NFL Wildcard weekend

Andrew Bulieris
Sports Editor

     Home-field advantage showed its true strength this past weekend as all of the home teams swept the floor, advancing to the divisional round of the playoffs. In fact all the home teams won by more than ten points with the lowest margin of victory being thirteen points. The teams that played last weekend were the Houston Texans vs the Oakland Raiders, the Seattle Seahawks vs the Detroit Lions, the Pittsburgh Steelers vs the Miami Dolphins, and finally the Green Bay Packers vs. the New York Giants.
        The Weekend started off with the Texans beating the Raiders 27-14. The Raiders came into the weekend with an 11-5 record after a surging season with quarterback sensation Derek Carr. Just before the season ended though Carr ended up breaking his leg and crushing the hopes and dreams of Raiders fans. Inconsistent quarterback, Brock Osweiler, had maybe his best game of the season after having an awful year. The late game on Saturday night was the Seahawks beating the Lions 26-6. Running back Thomas Rawls ran right through the Lions rushing for 161 yards and a score. The Seattle defense shut down the Lions offense without even allowing touchdown all day.
                 On Sunday the Steelers rolled over the Dolphins 30-12 as Le’veon Bell dominated once again rushing for 167 yards and 2 scores. The history of the weekend seemed to be the away team’s inability to put points on the board and the Dolphins struggle to score a touchdown all the way up to the 4th quarter. The final game of the weekend was the most hyped-up one, the Packers beating the Giants 38-13. Aaron Rodgers sucked the life out of the Giants after completing a last second hail mary to end the first half. Rodgers went on to throw four touchdowns after being mostly contained in the first quarter. Eli Manning and company struggled to keep up with the red hot Packers only scoring one touchdown. Wildcard weekend was full of home team blowouts but maybe the divisional round will give us some better matchups.

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