Victories by visitors set up rematches in NFC
Welcome back from those bye weeks, Carolina and Arizona.
Perhaps the Panthers or the Cardinals, or both of the NFC’s top two seeds, will be able to defend their home fifields.
No pressure, guys.
The visiting teams mirrored their AFC counterparts by winning the wild-card round games on Sunday.
Now the two-time defending conference champion Seahawks will take the cross-country trek to face Carolina next Sunday, and the Packers will travel southwest to play Arizona on Saturday night. Each NFC semififinal is a rematch of a matchup from the regular season, won by the Panthers and Cardinals. Here’s a closer look: Green Bay at Arizona: The Packers can at least count on this: They’ll have plenty of their foam-cheese-headwearing fans in attendance in the des-
ert, where they appear for road games as much as anywhere. Beyond that, the odds of a return trip to the NFC championship game are stacked against them in the form of a Cardinals team that beat them 38-8 just two weeks ago.
“We kind of felt like this was a possibility,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “It’s going to be one more competitive game, I bet.”
As long as Rodgers is running the offense, discounting the Packers would be unwise no matter how unorganized and punchless they’ve looked at times this season. Eddie Lacy and James Starks each had 12 carries on Sunday and combined for 116 yards rushing, production they’ll have to repeat to be able to upset the Cardinals in their comfortable home.
Last time, Rodgers was sacked eight times, losing two fumbles that the Cardinals recovered and returned for touchdowns. The Packers finished that game without both of their starting offensive tackles, and David Bakhtiari has missed the past three games on the left side with a sprained left ankle.
The onus is on the defense, though, against a prolific Cardinals team that averaged more than 30 points per game behind the finest of Carson Palmer’s 13 seasons in the NFL.
Seattle at Carolina: Maybe this one should be called the Bravado Bowl.
The Seahawks are the least-likely lower seed
to be intimidated on the road, with the swagger built by those consecutive Super Bowl appearances, that wealth of Pro Bowl players discovered later in the draft and the momentum this season they rode to an 8-2 finish. Then there’s that last-minute loss to New England in the Super Bowl last season they’ve been determined to move past.
The last game the Seahawks lost before they started to hit their stride in late October was, interestingly, at home against the Panthers, when they squandered leads of 20-7 in the third quarter and 23-14 in the fourth quarter in a 27-23 defeat. Russell Wilson was sacked four times that day by a defense that ranked sixth in the league and first in the NFC with 44 sacks this season, but the protection down the stretch was much better as Wilson flourished with the best passing performances of his stellar career.
The ground game is a bit of a mystery, with Marshawn Lynch concluding he wasn’t ready to return this week from the abdominal injury and Christine Michael managing a mere 70 yards on 21 attempts at Minnesota when the Seahawks needed more in conditions that made throwing difficult if not unwise.
The Panthers ought to be prepared to handle this, with their defense that forced an NFL-leading 39 turnovers and placed sixth in both yards and points allowed. They lost to the Seahawks in the divisional round last year, too, but that team needed four straight wins to finish the regular season 7-8-1.