The wild card round of the 2010 NFL playoffs comes equipped with enough intrigue to fill the five cold days between now and kickoff of the first game on Saturday afternoon. Want a battle between two of the league’s most exciting quarterbacks? Try Sunday’s Green Bay at Philadelphia matchup. A drama-filled team that has been hounded by controversy all year taking on the NFL’s do-no-wrong posterboy? You may enjoy the Jets at Colts Saturday night. Maybe you want to watch the defending champs play on the road against the first team to ever make the NFL playoffs with a losing record. Tune in to NBC Saturday for the Saints-Seahawks.  A great deal has been made about how there are five teams in this year’s postseason who didn’t qualify last year. But the same thing happened in 2009. One thing unique about this year’s playoffs? A threatened work stoppage may make this the last set of NFL games we see for a while. But there are plenty of other elements that make this one unique. Weve certainly never seen anything like whats happened in Philadelphia this year. “Every typewriter on earth,” the Journal’s Jason Gay writes, “is eager to write a five-part Michael Vick Super Bowl Redemption Saga.”  And take Seattle. They made the playoffs with a 7-9 record after beating St. Louis Sunday night. Jim Moore of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that had the Seahawks lost, their 6-10 record would have tied them with seven other teams in the standings. “They might have gotten the seventh pick in the first round and had a shot at Cam Newton,” Moore writes. “Now they’re stuck with the 21st pick in the first round and an embarrassing loss to the Saints.” Buried beneath Seattle’s futility, though, is the fact that the Seahawks are 5-3 at home this season and, by virtue of being division winners, get to host the New Orleans Saints in the first round of the playoffs in front of an always-raucous crowd. The Seahawks were blown out in New Orleans by the Saints, 34-19, in November. This was par for Seattle’s course: Every one of their losses ended up being by 15 points or more. “Had Kurt Warner not retired from Arizona or Mike Singletary not fumed and raged his 49ers into a crater, one of those teams would have been celebrating this week,” Yahoo’s Les Carpenter writes. “But since everybody else fell apart, destiny tumbled to the Seahawks.”  Seattle isn’t the only oddball underdog. Indianapolis beat Tennessee on a last-second field goal to secure a berth that was all but given to them when Houston’s thrashing of Jacksonville was made official just a few minutes before the kick. Even though this is the ninth straight playoff appearance for the Colts, this is not the team we have become accustomed to. They’ve battled injuries all season but are riding a four-game winning streak. They will host a Jets team that is motivated and hungry to exact revenge on the team that knocked them out of last year’s playoffs. “The Colts’ shoes are scuffed, their clothes are all wrinkled. Theyre scruffy and they dont smell very good,” ESPN’s Paul Kuharsky writes. “They are not, as theyve often been at the start of the playoffs, the pretty playoff entry. They dont particularly care.” Justin A. Cohn of the Journal Gazette says that the Colts may be flying under a lot of radars as they enter the playoffs because of the un-Colt-like way this season unfolded. Just over a month ago, people were writing the team off and fantasy experts were advising teams to bench a struggling Peyton Manning. “With four straight victories and a No. 3 seed,” Cohn writes, “one has to wonder whether the worry was worthwhile.”  The Kansas City Chiefs, making their first postseason appearance since 2006, could qualify as the most enigmatic team in this year’s playoffs. While their fans should be wholeheartedly celebrating the accomplishment and looking forward to a home playoff game against the Ravens Sunday, many are left scratching their heads after Kansas City confirmed that offensive coordinator Charlie Weis will be leaving the team after the playoff run to take the same position at the University of Florida. Rumors had swirled that Weis and head coach Todd Haleywho coached together with the Jets in the 1990sdidn’t get along, but Weis insisted that there were no hard feelings between them. He told the Kansas City Star’s Adam Teicher that the decision was based on his son, Charlie, Jr., enrolling at Florida, and Weis, who is also friends with new head coach Will Muschamp, getting the opportunity to spend time with him. “At the end of the day,” Weis tells Teicher, “I dont think anybody could understand how wonderful an opportunity it would be to be able to work at a place and see your kid on a daily basis.”  Although this “Back to School”-esque plan might be cause for distraction, Weis was quick to point out that he accepted the head coaching job at Notre Dame while still offensive coordinator for the Patriots in 2004. The Patriots beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl that season. And if that doesnt cheer Chiefs fans up, the NFL’s Bucky Brooks is touting them as a darkhorse candidate out of the AFC. “When thinking about the formula for winning in January, it is imperative that an offense features an elite quarterback, a dynamic playmaker at receiver and a strong running game,” Brooks writes. “The Chiefs surprisingly feature each of these critical elements, and the collective production will make them a difficult opponent in the postseason.”  It’s hard to remember a time when Brett Favre’s name didn’t inspire either a groan or chortle from football fans, but he was brilliant for years. The 11-time Pro-Bowler was a two-time NFL MVP and holds the NFL’s consecutive start streak. He was being championed as the greatest 40-year-old quarterback to play the game as recently as last season. Reduced to a punchline for late-night hosts in 2010, though, Favre decided Sunday that “it’s time” to call it a career. Although there will be many doubters about Favre staying put in retirementunofficially, this is his thirdSports Illustrated’s Peter King spoke with Vikings coach Leslie Frazier and kicker Ryan Longwell (one of the three players who flew to Mississippi to recruit Favre before the season), and they both all but guaranteed Favre was done. For good. “We won’t see him don another uniform, ever. Anywhere,” Frazier told King. “No doubt in my mind whatsoever.”  “Favre owns all the top passing records in the game. He won over fellow players and fans with his indomitable toughness and swashbuckling verve. And I believe that John Madden might have at one time openly considered adopting him,” Drew Sharp of the Free Press writes. “But his reputation took as many hits as his body did.”  People who read Bill Simmonss NFL picks columns solely for the picks may have glossed over a pretty significant “oh, by the way” in his latest ESPN column. In a sidebar, Simmons writes that he stayed in a supposedly haunted Oklahoma City hotel on a recent trip to see Kevin Durant play. He awoke in the middle of the night to a feeling that someone was in the room with him, accompanied by the sounds of a baby crying, supposedly the haunting wails of “Effie’s baby” in the infamous Skirvin Hotel. Simmons writes that he kept all the lights and the television on for the rest of his half-asleep/half-awake night. “I came to Oklahoma City for Durant and Westbrook and left telling stories about Effie’s baby,” Simmons writes. “The next time someone tells me a ghost story, I will believe them.”  Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself  write to us at dailyfixlinks@gmail.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email Nando at nandodifino@yahoo.com.
The Colts look mortal, the Chiefs could surprise and much more postseason analysis. Plus: Why Weis went to Florida; the end for Favre - no, really; and more.