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2020 Wildcard Saturday

09 Saturday Jan 2021

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The expanded Wildcard Weekend is here, that unsurprisingly throws up a couple of tasty games, but thanks to the structure of the playoffs we have a lopsided road favourite, but we shall get to them in a bit.

Indianapolis Colts (7th) @ Buffalo Bills (2nd)

The play-offs start with a cracking matchup that sees the Colts take their seventh ranked defence by DVOA to Buffalo to see if they can stifle the Bills and their fifth ranked offence who have look as good as anyone in the league. The Bills come into this game having scored 48, 39, and 56 points in the last three weeks but the loss of slot receiver Cole Beasley could well cause this offence some problems as could the Colts defence. The addition of DeForest Buckner this off-season has helped the Colts’ pass rush and Darius Leonard continues to impress as a linebacker up there with any in the league. This Colts offence might be outside the top ten by DVOA, but Philip Rivers has added veteran leadership and has been splitting red-zone and short yardage snaps with Jacoby Brissett as the younger QB being better able or more willing to be his body on the line. In truth this is not your average play-off seventh seed given that the Colts won eleven games but with the Bills defence playing better in recent weeks and a perfect 6-0 following their bye week the Bills look like the team best placed to test the Chiefs in the play-offs. The improvement from Josh Allen in his third season is remarkable, with the ten point leap in completion precentage jumping out at you and I would expect him to lead the Bills to a first play-off win since the 1995 season. Anything else will be a disappointment for the Bills.

LA Rams (6th) @ Seattle Seahawks (3rd)

The second of the Saturday matchups is a game that is intriguing rather than one promising fireworks, but it is a divisional matchup that has potential. The LA Rams lost in a head scratching manner to the New York Jets of all teams in week fifteen, before losing to the Seahawks in a game that saw Jared Goff dislocate the thumb in his throwing hand although he finished the game. There were stretches of the season where Goff looked really good, but towards the end of the season the quarterback had a couple of bad games and after surgery on his thumb had to watch the Rams eek out an 18-7 win without an offensive touchdown in week seventeen for the Rams to secure their play-off spot. There is talk that Goff could be back for this game, but the Rams have not named the starter yet so it could be that John Wolford gets to start his second NFL game, and in the play-offs. Wolford offers more with his legs both on designed runs and scrambling to make plays than Goff, but does not have the potential to match Goff when he is playing well. The good news is the Rams are much more balanced than the year they went to the Super Bowl thanks to a defence that ranks fourth in the league by DVOA this season, anchored around the other worldly talents of defensive tackle Aaron Donald and corner Jalen Ramsey. The offence also welcomes back Andrew Whitworth from IR who barring setbacks is set to start at left tackle but it seems they will need to dig deep into head coach Sean McVay’s excellent playbook to get the win.

The Seattle Seahawks have been in contention all season, which is hardly a surprising statement given their 12-4 record, but I confess that it feels a little flattering to me. The Seahawks started the season strongly on offence with Russell Wilson throwing the ball all over the field, but as the season wore on and defences adjusted to the new attack the Seahawks faltered, losing two games in a row. The Seahawks traded for veteran pass-rusher Carlos Dunlap and as the Seahawks defence improved they also reverted to running more on early downs. This has brought them the 12-40record and the division, but I am concerned that Russell Wilson might have to find some truly special performances when he has not looked as good as he did to start the year if the Seahawks are to go deep into the playoffs. With the situation at quarterback, it is hard not to give the edge to the Seahawks, even if McVay has a good coaching record against them, but it wouldn’t be the shock of the century if the Rams were to find a way.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5th) @ Washington Football Team (4th)

