Adapting to Survive

Well, we’ve almost made it. One meaningful game remaining, two teams left to fight for the title of the best in the league, a matchup that for the next two weeks will be driven into the ground as the old guard versus the new. The veteran Peyton Manning playing in what is likely the final game of his career, against the emerging superstar Cam Newton who is looking to cap off his breakout season.

Only two teams remain, and by this point I don’t have to point out that there is more to each of these teams than just the quarterback position. No one makes it to the Super Bowl on the performance of one individual, and this year is an excellent example of that, with arguably the two most complete teams in the league facing off against each other. On Carolina’s side we have the league’s most productive offense supported by a playmaking defense, and on Denver’s we have an efficient offense keeping things going for the best defense in the league. Both teams have superstars on each side of the ball, and neither has a single glaring weakness.

I’ll get into the actual matchup of these teams next week, but for now I want to focus on how they got here. A week ago I wrote about how games at this stage of the year are often decided by the smallest of factors, events or aspects of the game that give the winning team the slight edge it needs. We saw this again this weekend (even in the blowout Panthers victory). Both of these teams have benefited from luck, health, and coaching down the stretch, but in each case their greatest asset has been their adaptability. The strength and depth of the Broncos and the Panthers have allowed them to reshape how they play from game to game, giving them the needed edge to make it as far as they have.

This is a topic I’ve covered before, but it’s something we have to come back to time and time again. We get so caught up in discussing systems and schemes that we often forget the value of flexibility. Truly great teams can impose themselves on lesser opponents, but by this point in the year, there aren’t really any lesser opponents to face. At this point, the most valuable thing a team can have is flexibility, the ability to adjust what they do to attack the other team’s weaknesses.

The Undoing of Arians

We’ve seen plenty of examples over the years, but we may never again see a team as doomed by its lack of flexibility as the Arizona Cardinals. Bruce Arians has received almost nothing but praise since getting his first opportunity as a head coach with the Colts in 2012, and it is almost universally agreed that he is a top five head coach in the league. And while I absolutely agree with this assessment, I also acknowledge that Arians isn't flawless. His problems go back to his days as an offensive coordinator, where in Pittsburgh and then again in Indianapolis he put together potent offenses that were never consistent enough to take the next step, largely due to struggles to protect the quarterback and run the ball.

Arians was dealing with terrible offensive lines in both those situations, but he has to absorb part of the blame for not doing anything to compensate for their flaws. His scheme relies on constant deep passes, which leaves his offense nonfunctional when an opposing defense generates pressure.

He didn’t adjust then, and he didn’t adjust on Sunday. Arizona’s offensive line has been steady all year, but against Carolina’s front seven they were absolutely dominated. The first couple turnovers by Carson Palmer were the result of a collapsing pocket, and he wasn’t helped by having to hold onto the ball. The deep passing game can beat Carolina’s defense, but it wasn’t working for Arizona, no matter how many times the Cardinals tried to force the ball down the field.

The other side of the ball was a very similar story. Arizona’s defense has been one of the most aggressive in the league for the past two years, as evidenced by the blitz after blitz they sent to unsettle Aaron Rodgers in the Divisional Round. At this point we know what we’re going to see from Arizona’s defense. They are going to send constant waves of pressure, and they expect that their blitzers can get to the quarterback before he can find the holes behind them.

This has worked for the past two seasons, but it failed on Sunday. Carolina’s offensive line is better at run blocking than protecting the passer, but they played the best game of the season in the Championship Game. Cam Newton had a clean pocket to throw from the entire game, and with only a few defenders left on the back end, even his mediocre receiving corps was able to find separation. And when he did get the ball out, there weren’t enough tacklers on the back end to corral Carolina’s receivers, leading to big play after big play.

Even with all of this, the game was a lot closer than the final score indicates. Arizona was still very much in it late in the first half, as they stopped Carolina a couple times and managed to get their offense going by feeding the ball to David Johnson. But after the turnovers in the final two minutes, they entered the second half in full panic mode. Suddenly they had no choice but to abandon the run and attack downfield, playing right into what had been failing for them all game. Things spiraled from there, Carolina continued to break off big plays, and we ended up with the 34 point margin, far from indicative of the team that Arizona was this year.

Out of Options

The result of the Panthers-Cardinals game is easy enough to explain by looking at the coaches involved. The same can’t be said about the other game. On one side you have Gary Kubiak, a slightly above average coach whose career has been defined primarily by his consistent mediocrity. And on the other you have Bill Belichick, the best coach in the league and arguably the greatest of all time, a coach who has proven over and over again that he can find ways to win with whatever roster is put on the field for him.

