American Football: Playoffs (Chapter 2)

In the opening (wild-card) playoff-weekend, two distinct games signal the season's 'insane' pool of dark-horses and talent-gone-down.

Well, I've decided to minimalize my writeups for this NFL-playoffs (2021-2022 season) project to just two weekends after all and it will be just this wild-card weekend and the Super Bowl itself, since (honestly), the pool of teams this year has just so many potential/possible variations for odds and dark-horses winning that it just doesn't make too much literary sense to track everything. That's why I'm choosing the two games from this wild-card weekend which stir my 'fantasy-football' interest(s) --- Bills v Patriots; Bucs v Eagles --- to generate Chapter 2, which will be followed only by the Super Bowl game itself (Chapter 3). I'll see y'all again on Super Bowl Sunday (or rather the Monday afterwards). Thanks for reading (and enjoy!), 

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DISCLAIMER: I have no personal affiliations with any actual team mentioned in this playoffs-fanfiction project and present only a 'diorama' about projected greatness.

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As the playoffs begin with much pool-intrigue, thanks to the extreme variations in pool-design in the bracket, many fans wonder just who they should bank on to get to the Super Bowl and win it. Well, do fans really want to see Brady's Buccaneers play his old team, the New England Patriots, who, though underdogs, have a fair-shot of getting to the Super Bowl! There's of course all those fantastic heavyweights, like the Chiefs and Packers, and there's dark-horses with talent paired early, such as the Cowboys-49ers. One fan's opted to focus on wild-card weekend with two games, one past noon and one at night, and both games are, well --- up in the air.

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GAME 1: Bucs v Eagles

Brady's Buccaneers march onto their home-stadium to tackle the still-defiant Philadelphia Eagles who insist they 'have what it takes' to make a shocking dark-horse run to the Super Bowl in a 2021-2022 bracket that's simply...insane. As the game begins, Brady's Bucs control the early flow, scoring 2 unanswered TDs in the 1st quarter, but Eagles storm back with 2 TDs (running goal-line scores after steady marches down the field!) before halftime, making the score 14-14. In the 3rd, Brady takes over and scores 1 TD and the Bucs follow with 1 FG to give the Bucs a 24-14 lead. However, in the 4th quarter, an interception of a Brady pass leads to a TD, which is followed by a miraculous late-game hail-mary pass resulting in another/final Eagles winning TD, helping Philadelphia (once again) shocking the Goliath --- Tom Brady --- in a great 28-24 triumph, something which shall certainly drive these dark-horse 'birds' to get all the way to the Super Bowl again.

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GAME 2: Bills v Patriots

Now, the Buffalo Bills have had a solid season, as have the Patriots functioning 'smartly' without their 'ace Tom Brady now for some time. The Bills come out and score a 1 TD (running-score) in the 1st, but the Pats respond with a 40-yard TD-pass score, but the score remains tied 7-7 as we head into halftime. In the second half, it's all about tedious defense-stories, and neither team scores until the mid-4th quarter when the Bills run another TD from goal-line and hold onto their dear lead to achieve a very nice 14-7 triumph which has them humbled...but grateful. This just might be the 'odd grease' that slides these relative underdog Bills of Buffalo to their first Super Bowl since the 1990s. Will they meet the underdog Eagles? Certainly, such an American football playoff 'portrait' serves to remind us American fans of this iconic media-market sport why cheerleaders are the defining glory of the game --- all feathers, little distancing!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)