2015 Playoff Preview

Okay, we made it. After seventeen long weeks, twenty of the NFL’s teams have been eliminated, and we’ve reached the point where the games really start mattering. Eleven games remain in the season (twelve if you have any interest in the Pro Bowl, which I unfortunately do), and with each game another team will be eliminated until there is only one remaining.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that any one of the twelve remaining teams could go on a run and win this thing. But if history has taught us anything else, it’s that we often overstate the randomness of the NFL postseason. In all likelihood, the winner will come from the group of four or five teams that have established themselves as the best over the course of the season.

But for now, let’s enjoy the delusion of hope. Twelve teams remain, and for each team there are reasons to believe that they can pull it off, and reasons to believe they’ll fall short. You might think while reading this that the order I put these teams in has to do with the chances I see of them winning the Super Bowl, and you’d probably be right.

Minnesota Vikings

Why they can’t win:

It hurts me to start here, but I have to do it. It was a really tight decision between them and the Redskins, and it ended up coming down to the opponents in their path. In order to even make it to the Championship round the Vikings will need to knock off the Seahawks and the Cardinals, arguably the two best teams headed into the playoffs. This is too tall a hill to climb for this talented but inexperienced team. Their potential is still fantastic, and a year or two from now this team can compete for a championship. But as they are now, they should be happy with the experience they can gain.

Why they can win:

Damn it, I still have hope. The Vikings just went into Lambeau Field and beat Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, despite having possibly the worst game of the season from their offense. The Packers game aside, Teddy Bridgewater has been playing well down the stretch, and he can give this offense the boost it needs to complement an elite, and now mostly healthy, defense. The Vikings almost beat the Cardinals a few weeks ago, and they almost beat Denver earlier in the season. It would take a lot of good breaks, but this team isn’t as easy an out as people seem to believe.

Washington Redskins

Why they can’t win:

This one is pretty easy. No playoff team has a worse record than the Redskins, and no team is more of a surprise as a playoff representative. They wouldn’t have even come close to making the playoffs if Tony Romo hadn’t gotten injured, and they only pulled away at the end of the season thanks to the collapses in Philadelphia and New York. A first round exit is almost a formality now, as Packers fans have to consider themselves almost lucky that they lost last week and get to face Washington in the first round.

Why they can win:

Here’s a question I have to pose, one most people will laugh off: What if Washington is actually a good football team? They struggled early in the year, but this is a young roster that really came together down the stretch, behind a quarterback who has strung together enough good games that we have to at least consider that he’s turned the corner. This is a team that won six of its final eight games, two more than the team they are facing on Sunday. For reasons both on and off the field we have all written off the Redskins as a joke, but they are a much better football team than anyone is giving them credit for.

Houston Texans

Why they can’t win:

This is going to be a recurring theme in the AFC, but there’s no point in running from it. The quarterback position is an absolute mess on that side of the playoff field, and even though Houston isn’t in the worst shape, the roster they have around Brian Hoyer is probably the weakest of any team. They pulled away in a weak division, but they are going to be facing a new level of competition in the playoffs, demanding even more of stars JJ Watt and DeAndre Hopkins. These two have the ability to take over games, but this is not an effective formula for four straight victories.

Why they can win:

Hoyer is a problem, but as I made clear above, this is a common theme in the AFC. And of the other teams, only Pittsburgh and Cincinnati can boast a weapon on par with DeAndre Hopkins. If their defense can turn the game into a slog, a few big plays from Hopkins can singlehandedly carry this team against any opponent. And again, the path in the AFC is so much easier than in the NFC, putting them ahead of better teams like Minnesota and Washington.

Green Bay Packers

Why they can’t win:

It seems like we’ve been waiting half the season for Green Bay to come out of their funk, and maybe by this point we should just accept that this is a flawed team. It took a while for the loss of Jordy Nelson to catch up to them, but once their offensive line started struggling with injuries the weakness at wide receiver really showed up. Randall Cobb has been perplexingly mediocre this year, and Davante Adams is one of the worst starting receivers in the NFL. Add to that the inconsistencies of Eddie Lacy, and even Aaron Rodgers has struggled to make this offense run. They have the potential to pull it together, but it may be too late now for them to turn things around, especially with the difficult road through the NFC.