The edge in coaching is the primary reason I picked the Patriots to win this game. Because outside of that and the quarterback position, Denver has the edge at every spot on the roster. It may have been a more competitive matchup early in the season before the Patriots were decimated at running back and across the offensive line, but coming into this game it was clear that the Broncos had the edge in depth.

This proved to be the difference in the game, but it didn’t have to be. New England’s defense did more than enough to keep them in the game, holding the Broncos to only twenty points (with some help from a highly conservative strategy by Kubiak in the fourth quarter), and in the end it was the offensive side of the ball, the strength of the Patriots for the past five years, that cost them the game.

The matchup of Belichick and Kubiak seems like an obvious mismatch, but it is mitigated somewhat by the presence of Wade Phillips on the Broncos side. Phillips has a shaky reputation based on his struggles as a head coach, but the fact that he keeps getting opportunities demonstrates just how good he is as a defensive coordinator. Denver’s defense is loaded with talent, but Phillips deserves credit for shaping them into the best unit in the league.

On Sunday he reminded the NFL once again just how brilliant he is. He designed the perfect scheme to go after New England, completely changing his tactics on the defensive side of the ball and exploiting weaknesses that the Patriots had managed to cover against almost every opponent so far this season.

I mentioned above the injuries that New England had suffered on the offensive side of the ball, but I think we need to go into more detail. Without both Dion Lewis and LeGarrette Blount, the Patriots were forced to resort to bottom of the roster player James White and off the street veteran Steven Jackson in their backfield. Against Denver’s defense they had no hope of running the football, and their rushing game actually outperformed my expectations by putting up 31 yards (not including Brady’s rushing total).

They had similar problems on the offensive line, where over the course of the year they saw an astonishing 37 different combinations play at least one snap. Part of this is due to an unusual substitution pattern, but a lot of it has to do with the constant injuries they’ve faced. And yet, they did a fine job keeping Brady upright, finishing near the middle of the pack in sacks allowed.

The key to New England’s offense is a quick passing attack. They spread the field, they give Brady lots of options to choose from, and they let him pick the defense apart with slants and screens. Teams try to bring pressure at Brady, but he is always able to find the hole behind them before he can get hit, getting the ball to Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, or Rob Gronkowski and trusting them to do the rest.

The Broncos could very easily have tried the same strategies that had failed for every other team. They were a heavy blitzing defense this year, as all Wade Phillips defenses usually are, and with a strong and deep secondary, they had reason to believe they could hold up in man coverage on the back end.

But that’s not what the Broncos did. Not only did they avoid blitzing, they actually went a step further, sending only three men after the quarterback repeatedly in the first half. I usually despise a three man rush, but in this case it was spectacularly effective. A three man rush fails because it gives the quarterback all the time he needs to search the field for a hole in the coverage, but for a passer like Brady, time is not the issue. His entire game is based on rhythm, and once that rhythm is disrupted, he struggles to improvise outside the normal framework of the play.

This is something that the Patriots obviously saw as the first half progressed, and the big question coming out of the break was how the Broncos would hold up once New England adjusted. And yet, for some reason, the Patriots really didn’t mix things up. They kept running their offense into the teeth of a defense designed to stop it, leading to stalled drives and ill timed turnovers.

The Broncos ramped the pressure up in the second half, even if that only meant sending four rushers. After spending a lot of the first half in coverage, Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware were unleashed around the edge, wreaking havoc against New England’s trash heap of an offensive line. The Patriots could not create separation to throw the ball underneath, and they couldn’t hold the ball long enough to go deep. And without any running game to turn to, their offense was rendered helpless.

There are still steps they could have taken, and it is strange that Belichick wasn’t able to make it work. The obvious solution when a team is getting pressure off the edge is to keep additional blockers to help, either by keeping a running back in the backfield or chipping with a back or tight end as they go out on their route. Yet for some reason, Miller and Ware played nearly the entire game facing only single blockers, a matchup the Patriots had no chance of winning.