Thanks to the state of the NFC East, the final game on Saturday sees a 7-9 fourth seed hosting an eleven-win fifth seed. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are appearing in their first play-off game in thirteen seasons and will be looking for their first play-off win since the 2002 Super Bowl win. The addition of Tom Brady clearly helped the Bucs improve and with his playoff experience and their opposition the Bucs are favourites to win on the road, but might not have everything all their own way. The Bucs have at times looked as good as anyone in the league, with a plethora of pass catching options for Brady and a defence than can be truly scary. Any team who has a top five offence and defence should feel confident and the Bucs have definitely looked better towards the end of the season as Brady adjusted to the new team and scheme and got over the disrupted pre-season. However, the Washington Football Team made the play-offs thanks to their defence and in particular their defensive line. This is not to say that the Football Team will win, but with impressive rookie defensive end Chase Young leading the way you can see their pass rush getting pressure on Brady and as impressive as the veteran quarterback is, he was very quick to get rid of the ball even before he turned forty-three. The problem that Washington will have in this game is even if their defence can disrupt the Bucs and Brady on offence, there has been genuine discussion of a quarterback rotation as Alex Smith deals with a calf strain that has hampered the veteran quarterback in recent weeks. It takes nothing away from Smith’s incredible comeback from a horrific injury and post-surgery complications that nearly cost him his leg, but with Taylor Heinicke and his one career start being next in line it is hard to feel confident in Washington’s chances. This is still a season of progress for Washington who have not been to the play-offs since the 2015 season or won a play-off game since the 2005 season, and they had a record of 3-13 last year. In fact given the turmoil off the field, Ron Rivera’s transformation of the franchise is pretty remarkable and let us not forget that he has managed all this whilst undergoing treatment for cancer. There are no participation trophies in the NFL, but if you look at both quarterbacks and Rivera it is a remarkable achievement just to be involved in this game, but you know that Brady will see anything other than a win as a disappointed and I think I would be genuinely shocked if he didn’t get one more win tonight.

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measuring a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

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Saturday Divisional Games

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts, Playoffs

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Now we have all the teams that are left in the competition playing it is time to look at the Saturday games.

Indianapolis Colts (6th) @ Kansas City Chiefs (1st)

The Kansas City Chiefs have been the talk of the NFL all season thanks to their high powered offence and the play of Patrick Mahomes in his first full season. Mahomes threw fifty touchdown and only twelve interceptions as he account for five thousand spectacular yards. We’ve had no look passes, differing arm angles and regular how did he do that plays, which have made Reid’s offensive scheme hum. This has been helped by the glut of talent the Chiefs have at the skills positions, and although there was a wobble after they cut running back Kareem Hunt after video of his assault of a woman in a hotel surfaced (because TMZ are better at investigating these incidents than the NFL are), the Chiefs finished the season with two thirty points games. The worry for the Chiefs is that their offence may match their overall ranking of first by DVOA, and their special teams are ranked second, but their defence is ranked twenty-sixth and so whilst they went 12-4, they have had to win a lot of shoot outs.

There are other problems though. One is that the Chiefs home playoff record has not been good, and whilst they will hope to overturn that this weekend, it would not exactly be a surprise if Mahomes shows some nerves early in the game. They welcome a Colts team who went on the road to beat their divisional rivals last week and come into this game with good form and great offensive and defensive lines. The other problem I want to mention for the Chiefs is that their defence was bottom of the league in rush defence by DVOA, and so whilst the Colts are not especially great at running the ball, they don’t have to be. I don’t have strong feeling on who is going to win this game, but I am really looking forward to seeing it as I think it could be spectacular given the Chiefs offence skill and defensive problems. I could see the Arrowhead crowd getting nervous if the Chiefs don’t get off to a good start and I do think an upset is possible. I’m not going to call it as a home teams in the divisional rounds have been won of the safer bets of the playoffs recently, but it definitely could happen.

Dallas Cowboys (4th) @ LA Rams (2nd)

The LA Rams may have suffered a disappointing Wildcard loss last season in Sean McVay’s first year, but they built on that momentum and hit the ground running this season. The offence was as scary as anyone’s up to their week twelve bye. Injury has hampered them a little since then, and one of the big questions going into this game is just how healthy is Todd Gurley. However, the signing of CJ Anderson helped them right the ship at the end of the season, and if Jared Goff’s form has dipped since the Rams lost Cooper Kupp they have done enough to be seeded second in the NFC. On the other side of the ball, Aaron Donald has had a formidable year as arguably the leagues best defensive player, but things have never quite gelled for all of the free-agents they have brought in and so whilst the offence is second in the league by DVOA, the defence is nineteenth. This is still better than the Chiefs, even if it is a similar formula and they may run into similar problems against the Cowboys as I see the Chiefs having with the Colts.

The Cowboys were the only home team to win in the Wildcard round and take their own formula to face the Rams. This starts with an offence built around Ezekiel Elliott running the ball and increasingly catching the ball out the back field. The addition of Amari Cooper has opened up defences for the Cowboys, but losing Allen Hurns last week to a nasty dislocation/broken fibula will hurt the passing game as will the niggles Cole Beasley and Tavon Austin are dealing with. However, the Rams defence has struggled against the run, only ranking twenty-eighth by DVOA despite the presence of Donald and Ndamukong Suh in the middle of the defensive line. The Cowboys formula of running the ball could definitely work in this game. Meanwhile the Cowboys defence has looked pretty good as well and finished the season ranked fifth in rushing defence by DVOA. If they can limit the Rams effectiveness in running the ball and not over commit to the play fakes of the Rams then they could well sneak this game and you know the Cowboys fans will likely be well represented in the Coliseum this Saturday. I lean to the Rams in this one, but I can make a formula for the Cowboys to win this game.

