Click here<\/a> for live odds.<\/p>\nNew England Patriots (-5) at Denver Broncos | 3 p.m. ET Sunday, CBS<\/p>\n
A great matchup between two pretty good coaches. There\u2019s the Patriots\u2019 Mike Vrabel, tied for the longest-tenured coach in the AFC East, who is finally carrying his weight after Drake Maye carried Vrabel\u2019s defense the first 16 weeks. There\u2019s the Broncos\u2019 Sean Payton, who was almost smirking after he announced that Nix was out for the season \u2014 he feels backup QB Stidham is going to let it rip and surprise some people Sunday.<\/p>\n
Not me. I was in the house for Stidham\u2019s two starts with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022. He can sling it. Think of him as a dirt-poor man\u2019s Brett Favre. Stidham has some swagger and loves to throw the ball into tight windows \u2014 he has eight touchdowns and eight interceptions in four career starts. And while he is no Nix, he can run it better than people give him credit for. Stidham won\u2019t be the reason the Broncos lose, as long as Dobbins and even Harvey keep the Patriots\u2019 defense honest.<\/p>\n
The Patriots hit the road for the first time in the playoffs, and there will be some pressure on Maye. The second-year QB has already fumbled six times in the playoffs, losing three, and he actually leads the league with 14 on the season. Eleven of those were on strip sacks, tying Matt Ryan (2022) for the most since 2020.<\/p>\n
As we mentioned last week (when we picked the Bills and \u2014 sigh \u2014 they missed covering by only two points despite five turnovers), the once-feared Broncos defense has had some serious slippage the past seven weeks. But \u2026 Denver can still get after the quarterback. It has 71 sacks \u2014 14 more than anybody else \u2014 in 18 games, and even ranks fourth in pressure rate when not blitzing. Patriots left tackle Will Campbell, meanwhile, has not been the same since coming back from a knee injury, allowing four sacks and 10 pressures in the past two games.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s enough for me. There\u2019s also this: Home underdogs of 4 or more points in the playoffs are 9-0 ATS in the past 50 years.<\/p>\n
The pick: Broncos\u00a0<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks (-2.5) | 6 p.m. ET Sunday, Fox<\/p>\n
The Seahawks hammered the 49ers last week, and their defense is the first to rank in the top two in both yards per rush and yards per pass allowed since the 2015 Super Bowl champ Broncos. Too bad they have to face the Rams.<\/p>\n
The teams split their two regular-season meetings, but the Rams won the first game and led 30-14 in the fourth quarter of the second. They forced Sam Darnold to throw six interceptions. It\u2019s a little sad how everyone is waiting for Darnold to crumble, but he does have eight interceptions when pressured this season, tied for most in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Darnold has been leaning on his defense, but this is not a good matchup for the Seahawks. Puka Nacua had 19 catches for 300 yards in the two games \u2014 the most yards by any player against any single opponent across the league all season \u2014 and the mighty Seahawks defense also didn\u2019t sack Matthew Stafford once.<\/p>\n
Davante Adams is back for this one, after the Rams scored four touchdowns out of three-tight-end formations in his absence in the last matchup. Only one of those was actually caught by a tight end, but the Seahawks rank 27th in EPA per target to tight ends (-0.4), worst among any team to win a playoff game.<\/p>\n
Plus, if you go back to when Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald was the Baltimore Ravens\u2019 defensive coordinator, the Rams under coach Sean McVay are averaging 28 points per game in five meetings against Macdonald\u2019s defenses. Macdonald has otherwise allowed 18 points per game with the Seahawks and 17 with the Ravens.<\/p>\n
This also now feels like a battle-tested Rams team after two close wins in the playoffs, and it won\u2019t be fazed at all by playing in Seattle. The Rams have won there in each of the past three seasons.<\/p>\n
The pick: Rams\u00a0<\/p>\n
Best bet: We\u2019ll go with the Rams again after they failed to cover by half a point for us last week.<\/p>\n
\u2014 TruMedia research courtesy of Jason Starrett.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s been tucked away on the shelf, and now he\u2019s being asked to come in cold and spark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[258,7,58,249,6,84,261,5433],"class_list":{"0":"post-700271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-denver-broncos","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-new-england-patriots","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-nfl-playoffs","14":"tag-seattle-seahawks","15":"tag-sports-betting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115947441199803931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}