Playoff Predictions: NFC Divisional Round New Orleans Saints at San Francisco 49ers

Now that Wild Card weekend has come and gone with no major surprises (is anybody surprised by Tebow anymore?) we are down to the real Super Bowl contenders with only 8 teams remaining. In my mind the NFL Playoffs get serious in the Divisional Round as the Wild Card Round usually tends to be the culmination of the "pseudo-playoffs" that take place during the final weeks of the regular season after the best teams have already booked their tickets for the playoffs and few spots remain. The teams who compete for these spots are generally the ones who are content with simply making the playoffs and aren't true contenders (for example the 9-7 Bengals and the 8-8 Broncos). In the second playoff week the true battle for the Super Bowl crown begins.

The NFC games next weekend will see the New Orleans Saints (14-3) travel to play the San Francisco 49ers (13-3) on Saturday while the defending champion Green Bay Packers (15-1) will host the surging New York Giants (10-7) on Sunday.

The 49ers have been the biggest surprise in the NFL this season as first year head coach Jim Harbaugh produced one of the league's best defenses (with easily the NFL's best run defense that allowed only 77 yards a game and gave up only one single rushing TD all season long that didn't occur until the final game of the season) and revitalized the career of QB Alex Smith by turning him into the best game-manager in the league who threw only 5 INTs all year (the 49ers lead the NFL with a +28 turnover ratio). However despite having their best season since the days of Hall of Fame QB Steve Young they benefitted from a relatively weak schedule and get a lot of good breaks.

The Saints will come into this on a 9-game win streak and in my mind are the hottest in the NFL. There aren't enough superlatives to describe what QB Drew Brees has done this season while setting NFL records by smashing Dan Marino's mark for passing yards in a season, finishing with 5,479 and oh-by-the-way set the season record for passing efficiency by completing 71.2% of his passes. The Saints had the best offense in the NFL this year with the key being their renewed success in the running game which finished 6th overall. Last year they were missing that element which was the biggest reason last season ended with a sour loss to 7-9 Seahawks. When I predicted that the Saints would win the Super Bowl 2 years ago it was because they were playing offense on a truly unstoppable level and were making the plays on defense that you see in every Championship team. To be honest, since the Saints dropped an inexplicable game to the lowly St. Louis Rams in Week 8, the have looked better than they did in 2009. Drew Brees and head coach Sean Payton are proven winners and their momentum and experience is going to be far too much for the 49ers to handle. The San Fran defense will keep them in it and I can see this game being close into the 4th Quarter. However the Saints' 9-game winning streak has been defined by their ability to bury teams when it matters which other teams haven't done to the 49ers this year (see the 23-3 lead that the Philadelphia Eagles blew in a 24-23 home loss).

I think the Saints will get an early lead but will have trouble building on it because of the 49ers D will cause a turnover or two (but will end up settling for FGs rather than TDs preventing them from really hurting the Saints) and then Alex Smith and Frank Gore will lead a scoring drive early in the 4th that will close the gap to something within a FG like 21-19. It will be at this point where Brees and the Saints will march down the field on a long TD drive that will take a huge chunk of time off the clock and then cause an Alex Smith turnover on the next drive with the clock running down and pressure mounting.

Final Score: Saints 28 - 49ers 19