Ricky Dimon
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Well, Super Wild Card Weekend was not exactly super – especially if you are (or were!) a team from the NFC East. Out of 6 games, only 1 (Lions vs Rams) was competitive. Both Dallas and Philadelphia got completely humiliated, Houston blew out Cleveland, Miami froze in Kansas City and Buffalo handled Pittsburgh. Will we get some drama in the Divisional Round? We’ll find out this coming weekend when top-seeded teams in Baltimore and San Francisco join the party.
Make sure you check out our NFL predictions as we add our picks on the side and total for every game, with our experts up +50.4 units this season! For now, let’s break down the NFL Divisional Round opening lines and give our best early bet to make.
NFL Divisional Round opening lines and odds
Odds available at DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publishing.
Houston Texans +9.5 (-110) vs Baltimore Ravens -9.5 (-110) – Saturday
Green Bay Packers +10 (-112) vs San Francisco 49ers -10 (-108) – Saturday
Tampa Bay Buccaneers +6 (-110) vs Detroit Lions -6 (-110) – Sunday
Kansas City Chiefs +2.5 (-102) vs Buffalo Bills -2.5 (-118) – Sunday
Best early bet for the NFL Divisional Round: Detroit Lions -6 over Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-110)
Throughout the second half of the regular season, the thinking was that whoever won the NFC South would be a sacrificial lamb in round 1 of the playoffs – even at home – against whoever didn’t win the NFC East. Yeah…um…not so much. Once 10-1, the Eagles proceeded to endure one of the biggest in-season collapses in football history. Sure, the Bucs deserve at least a little bit of credit for hammering Philadelphia 32-9 on Monday night. However, the Eagles were a shadow of their former selves. They might as well have not made the trip to Tampa. There is no need to overreact to that result – but that is exactly what the oddsmakers have done. Don’t let that game blind you from reality: the Bucs are a mediocre football team at best and a bad one at worst. There is a reason why they just barely squeaked out of one of the weakest divisions of all time.
As for the Lions, they beat a red-hot Rams team. Now that the playoff-win monkey is off their back for the first time since 1991, pressure is mostly gone. If Detroit was going to choke in the postseason, it would have been in its first game. Now this team may be off to the races. I’m counting on the home team to prevail by at least a touchdown on Sunday.
We’ll have NFL Divisional Round picks for every game this weekend