Part of this may come back to the injuries at running back. Blount has his flaws as a runner, but he is a damn good pass protector, and Lewis was a nearly unstoppable weapon out of the backfield during the first half of the season. The Patriots tried to replicate this sort of player with White, but he only managed to haul in 5 of the 16 passes thrown his way. I haven't seen enough of him to judge his pass protection abilities, but judging by the way the Patriots used him, I have to assume he is totally ineffective as a blocker. But even if this is the case, at a certain point simply having his body in there would have been more valuable than throwing incomplete passes his way over and over again.

This was the close game of the weekend, and there are any number of places we can put the blame for the Patriots defeat. We can give it to Stephen Gostkowski for the missed extra point in the first half (we could, but we shouldn’t). Similarly, we could misplace the blame at Belichick’s feet for passing up multiple field goal opportunities in the fourth quarter (correct decisions both times). We could even blame Brady for not seeing Gronkowski wide open in the back of the endzone on the two point conversion (though I would rather question the playcall that has Brady rolling out of the pocket).

But if I had to identify the main cause for the loss, it has to be the inability or unwillingness to adjust their scheme. Had they been healthy, they would have had more flexibility to adjust to what the Broncos were doing. But as it was, they could only make the same mistakes over and over again, costing Belichick and Brady a shot at another Super Bowl title.

First Overall

As we approach the Championship Round, we find ourselves once again reminded of the greatness of Tom Brady. This is the tenth time that Brady has made it this far in the playoffs, by far an NFL record. This level of consistent success is particularly impressive, considering where Brady started. As the 199^th pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, he was never supposed to be a starting quarterback, much less a first ballot Hall of Famer. And as we enter draft season, Brady stands once again as a reminder that a team can solve their quarterback problem anywhere in the draft.

Of course, if you’re a fan of this argument, you probably shouldn’t look too closely at the other three quarterbacks playing today, each of whom was selected with the very first pick in the draft. In fact, more than a quarter of the starting quarterbacks in the NFL were selected first overall, and over the past five years it has become increasingly clear that the surest way to solve a quarterback problem is to end up with the worst record in the league.

So I decided to have some fun on this occasion. Below I’ve gone through and ranked every quarterback selected first overall between Peyton Manning and Cam Newton, starting from the worst and working my way up to the very best. It is a very interesting group, with a wide variety of career paths, and three of the most interesting will be on the field today, fighting for a chance to make it to the Super Bowl.

2007: Jamarcus Russell

When talking about the biggest draft bust of all time, there are only two possible answers. The first is Ryan Leaf, picked second overall after a player you’ll find lower on the list. The other is Russell, the very first player off the board in 2007.

The debate between who was a bigger disappointment is actually very interesting. Both players were as big a problem off the field as they were on it, so I can’t give either an edge there. Leaf put up worse stats during his time in the NFL, but he played in a more difficult era for quarterbacks, so simply having worse numbers might not do it.

In the end, I think the difference comes down to two things. Leaf was picked second overall, ahead of two surefire Hall of Famers (Randy Moss and Charles Woodson) and a pretty good collection of players. Russell went first overall, ahead of Calvin Johnson, Joe Thomas, Adrian Peterson, Patrick Willis, and Darrelle Revis, all of whom have earned their places in Canton. Add to that the difference in their contracts ($13 million guaranteed to Leaf vs $32 million guaranteed to Russell), and I have to call Jamarcus Russell not just the worst pick on this list, but also the worst of all time.

1999 and 2002: Tim Couch and David Carr

I’m putting these two together because they both belong in the same category, the “what might have been”. These two quarterbacks followed remarkably similar paths, as they were drafted to be the face of an expansion franchise and failed miserably. Based solely on their accomplishments, they should be considered busts, but the circumstances around their careers make these cases more like tragic accidents than cautionary tales.

Prior to the return of the Browns to Cleveland in 1999, the NFL’s last expansion had come in 1995, when Jacksonville and Carolina entered the league. These two teams had remarkable immediate success, both reaching the championship round by their second season. As quickly as they rose, the NFL decided that they had to reevaluate the expansion process during the next round, giving Cleveland and Houston significantly less to work with.

Of course, their course correction went too far in the opposite direction, and when the Browns and Texans spent their first ever selections on quarterbacks, they immediately set up these two players for failure. Carr is the obvious example everyone thinks of, and he is still responsible for two of the three worst sack seasons by a quarterback in NFL history. But Couch was victim of the same circumstances, and under better conditions he may very well have lived up to his draft slot.

