NFL Wild Card Weekend: Bills at Jaguars, Panthers at Saints T.V. and Live Stream Details
Sunday of Wild Card weekend in the NFL presents a familiar matchup in the NFC, and a surprising and fresh AFC game.
While the Carolina Panthers and New Orleans Saints will meet for the third time this season—the Saints won both previous meetings—Sunday’s early game is between two teams who rarely meet. The Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars are experiencing renaissances this season following protracted absences from the playoffs. They meet in northeastern Florida in a rematch of the 1996 AFC Wild Card game, when the Jaguars upset the favored Bills 30-27.
Here’s how to watch both of Sunday’s playoff games.
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Bills at Jaguars
The Bills sneaked into the playoffs, to jubilation across upstate New York, when Andy Dalton threw a 49-yard touchdown pass on fourth down with time expiring to beat the Baltimore Ravens. Against the Jaguars Buffalo will snap a 17-year playoff drought, the longest futile run in American professional sports. Whether the Bills can make it one step further to a divisional game depends on the health of LeSean McCoy. The brilliant running back is dealing with an ankle injury and even if he plays, his movement may be limited.
This is the first playoff game for Jacksonville since the franchise lost the AFC divisional game to the Patriots on January 12, 2008. The Jaguars compiled a 10-6 season, and won the AFC South, off the back of one of the NFL’s outstanding defenses and a stout running game led by rookie Leonard Fournette. Jacksonville’s ability to generate sacks and turnovers and chew the clock on offense with Fournette should translate into playoff success. But can Blake Bortles cope if they fall behind and need to sling the ball downfield?
The Bills at the Jaguars is live on CBS from 1.05 p.m. E.T. CBS All Access will show a live stream.
Panthers at Saints
No team that got out of the NFC South this season should be taken lightly. The Panthers finished the season limply and their wide receiving corps has been whittled down by injuries. But Cam Newton, Greg Olsen and Christian McCaffrey can turn it on when it matters. The defense is strongest in the middle with All-Pros Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis, who are as adept at running from sideline to sideline as they are at stuffing your team’s run game. Julius Peppers is still causing havoc for quarterbacks, even at 37.
Like the Panthers, the Saints fell off at the end of the regular season with a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The monstrous running game of earlier in the season slowed down, too, although Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara are still by some distance the best running-back tandem in the NFL this season. A New Orleans offense that doesn’t rely solely on Drew Brees is a scary playoff prospect indeed. Sean Payton has his best defense since before the ‘Bountygate’ scandal, just to make the Saints even more imposing. Cameron Jordan wreaked chaos on the edge all season long with 13 sacks. Only the Jaguars’ Calais Campbell, of players involved in the postseason, had more. Jordan will be tested against one of the NFL’s best offensive lines, and by the enigmatic and beguiling talents of Newton.
The Panthers at the Saints is live on Fox Sports from 4.40 p.m. E.T. on Sunday. Fox Sports Go will have a live stream.