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With all due respect to the Saturday Wild Card Round games, the best were saved for last in Baltimore-Kansas City and Green Bay-Philadelphia.

Our six prognosticators are definitely not unified on the Sunday games, although there’s only one dissenter to a common theme on the Chiefs-Ravens game.

Who will win? Hell, we don’t know. But we’re looking forward to finding out.

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Well, there appear to be some big games or something coming up this weekend.

Playoffs? Perhaps you’ve heard of them.

We start our previews with our picks for the Saturday games, and our six prognosticators aren’t all on the same page … well, not exactly. While no one is picking the Saints to lose in Seattle, at least one of them seems to think it’s going to be a game worth watching.

As for Colts-Jets, the only agreement seems to be that it’ll be a Saturday night fight to remember.

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New Year’s Resolutions. We all have some, whether it’s to lose weight, be a better person, get a better job or contribute to the cause of world peace.

Here’s another resolution for you to consider: to get all of the unique material that Pro Football Focus has to offer by subscribing to our premium charts, stats and rankings.

Now is the best time to subscribe — for a special $39 offer, you’ll have access to our complete gamebooks from each playoff game to come with grades on each player, all of the player and team pages from the 2010, 2009 and 2008 season, all of our sortable stat charts.  You’ll get to refer to them all offseason, which you’ll do often as teams go through free agency and the draft, and your  subscription won’t run out until Week 2 of the 2011 season (or the 2012 season, God forbid).

It’s going to be a great year. Read on for a complete list of options and features.

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Yes, voting for the Pro Bowl ends today at NFL.com, and our Neil Hornsby spent the better part of his weekend working on his final appeal for the right guys to take their trip to Hawaii this season.

Among the most preposterous fan favorites, he takes special exception to the appearance of several Steeler offensive linemen: “I’ve always found Steeler fans to be among the most knowledgeable around … what possessed them to vote for almost every man on probably the second-worst offensive line in the NFL?”

He has praise, too, for underappreciated guys like Jason Witten, two Panther offensive linemen and Bart Scott. He finds room for only three rookies (two on special teams), and neither is named Ndamukong Suh.

Read Neil’s picks in the AFC here.

Read Neil’s picks in the NFC here.

Burdened by his three-week stretch of greatness, Khaled Elsayed (122-84) lost his way and now looks certain to lose the title of “Mr. Predictions Know-It-All” to Sam Monson (130-76).

At the very least, both men have turned poor early starts into respectability. And maybe one strong week could make this a competitive race once again.

Maybe, but probably not. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The Pro Bowl balloting only has a week left. Make your case for one deserving player you think needs the help.

Neil Hornsby: Josh Sitton is the guy I’m rooting for. The Pro Bowl selections are notoriously mixed even for positions which should be straightforward, but when it comes to selecting linemen they can be downright awful. I have a view that it may be same old, same old and you’ll get a default selection of Hutchinson, Faneca, Snee and Evans (among others) even though none of the guys have played particularly well this year. I hope not, because not only is Sitton the best pass protector we’ve seen this year but also well within the top 5 as a run blocker too. That’s unusual and incredibly valuable for the team.

Ben Stockwell: Sitton has been great, and let’s not overlook Harvey Dahl of Atlanta at the guard spot either.
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With just four weeks of regular season action left, Khaled Elsayed (115-75) is closing the gap on Sam Monson (119-71) after a superb week 13 in which he predicted 14 out of 16 games.

Can he close the gap, or can Ireland’s finest (that’s Monson, by the way) hold off his plucky challenger?

Let’s see …
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Players are sorted by position and ranked based on priority. This means that, in most formats, you’ll want to pick up the first name listed if several are available. Note that this advice is strictly for redraft formats and usually will lean towards a fairly standard 12-team PPR league.

Quarterbacks:

Alex Smith – 49ers

Alex Smith is back in the saddle in San Francisco, replacing Troy Smith. The 49ers have leaned more on the run since Troy took control vs. Denver in week 8, but with Frank Gore now done for the season, it could be back to more of a balanced attack.

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Thanks to all who entered our PFF premium giveaway contest, and to everyone who visits the site regularly.

The following six people won free subscriptions, and we will be in contact shortly to confirm: Tim Tellean, Brian Wisniewski, John Hellwich, Connor Oberkron, Michael Holt and Steven Hallin.

Congrats!

As the Showdown nears its end, Sam Monson (108-66) maintained his seven-game lead over Khaled Elsayed in the series with just five weeks of regular season action left.

Both of our analysts are starting to find their groove, but can Khaled (101-73) make up the gap?

Or will he have to spend the off season finding ways to ridicule the Monsoon to make himself feel better?

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