Houston Texans

NFL wild-card playoff expert picks: Our predictions for every game

Published Jan. 12, 2017 10:46 a.m. ET

Zack Pierce

After 17 weeks of expert picks fun and agony, the playoffs are finally here.

Chase won the final regular season week, posting an impressive 13-3 mark. But our wire-to-wire leader Andrew went 12-4 and his dominating lead stands at 10 games. Now that the picks are in, we can say he is officially our champion for the season. With a 10-game lead over Smiley and an 11-game lead over WhatIf, his pursuers would've needed essentially all of the 11 playoff games to be a win for them and a loss for Lynch to get back into it, but all three of those guys picked both the Seahawks and the Steelers this week. That means that at worst Lynch's lead will be down to eight games with seven to go after this weekend, if both the Texans and Giants win.

Also of note: Mr. Schrager has dropped out of the panel for the playoffs. He'll be working sidelines for some of the games, so catch him on TV. Schrager finishes 148-106 on the season.

We're dropping our locks, bold choice and surprise picks categories for the duration, as well. But the entire panel did like heavily-favored Seattle over the Lions and Pittsburgh over the Dolphins. Giants-Packers was a slight edge to New York, with only Dieter and Andrew taking the home team. Only Andrew went for the Derek Carr-less Raiders.

Let's get to the picks. (Mobile users flip to landscape mode to view.)

Game	Chris Chase	Dieter Kurtenbach	Andrew Lynch	Brett Smiley	WIS
OAK at HOU Tickets
DET at SEA Tickets
MIA at PIT Tickets
NYG at GB Tickets
This week	3-1	4-0	3-1	3-1	3-1
Season record	147-111	161-97	173-85	163-95	162-96

Records will be updated each night after games. Check back every Thursday morning during the season for the new week's picks. (Note: Regular-season ties were not counted in the weekly or overall records.)

Participating this year:

— Chris Chase, Dieter Kurtenbach, Andrew Lynch and Brett Smiley, FOX Sports writers;

— Peter Schrager, FOX Sports NFL insider;

— And WhatIfSports, FOX Sports' simulation engine for computer-generated picks.

Compete against the experts each week in Pro Pick'em.