They also have one of the toughest tasks, traveling cross-country on a short week to play a team with plenty of postseason experience - and at a stadium that for the last few seasons has been one of the toughest in the NFL for visitors.
Yet the Redskins go to Seattle on Saturday supremely confident that the emotion from the death of Sean Taylor and the play of quarterback Todd Collins, who went 10 years without a start until this season, will continue to carry them.
Washington was 5-7 and seemingly out of contention when the 36-year-old Collins took over for injured Jason Campbell against the Chicago Bears and carried the Redskins to victory.
He made his first start in a decade in a win over the Giants, then directed the team to wins over the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys to get into the playoffs as the NFC’s sixth and final seed.
“Todd opens things up for everybody,” says running back Clinton Portis, who averaged 102 yards rushing the final three games. “You never know who’s getting the ball now. So if you think you’re on the route that’s not coming to you, you’d better go full speed, because Todd will hit you right upside the head with the ball.”
The Seahawks (10-6) have far less momentum.
They clinched the weak NFC West on Dec. 9 and lost two of their final three games as they rested regulars and prepared more for the postseason than for the games at hand. They had to go cross-country, too - to Atlanta - but they didn’t invest much effort there, losing 44-41 to the lowly Falcons in a meaningless game.
One thing the Seahawks accomplished was rushing the ball better. The five-game winning streak that put them in position to rest was largely the result of Matt Hasselbeck’s passing. Those last three games were used to try to improve the running game, which finished 20th overall.
“It couldn’t get any worse,” says running back Shaun Alexander, the league MVP for his heroics in 2005, the season of the Seahawks’ trip to the Super Bowl. “So we’re doing little things and taking steps.”
How did the Redskins gain momentum?
“The first one I would say is losing Sean and coming together as a team,” receiver Antwaan Randle El says. “The second would be Todd. Because when you lose a leader in your quarterback, it’s a hard spot to fill.”
The top-seeded teams are resting this weekend: The unbeaten New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts in the AFC; Dallas and the Green Bay Packers in the NFC. The Patriots and Cowboys will play the lowest-seeded winners of this week’s games; the Colts and Packers get the higher seeded teams.
In the other wild-card games, the Jacksonville Jaguars are at the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday night; the New York Giants are at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the early game Sunday; and the Tennessee Titans are at the San Diego Chargers in the weekend’s final game.
Jacksonville Jaguars (11-5)
at Pittsburgh Steelers (10-6)
The Jaguars have been designated as the AFC’s “scary” team. Until they rested starters in the final game, they won six of seven and the one loss was 28-25 in Indianapolis, when they put a scare into the Colts but were hurt by replay reversals.
The Jaguars won 29-22 in Pittsburgh on Dec. 16, another reason why bettors turned them from 1-point underdogs into two-point favorites entering this game.
Pittsburgh is without Willie Parker, who was leading the NFL in rushing when he broke his leg in St. Louis two weeks ago. QB Ben Roethlisberger has a sore ankle, star safety Troy Polamalu has been hurting all season, and the Steelers are thin at other positions.
No excuse, according to first-year coach Mike Tomlin.
“Whoever hoists that Lombardi Trophy in a month or so will have had injury issues and will have found ways to overcome it,” he said. “It’s as much a part of the game as blocking and tackling. The healthy guys play and the standard of expectation doesn’t change.”
New York Giants (10-6) at
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (9-7)
Like the Washington-Seattle game, this involves one team with momentum and one without it.
The Giants, who could have rested players, instead played them in an effort to keep New England from finishing unbeaten. They lost 38-35 after leading by 12 points in the third quarter and getting three starters hurt: cornerback Sam Madison, center Shaun O’Hara and linebacker Kawika Mitchell.
But they think they gained more than they lost and are encouraged by their 7-1 road record. The Giants, along with the Seahawks, Colts and Patriots, are the only four teams to make the playoffs three straight seasons, but they are 0-2, as is QB Eli Manning.
One of those losses was in Philadelphia last season, where the winning QB was Jeff Garcia, whom the Giants now face in Tampa. Garcia also beat New York in a memorable 2003 playoff game in San Francisco, rallying the 49ers from a 38-14 deficit to a 39-38 win.
The Bucs rested players in their last two games after clinching the NFC South with two weeks left and are portraying themselves as huge underdogs.
“We are in a single-elimination tournament. We’ve all seen Villanova. We all remember Rollie Massimino,” Bucs coach Jon Gruden said this week. “The underdogs do flourish sometimes. I’m sure we’ll be a heavy underdog in this tournament, but we’ll see what we get.”
Tennessee Titans (10-6) at
San Diego Chargers (11-5)
The Chargers lost three more games this season than last. But they are favored to win this playoff game, something they didn’t do last season, one of the reasons coach Marty Schotttenheimer was fired after a 14-2 regular season.
This is a rematch of a Dec. 9 game in Nashville won 23-17 in overtime by San Diego, which trailed 17-3 in the fourth quarter. There was a lot of chippy stuff in that one, including a personal foul on reigning NFL MVP LaDainian Tomlinson and fines levied by the league against two Titans and one Charger for dirty play.
“We’re going to try to stay focused this week and not get caught up in the locker room trash talk and just focus on ourselves,” said Tennessee center Kevin Mawae, one of those fined.
One question for the Titans is the health of quarterback Vince Young, who left Sunday’s playoff-clinching game in Indianapolis after reinjuring his right quadriceps muscle. Kerry Collins replaced him and led the Titans to three field goals that gave Tennessee a 16-10 win over a team resting almost all its key players.
This would be Young’s first playoff start. Collins has far more postseason experience: 3-3 in six starts, including the 2001 Super Bowl when he was with the Giants.
