After a pretty solid first two weeks of playoff football, only 4 teams remain in the hunt to be SuperBowl LX champion. Maybe only 3 realistically after Denver lost Nix for the remainder. I don’t remember a year where we’ve had so many tight back and forth playoff games over the first two rounds. Usually at least one weekend is a complete dud with a bunch of blowouts. It’s also nice to see 4 completely different teams in the Conference Championships this coming weekend.

With only 4 teams left, we get a bit of clarity on what could happen in the remaining pools as well.

Of the 20 entries still making picks this weekend, 17 took home either 25 (HOU) or 30 (BUF) points. Brushy taking a zero pretty much takes him out of contention for a top 3 spot - albeit, with all of the top 4 being on Houston, it likely wouldn’t have been enough, but would have been sitting in the top 5 with 2 weeks remaining. With the teams that are left, the max possible points left is 46, in some sort of a Denver/Rams combo (with Nix out - you can figure out how that’s most likely). So technically, any of the top 3 still have a shot, but someone is going to have to go out on a pretty big limb and have a lot go right for us to see a real shake up at the top.

Congrats to Kyle on being the first entry completely eliminated from this year’s pool. I think 5 of us joined him yesterday. Not a single entry has Denver winning the ‘ship and only 2 entries have them getting to the big game. Here’s who (if I got the math right) will win the pool in each of the 8 outcomes:

Good luck the rest of the way to those who still have a shot to win the pool, or at least finish in the top 3.