Yes, I know you're not supposed to look ahead, play 'em one at a time, focus on the task at hand. But I'm not playing this Sunday and so far Joe Gibbs has not responded to my offer to help with the game plan. So I think that no damage will be done if I take a peek ahead at the Redskins' possibilities for who they will meet in the playoffs and when they will play.
The only spot the Redskins can get is the six seed. The Giants have wrapped up the other Wild Card spot and they have 10 wins and the most the Skins can finish up with is nine.
That means that if anyone offers to sell you tickets for a Redskins home playoff game, do not buy them. They can't host a playoff game no matter what. The higher seed gets home field and the Redskins can't be the higher seen in any game since they are the lowest seed.
Should the Redskins qualify, they will play at the three seed. Seattle has locked up that spot, so we would have a rematch of sorts of the 2005 season playoffs when the Skins gave the Seahawks some problems before bowing.
When would that game be played? There are four slots for the Wild Card round. NBC gets a Saturday doubleheader, one AFC game and one NFC game, with time slots at 4:30 PM and 8:00 PM Eastern. Fox and CBS each get a Sunday game, one at 1:00 PM, the other at 4:30. Out of the four time slots the only one that the Skins-Hawks couldn't play in is the Sunday 1:00 since it would be 10 AM in Seattle. The guess here is that NBC, having carried the Redskins the last two weeks, will ask for and get the New York market for its NFC game, which would put the Redskins into the late Sunday game.
If they win that one it would be on to Dallas. There is no March Madness-style bracket in the NFL playoffs. The highest remaining seed plays the lowest remaining seed. The Cowboys are the top seed and a surviving Redskin team would be the lowest remaining.
The Divisional round is January 12 & 13. On Saturday, Fox has a 4:30 game and CBS has the prime time 8:00 spot. On Sunday the games are at 1:00 and 4:30 and either network could get either slot. The preference is to give the top seed a Saturday game to give them the slight advantage of an extra day of rest before the conference title game, so that 4:30 on January 12 seems to be the likely landing spot for this game. Since the other NFC game will be in Green Bay there is no West Coast consideration so a possible Skins-Cowboys rematch could be in either time slot on Sunday.
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