Close games have been a feature of this season. We could well have two of them today!

Don’t Worry, No-One Knows Anything…

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

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18-10-17 M-Tomlin

Image Credit: behindthesteelcurtain.com

So with a heart filled with the familiar pain of a loss to our divisional rivals I have to pick up the jagged bloody pieces of my fandom and get on with the blog because the NFL schedule waits for no one.

The Bengals lost to the Steelers again, but it wasn’t exactly an implosion and Andy Dalton gave the boys in stripes a lead with 1:18 left on the clock in the fourth quarter, but Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brows sealed the game and whilst some are complaining about calls, this was a close game and the mounting injuries were as much the cause as anything. It doesn’t get any easier though as the Bengals are on the road against Kansas City this week and have been flexed into the Sunday night game, which bodes badly given the Bengals poor record in nationally televised games.

However, enough of my gloom! One of the reasons that covering the NFL is fun is that even with the most detailed preparation no one knows anything and there were plenty of surprises amongst the entertaining week six games.

I chose entertaining deliberately as we had one of the best games of the season this week with the Kansas City Chiefs going to New England taking them down to the final whistle as Stephen Gostkowski kicked a twenty-eight yard field goal to seal the win. For what felt like the first time this season it looked a little bit like Patrick Mahomes felt some nerves being on the road in front of the nation, but the Chiefs recovered from a half time score 0f 9-24 and forced a final second field goal out of the Patriots. I’m sure plenty of people are already hoping for a repeat game in the playoffs, whilst I’m just worried about what the Chiefs are going to do to the Bengals next week, but let’s not disappear down that rat hole!

Part of the excitement of this season has been the dominance of the offence this season where even a team that has the number one defence by DVOA can give up five hundred yards to a Miami Dolphins offence helmed by Brock Osweiler. Now a lot of this was done by Adam Gase utilising his young skill players ability to turn short passes into long gains, but is impressive none the less. I’m beginning to think the only reliable defence at the moment belongs to the Baltimore Ravens who shut out the Tennessee Titans this week and managed to rack up eleven sacks. This is too many for me not to take a look at their pass rush for my amateur adventures in film post and it will be nice to get back to some defensive tape. However, the story this season really is offence and not always from the usual suspects. I shared the frustrations I had heard repeatedly stated about the Dallas Cowboys offence having seen it for my own eyes against the Texans earlier this season, but thanks to modern technology it takes so much less time for plays to spread and the Cowboys came up with a doozy of a game plan in week six that enabled them to stick forty points on the Jacksonville Jaguars defence. Okay, so there were four field goals in that total but Cole Beasley racked up over a hundred receiving yards and a two touchdowns whilst Ezekiel Elliott also ran for a hundred yards. All this was with Dak Prescott throwing for a modest one hundred and eight-three yards but he also chipped in with eighty-two yards on the ground. I’m not saying everything is suddenly fixed, things are far too unpredictable but this game is definitely something that could be built upon.

There’s a reason that I said could. If this season has taught us nothing else, it is to be wary of the grand statement. Now this is a familiar feeling to me having been blogging about this league for four years now, which is really nothing, but it does feel like the development and changes within the league are accelerating. Every year we see teams who were bottom of their division suddenly leading, even if there are a handful of teams who always seem to do well or poorly, but it does feel like things are increasingly topsy-turvy and week to week. This is likely to be that apart from the structural things to do with the rosters, injury luck, and tactical complexity that makes predicting outcomes difficult, we have such a small sample size that every game takes on more importance and we draw bigger inferences than we should on the basis of one game. Across the entire season they sort themselves out a little, but it is so hard to remain competitive across a season never mind to build a dynasty like the Patriots currently have, or that the 49ers had when I was growing up.

It also doesn’t help when trends spread across season. It feels like LA Chargers have been competitive but losing too many close games for a while, but if you look back at their results to include last season. They may have started 2017 with four losses, but since week five of last season the Chargers have only lost to the Patriots, Jaguars and Chiefs last in 2017 and the Chiefs and Rams this season. That gives them a record of 13-5 record over an admittedly arbitrarily selected series of games. However, they beat the Cleveland Browns convincingly this week and so perhaps I should be a little more trusting of them given that they had moved cities and hired a new head coach before the start of said 2017 season and that four loss streak. There is plenty of talent on their roster and having listed them as a real contender two weeks ago, I’m really beginning to think they will compete across this season. I hereby apologise for the jink I have just placed on the Chargers.

