Hello and welcome to the weekend edition of Inside the Huddle. The NFL Playoffs are here.

I'm your host, Neil Reynolds, joining me to discuss the race to Super Bowl 46 in Indianapolis is Mike Carlson of the BBC.

Mike, happy new year. Good Christmas. It was a great Christmas and, you know, that

first turkey and stuffing sandwich sort of the day after Boxing Day was fantastic and a really

good New Year's Eve since Nate and I stayed up and watched horse feathers. And I just thought

about how much better that football game between Darwin and Huxley would have been if Ed Hockely or Walt Coleman

had been refereeing it. I'm going to laugh politely. It's all flown straight over my head. I'm

afraid. Never seen the film. The Marx Brothers, good boy. Who did they play for? They played for

Huxley against Darwin. Any good? It's great. No, were they any good? Not as good as the

three stooges in terms of pure football talent.

Mike, we'll get on to the four wildcard games for this weekend in a minute.

Just a couple of notes from the 2011 season that stood out.

Scoring was at a 46-year high, 44.4 points per game.

That was the most since 1965. It was the first time in

NFL history. Three teams scored over 500 points. Green Bay got 560, New Orleans, 547, New England,

513. There were over 48% of games decided by seven points or fewer. It was a year of the comeback

as well. There were 18 games.

That was a record in which teams overcame a 14 point deficit.

Six games where they went 20 points or more behind them won.

Seven of the eight divisions were won by new teams.

Only the Patriots repeated as division champions.

And we had six teams in the playoffs who didn't make it last year.

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