NFL playoff myth-busters: Why you're wrong about all 14 teams - ESPN

The NFL playoff field is set, and you know these teams. For months, you've been watching them, talking about them and drawing conclusions about them. But some of those conclusions are wrong.

It's not your fault. The week-to-week nature of the NFL lends itself quite naturally to missing the forest for the trees. You see a team one week, notice something about it, watch that same team a week or so later and notice the same thing again. And then you just figure that thing to be true — that it's part of what defines that team.

But what we're doing here — with the 18-week regular season concluded and four months' worth of data to sort through — is step back, look at the bigger picture and figure out which of the things we think we know about each playoff team might not, in fact, be true. For some of these teams, our conclusions might be encouraging. For some, they might be cause for concern. But hopefully this offers at least a little bit of a different way to look at all 14 playoff teams as they get ready to prove us all right or wrong (or a little of both).

So here are our annual playoff myth-busters, with a big assist from ESPN researcher Paul «Hembo» Hembekides and the ESPN Research team. Let's start with the NFC, and teams are ordered by seeding.

Jump to a team:
BUF | CAR | CHI | DEN | GB
HOU | JAX | LAC | LAR | NE
PHI | PIT | SF | SEA

Myth: Their run game isn't good enough.

The Seahawks finished the season ranked 27th in the NFL in offensive rush EPA, which backs up the seasonlong narrative that they weren't running the ball consistently well and relied too much on their (admittedly outstanding) defense and wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Seattle scored the third-most points of any team in the regular season but