10 down, 1 to go. The 2014 NFL playoffs have been pretty good, by recent NFL standards. We suffered a great deal of prime-time misery as fans this year, with blowouts on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights taking some of the gloss off another season. Thankfully, the playoffs have bucked that trend and produced some of the greatest games of all time.

Here's 10 things we know now that we didn't know on December 28th

1: Having a first round bye is a statistical advantage

The last few years have seen a narrative develop of the first round bye being at best a lottery, at worst something of a momentum-busting inconvenience. Well, as this table shows, that's not entirely true over recent years.

Bold denotes a team with a bye. *denotes progressed to conference championship at least

Year

AFC 1st Seed

NFC 1st Seed

Bye

Bye

AFC

NFC

SB

2006

San Diego Chargers

Chicago Bears

BAL*

NO*

IND

CHI

IND

2007

New England Patriots

Dallas Cowboys

IND

GB*

NE

NYG

NYG

2008

Tennessee Titans

New York Giants

PIT*

CAR

PIT

ARI

PIT

2009

Indianapolis Colts

New Orleans Saints

SD

MIN*

IND

NO

NO

2010

New England Patriots

Atlanta Falcons

PIT*

CHI*

PIT

GB

GB

2011

New England Patriots

Green Bay Packers

BAL*

SF*

NE

NYG

NYG

2012

Denver Broncos

Atlanta Falcons

NE*

SF*

BAL

SF

BAL

2013

Denver Broncos

Seattle Seahawks

NE*

CAR

DEN

SEA

SEA

2014

New England Patriots

Seattle Seahawks

DEN

GB*

NE

SEA

?

Firstly, as you can see, it's possible to isolate periods over the last decade that prove the bye week was no particular advantage - so let's not get carried away and assume that this is definitive, but since the advent of the 12 team playoffs in 1990, at least 1 team of the AFC and NFC championship games has been a team that had a bye week.

Put bluntly, the bye week is far from a guarantee of a Super Bowl victory, but as we've seen over the last few years, the myth that it impacts teams negatively is also being squashed. In fact, over the last 12 years, 56% of teams in the AFC and NFC conference games have been bye week-ers, and those teams produced a healthy 16/24 (66%) of the winners. Impressive, given that only 2 teams receive byes in each conference.

So there you have it: Bye week teams: More likely to win Conference title games, whatever the narrative says.

2: It's ok to ask if Brady is losing it - even when he isn't

Is he losing the inate ability that has led to him being one of the two best QB's of the last 20 years - and possibly ever? It didn't look like it against the Colts or Ravens. Instead, this was vintage 'Tom Terrific' (I think I'm going to vomit using that moniker) and capped a stretch dating back to week 4 that has defied his critics.

One of those was Profootballfocus's Sam Monson, who wrote on ESPN.com in June that Brady was 'no longer a top 5 QB'. Now, full disclosure, we like Sam and he's a nice chap who takes an interest in our site, but that doesn't mean we treat him any differently to other writers. What we're about to say will likely fly in the face of the narrative you'll relentlessly hear over the next two weeks, so be warned, you might not like it...

Monson was right to ask if a 38 year old QB coming off one of his worst seasons as a pro was fading. Of course, he got the wrong guy, but that's not the point. The point is that at some stage of your career - if you play long enough and wish to continue doing so - age is going to catch up on these guys, and when it does, that end will come quickly, as we'll cover in point 2 of this article.

Regardless of the 'top 5' debate - I think we can safely say that Brady is currently one of the top 5 QB's in the league right now - Monson took a lot of heat in June for suggesting that Brady was in decline. Now let us take a step back to that Kansas City game in week 4, where Brady looked a shadow of his former self, suffering the ignominy of being effectively pulled for his own good and replaced by Jimmy Garoppolo , who promptly threw a controversy-starting TD. Did anyone think Monson was out of line at that point? Brady quite clearly had regressed and was in the midst of a year long slump, so why ignore that fact blindly?

No, in week 4 the media were relishing the end of the Brady era. Chris Mortensen published an atrocious 'scoop' that Brady would be benched 'sooner rather than later' for Garoppolo. The same stats that people had ignored in June were rehashed and seemed validated by Brady's play in the first 4 weeks. In short, the knives were out.

But they were wrong. Brady came back like a man possessed and dragged the Patriots comfortably into the playoffs. He also opened up his life to Sports Illustrated in a tactically astute move that emphasized his dedication to football. It was also another shot at those who had questioned his age as a debilitating factor. But why?

