Hello sports fans and friends, family, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, cousins and aunts of sports fans.
For many NFL football fans, this coming weekend is the best weekend of sports for the year. Like last weekend, there are four playoff games over two days. What makes it even better than last weekend is that the four teams with the best records in the league rested last weekend and now all host the winner of last weekend’s games. It’s the NFL Divisional round of the playoffs! To help prepare for the games, I invited my old friend Brendan Gilfillan to join me in a series of podcasts. We’ll go through each NFL playoff game and talk through the most interesting characters, the basic plot of the game, who we want to win and who we think is going to win, and just for fun, we’ll share our favorite player names from each playoff team. I hope you enjoy it.
The NFL Wildcard Round
NFL Football — Sunday, January 11, 2015 — Dallas Cowboys at Green Bay Packers, 1:05 p.m. ET on Fox.
- Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers — he’s the best quarterback in the league, but he’s injured. How good can he still be?
- Green Bay Packers wide receiver Jordy Nelson — why does he seem to be open deep, all the time? Could assumptions of race play into it?
- Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews — and why you’ll want to “reach out and touch his hair.”
- Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo — has his sports narrative conclusively changed after last week’s game? Is there actually a clutch gene? What about an “oops” gene?
- Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Cole Beasley — talking about open, why does it seem like he’s open on every play?
- A plot synopsis of the game — This is the biggest game of the weekend from a spectacle standpoint. It’s America’s Team (the Cowboys) vs. the only collectively owned major sports franchise in the country (Green Bay.) As for the actual game, Green Bay should probably win, but if Tony Romo and the Cowboys can win, the’ll remove the playoff monkey from their backs forever. Aaron Rodgers’ injured calf is the other big plot point of the game. How bad is his leg? What will the weather be like?
- The players on both teams whose names we most envy and enjoy
- Who we want to win and who we think is going to win
- And much, much more!
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Music by Jesse Fischer.