NFL Open Thread: Divisional Round Saturday

Let’s see if I can keep my undefeated streak going (fortunately, back in my pain-in-the-ass-to-bet jurisdiction so the wildcard profits are locked in — yay paternalism!)

Bills at Broncos (-1.5): I would love to see Josh Allen finally make a Super Bowl, and I can’t blame anybody who sees Allen v. Nix and wants to smash Buffalo getting points. I also think the Broncos are a subpar #1 seed — OK offense, defense very good but not in the class of Texas or Seattle. But I still have the same nagging objection to the structure of the Bills I’ve had most of the year: they surrounded Allen with a bunch of replacement-level wideouts to focus on fixing the defense, and then…didn’t fix the defense. I could certainly see Allen working miracles late like he did against the Jaguars. But I think the more likely scenario is Payton having the discipline to keep attacking the abysmal Bills run defense and keeping the ball out of Allen’s hands, and the Bills receivers just not getting enough separation against man coverage for Allen to generate enough yardage. I would pick Denver and hope to be wrong.

49ers v. Seahawks (-7) Before we get to this game, can we talk about what a gigantic coaching mismatch last weekends Eagles/Niners game was? (As Tanier put it, “Kyle Shanahan versus Nick Sirianni: one coach playing chess, the other trying to crawl into the box the chess set came in like a confused kitty cat.”) After a Philly Special-worthy trick play got the Niners a critical fourth quarter TD, Shanahan dialed this up to spring his best receiving option open and get the go-ahead score:

Christian McCaffrey is unbelievable. One of the best to ever do it.pic.twitter.com/t0XkdqbRcY— NFL Fantasy Football (@NFLFantasy) January 12, 2026

Facing their final fourth down, conversely, Sirianni and Patullo dialed up a Four Verts concept familiar to anyone who has seen the first page of a Madden playbook or played football with their relatives after Thanksgiving dinner, resulting to a hopeless throw into triple coverage:

ERIC KENDRICKS KNOCKS IT AWAY

49ERS BALL 😳

SFvsPHI on FOX/FOX One
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/YS7jtonSGC— NFL (@NFL) January 12, 2026

But wait — it’s worse than that. This is what they came up with after a timeout, and at that a completely irrational timeout that guaranteed that they would not be able to get the ball back if the fourth-and-long try failed. I think Patullo is working at a Wawa now and if not for being the defending Super Bowl champion Sirianni might be his manager.

Anyway, despite the Seahawks absolutely throttling the Niners offense in Week 18, this is why I’m a little leery of laying seven points to the Niners. Seattle is certainly better given the current state of the San Francisco roster, but especially with Darnold apparently not 100% I would expect the Seahawks to have a very conservative game plan focused on ball control, and Shanahan will probably come up with enough answers to do more damage than the previous game. I expect Seattle to win but I would take the points.