Listen, when you get to 38, people are going to be gunning for you. They're not going to believe you can play until you're 45. Why? because my Grandfather still claimed to have the body of a 21 year old at the age of 80 'I feel no different now' is one of the most common phrases that those of us over 30 utter to people while we're desperately clinging to our last vestiges of youth. Of course Brady will protest that he's in better shape than ever. He's a competitor, and competitors don't like to lose to anyone, let alone Father Time.

But he had better get used to the questions...

3: 'Peyton Manning Retires' - a headline you'll see sooner than you'd like...

If Brady is worthy of such questions, then equally Manning - who ironically was held up by Monson as the standard by which Brady should be judged last summer - is in the uncomfortable situation of facing a forensic analysis of his physical shape over the next 9 months.

I have said this before, but we are lucky to have spent the last 15 years watching Brady and manning duke it out. Sure, many Jets, Titans, Bills and Texans fans will disagree, but don't worry, when you get to 75 and tell your grandkids about the 00's, you were never going to start with 'let me tell you about David Carr and Ryan Fitzpatrick...' anyway. Like them or lump them, the Manning-Brady duel has defined the last 15 years of our NFL viewing, and we're all better for that.

Unfortunately, it is clear that this time is over. At best, Manning has a season or two left where he'll need to either get physically stronger in the offseason, or manage his arm strength throughout the regular season if he is to be effective in the playoffs. I wrote last year that Manning's cold-weather performances have been exaggerated previously, but if his arm has genuinely gone, then the weather in Denver won't help matters.

The main thing with Manning is that psychologically, he has to be able to restart everything on a team that has questions to answer, a new coach, probably a new OC, certainly a new playcaller (Gary Kubiak called Houston's plays) - and likely turnover of offensive and defensive personnel. Is he mentally able to inspire people who may now believe he is a mere mortal? Does he have the desire to prove people wrong just one more time, with the risk that he may face yet more heartbreak in 12 months time?

Also, consider that it's 13 years since a healthy Manning didn't make it to the playoffs, or indeed had anything approaching a losing record. Do you think that Manning will push himself to return against his better judgement and expose himself to a Favre-esque inglorious farewell? I'm not so sure.

And you know, that would be a terrible shame in itself if the worst came to pass. While the selfish part of me wants the era that began when I was a teenager to continue, the realist within all of us should remember that at some point, humans age. Careers can't go on forever, and I suspect more than a few players have regretted coming back for one last shot at the title.

We should all hope Manning isn't one of them.

4: The playoffs don't need expanding

We noted some calls for a 14 team playoff field earlier in the month - now feels like a good time to rebutt it.

First of all, as noted above, playoff bye weeks are definitely worth playing for, whereas the chances of a meaningful week 17 (or even 16) game for many teams would be eliminated if a bye week was taken away from one of them. As much as an extra prime-time game would be added, we could realistically also expect that games at the end of the regular season would lack drama, thus negatively effecting the league's overall marketability during this time.

And while we've come to expect that no depth will be stooped to by Roger Goodell in the quest for the all-ighty-ollar, it would actually be a shame if this type of short-sighted decision was allowed to dilute the post-season drama that we've enjoyed this year.

Sure, the final games of the season can turn out to be dreary affairs, but did we really need the Eagles and Texans in the field to add to our playoff viewing experience? Definitely not. Can we make changes to the playoff seedings and structure? I believe so. A divisional title should still equate to a playoff spot, but it should never guarantee home field, as it did for Carolina, Hell, if you asked me today would I sacrifice the sanctity of the divisional playoff spot for the sake of adding the teams with better records instead, I'd probably say yes. It would certainly be favorable compared with adding two mediocre teams to the mix.

At some point, the NFL needs to remember the reason that football is popular is that it is elite. The best. Rare. Sure, the league strives for ubiquity and exposure, but over-saturation is a real danger in the longer term, and expanding the playoff pool smacks of a league that has forgotten that it is dominant because it rewards only the few.

5: This is going to be a tough Super Bowl to predict

While the Broncos were most fancied to win the Super Bowl by experts this year, the Patriots and Seahawks were the teams most tipped to make it to the game itself before the season started. Having met those expectations with equally impressive regular seasons, their postseasons have taken oddly contradictory routes, with the Seahawks comfortably beating Carolina in the divisional round, before pulling off a last-minute comeback vs the Packers, while the Patriots started off by beating the Ravens from behind(!), before comfortably destroying the Colts like Vikings in an English monastery circa 800AD.

Will the experts give the Seahawks less credit because they were sloppy for large parts of their last game? or will they see it as evidence that the Seahawks are able to overcome any level of poor play? We will of course find out right here on these very pages over the next 12 days, and we look forward to seeing your own Super Bowl picks, which you can make right here.