Wild Card Saturday Preview: Rams-Panthers and Packers-Bears
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Wild Card Weekend kicks off on Saturday with the two games that occupy opposite poles in the round. First up is Rams-Panthers, where the Rams are 10-point favorites, the biggest spread on the board. The nightcap is Packers-Bears, where the Packers are the narrowest favorites of the round as we click publish on this episode. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen dive deep on these two games to get the playoffs rolling on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
2:45 Rams-Panthers preview
22:20 Packers-Bears preview
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Theme song: Haunted
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. It's part one of our wild card weekend |
| 0:09.1 | preview. We split this into two parts because, I don't know, six games would be way too much. |
| 0:13.9 | It'd be here for two hours. So we got the Panthers, Rams game, and the Bears, Packers game, |
| 0:19.6 | both the Saturday matchups on this episode. |
| 0:23.3 | Just me and Derek today, Dave is out taking care of some family stuff, but really enjoyed |
| 0:28.4 | both discussions about each of these games. |
| 0:30.7 | Let's get into it right now. |
| 0:37.3 | It's part one of our wild card preview here on the athletic football show. |
| 0:43.5 | Part two should be available in your podcast feeds right now. |
| 0:47.4 | We did this last year. |
| 0:48.4 | I think we had separated by conference last year, but it also happened to work out that |
| 0:52.1 | the conferences played chronologically last year. |
| 0:54.9 | Not the case this year. |
| 0:56.5 | So we're going to be doing two different shows. |
| 0:58.3 | We're going to start with the Saturday games on this one. |
| 1:01.1 | The Sunday and Monday games will be on the other episode currently in your feed. |
| 1:05.8 | These games are presented by BetMGM. |
| 1:09.0 | And let's kick things off with the first playoff game of the weekend. |
| 1:12.7 | Rams at Panthers. |
| 1:14.5 | Rams are 10.5 point favorites in this game. |
| 1:17.3 | And I think that will probably hang over the discussion we're going to have about this game. |
| 1:22.3 | But for each of these, all the six of the games we're going to talk about, |
... |
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