AFC Divisional Playoffs: Jacksonville Jaguars at Pittsburgh Steelers

While we’re waiting for today’s main event to start, on CBS they’ll be showing the matchup that will determine the second part of this year’s AFC Championship Game. From Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, it’s the AFC Divisional Playoff game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Jaguars hosted their first playoff game in many, many moons last week when they took on the Buffalo Bills and. . .well, it was ugly. The Jaguars took down the Bills by a score of 10-3 in a game that may have set offensive football back twenty years. The Jaguars do boast the NFL’s best non-Minnesota defense, and they’re going to need every bit of it in this one.

The Steelers got to take last week off, and they needed it in order to get star wide receiver Antonio Brown healthy again. Brown suffered a calf injury in the Steelers’ loss to New England in Week 15 and missed the Steelers’ final two games. He’s active and ready for this one, however.

These two teams met back in Week 5 in Pittsburgh, and the result was one of the more surprising ones of the season. The Jacksonville defense intercepted Ben Roethlisberger five times on their way to a 30-9 blowout win. I have a feeling that Roethlisberger won’t be throwing five interceptions today, so this one should be a pretty decent game.

The winner of this game earns the right to travel to Foxborough next Sunday afternoon to take on the New England Patriots, who dispatched of the Tennessee Titans in last night’s Divisional Playoff game.

Kickoff for this one is about half an hour away, folks! We’ll have the Open Thread for the only game we actually care about up and running at about 2:30 PM Central, an hour before kickoff.