With the conclusion of the holiday season also comes the conclusion of the NFL’s regular football season. Fans spend the dead of winter in front of their TV watching their favorite teams or choosing a new favorite team if theirs didn’t make it compete for time on the big football stage of the Superbowl which this year will be Sunday, February 12.

Only fourteen teams -seven from each conference-can compete in the playoffs. According to PointsBet, the team with the highest odds of making the 2022-23 NFL playoffs was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It’s not surprising considering Tom Brady is returning for at least another season. However, they ended up with the fourth seed. Though Ms. Glenn typically is not a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan she shares, “I’m definitely not a Tom Brady fan but one of my former English 11 students from Owings Mills, Donovan Smith, plays offensive line for Tom Brady and the Buccaneers so they tend to my NFC team I root for.”

Sometimes it’s not the team as much as it is a player or former player that has someone rooting for a team in the play off. For Kenwood’s Athletic Director Coach Ruocco it’s Mark Baravo that has him rooting for the sixth seed New York Giants. ““Mark Bavaro was their tight end in the 80s and that was my idol,” Ruocco shares.

In the AFC, it’s the Chiefs that will have a bye this weekend and the Philadelphia Eagles were the ones to secure the first seed for the NFC. Both teams will host their first play off game next weekend, against who is dependent on who wins this coming weekend.

Baltimore’s own Ravens secured a spot in the playoffs as a wild card. They will face off against division rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday night. However, fans aren’t feeling too hopeful. Kenwood student who wants to stay anonymous shares, “I think the play offs are the end for the Ravens. If they keep playing how they’ve been playing and putting everything on Lamar, they aren’t going to go far. Especially since Lamar isn’t even playing!”

Everyone has their team they’re rooting for this play off season; however, anything is possible on who will turn out to be the winner.