All the brackets have been determined and the path is set for all teams as far as what they need to do to make it to the big dance is concerned. The matchups are pretty solid, aside from one and of course, that one involves my team that eeked their way into the playoffs, the Carolina Panthers.
This bracket is funny for one particular reason and that is that the Rams who are 12-5, are ranked LOWER than the Panthers who are 8-9. I may have mentioned before that it is extremely rare that a team with an overall losing record makes it to the playoffs. But the NFL functions with an 8-division setup and the winner of each division moves forward regardless of how terrible the 4 teams in that division happen to be. It isn't often that all 4 teams in a particular division are really bad, but that was the case with the NFC South division in the 2025 season.
The Panthers must be ranked in the top 4 because of the rules that exist as far as rankings are concerned in the playoffs. If we were being truly honest, they would appear ranked as 14th in that picture.
One thing I enjoy that they do with the NFL playoff system is that they don't make it a "free ride" for the number 2 teams as if they do win their first game, which of course is likely, the next team they have to play is the number 1 seed rather than getting some easier games on the way to the conference championship. In some way this functions different than other brackets, such as the NCAA basketball tournaments, where brackets are designed so that it is quite likely the number 1 and 2 seed will be in the final four.
Obviously upsets can and do happen, but you can see from last year's NCAA basketball results that in 3 of the 4 brackets, the number 1 and 2 seed ended up making it to the end of their respective divisions. Check it out here if you feel so inclined.
Going back to the Panthers vs Rams: Wishful thinkers will remember that the only other time these two teams have met in the regular season, that the Panthers actually won the game. But wait! There's more to this story: All professional pundits and any casual fan understands that this wasn't due to Carolina excellence, it as because Los Angeles defeated themselves with some very silly mistakes, one of which was a "pick 6" (where a turnover is immediately returned for a touchdown). The worst mistake was when the Rams were in game-winning territory with less than 3 minutes on the game clock and the Rams didn't snap the ball in time and faced a delay of game penalty turning a 3rd and 5 into a 3rd and 10.
Any given sunday
That's the expression about American football and how any good team can lose to a lessor team if something just isn't clicking withe the team chemistry.
Unfortunately for Carolina, their mishaps have been much more frequent than the Rams choking on turnovers in a game that should have been a walk in the park.
The current Vegas lines for this playoff game with Rams v Panthers is -10 in favor or the Rams. This is an almost unheard of predicted domination in a playoff game. The only other game that has a Vegas prediction that is more than just over a field goal is the Philly / SanFran game, and that is -4.5 in favor of the Eagles.
Here are the amount of bets that we are seeing as of right now for the Rams / Panthers game.
On a straight win, more than 85% of people are banking on the Rams while once the point spread is taken into account a slight majority of people believe that Carolina can keep the game within 10.
Call me a cynic, because I am one, but I think this is because the public believes that the Rams will be content to win by less than 10, not because they wouldn't be capable of winning by more than that if they wanted to.
I am betting as I always do, which is against Carolina. This way, if they win I am excited and surprised; if they lose, I am still ok with it because I have won a little bit of money. I'm only betting $20 on a straight win, which means that if and when LA wins the game, I will be rewarded with a cool $7.