The two weeks of hype is almost over. The Super Bowl Sunday is one of the best days of the year. If you don't believe me, just ask the people that own Kroger. I was there earlier this afternoon and that place was an absolute mad house. The funny thing was pretty much everyone there was wearing some type of NFL paraphernalia, and a couple of people actually had a shirt or jersey on for the Giants or Patriots. I saw a couple of Eagles shirts and a couple of Bears shirts in addition to the normal amount of Titans stuff I would normally see around here.

As for the game, I said yesterday that my early inclination was to go with the Giants, but I have since changed my pick to the Patriots. JustinS suggested in the comments of that thread that you should probably pick opposite of me because of my playoff track record. It is hard to argue with that.

Discuss the game below.

Why do they still play the Pro Bowl? They really should keep all of the voting stuff they have now, name a Pro Bowl team, award those guys with a vacation to Hawaii, and call it a day. What they do right now is just dumb.

If they are going to play the game, I think they should do what they do with the NHL All-Star game. The NHL names two captains. Those two players then go through a draft process where they pick the guys they want on their team. They do all of that live on TV.

How cool would it be if you had Drew Brees as one captain and Aaron Rodgers as the other picking the guys they wanted to play with in the game? That would at least give us something interesting to watch.

For now, we will just have to make due with what we have. Discuss the game below.

This is the more intriguing game of the day. The 49ers keep winning when no one gives them a chance. They have done it all year, and they look like a really tough out, especially at home.

The Giants were up and down all year. It took them until the last weekend of the regular season to clinch a playoff spot, but they are playing really well right now.

Last week I would have been fully in the Giants camp because of how well Eli Manning is playing right now, and the fact that Alex Smith is the 49ers quarterback, but Smith was fantastic at the end of the game last week. Of course it helped that Gregg Williams decided to keep blitzing and not double Vernon Davis, but Smith still played well when it mattered the most.

All of that being said, my money is still on Eli in this game today.

Discuss the game below.

This is another lesser of two evil games for me. I hate the Patriots, but not nearly as much as I hate the Ravens. I guess that means I am cheering for the Patriots in this game.

I feel pretty confident that New England will win this game. Their defense is not very good, but Joe Flacco is the Ravens quarterback and he is not very good.

The Baltimore defense is still good, but it is not anything like the Baltimore defenses when Ray Lewis and Ed Reed were in their primes. Tom Brady probably won't throw for 300 yards, but he will be able to move the ball enough to score three touchdowns.

The Ravens will not be able to match that unless Brady makes a couple of costly mistakes, and that is not something he does very often. Hopefully he does not decide to start doing that in this game.

Discuss the game below.

We had really good participation in our open threads over the weekend, so I figured I would do a roll call post.

Stats after the jump.

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The Giants almost pulled off the upset a few weeks ago at the Meadowlands. Can they do it successfully in their second try? These are two teams that went into the playoffs playing really, really well, and they have two of the hottest quarterbacks in the league.. I say Giants win in a close one.

Discuss the game below.

The phrase "lesser of two evils" keeps popping into my head when thinking about this game. The only problem is I am having trouble figuring out which team that is. I think it is the Texans because they have never really taken anything away from the Titans. This is the first time they have made the playoffs, and they were clearly better than the Titans this year.

Actually, now that I think about it, I hate the Ravens a lot more than I hate the Texans. If there were a way for both teams to lose that would be awesome, but since one team has to win, I guess I hope it is the Texans.

The Texans have a really good chance to win this one, even with all of their injuries, because their defense is so good. This game will be close late, so it is going to come down to which quarterback makes a late mistake. I am taking the Texans to win.

Discuss the game below.

As I said the last time these two teams played, if the Broncos win the internet will be broken. Last week, Tim Tebow almost broke Twitter when there were 900 million tweets per second* after the 80-yard game winning touchdown pass. That number will double if the Broncos can pull off the upset today.

The only way that will happen is if Denver plays a perfect game. They were beating the Patriots in week 15 until they turned the ball over a couple of times and the Patriots opened up a big lead. There is no way they can score with the Patriots, so there best chance is to double up time of possession and keep Tom Brady off the field.

New England is a 13 1/2 point favorite tonight. That is a really high number for a divisional round game, but I don't expect them to have any trouble covering it.

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*Maybe not the actual number.