There’s a Manning, a Brady, and a pair of Harbaugh’s left standing in NFL playoff betting action, and one of these four is going to go on to win Super Bowl 46.

We’ll begin in the AFC, where at least so far, it has basically been all home teams to speak of in the postseason. In the opening round, the Houston Texans and Denver Broncos covered their spreads by double digits, and that started to remain true on Saturday when the New England Patriots ripped the Broncos to shreds, taking their opening playoff tussle by a 45-10 count in a game that never really was all that close.

It was a day for celebrating the New England offense for certain. In this year in which records have fallen left and right, now it was Brady that was coming up with a tremendous accomplishment. His five first half TD passes set an NFL playoff record for a single game, and the six scores that he finished with made him the third man in NFL history to throw six TDs in a single playoff game.

Brady was simply masterful on this day. Save for one errant throw in which he overshot TE Rob Gronkowski and ended up getting picked off, there were virtually no mistakes. He went 26-of-34 for 363 yards.

Gronkowski, to no one’s surprise, also had a mammoth day. He had 10 catches for 145 yards and three TDs, most of the damage of which came in that ridiculous first half which saw the Pats put 35 points on the board. TE Aaron Hernandez had 55 yards and a TD as a receiver, but he was also used as a running back and had 61 yards on the ground. WRs Deion Branch and Wes Welker both found the end zone as well.

For Denver, it was a harsh reminder that the team was still just a .500 team this season, and though QB Tim Tebow has proven that he should be the starter for this team next season, he does have a lot of work to do after going just 9-of-26 for 136 yards in his first road playoff game.

New England will draw the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, but we have to admit that Baltimore’s road to this point definitely wasn’t an easy one.

The men in purple got a tremendous game out of the Houston Texans on Sunday. Playing in their first home playoff game with QB Joe Flacco under center, the Ravens came out like a house of fire, capitalizing on Houston mistakes to take a 17-3 lead in the first quarter. Little did they know that that would basically be all that the team would come up with offensively all game long.

The problem for Houston is that it just couldn’t really get anything in the passing game. QB TJ Yates was picked off three times on the day, and he couldn’t get any of the last few drives into the end zone that could have tied the game and sent it to overtime.

The Texans may have been beaten 20-13, but they did cover the spread, and they certainly proved that they are good enough to play with the best teams in the league. There isn’t a projected starter next year over the age of 30 on this roster, and the majority of these players that built this defense are 25 and younger.

Baltimore knows that it has its work cut out for it in this one coming up, as it needs to do a lot better job protecting Flacco, and the running game needs to get more going. The defense can’t constantly be put in the same situation of having to defend relatively short fields against the Brady Bunch, because it just won’t work like that.

That being said, the Patriots haven’t beaten a team all season long which finished up the campaign above .500, while the Ravens have beaten the Steelers twice, the Bengals twice, the Texans twice, and the 49ers. Still, New England is favored by 7.5 points, with the ‘total’ coming in at a rather lofty 50.5.

In the NFC, we are shocked to think that neither the New Orleans Saints nor the Green Bay Packers are going to be playing in the NFC Championship Game.

The Packers, who flirted with perfection this season after going 15-1, were absolutely stunned by the New York Giants 37-20 in a game in which absolutely nothing went right. The hosts never led in the game, and the kill shot was a Hail Mary TD pass by QB Eli Manning to WR Hakeem Nicks for a score at the gun of the first half. Green Bay never looked the same, and it suffered a miserable defeat that really ruined the entire season.

Manning looked great, throwing for 330 yards and three TDs against just one pick. RB Ahmad Bradshaw had his second straight solid game on the ground, and RB Brandon Jacobs scored the TD that essentially ended the game with just a few minutes left. Nicks had 165 yards and two trips to the end zone.

The Giants were tremendous underdogs in the divisional round of the playoffs, and now, there are a slew of comparisons being made to the team that won the Super Bowl four years ago against the not-so-perfect Patriots. There is still one more roadblock to get by though, and it will be a big one.

All season long, most didn’t really believe in the San Francisco 49ers. Sure, they didn’t play in the toughest division in the world, and they didn’t really end up playing that great of a non-divisional schedule, but they kept winning games, especially at Candlestick Park. San Francisco moved to 8-1 SU and 8-0-1 ATS at home this year with a wild 36-32 win over the Saints in what amounted to be one of the best games that we have seen all season long.

New Orleans came back from a 17-0 deficit in the first half to take a 24-23 lead with 4:02 to play in the game. QB Alex Smith, a much maligned signal caller whom hardly anyone believed in this year, rushed for a 28-yard score with 2:11 to play to give the Niners back the five-point advantage. Just over 30 seconds later, QB Drew Brees hit TE Jimmy Graham for 66 yards and a score to give the Saints the edge by three.

Needing a field goal with very little time to do it in, Smith got the job done, hitting TE Vernon Davis on two separate plays to score the game-winning touchdown with nine seconds left to send the 49ers to the NFC Championship Game.

Hats off to the San Fran defense. Sure, Brees threw for 462 yards and four TDs, but in the end, the Niners forced five turnovers that ended up proving to be the difference in the game. Smith, with his four total TDs has been validated as well, especially knowing that he did the job against arguably the best offense in NFL history.

The Niners are going to be engaged in a rematch against the Giants here at Candlestick Park from three months ago. This was a tightly fought contest for the majority of the game, but on a day where Head Coach Jim Harbaugh successfully recovered a shock of an onside kick, it was Smith and the Niners that outdid Manning and the Giants 27-20.

On this day, the 49ers are favored by 2.5 points, and the ‘total’ comes in at 42.

Off the field this week, there were some coaching moves. The St. Louis Rams landed the big fish in the coaching sea, bringing in Jeff Fisher, who spurned the Miami Dolphins. The Indianapolis Colts also decided to remove Jim Caldwell from his post as well. As of Thursday, there are still head coaching openings with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders, the Dolphins, and the Colts, though we expect to see some of the Green Bay assistants start to get some looks as potential head coaches in these vacancies as the days wear on.