Wildcards

Yesterday I was reading Bill Simmons' predictions for the NFL wildcard games. I was familiar with his Playoff Manifesto, so I thought that he might actually pick the Miami Dolphins over the Baltimore Ravens. After all, Miami has a number of the Manifestos' rules in its favor:

Rule #1: Never back a crappy QB on the road. Maybe crappy is too harsh of a term for Joe Flacco, but he is a rookie with limited upside. And he's on the road against an experienced QB.

Rule #2: When in doubt, seek out the popular opinion and go the other way. Check out the "experts' picks": They all pick Baltimore.

Rule #6: Ignore the final records and concentrate on how the teams finished the last five or six games of the season. Miami won their last five games and nine of their last ten. In fairness, Baltimore finished very strong too.

Rule #8: Beware the road favorite. Baltimore is a road favorite, Miami the home-underdog.

Those were all rules definitely in favor of Miami. In fact, none of Simmons' rules would lead one to pick Baltimore over Miami. So Simmons picked Miami, right? Nope. He got on the Ravens bandwagon and picked Baltimore to win by 19. Ouch. Hopefully he'll be kicking himself on Monday!