The best arrived first. After Seattle's astonishing win over New Orleans on Saturday afternoon, the other wildcard encounters were always going to struggle to match the excitement and energy of the Seahawks' victory.
I was somewhat on the fence with Mike Mayock being the analyst of choice for NBC's opener at Qwest Field, but he proved to be a solid choice and far better than the Joe Theismann and Joe Gibbs tandem used in last year's equivalent game.
Mayock didn't make ground-breaking analytical points, but he understood the key moments in the game and picked up the excellent performances from Seattle defenders Will Herring and Earl Thomas.
On the downside, he did make irritatingly frequent reference to the 'veteran' status of Matt Hasselbeck and Brandon Stokely, which once noticed was almost impossible to ignore.
However Mayock's game will largely be remembered favorably for his call in the aftermath of Marshawn Lynch's 67 yard scoring run, the decisive and stand-out play of the game:
* Seattle's win was truly incredible given their distinctly poor regular season. Even their week 17 playoff-securing win over St Louis had been uninspiring; the result as much down to the unwillingness of the Rams to be more aggressive in the early going and drops by receivers when they did take their shots downfield.
The Seahawks win in that game owed as much to the brief but crucial flashes of a running game that appeared in the third quarter, and they built on that performance against the Saints on Saturday, culminating in that final run. Lynch's punch-drunk stumbling up the field from one Saints defender to the next was a thing of part beauty and part comedy.
But Matt Hasselbeck was also special; standing in and taking severe punishment whilst lofting up perfectly weighted passes and in one of my favourite plays of the game, finding receiver Mike Williams over the heads of two Saints defenders in pursuit:
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