The road to Super Bowl 50 begins tonight as the defending champion New England Patriots take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Foxborough. There will be an additional 255 games played after that before we get to the big one in the Bay Area.
In an effort to usher in this new season and the fact that, for 21 of the next 22 Sundays, we'll all be glued to our TVs to see what happens, the CBSSports.com crew predicts the division winners, the playoff teams and, ultimately, the Super Bowl champion.
A few notes:
- Seven of our eight experts predicted the exact same order of finish for the AFC East. Only Ryan Wilson picked the Bills in second place over the Dolphins, while everyone has the Patriots in first and the Jets in last.
- The AFC North, AFC West and NFC South appear to be the most contentious divisions. Three different teams in each division received first-place votes.
- All eight panelists predicted the Colts to finish first and Texans to finish second in the AFC South, yet nobody put the Texans in the playoffs.
- Three panelists -- Will Brinson, John Breech and Sean Wagner-McGough -- have the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Brinson has them winning it all. But three other panelists --Jason La Canfora, Pete Prisco and Ryan Wilson -- have them missing the playoffs altogether.
- Pete Prisco and Pat Kirwan amazingly have the same predicted order of finish for five of the eight divisions, as well as the same wild card teams in the AFC.
- Six of eight panelists have the Panthers finishing first or second in the NFC South, but Sean Wagner-McGough has them in last place.
- Five of eight divisions have a unanimous last-place team, while only three have a unanimous first-place team.
- Wilson is alone in picking both the Bills and Rams to make the postseason, while only Kirwan has the Lions playing in January.
- Every panelist has the Patriots, Colts, Broncos, Packers and Seahawks making the playoffs.
- Not one of the eight panelists picked the two-time defending NFC champion Seahawks to return to the Super Bowl for a third straight year. Five different teams are picked to reach the Super Bowl, and there are four distinct predicted winners, as well.
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| Super Bowl Picks | |||||||
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| AFC Champion | |||||||
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| Super Bowl Champion | |||||||
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| Super Bowl Score | |||||||
30-24 |
38-33 |
30-24 |
35-28 |
33-24 |
28-24 |
34-27 |
31-27 |
