Recapping a crazy divisional round weekend and looking ahead to the conference championships.

That's what we're going to talk about today on stealing bananas.

I'm Ben Gretsch.

You can find stealing signals at Ben Gretsch.substack.com with me as always is Sean Siegel. You can find all of his great work

or whatever is. Sean, we missed recording something last week. After all my travels, New Orleans,

Houston, I end up getting sick for an extended period. And then you also got sick. so here we are we're recording on our at our

normal time on Thursday morning we're still kind of pivoting into the off season because we're

during the season we're recording on Sunday nights and then on Thursday mornings we aren't recording

on Sunday nights anymore and then we missed our Thursday morning last week we got to pivot to some

different time frames and and we will.

And so we apologize to the listeners for the gaps and those things. But we're back here today.

We're going to talk a little bit about division around weekend, which was super fun. I was talking

to you a little bit about, I mean, I think inevitably every year, it becomes like sort of the most fun weekend. The Wild Card Weekend has more games, but you also have some teams every year that kind of don't belong in the playoffs that sneak in or it feels like that. My favorite part of Wild Card Weekend is you get the bi teams, or excuse me, divisional round weekend, is you get the buy teams brought back in. You have all the best teams playing, the ones that, you know, shown that they're the best, they're advancing. You get the Bill's Chiefs matchup this year. Some of those types of matchups already start to happen where it's like these are two legitimate Super Bowl contenders facing off. You also have the teams that are the upstarts that might be the story for that year getting their first big test, it kind of feels like. like the year the Bengals made the run of the Super Bowl. They went in the first round, I think, against the Raiders that year getting their first big test, it kind of feels like. Like the year that the Bengals made the run of the Super Bowl,

they went in the first round,

I think against the Raiders that year, and then they have to go into Tennessee, who's the number one seed. And that's fun. It's young Joe Burke, and he went on the road in Tennessee. We got to see that with CJ Stroud this year, where he felt like a live underdog at Baltimore,

even as like a 10 point underdog.

And obviously Baltimore takes care of business.

Similarly, crowd this year where he felt like a live underdog at Baltimore, even as like a 10-point underdog.

And obviously, Baltimore takes care of business.

Similarly, Jordan Love and the Packers are playing incredible football down the stretch.

They feel like a live underdog.

They're going to San Francisco, who for months has felt like maybe the Super Bowl favorite,

...