I can’t finish this blog without saying a quick word about the London game. It was a rainy Wembley that saw the host Oakland Raiders get thoroughly beaten by the Seattle Seahawks and we should not take for granted that we still get to see live regular NFL games in this country. There have been some great competitive games at Wembley, but we have also seen our fair share of one sided contests. This time both teams had to travel from the west coach of America so there’s no real disadvantage there but whilst the Seahawks may well be rebuilding, at least they have a settled head coach and general manager working together. It feels like Jon Gruden is rebuilding the Raiders by tearing everything down, which is interesting as the GM who built it, Reggie McKenzie, is still there. Not content with trading away Khalil Mack there’s now rumblings the Raiders would accept a number one pick for Amari Cooper and people are talking about how little a cap hit it would be to cut Derek Carr at the end of the season. This is all getting a bit speculative for me to want to cover, other than to say with a roster that has a number of older players, if they are going to tear everything down it could take a while to get good again and I don’t see how this is going to sell tickets in Las Vegas. Still, all we can do for now is watch and wonder, which is pretty much how I’ve felt all season, be it considering thoughtfully or gazing in awe.

Sunday Divisional Games

15 Sunday Jan 2017

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Green Bay Packers @ Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboy lost Tony Romo in pre-season to a fractured vertebrae, and rookie quarterback Dak Prescott stepped into the void and looked comfortable from the get go. Operating behind what is widely regarded as the best offensive line in the league he and fellow rookie Ezekiel Elliott helped the Cowboys get the number one seed behind their stellar play. As the season went on Prescott was able to increase his grasp of the offence and with a combination of the way Elliott ran the ball and Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, and Cole Beasley as receiving options, the Cowboys are formidable opponents for the Packers in this game. However, whilst the offence stands every chance of moving the ball on the Packers, the defence has been more of an issue. They do not have the pass rush of the similarly constructed Falcons, but do rank better by overall defensive DVOA. However, they face a really tough matchup in the Packers offence

The Packers come into this game as one of the hottest teams in the NFL having turned a 4-6 record into a 10-6 division win and running out easy winners against the Giants last week. The defence has been battling injuries in the secondary for most of the season, and although they were ranked number one against the run at one point, are another unit in the playoffs that ranks a fair bit worse than their offence. The offence lost Jordy Nelson early last week who will not make this game due to his fractured ribs, but Aaron Rodgers has found his rhythm with his receiving group during this win streak and so will remain dangerous in the passing game. Rodgers has an uncanny ability to move and keep a play alive and is back to throwing receivers open and looking is looking like the best quarterback in the league.

This is not a game I want to predict, the Cowboys can likely dominate the time of possession with the run game and protect their defence, which has been the game plan for most of the season, but Rodgers does not need a lot of opportunities to produce points. This could very well be game of the week, and I for one am heartily looking forward to it.

Pittsburgh Steelers @ Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs have been quietly racking up the regular season wins for a season and a half now, and welcome the Steelers to the loudest outdoor stadium in the league.

A lot of jokes have been made about Andy Reid’s clock management over the years, but he is an incredibly good coach whose football teams have won a lot of games. His quarterback has the reputation of a game manager, but Alex Smith gets the job done and is capable of spreading the ball around as required as well as moving the ball with his feet. The Chiefs’ leading receiver this year was Travis Kelce, who will be going up against a defence ranked thirteenth in the league against tight ends by DVOA. However, the emergence of Tyreek Hill as a big player receiver as well as special teams returner has added another dimension to the Chiefs, but he is not the only speed option they have on offence. The Chiefs’ defence has been good rather than outstanding, and has missed Justin Houston to injury for much of the year, although Houston has flashed when he did get on the field and the Chiefs will hope that he plays on Sunday.

The Steelers got an easy win against the Dolphins last week as Antonio Brown stole the game in the first quarter. They will expect that Le’Veon Bell will be able to rack up the runs against a rush defence that ranked twenty-sixth in the league against the run by DVOA, and that could be enough to win them the game with the way Bell has been playing this season. He has needed to be this good as Ben Roethlisberger has struggled at times, and the quarterback left the stadium in a walking boot last week but will be playing this week. The Steelers’ defence played very well against the Dolphins, with the seemingly ageless James Harrison making his presence felt along with the other Steelers linebackers. This is not the same style of defence as in recent years, and they started the year struggling a little, but finished the year just outside the top ten by DVOA and have been very solid in their new cover 2 look.

This is another game that is hard to predict as both teams have been competitive all year, but if feels like the Chiefs have been more consistent all year and are home so I would give them the edge, but this feels like a second toss up game.