BroBible
Don’t look now but we might have the best long weekend of football in recent history ahead of us this week. On top of the six NFL Wild Card Weekend playoffs games there are two College Football Playoffs games leading us into the weekend. A full four days of consequential and high energy games featuring the best teams left right now. How can we top that?
As we look ahead to the 2026 NFL Wild Card Weekend match ups, let us first look to the past and see how each of this year’s NFL Wild Card teams has done in previous Wild Card appearances.
There are two teams on bye for the Wild Card Round. The Denver Broncos who have previously appeared in 9 Wild Card games (2-7 overall) and the Seahawks who have made 16 Wild Card appearances (9-7).
The first game of Wild Card Weekend will feature the Los Angeles Rams travel to Charlotte to face the Carolina Panthers who somehow managed to win the NFC South with a losing record (8-9) and after losing to the Buccaneers in their final game of the season but getting help from the Falcons in a 3-way tie.
This will be the Carolina Panthers’ 4th appearance in Wild Car Weekend games. They are 3-1 in those games for a strong .75% win percentage.
The Los Angeles Rams (and previously the St. Louis Rams) have made 13 Wild Card game appearances. In those 13 games, the Rams are 6-7 all-time for a .46% winning percentage.
Los Angeles and Carolina kick things off at 4:30pm on the 10th. The Rams are currently 10-point favorites over the Panthers and Stafford is arguably the best QB in the NFL Playoffs this season.
The second Wild Card Weekend game begins at 8pm on 1/10 and features two of the most historic NFL franchises and two bitter rivals, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Green Bay (9-7 regular season) will travel to Soldier Field to face the NFC North winning Chicago Bears (11-6). Chicago is a slim 1-point favorite at this point.
For a franchise that’s over 100 years old, I would’ve suspected the Bears to have more Wild Card appearances but they have only played in 6 Wild Card games and Chicago is 2-4 in those appearances.
On the flip side, the Green Bay Packers have a whopping 17 Wild Card Game appearances and they are 11-6 in those games. Absolutely dominant.
But the Bears and Packers split their regular season match ups making it hard to get a real gauge on how this game will play out. However, the Green Bay Packers are one of the teams to win the Super Bowl as a Wild Card team when they did so back in 2010, winning Super Bowl XLV as a #6 seed against the Steelers.