Why they can win:

Still, Aaron Rodgers. He’s been the best quarterback in the league for the past five seasons, and a bad stretch of games hasn’t changed the awe inspiring and terror inducing abilities he possesses. The offense isn’t as good as it was a couple years ago, but the defense has improved in that time, enough that even a mildly spectacular performance from their quarterback can be enough to win this team a game against any foe in the league.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Why they can’t win:

A few weeks ago I called the Steelers secondary “the worst in the league, and possibly the worst I’ve ever seen”, and even after a successful playoff push, I am not going to back down from this statement. Their pass defense is dreadful, and I’ve long since given up hope that they will come to their senses and get Antwon Blake the hell off the field, despite the fact that their defense has improved significantly each of the past three games when he went out in the second half (once to injury, twice to temporary benching). No other playoff competitor has any part of their team that is even close to as bad as Pittsburgh’s secondary (except possibly Seattle’s offensive line), and this could prove a fatal blow to an otherwise stacked team.

Why they can win:

If there’s a year to have a bad pass defense in the playoffs, this is it. The most dangerous quarterback the Steelers will have to worry about beating prior to the Super Bowl is a beaten up Tom Brady on an offense devoid of weapons, a task that might even be within their limited capacities. And even if they can’t hold the opponents down, they can keep up with anyone in a shootout. Ben Roethlisberger is the best quarterback in the AFC, and he has a case to make as the best in the entire playoff field. And Antonio Brown somehow just keeps getting better, the most dangerous offensive weapon in the league playing with a quarterback who knows how to feed him the football.

Kansas City Chiefs

Why they can’t win:

I just, I just can’t get over Alex Smith. He has played remarkably well this year, definitely the best season of his career, but it’s still hard for me to believe that a 31 year old quarterback has completely reinvented himself in a way that can make a significant difference. It would be one thing if he was just riding a strong running game and an elite defense, but without Jamaal Charles he is the heart of their offense, in a lot of ways the best thing they have going for them. Sooner or later, the Chiefs are going to need him to make plays down the stretch to win the game, and until he’s shown he can make those plays, I just can’t see it happening.

Why they can win:

They’ve won ten straight right now, so what’s another four? Over the second half of the season no team was playing as well as Kansas City, and with a shaky AFC field they could easily keep their momentum going. Not only that, they’ve done most of it without their best defensive player, and the return of Justin Houston can only give their defense a boost. I’ve questioned Smith in the past, but right now he is the third best starting quarterback in the AFC field. He nearly led San Francisco to a Super Bowl four years ago, and the Chiefs have the same makeup as the team he just barely fell short with.

Cincinnati Bengals

Why they can’t win:

Sorry to be repetitive, but again, quarterback issues. We still don’t know if Andy Dalton will make it back for this Saturday’s game, and if they’re stuck with AJ McCarron they’ll be trotting out the worst quarterback in an abysmal group. It doesn’t help that they’ll start out matched up against a Steelers team that thrashed them only a month ago and probably should have won the first time they played earlier in the season.

Why they can win:

Experience losing playoff games is still experience in playoff games, and that gives Cincinnati a leg up against some of the other teams. I’ve been skeptical of their roster in the past, but it is probably the most complete in the AFC field. Dalton was playing extremely well prior to his injury, and if he can conjure some of that early season magic, he can challenge Smith for the title of third best quarterback in the AFC, a serious threat behind the best offensive line in the conference and supported by the second best defense.

Denver Broncos

Why they can’t win:

This actually hurts. Peyton Manning has been one of my favorite players to watch play in my lifetime, and I consider him to be the greatest quarterback of all time. More often than not I found myself cheering for him when the playoffs came around, and the inability of his teams to get him over the top was frustrating beyond end. It’s sad then that the best defense he has ever played with happened to come together in the year when he finally fell apart. Give Manning this defense in Indianapolis—or even two years ago in Denver—and he would have won multiple Super Bowls. But now he may not even be starting for the Broncos, potentially still benched behind a quarterback who has shown flashes but simply isn’t capable of leading this team where it needs to go. One of the best defenses in recent memory was paired with the greatest quarterback of all time, and the timing simply didn’t work out.

