With NFL Championship Sunday approaching, the football world is blessed with two glorious matchups (Pittsburgh at New England and Green Bay at Atlanta), featuring a slew of MVP candidates and marquee names.
While Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell will likely steal the headlines, history shows that having a dynamic X factor serves a team well in the playoffs.
Click here to watch my segment on NFL Network discussing the AFC X factors and here for NFC X factors.
Remember former unlikely heroes like Jacoby Jones, Deion Branch and Desmond Howard? They remind us that the X factor is sometimes just as important as the superstar in a one-and-done tournament format.
With that in mind, let’s examine each team’s potential game-changers heading into Sunday’s action:
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Bud Dupree caused the hold on Eric Fisher.