Kick back on the recliner, close your eyes, and conjure up a vision of an all-Big Apple championship game. Given everything that has happened to your city, you've earned the right to the superest of Super Bowl contests, a game that would thrill those who work in the NFL offices on Park Avenue and all those Madison Avenue advertising executives as well.

A game in which the national anthem would be replaced by slimmed-down Billy Joel belting out A New York State of Mind before the opening kickoff. For the first time since 1986, both the Giants and the Jets have qualified for the postseason, with the stadium they share in the New Jersey swamplands transformed over the weekend into the country's largest and loudest open-air fun house. The weekend contests demonstrated again that, in this most inexplicable of NFL seasons, all things are possible.

And the winner is ...

While the dream of the Giants and Jets in the Super Bowl will send New Yorkers crazy, Philadelphia and Oakland figure to be the teams to end it. As unusual as this season has been, and as unpredictable as these playoffs will probably end up being, we're sticking with the chalk and forecasting a Eagles-Raiders matchup in the Super Bowl. And the winner at this premature stage is the Raiders. -- Len Pasquarelli

So a title game on Jan. 26 matching the Giants and the Jets?

"The way this season has gone," said Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, "I don't think I'd bet against anything. Why not us and the Giants? Stranger things than that have occurred this season. It really has been a season when you can't predict what's going to happen."

Unlike recent seasons, when the playoffs began with a consensus favorite, the 2002 Super Bowl tournament is mind-bogglingly wide open. Indeed, only a year ago, everyone agreed the road to the Super Bowl led through St. Louis. Next weekend, the playoff franchises will embark on an uncharted odyssey that could be a stairway to heaven, or which might include a detour that leads down the road to perdition.

With how the regular season played out, a year when the only certainty was uncertainty on a weekly basis, don't count on any signposts.

Indeed, looking back on the '02 campaign, league officials might consider renaming the championship game the Schizophrenia Bowl. Every coach in the playoffs should be supplied a generous dose of nitroglycerine capsules for those times their hearts figure to short-circuit over the next few weeks.

For sure, the Cleveland Browns, those princes of playoff permutations are hardly the only Cardiac Kids still alive for the postseason. Life support was a condition with which several franchises coped down the stretch and, until someone pulls the plug, it figures to be an element of the playoffs, too.

Not even the teams with home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, the Oakland Raiders in the AFC and the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC, can breathe easy. This could be a postseason tourney in which Maalox will be substituted for Gatorade on the sidelines.

"It's probably the most even (playoff) field I've seen since I've played in the league," acknowledged Raiders free safety Rod Woodson. "Virtually every team has had some 'ups' and suffered some 'downs,' too. You've got some teams who seem to be really peaking now and others who stumbled into the playoffs. But this has been one of those 'anything is possible' seasons, so I'm not sure I'll be shocked by anything."

The numbers certainly indicate that the 2002 postseason field is one of the most leavened in recent history and, thus, figures to produce a playoff run filled with the unanticipated.

Entering the Monday night game, where San Francisco could add a victory to the aggregate record of the playoff entries, the dozen qualifiers own a combined 125 victories. Even if the 49ers defeat the Rams on Monday, the '02 playoff teams will have the fewest victories by a playoff field since '95. Nine of the playoff teams this year have double-digit victories, the fewest since 1999.

This year marks the first time since 1993 that there isn't a playoff franchise with more than 12 wins. And for the first time since '99, and only the third time since the league adopted the 12-team playoff format in 1990, there is a division champion with fewer than 10 victories. And, of course, the final weekend of the regular season saw a league-record 19 teams still eligible for Super Bowl contention.

"It was," said Jets coach Herman Edwards, "a mad scramble."

	“	It's probably the most even (playoff) field I've seen since I've played in the league. Virtually every team has had some 'ups' and suffered some 'downs,' too. You've got some teams who seem to be really peaking now and others who stumbled into the playoffs. But this has been one of those 'anything is possible' seasons, so I'm not sure I'll be shocked by anything. ”
		— Rod Woodson, Raiders safety

Edwards should know, since his club became just the third in recent history to rally from a 2-5 start, and still earn a playoff berth. That the Jets simply demolished Green Bay on Sunday evening, when the Packers still had the chance to grab home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, is testimony to the grit and determination New York displayed the second half of the year.

Then again, here's how fortunate the Jets were, in a month when virtually every outcome had some impact not only on the teams involved by also on the playoff race as a whole: Were it not for a bogus pass interference call against Miami cornerback Jamar Fletcher in the final five minutes Sunday, a botched judgement by field judge Bill Lovett that sparked the New England rally, the Dolphins would have been in the playoffs and the Jets-Packers game would have been reduced to a meaningless exercise for pride for New York.

That's why a dozen head coaches will all remind their teams over and over again that, particularly this season, every snap has significance.

"There were so many times this year when you could look back on a game and see where one play made a huge difference," said Giants left offensive tackle Luke Petitgout. "That's going to be magnified (in the playoffs). We all start, pretty much, on a level playing field. This just happens to be the year when the playing field is even more level than usual. There are some great teams. But there is no team, I don't think, that is wart-free."

Good point, since nearly all the playoff franchises suffered an outbreak of acne at some point during the season.

The imperious Raiders, with a rookie head coach, had to overcome an ugly four-game losing streak. So did the Tennessee Titans, arguably the hottest team in the AFC, but also a club whose owner suggested early in the season that his team was being out-coached. The Jets also lost four straight, went to the inexperienced Pennington when Vinny Testaverde was ineffective, and finally caught fire.

Tampa Bay, the league's equivalent of a hothouse tomato, managed to lose two games to the underachieving New Orleans Saints. The upstart Atlanta Falcons, with the NFL's most exciting player in quarterback Michael Vick, crawled into the playoffs, losing three of their final four games. Winners of just three home games, Cleveland had to rally very late in the fourth quarter in both its final two games and goes into the postseason minus quarterback Tim Couch, who sustained a broken fibula on Sunday afternoon.

Even the Eagles, where a masterful job turned in by Andy Reid should earn him coach of the year honors, are surrounded by question marks. It appears that quarterback Donovan McNabb, who hasn't played since fracturing his ankle on Nov. 17, will start in the playoffs. But there's no guarantee of that.

As the Eagles and Reid learned Saturday, when they temporarily squandered away home-field advantage by losing to the pesky Giants in overtime, never take anything for granted. It was a lesson learned painfully by the Packers as well, just one day later, in the same venue.

On Saturday afternoon, a contingent of Packers officials were in the press box to watch the Giants-Eagles game, and one of them let out a quiet yelp as Matt Bryant's 39-yard field goal went through the posts. The exuberance was forgiveable, since the successful kick meant the Packers controlled their own fate in terms of grabbing home-field advantage.

A day later it was an Eagles executive cheering to himself in that same press box, realizing that his club had recaptured the home-field edge, as he saw the Jets dismantle the Packers.

"Over a very short period, you can go through the highest high and then see the lowest low," said Eagles middle linebacker Levon Kirkland. "That's the way this season has been. But now it's time to focus, to find that level of consistency, and maintain it for just one month. It's time to get off the crazy merry-go-round everyone has been riding, and get your feet on the ground."

Certainly the brass (Super Bowl) ring is within reach of every one of the 12 teams still playing into the New Year.

More than in any recent postseason competitions, Giants quarterback Kerry allowed, tt's anyone's guess who will grab it.

"Hey, the slate is wiped clean, right?" said Collins. "Everyone should enter the playoffs with a kind of 'why not us' mentality. I know that's how we're looking at it."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.