Why they can win:

It feels weird to try to follow that up with optimism, but here I go. That defense I mentioned is good—very, very, very good. They have a pair of elite pass rushers, a dominant run stuffing line, and three top notch cornerbacks on the back end. Against the offenses they will face in the AFC, they can keep things into a low scoring slog, and if they can get even a flash from Manning, they have a chance to win any game. We haven’t seen a quarterback this bad win a Super Bowl since the 2002 Buccaneers, but we may not have seen a defense this good since the 2002 Buccaneers. It will take a lot for a defense to carry a team to a championship in this era, but this might just be the team that can pull it off.

Seattle Seahawks

Why they can’t win:

The first round bye is incredibly underrated, and it’s part of the reason Seattle is below the team they humiliated just two days ago. The other part is their offensive line, which is an absolute disaster right now. Everyone is leaping onto Seattle’s bandwagon after their win over the Cardinals, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was a team that was handled by the Rams less than ten days ago. This is the worst Seahawks team we’ve seen in four years, and they will face an uphill fight in a conference led by two teams that have done a fairly good job matching up with the Seahawks over the past three seasons.

Why they can win:

I don’t need to get too deep into this point, since everyone else is shouting it from the rooftops. Seattle has played extremely well after a slow start to the season, looking at times like the most dominant team in the league. If they gave an MVP for the second half of the season, Russell Wilson would get it in a landslide. And they’ll be getting Marshawn Lynch back, adding a running dynamic to an offense that has been a world destroying machine for two months now.

Arizona Cardinals

Why they can’t win:

The formula to beat Seattle is clear, and last Sunday, Arizona couldn’t pull it off. Even going against a battered version of one of the worst offensive lines in the league, they could not find a way to pressure Russell Wilson. He was free to stand in the pocket and wait for his receivers to come open, against a secondary missing its most dynamic playmaker in Tyrann Mathieu. Other teams are more than capable of copying this formula, and against the elite quarterbacks in the NFC field, the lack of a pass rush will force Arizona to win shootout after shootout in order to come out on top.

Why they can win:

This past Sunday’s game shook things up, but until then there was a very strong case to be made for Arizona as the best team in the league. They combine an explosive offense with a playmaking defense in a way no other team in the league can, and they constantly force opposing defenses to play on their heels to defend them. The Seahawks game was a good wakeup call for a defense that is more than capable of bouncing back, especially if matchups break their way. Top to bottom there may not be a more complete team in the playoffs, and they are more than capable of beating any foe set in their path.

Carolina Panthers

Why they can’t win:

It’s been a remarkable run for Carolina, but this entire time it seemed like there was something off about it. They aren’t loaded with talent like Denver or New England, and they haven’t won games with the authority of the Cardinals. An easy schedule got them a lot of wins, but as the season went on it became a running joke each weak to ask if the Panthers were the worst X-0 team of all time. When they finally went down to the Falcons, it wasn’t the great upset a 14-0 team losing usually is. The talent on this team isn’t overwhelming, there are obvious holes on both sides of the ball, and there is a general sense that their record overstates how good they actually are. Sooner or later, that is bound to catch up with them, and no one would be particularly surprised if they wind up facing the Seahawks as underdogs two weeks from now.

Why they can win:

Much has been made of Carolina’s weak schedule, but they do boast victories over both Seattle and Green Bay. They have home field advantage on their side, they have the MVP under center, and they have a defense that consistently churns out new superstars each year. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a number one seed so overlooked (other than the one seed in the AFC this year), and at a certain point we may just have to accept that the Carolina Panthers are a really, really good football team.

New England Patriots

Why they can’t win:

This team is battered, and this team is flawed, and there is only so much that Bill Belichick can do to hold things together. Even if Julian Edelman can make it back, there’s no guarantee that he will be the player we’re used to seeing. This offense has been stripped bare, both in the weapons department and along the offensive line. Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady are still incredible, but they can’t carry an offense by themselves, not against the elite teams they will have to beat to claim another title.

Why they can win:

New England isn’t as good as some of the teams above them on the list, but they have by far the easiest path. It’s often an oversimplification to break a game down as a matchup of quarterbacks, but when this team is going to be putting Tom Brady out against a field of backups and journeyman veterans (assuming they can dodge Ben Roethlisberger), the disparity should be enough to decide games. Add to that a first round bye, championship experience, and possibly the greatest coach in NFL history, and the Patriots have to be considered the favorites to win the Super Bowl, if only because of they have the best odds of making it there.