It is, of course, impossible to say, which is why I have to put them below every other quarterback on this list. Perhaps it was the team around them, or perhaps these were just two players incapable of playing at a high level in the NFL. Maybe Carr was never good enough to adjust to the talent jump between Fresno State and the NFL. Maybe Couch was another example of a quarterback who put up big numbers in college but failed once he was taken out of his system. I’m tempted to move them past the next quarterback on the list, but as unlucky as they were, I still have to give the edge to someone else lingering on the edge of bust conversation.

2010: Sam Bradford

I’ve never liked Bradford. I didn’t like him coming out of college, I didn’t like him after his Rookie of the Year season, and I don’t like him now, after he put together arguably the best season of his career in Philadelphia. I’ve been consistent on Bradford, but everyone else seems to have changed their positions two or three times.

There are multiple possible narratives we can fit Bradford into. The first is the talented quarterback whose career was ruined by poor coaching and health issues. A fantastic rookie season quickly evaporated behind uninspired play calling and injuries that robbed him of his physical gifts. Another version is that of a fundamentally limited passer who showed flashes when he first entered the league but never had the tools to grow into something more. The league probably should have given up on him years ago, and the fact that he’s likely going to open next season as a starting quarterback is an indictment of the talent in the league right now.

I think it’s a little bit of all of this. Bradford is undoubtedly talented, but he thrived in very specific conditions in college, conditions that couldn’t be replicated in the NFL. Everyone talks about “system quarterbacks” when a player is mobile like Tim Tebow or Robert Griffin III, but Bradford was every bit the system quarterback in Oklahoma’s spread passing attack. When he got to the NFL and was suddenly not standing behind a behemoth wall and throwing to the best athletes on the field, he lacked the tools to take over a game himself.

This is all true, but I do believe there is an alternate reality in which Bradford is a successful NFL player. The scheme he ran in college isn’t all that different from the one New England is running now, and even though he clearly isn’t Tom Brady, the Rams could have found a better way to use him. Chip Kelly actually managed to pull some of that off down the stretch in 2015, but by this point it is too late. Bradford is what he is, a bust of a first overall pick.

2001: Michael Vick

At his best Vick was the most exciting player in the NFL, but excitement was never enough to revolutionize the game in the way many people expected when he was selected first overall. The talent was always undeniable, the arm strength and the elusiveness as a runner, but he wasn’t able to put the full package together.

It’s impossible to talk about Vick without mentioning the dog fighting conviction, which cut into the prime of his career and permanently tarnished whatever legacy he was building. But even if he’d remained in Atlanta, I think he had established the sort of player he was.

His athleticism was always an asset, and he certainly could make enough plays to win his team any game. But in the end, he never had the discipline to truly refine his game, and he was never able to mesh with the NFL as it existed ten years ago. Perhaps things would have been different if he entered the league now, when coaches are more open to trying innovative schemes to support unique talents. But I think the reality is that Vick was always limited, and that as fun as he was to watch, he wasn’t worth the pick that was used on him.

2005: Alex Smith

 

Aaron Rodgers was supposed to be the first overall pick in 2005. This isn’t something I’m just saying in hindsight, not an idea I’m just coming up with after seeing how their careers progressed. For most of the predraft process, Rodgers was the favorite to go first off the board. He was better in college than Smith, from a system that was more suited to an NFL transition, and he had all the local connections to San Francisco.

So why did Smith end up going first? There were a number of factors, all of which seem stupid now. For one, people were worried that Rodgers was just a system quarterback. Cal coach Jeff Tedford had produced five former first round picks, and by this point all five had been ruled off as busts. There were worries that Rodgers would be just another Trent Dilfer or Joey Harrington. The 49ers also wanted someone more mobile, and after succeeding in Urban Meyer’s system at Utah, Smith’s versatility moved him up to the first pick.

Smith is another one who has had an interesting career. I honestly don’t know whether or not to call him a bust, but for his first six years in the league there was absolutely no debate about it. He was bad from the moment he stepped onto the field, and he stayed bad until his career was rescued by Jim Harbaugh. We know what happened after that of course, with an injury leading to his replacement by Colin Kaepernick and eventual trade to Kansas City.

It would have surprised no one if he regressed after leaving Harbaugh, but it turns out that Andy Reid is a pretty damn good coach too. Smith had the best year of his career in 2015, carrying the Chiefs to a ten game winning streak and a playoff victory. He has proven to be worth the two second round picks Kansas City gave up for him, even if he was never worth the pick San Francisco used to take him.

