Bills and Bucs conquer the last passages

The key to the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs was complete, after the last two of six games in the Wild Card Round were played this Monday.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers closed out the day’s action with a 32-9 beating of the Philadelphia Eagles, who never took off in the game. Counting this day’s loss, the Eagles lost six of the last seven times they took the field for a game.

Now, Tampa Bay heads to Detroit to visit the Lions.

Hours earlier, the Buffalo Bills took advantage of their home status at Highmark Stadium in a Monday afternoon game that was originally scheduled for Sunday to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-17. It was the fourth consecutive Wild Card Round win for the Bills.

The meeting was rescheduled due to a snow storm in the Orchard Park region.

The franchise called on fans to help in the preparation tasks for the game, removing snow from the stadium stands in the hours before the game.

In Sunday’s action, the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions joined the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans (teams that reserved their spot in the Divisional Round in Saturday’s games) as teams that previously claimed their spots for the next round.

Green Bay made a great demonstration of offensive power in its visit to AT&T Stadium to eliminate the Dallas Cowboys, who arrived as the No. 2 seed in the National Conference, in Sunday’s first game.

This was the ninth game in history between the Packers and Cowboys in the playoffs, representing the fifth victory in the series for Green Bay. The 48-32 score also represented the most points allowed by Dallas in any postseason game in its history.

With their victory, the Packers, who advanced as the seventh seed in the NFC, will visit the San Francisco 49ers next week, who finished as the conference’s first seed.

Then, in nighttime action, the Lions held off the Los Angeles Rams to win for the first time in more than three decades, and with several of the franchise’s legends in attendance, including Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson, a game was played playoffs, thanks to a result of 24-23.

In both games on Sunday, the running game made a big difference on the scoreboard.

In Saturday’s Wild Card Round, the Chiefs repeated their regular-season fix against the Miami Dolphins, beating them 26-7 in a frigid Arrowhead Stadium to become the fourth team to secure their spot in the next round.

The combined 33 points were the fewest in a playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium since the Denver Broncos’ 14-10 victory over Kansas City in the 1997 Divisional Round.

It also marks the sixth consecutive postseason in which the Chiefs have won at least one game since Patrick Mahomes took over as the team’s starter in 2018, the second-longest streak in NFL history, trailing only New York’s eight. England Patriots from 2011 to 2018.

Now the Chiefs will travel to face the Bills, in Mahomes’ first postseason game away from home, not counting the Super Bowls.

In the first game of the Wild Card Round, the Texans secured their ticket to the Divisional Round after beating the Cleveland Browns 45-15 at home.

The Texans will face the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens next weekend in the AFC.

Despite playing at home, the Texans finished as the underdogs. The 31-point margin of victory is the largest in playoff history for an underdog team and is also the fifth-largest margin of victory in a postseason game in the Super Bowl era, tied with Philadelphia’s victory. Eagles. over the Minnesota Vikings in the 2017 NFC Championship Game.

The largest margin of victory in a playoff game belongs to the New York Giants, who beat the Vikings by 41 points in the 2000 NFC Championship Game, followed by the Seattle Seahawks’ victory over the Broncos in the Super Bowl XLVIII by 35 points, third Place goes to the Vikings who beat the New Orleans Saints by 34 points in the 1987 Wild Card Round and fourth place goes to Washington who beat the Broncos by 32 points in Super Bowl XXII .