And at the top of the AP Pro32 poll http://www.seahawkscheapshops.com/cheap-authentic-marquise-blair-jersey , the new year starts right where the previous one ended.The New Orleans Saints, Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears, the top three seeds in the NFC, retained their top three spots in the final AP Pro32 poll of the season.New Orleans received 11 of the 12 first-place votes for 382 points in balloting Wednesday by media members who regularly cover the NFL. New Orleans will open the playoffs at home in the divisional round on Sunday, Jan 13.“The Saints lost in Week 1 and Week 17, both at home,” said Ira Kaufman of Fox 13 in Tampa, Florida. “In between, Drew Brees and company established themselves as the team to beat in the Super Bowl chase.”The Rams, who also finished 13-3 in the regular season, will start their postseason at the Coliseum on Saturday, Jan. 12. The Bears will close wild-card weekend when they host the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles on Sunday.The next six spots in the poll are all taken by the AFC’s playoffs teams.The Chiefs, who have the AFC’s top seed, are No. 4. Kansas City, which received the remaining first-place vote — from John Czarnecki of Fox Sports — has won the AFC West for three consecutive seasons. Patrick Mahomes, who finished with 5 D.K. Metcalf Jersey ,097 yards and 50 TD passes, will try to get Kansas City its first home playoff win since the 1993 season.“MVP front-runner Patrick Mahomes finished a brilliant first season as a starter with 50 touchdown passes,” said Newsday’s Bob Glauber. “With home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs, is a Super Bowl berth next?”The Los Angeles Chargers and New England Patriots finished in a tie at No. 5 in the poll.The Patriots, who won the AFC East for the 10th straight season and 15th time in the past 16 seasons, are the No. 2 seed in the AFC. They are trying to reach their ninth Super Bowl in the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era. They are also trying to become the first team since the 1990s Buffalo Bills to return to the Super Bowl after losing it the previous season, and the first since the 1992 Bills to make a third successive trip to the big game.The Chargers, despite finishing with the same record as the Chiefs at 12-4, lost the tiebreaker and are the No. 5 seed in the AFC. They will head to Baltimore to face the AFC North champion Ravens on Sunday. The Ravens are No. 9 in the poll.AFC South rivals Houston and Indianapolis are Nos. 7 and 8 in the poll. Those teams will open the postseason in Houston on Saturday when they meet for the third time after splitting their previous meetings.“Just wish they had another WR,” Czarnecki said of the Texans. Houston’s DeAndre Hopkins finished second in the NFL with 1,572 yards, but the depth took a hit when Demaryius Thomas was lost for the season with an Achilles tendon injury.Seattle and Dallas, who meet Saturday night in Texas, are 10th and 11th in the poll. The Seahawks and Cowboys both finished 10-6. They met in Seattle in Week 3, when the Seahawks won 24-13.The team that made the biggest climb from the first poll, which was released before the season started http://www.seahawkscheapshops.com/cheap-authentic-cody-barton-jersey , was the Bears, who started out at No. 28 and finished at No. 3. And the team that had the biggest drop was the Jacksonville Jaguars, who began at No. 7 and ended up at No. 28.The Arizona Cardinals, who finished with the worst record in the NFL at 3-13 and have the No. 1 pick in April’s draft, were a unanimous choice for last place in the poll. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NFL’s top medical experts believe they can take the knowledge of college football physicians and trainers and the research from the NCAA to make football safer — together.Dr. Allen Sills and Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for health and safety initiatives, spent Monday and Tuesday in Indianapolis sharing data about their findings on the prevention and treatment of injuries. It’s the most formal presentation league executives have had with college officials, and Sills and Miller hope this presentation leads to a broader conversation that includes discussions about lower-body injuries.“We’re able to show them what we’re working on and what we’re finding and how we’re applying that knowledge into the day-to-day care of professional athletes,” Sills told The Associated Press during a break. “I think we hope this is the start of even more regular interaction between the two organizations because we share the exact same goals, which is improving the health and safety of players.”The two-day meeting included participants from the NFL’s health and safety team, the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute and medical staffs from schools in each of the power five conferences. It comes amid a rapidly evolving landscape of injuries in football. Sills is the league’s chief medical officer.Over the past decade, Miller estimates the NFL made between 50 and 60 rules changes to enhance player safety. Members of the league’s competition committee now routinely contact the medical team before considering making additional changes.Plus, as Sills and Miller have collected more data they found NFL coaches and players increasingly receptive to their recommendations and conclusions.Players, they say, are asking more questions about equipment, such as helmets. Coaches and assistant coaches Gary Jennings Jr. Jersey , they add, have shown greater interest in how they can reduce the number of injuries at practices.“They (coaches) care about these people,” Miller said. “They care about the performance of them and they care about their long-term viability in the league, and those are all real good reasons to be open minded about how we practice, train and treat athletes as they go through an NFL training season or regular season.”The NCAA also has put a premium on player safety.It has introduced rules such as “targeting” in football, established a formal concussion protocol that includes guidelines for players returning to action after suffering a head injury and adding a section on the well-being of athletes to the governing body’s web site.But the key to success may be developing how to get the message out about additional safety measures.Until now, much of the focus publicly was on concussions: Last year’s statistics showed a 24 % decrease in the number of concussions, dropping from 281 in 2017 to 214.While Sills and Miller agree such work must continue, they also believe it’s time to specifically tackle another key issue: lower-body injuries such as sprained ankles, strained hamstrings and knee injuries, which wind up costing athletes more playing time than concussions.“We’re taking a very, I think, comprehensive approach to understanding foot, ankle or knee injuries and the contributing aspects of that,” Miller said. “I think, we are looking at the performance of certain cleats; their traction; how easily they release from different turf surfaces; how much different turf surfaces contribute to potential injuries; how we train our athletes http://www.seahawkscheapshops.com/cheap-authentic-phil-haynes-jersey , the load they go through on a daily basis or through a training camp and whether that correlates with particular sprains or strains.”The league has invested more than $60 million over the past 3½ years to get those answers, which they want others to use.It’s not just injuries, either.Sills and Miller spoke Tuesday about handling emergency situations when players suffer cardiac arrests or heat illnesses, in addition to brain and spine injuries, and they back the NFL’s new mental health initiative that was announced last month.What they want most, though, is to share this information with schools that can help the sport remain strong and safe.“We know that our knowledge is expanding rapidly and there are many things we can learn from each other,” said Sills, a neurosurgeon who worked at Vanderbilt before taking the NFL’s post in March 2017. “There’s a lot of potential for collaboration around the research questions we’re both working on. For example, we have a major research effort around playing surfaces and how cleats interact with playing surfaces. We can look at 1,800 athletes in the NFL, but imagine the power of being able to expand those observations to a number of NCAA athletes. That’s going to allow you to reach conclusions a lot quicker and with more power because we’ll have more athletes.”