NFL Predictions Week 17: NY Jets Keep Winning, Send Steelers Home

Only one playoff spot remains open and the New York Jets will win it. Sorry Pittsburgh, your Steelers are heading home. NFL Predictions Week 17. Dan Salem and Todd Salem debate in today’s NFL Sports Debate. Two brothers from New York yell, scream, and debate sports.

TODD:

We have reached the NFL’s final regular-season week. Very little now stands in our way of the playoffs. With no Thursday games, no Saturday games and no Monday games, it all comes down to Sunday, Week 17.

Of course, there isn’t all that much to still determine. The entire NFC playoff slate is filled. All that remains is positioning. On the AFC side, four of the six spots are also claimed. In fact, let’s just say five of six are claimed. The things that all have to happen for the Indianapolis Colts to hop the Houston Texans and claim the AFC South crown are unlikely enough to rule it out.

That leaves one playoff spot up for grabs: the second AFC wildcard.

Last week, we touched on the possibilities. You said you liked the New York Jets to grab this spot by defeating New England and saw Pittsburgh losing to the Baltimore Ravens…which is exactly what happened.

For Week 17, do you feel the same way? New York now has the edge over Pittsburgh, unlike last week. The Steelers now need the Jets to lose and for themselves to win to get into the postseason.

With the Cleveland Browns in tow and having already received their wake-up call in Week 16, I find it hard to believe the Steelers will lose another one. But for New York to get in, they don’t have to. All that has to happen is the Jets take care of the Buffalo Bills.

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Former Jet head coach Rex Ryan wants to win this game so badly. Everyone knows it. But his team may not have enough talent. The Bills have been disappointing on the defensive side all year, and Tyrod Taylor has regressed from his high point earlier in the year at quarterback.

Yet the first time these teams met, with the game being played in New Jersey, Buffalo toppled the home Jets. Do you trust Ryan Fitzpatrick on the road with a postseason berth on the line? Do you believe Rex Ryan won’t unleash all kinds of havoc on the defensive side in this one? And more to the point, can Pittsburgh, a team that looked like one of the five best in football as recently as two weeks ago, really miss the playoffs entirely?

DAN:

The Pittsburgh Steelers will end their season with a victory, but not the kind their fans wanted. Pittsburgh takes care of the lowly Browns, yet misses the playoffs in the process. Cleveland’s defense is not up to the same level as Baltimore, who managed to hold off the Steelers’ offense last week. With one more victory necessary for Pittsburgh to make the AFC playoffs, the Steelers find themselves going home.

NFL Week 17 is all about the New York Jets. Bouncing back from a four win season to win in double figures is good. A rookie head coach taking his team to the playoffs is better. Defeating their former head coach on his new home turf to accomplish it all is why we love the game.

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Forget what you knew about the New York Jets and about Ryan Fitzpatrick. Unless you’ve been watching New York this entire season, and watching during its current five game winning streak in particular, you’d struggle to believe the numbers. The Jets’ offensive stats this season are such a stark contrast to recent memory that one might think no one remains from last year’s team. You’d be both wrong and right. No one is playing like years past, especially not quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. He is playing like the most reliable signal caller in the game right now.

I trust Fitzpatrick to win on the road in Buffalo. The media and fans are making a big deal of the new rivalry, of Fitzpatrick’s return to upstate New York, and of Rex Ryan’s chance to ruin his old team’s year. Yet the real story is what Todd Bowles has done with the Jets. This team lives week to week and quarter to quarter. They have a short memory, and an even shorter leash. New York could have easily scored another fourteen points on the Patriots last weekend, making overtime a moot point. New England held them off just enough, but the Jets offense always seems to bounce back, control the game, and punish opponents. New York wins in Buffalo on Sunday.

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NFL fans should be happy that double-digit wins were needed for the playoffs this season. Sure, a couple of division winners snuck in with less than impressive records, but no losing teams will be in this season’s playoffs. Those ‘bad’ divisions were highly competitive, and the wildcard races came down to the very end. Despite knowing which teams were good and which were bad pretty early on, the season was just as exciting as ever. It’s playoff time.