Divisional Round Saturday open thread

The Wild Card round is behind us, which is good because most of those games were blowouts. The wild finishes in Bengals-Raiders and Cowboys-49ers obscured largely ugly games, while every other result was extremely lopsided. While that was entertaining as hell in some ways, I’m hoping for closer games this weekend.

We kick things off today with Bengals-Titans in a little bit. The Bengals are one of the league’s most exciting teams right now and an easy team to root for, given their young and gifted offense and the fact that they just picked up their first playoff win in 30 years. The Titans won’t make it easy, though, as despite missing Derrick Henry and Julio Jones for large chunks of the season, they still emerged as the AFC’s #1 seed and remain one of the most dangerous teams in football. I’ll be rooting for Cincinnati, but I am interested to see how Tennessee fares.

The late game pits the 49ers against the Packers. San Francisco was good enough to beat Dallas but also had some significant help from absolutely boneheaded playcalling and execution from the Cowboys, and they’re unlikely to get that against Green Bay. The Packers likely win unless the 49ers get an extremely clean, quality performance, which we’ll have to see to believe.

Who are you rooting for today? Use this as your open thread for the games ahead!