NFL Playoffs 2016 Betting Odds: Panthers, Patriots favorites ahead of conference championships

The Cardinals’ ability to throw deep balls against a sometimes suspect Panthers secondary does give me pause, but not enough, so I’ll fast forward two weeks from now and tell you this: Super Bowl 50 will be a rematch of Super Bowl XXXVIII, the classic between the Patriots and Panthers.

Carolina and Arizona, NFL teams seeking a first Super Bowl triumph, meet Sunday to decide which will advance to next month’s championship spectacle, with both adopting a business as usual attitude.

It is the 17th meeting between the two, with Brady holding a 11-5 advantage.

Who are you taking at this point?

Manning, 39, would become the oldest winning quarterback in Super Bowl history if he can lead the Broncos past the Pats and go on to capture the title.

Despite all that experience, Brady says last year’s Superbowl is a reminder that you don’t need experience to make the biggest play in the biggest games. “There have been so many games as a team he has been a part of that they have won”.

I can’t wait to see how this team responds to the adversity that lies ahead.

It’s the NFL’s equivalent of the epic man-to-man matchups on the order of the NBA’s Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird, boxing’s Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, golf’s Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and Bjorn Borg versus John McEnroe in tennis. But he apparently took things to a whole new level in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX.

Everyone will obviously spend time discussing Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning, but Manning is no longer the quarterback he was even a few years ago.

However, in team sports, it’s rare to see the kind of rivalry that we have had with Manning and Brady.

The two spotlight rivals are friends, have dined together and with their families and supported each other through injuries.

“He’s a great passer, he’s so accurate”, said Brady. “There are times offensively that we are like, ‘What are we doing?’ But we just fight and we grind”. I think the Cardinals go into Carolina and takes out the Panthers.

Manning heaps praise upon Brady as well. Most of this current roster has played in the last four previous AFC Championship games.

“I just have a lot of respect for him and he has earned that respect”. Big mistake. This season started as the DeflateGate Revenge Tour, and we’re only one game away from the possibility of Twitter blowing up when Roger Goodell has to hand the trophy to the Patriots.

This coming Sunday we will witness one of the greatest rivalries of our generation clash for the 17th time.

Elway only faced his top foe, Dan Marino, three times in their careers.

When the Denver running back was asked if there were any parallels between this year’s Broncos squad and the 1997-98 teams that went back-to-back, he responded with a laugh. That wild overtime sequence aside, the Cardinals were outplayed for most of the game, and that scares me. It feels right that they’re playing with a chance to represent the conference in the Super Bowl.