NFL Wild Card Weekend Best Bets: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

With all due respect to the holiday season that just passed, the most wonderful time of the year for NFL fans is upon us. Sure, conference championship Sunday and Super Bowl Sunday are great days. But over a nine-day span starting this Saturday, we have 10 playoff games to enjoy.

It all starts with Wild Card weekend, featuring teams that are surging and one in a free fall. The 7-seed Green Bay Packers finished the season 6-2 with Jordan Love playing like a top quarterback in that span. The Pittsburgh Steelers somehow won 10 games. The Buffalo Bills somehow won the AFC East despite being 6-6 at one point. The Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams might be the best teams no one is talking about. Will the Philadelphia Eagles show up? And is the inevitable heartbreak coming once again for the Dallas Cowboys?

The storylines are abundant. It’s time to take it all into account for our NFL Wild Card weekend best bets!

With the Baltimore Ravens dominating the AFC with splashy wins over the likes of Detroit, San Francisco, and Miami, it’s easy to discount what the second-place finisher in the AFC North has done. But the Cleveland Browns won their final four games of consequence and were able to rest their starters last week after locking up the 5-seed in the AFC.

The Browns are on quarterback No. 4 this season, but Joe Flacco has been a revelation for Cleveland. Flacco, called out of retirement after injuries to DeShaun Watson and Dorian Thompson-Robinson, has averaged well over 300 yards per game in five starts with 13 touchdowns and eight interceptions.

In a Christmas Eve thrashing of Houston — the Browns’ opponent this weekend — Flacco was 27 of 42 for 368 yards, three touchdowns, and two picks.

Flacco, the veteran of many playoff wars for well over a decade, matches up with rookie C.J. Stroud. Stroud has played brilliantly in his rookie year, throwing just five interceptions all season. But the playoffs are a different story, the Browns have the NFL’s best defense when it comes to yards allowed, and the Texans are coming in short-handed on the wide receiver front.

The Browns are getting respect from the oddsmakers by being favored here, but there’s still value — especially if you can lock Cleveland in under a field goal.

The Play: Browns -2.5 (-115 at FanDuel)

For the first time in his career, Patrick Mahomes plays on Wild Card Weekend. If the Kansas City Chiefs win, there will be another first the following week: Mahomes’ first road playoff game.

Before we get there, the Chiefs host the Miami Dolphins in what will be a frigid Arrowhead Stadium. Two weeks ago, the Dolphins controlled their own destiny for home-field advantage. But an 0-2 finish takes them out of sunny South Florida and into unfavorable weather conditions.

Of greater concern for Miami is its performance against teams that ended up reaching the playoffs. The 1-5 record is a problem for the Dolphins, but for our purposes, we’re looking at the points scored in those games.

Miami was first in the AFC with 29.2 points per game, but that number is skewed by a 70-point performance against Denver and seven others above 30 against losing squads. In the six games against playoff teams, the average scoring output is 17.6.

The Chiefs, on the other hand, have scored just 21.8 points per game, which is their lowest output in the Mahomes era. Their first meeting in Germany was a 21-14 Kansas City win. We’re not sold on either team’s offense enough to make a pick, but we do think the scoring output will be similar or even less due to the adverse weather conditions.

The Play: Dolphins-Chiefs UNDER 44 (-109 at BetRivers)

After an 10-1 start, the Philadelphia Eagles unraveled over the final month and a half of the season. A change in defensive signal calling didn’t help, and now the team is dealing with injuries on offense as part of a 1-5 finish. The regular season ended with the New York Giants, who were among the lowest scoring teams in the NFL, putting points on the board at will against the Eagles.

The Eagles are probably fortunate that they didn’t win the NFC East to host surging Green Bay. Instead, they head to Tampa Bay to play a 9-8 Buccaneers squad that has been tough to figure out in recent weeks. Will we get the Buccaneers and Baker Mayfield who put up a perfect passing number at Lambeau Field last month? Or will it be the team that lost at home to New Orleans two weeks ago and beat 2-15 Carolina 9-0 last week?

One thing is for sure. The Eagles’ problems run deeper than something that can be fixed in a week. But a 25-11 Week 3 win over the Bucs at Raymond James Stadium does give Philadelphia some confidence that they can run it back.

With a relatively high number, we’re going to take another under here.

The Play: Eagles-Buccaneers UNDER 44 (-110 at Caesars)

The Los Angeles Rams are in a similar spot to the Browns: finished in second place to their conference’s top seed. LA started 3-6, but once they got healthy, the Rams finished the season at 7-1. The only loss being an overtime defeat at Baltimore.

Now, as fate would have it, Matthew Stafford returns to Detroit to play against the Lions in the franchise’s first home playoff game in over 30 years.

The Lions have been an incredible story this year, and they are talented on both sides of the ball. The difference in this one, however, could be the status of tight end Sam LaPorta. The team’s second-best pass catcher, who set an NFL record for receptions by a rookie tight end this year, was lost to a leg injury in the team’s Week 18 win over Minnesota.

While head coach Dan Campbell said that LaPorta has an outside shot to play on Sunday, the Rams come in with the experience edge. The last time we saw Stafford, Cooper Kupp, and Aaron Donald in the postseason, it was in a Super Bowl victory in February 2022. LA getting over a field goal here is great value.

The Play: Rams +3.5 (-115 at PointsBet)

Two weeks ago, we wrote that Dallas’s dominance at home was more due to the caliber of the opponent rather than the level of competition. The Cowboys holding on — with a little held from the officials, depending on your point of view — for a one-point win over the Lions bore out that theory.

Now, there’s mountains of pressure on the Cowboys to get to the NFC Championship game (and beyond) for the first time since January 1996. Standing in their way are the Packers. They are led by Jordan Love, who has had a better first full season as Packers starting quarterback than predecessors Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.

The chances of a rout are always present with the way Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb have been playing. However, Love has limited his mistakes of late (18 TDs vs. 1 INT in his last eight games), and Aaron Jones has run for over 110 yards in three straight games.

The Play: Packers +7.5 (-110 at DraftKings)