lions, The Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers are facing off against the Detroit Lions in the 49ers territory, and the Kansas City Chiefs are facing off against the Baltimore ravens in Baltimore Raven territory. These teams as we know are playing for the right to go to the super bowl, in the AFC championship between Baltimore the Kansas city, the Ravens have a 3.5 point favorite to beat the chiefs, and in the NFC championship between San Francisco and Detroit, The 49ers have a 7.5 point favorite to win this match up. As much as these odds give the other team to lose, any thing is entirely possible, the 49ers could play the Ravens, The Ravens could face the Chiefs, The chiefs could face the lions, the Lions could face The Ravens, and the 49ers could face the chiefs, anything can happen, but it’s up to you to make your picks. Strategy is a huge thing when it comes to these type of games, for example, The 49er heavily rely on their running game to get the dirty work done for them, and they very much rely on their wide receivers to get yards after the catch, so you want to stuff the running lanes and try to limit their yards after the catch. For the lions, they rely a lot on their running game since they are 5th in the whole league, behind the 49ers, and they rely on big chunk plays, so the niners would have to try to do zone offense to stop that from happening and stuff the running lanes up to which they are one of the best at doing just that. The Chiefs would have to contain Lamar Jackson and make sure he doesn’t escape the pocket and protect the running game, to which the Ravens would have to do the same with Patrick Mahomes and their running game. And the Ravens will have to protect 15+ yard plays and play zone defense to protect that and make sure that does not happen.
In the world of sports anything can happen, the 18-0 patriots were outmatched by the 12-4 Giants, the Cleaveland Cavaliers came back and won in stunning fashion against the 72-9 golden state warriors, and the National Olympic Team U.S.A. won the game 4-3 despite having lost to the Soviet team, 10-3, in an exhibition game just prior to the Olympics. The win is still widely regarded as the biggest upset in American sports history. Anything can happen with a little faith.