Know who to pull for: week 12

Know who to pull for is not that meaningful when you are headed to win your division, basically you pull to have a better record than other division leading teams so you can have home field advantage. When you are in a wild card fight, however, it makes a lot of other games meaningful. While the saints are tied for their division lead, their recent play makes them winning the division a possible but questionable proposition. Here is how the playoff race shapes up now:

Bears 9-1
Dallas 7-4
Giants 6-4
Saints 6-4
Seattle 6-4
Panthers 6-4
Falcons 5-5
Philly 5-5
SF 5-5

Now get this. The saints have 6 games left and 5 of them are against playoff
hunting teams(atlanta, panthers, cowboys, giants and niners). Every game is huge now and the first big game for the saints starts this week at atlanta.

Here are the big games this week:

6-4 Carolina at 3-7 Washington - No NFL game is a gimme and the skins are a talented group. If the skins win and the saints lose then we have a three way tie in the west at a disappointing 6-5, just several weeks after we wee bragging how tough the NFC south is. No question on this game, we want the skins to win.

5-5 San Francisco at 4-6 St. Louis - SF was in the game last week that was a bit hard to call. My first reaction was to pull for SF to beat Seattle so we would win home field advantage. Then I realized a SF win would put them a game behind the saints if we lost. If we and SF play even the whole way out and SF beats us at home, we could lose a 9-7 tiebrak scenario to SF. I am not in the "if we cant beat SF we dont deserve to go" crowd, and never understood that thinking. We definitely want SF to lose this game. There are (essentially)8 teams fighting for 6 spots and we want SF to drop out and make it 7 teams fighting for 6, even thopug a rams win keeps their slim hopes alive.

6-4 N.Y. Giants at 3-7 Tennessee - I wish Tennessee was still in the hunt so they would have a fired up crowd for this one. Peyton is the Man (ning) in tennessee, Eli is not, and we want the Titans to get after Eli. Eli was the prize in the Manning/Rivers/Rothlisberger qb rich draft several years ago, or so people thought. Could he be third best? He is struggling and with Dallas coming on we could be in a wild card fight with the giants, so this game is big. We have to travel to NY and our game there could be the game that determines our fate.

4-6 green bay at 6-4 seattle - Things change so quickly. With Hassleback and Alexander coming back, many writers are crowning Seattle as division winner. But if the Craig Stadler lookalike Holmgern cant beat green bay and then the surging niners win, the west is tied and we could find ourselves in a wildcard fight with seattle. lets keep our options open here and pull for the packers.

5-5 Philadelphia at 9-1 Indy - Not much to say about this one. If we have to back into the playoffs with Philly dropping down that great too. The odds are getting short for Philly and with McNabb hurt a win in Indy for them would be a huge upset.

6-4 New Orleans at 5-5 Atlanta - This is a really big game for us and a pretty much must game for the falcons. With big jim Mora fueling the fire with his "vick the coach killer" take, a falcons loss could have that team imploding. The saints would dramatically improve their chances of winning the division or getting a wild card spot with a win in Atlanta. 7-4 puts the saints in the drivers seat to get to the playoffs. 6-5 puts them in a huge jumble.