I am proud to say that these will be my most objective NFL Playoff picks yet. Because I'm going to be honest: If the New England Patriots had made it to the AFC championship, I would have picked them to lose. I have picked the Patriots to lose every game they've played in since Super Bowl XXXVI, during which Tom Brady—before he was even very good, back when he was the guy the Patriots played ahead of Drew Bledsoe because of inertia—and Adam Vinatieri secured themselves a lifetime of undue adulation and broke my 14-year-old heart. That's over now: I can now safely pick the New York Jets over the Pittsburgh Steelers for reasons that go beyond adolescent heartbreak.
↵Namely: I hate the dictum that defense wins championships. Scoring more points wins championships, as does allowing fewer points, and while the Steelers actually scored more points than the Jets—eight of them—they also possess the number-one defense in the league. I can't handle the Steel Curtain rhetoric; Rex Ryan kind of got a rough deal regarding his apparent foot fetishism; and Ben Roethlisberger seems like a creepy bro at best. The Steelers are the better team, but picking NFL games is a fool's errand anyway, so: Jets 21-17; Pittsburgh erects an actual steel curtain around its borders and weeps behind it for the remainder of the NFL season.
↵Over in the NFC, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears plan on utilizing every quark of irrational hatred in the Midwest Sunday afternoon. Aaron Rodgers is the best quarterback standing and Jay Cutler couldn't even have a Jon Kitna year with Mike Martz at the helm, which makes me a little irrationally angry. The Packers beat the Bears 24-14, but Chicago gets the last laugh when Soldier Field and the rest of its Launch Arcologies blast off into space that night