This is it. This is the big dance before, um, the bigger dance. Week 17 is the last week in the NFL’s regular season, determining once and for all which teams will be continuing on to the Super Bowl playoffs and which teams will start practicing their golf skills.

As you may have noticed, my NFL predictions have been hit and miss all year long, but surprisingly, I’m still averaging an overall accuracy right around 50%. I’ll try to provide a final tally along with the NFL Week 17 results early next week.

There are some pretty important football games this week. It’ll be interesting to see if Tony Romo can rise to the occasion for the Dallas Cowboys against the Philadelphia Eagles, for example, and I’m looking forward to the Sunday night game between the Denver Broncos and the San Diego Chargers. The winners of both of those games go on to the playoffs, whereas the losers go home.

Ironically, one of the potentially most exciting games — Indianapolis and Tennessee — really means nothing, because both of those squads are already locked into their playoff positions. Maybe they’ll meet again in the second round of the playoffs (the Titans get a first week bye).

NFL 2008 - Week 17 Picks and Predictions

Instead of going through game by game as I normally have, I’ve kept this week’s predictions short, sweet, and to the point. Wish my luck!