Super wild card weekend officially concluded last night with Monday Night Football with the Dallas Cowboys taking down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in what seemed to be the only non-competitive game of the week.
The NFC games were evenly dispersed over Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with one game on each day and the first matchup featured the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers, a divisional matchup.
Now it is hard enough to sweep a season series against another team in the regular season, but to beat a team three times and this time in the playoffs is even harder. But, the 49ers were able beat the Seahawks for a third consecutive time to advance to the next round. Seattle put up a great fight in the first half and actually went into halftime leading, but things quickly turned upside down for them in the second half.
Seattle had a great year that was very unexpected after trading their franchise cornerstone, Russell Wilson, to the Denver Broncos. Geno Smith proved all the doubters wrong and the fact that Seattle made the playoffs was pretty amazing. But, after overcoming so many things, they were unable to overcome the 49ers after three chances. The Niners now have a rematch with the Cowboys from last years playoffs, but this time at home in Santa Clara.
The second matchup of the weekend featured the New York Giants and the Minnesota Vikings. Out of these three games in the NFC, this game was by far the most intense game to watch. The Giants once again proved all of the doubters wrong and went into Minnesota and took down the NFC North champions, 31-24.
It's pretty ironic how Minnesota went 11-0 in one-score games all season, then come playoffs they lose their only one score game to get eliminated. Out of the teams in the playoffs, these two teams have had the most critics, with the Giants that Daniel Jones is not good enough, and with the Vikings that they simply are not good enough and have gotten lucky all season. In my opinion, both of these opinions are wrong and the Vikings were a good team all season no matter how close they won games by, but they couldn't show up in the playoffs. The Giants now head to Philadelphia to face the #1 seed Eagles in the next round.
Finally, the final game of wild card weekend featured the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So many headlines going into this game, with Tom Brady facing off against Dak Prescott, but in the end to many people's shock, the Cowboys routed the Bucs, 31-14. Lots of people expected Brady to win this game easily as he is Tom Brady, but he looked absolutely horrible in this game. For the first time in his illustrious career, he played like a normal guy his age would play, not good.
In recent history, the Cowboys have not been good at winning games in the playoffs and they have came in very close margins. Everyone questioned if Dak was good enough to go into a hostile environment and lead his team to a victory and he sure did. Now the Cowboys go to Santa Clara to face the 49ers and I'm sure that they have last years playoff loss against the Niners in the back of their minds.
Now only eight teams left in the playoffs as we push into week 20. I would have to say, the AFC games were much more competitive than the NFC games. So now the Cowboys face the 49ers and the Eagles face the Giants and the winners of those two games will face each other with a Super Bowl trip on the line.
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