Wild Card Playoffs and the National Championship and FPI

 

It's that time of the year again.  We have the College Football Playoff National Championship featuring Alabama vs. Ohio State and the beginning of the NFL Playoffs with Wild Card Week.  Moments ago, Devonta Smith of Ohio State won the Heisman Trophy.  This is awesome since he's the first receiver to do this since 1991 when Desmond Howard won the award.  With this in mind, Nick Saban is 2-0 in the National Championship when one of his players win the Heisman in the same season.  We'll see if he can go 3-0.  Bowl season is quite over yet, but I'll release my final prediction record for the College Football season after Alabama and Ohio State battle.

In speaking of the National Championship, I am going to pick Alabama to win.  Not just because Nick Saban is undefeated so far in the National Championship when he has a player that also wins the Heisman, the FPI says so.  If you want to read more about it, here's the link.  Let's take a look at ESPN's FPI prediction for the National Championship.  

According to the FPI, Alabama has a 62.5% chance of winning.  That also means that they have a 37.5% chance of losing this match-up according to the FPI.  When it came to my pick for when Ohio State played Clemson, I chose Clemson because they had a 50.6% chance of winning, which made it pretty even.  But of course, the FPI can't predict everything and Ohio State won 49-28.  The same thing could perhaps happen against Alabama too.  But, I will take my chances and believe the FPI has it this time.  If you didn't know, the FPI has predicted the winner accurately for 75% of the games that it predicts for college football.  That's just if the team it predicted had a chance of winning higher than 50%.  Therefore, we shall see if Alabama's chance are better than Clemson's against Ohio State.

Now let's get to the NFL Predictions!  I was 12-3 (80%) last week and I made no Underdog predictions.  Now I am 86-43 (66.7%) for regular NFL predictions and 0-5 (0%) for Underdog predictions.  Now for my playoff predictions!  I'll predict all of the playoffs but of course change week to week when each round happens for the playoffs.

Wild Card Round

Colts vs. Bills: Bills

Rams vs. Seahawks: Seahawks

Buccaneers vs. Washington: Buccaneers

Ravens vs. Titans: Titans

Bears vs. Saints: Saints

Cleveland vs. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh

Divisional Round

Steelers vs. Bills: Bills

Titans vs. Chiefs: Chiefs

Seahawks vs. Saints: Saints

Buccaneers vs. Packers: Packers

Championship Round

Bills vs. Chiefs: Chiefs

Saints vs. Packers: Packers

Super Bowl

Packers vs. Chiefs: Chiefs