2009: Matthew Stafford

It’s hard to say anything decisive about the career Stafford has put together so far. A couple years ago it looked like he had a chance to become one of the best quarterbacks in the league, as he threw for over 5000 yards and led the Lions to the playoffs. With Stafford at quarterback, Calvin Johnson on the outside, and Ndamukong Suh anchoring the defense, the Lions looked like a team ready to break out.

But they didn’t, and Stafford’s stagnation bears a lot of responsibility for that. His numbers have always been fantastic, but they are propped up by playing in a pass heavy scheme with a truly dominant wide receiver. And now that the Lions look like they’re on a downward trend, with Johnson nowhere near what he used to be and even discussing retirement, there are questions about whether or not they should stick with Stafford as their long term solution at quarterback.

The contract situation is a bit of a problem, but other than that I can’t imagine any reason to part ways with Stafford. This is a team about to enter another rebuilding phase, and I can understand why they wouldn’t want to stick with a big money quarterback through that. But Stafford is still only 27 years old, and if the Lions do things right, they can rebuild the team around him while he’s still in his prime. Things are looking bad for Stafford right now, but he is the sort of player I can see having a late career resurgence, much like one of the quarterbacks we’ll get to further down the list.

2011: Cam Newton

Newton is the most recent draft pick on this list (I decided to exclude Andrew Luck and Jameis Winston because they haven’t been around long enough), but he has already earned a high spot, and could climb even higher by the end of his career. He is likely to walk away from this season with the league’s MVP, one of only two players on this list to claim that award. After some ups and downs over his first few seasons, he has developed into one of the best players in the NFL, and he has a chance to earn a championship this year to further his growing legacy.

I have to admit that I was wrong about Newton. I thought he was a borderline first round pick, a quarterback who dominated by running in college but would struggle when forced into the NFL’s pass heavy system. I underestimated him on two counts. First of all, he was a much better passer coming into the league than I realized, as he demonstrated by setting an NFL record for passing yards in a debut. And second, he has grown better than I expected, in five years turning into one of the preeminent passers in the league.

I cannot stress this last point enough. Newton has a reputation as a mobile quarterback, and he certainly has the skills to justify this. He is an absolute weapon in the running game, either through read option plays or designed quarterback keepers. But unlike some other mobile quarterbacks (notably Vick), he is at his best when throwing from the pocket.

Carolina isn’t a very heavily watched team, so it’s understandable that people have some misconceptions. But if you really watch the Panthers this weekend, you’ll be surprised by what you see from Newton. Unlike other mobile quarterbacks like Alex Smith and Russell Wilson, the majority of the damage Newton does with his legs comes on designed carries. When a play is called as a pass, he almost always completes the play from the pocket. In fact, he actually could probably benefit from being more aggressive with his legs, not that he needs much improvement. Newton was the best player in the league this season, and he could very easily hold onto that title for the next five years.

2003: Carson Palmer

The two quarterbacks facing each other in the NFC Championship Game find themselves back to back on my rankings, and in truth I could have put them in either order. I gave Palmer the edge for now due to longevity, but I think before long Newton will climb past him on the list. But for now I give the edge to Palmer in this one, even though I think Newton will beat him for the MVP this year and for the game this weekend.

Of all the players on this list, Palmer may have had the most fascinating career. He’s the only one not to start a game his rookie year, sitting for an entire season on the bench behind Jon Kitna. But when he did make it onto the field, he absolutely exploded, quickly earning the title of best young quarterback in the league. In 2005 he finished fourth in the league in passing yards, second in quarterback rating, first in completion percentage, and first in touchdowns. He led the Bengals to the playoffs for the first time since 1990, and on his very first pass of the game he completed a 66 yard bomb to get the Bengals in position to take an early lead.

Unfortunately, he also suffered a torn ACL on that play, ending any hopes the Bengals had of a playoff run. The Steelers went on to win that game and eventually the Super Bowl, and Ben Roethlisberger took over as the preeminent young quarterback in the AFC North. Palmer came back in time to start the opening game of the next season, but he was never the same in Cincinnati. He toiled along as a slightly above average quarterback for the next five years, another case of what might have been.

In 2011 the Bengals used a second round pick on Andy Dalton, signaling the impending end of the Palmer era. For obvious reasons, this upset Palmer, and he announced that he would rather retire than play for the Bengals. And for the first half of the 2011 season, that’s exactly what he did, until Jason Campbell’s injury in Oakland forced the Raiders to sell everything they had to get Palmer. But that was the era of Oakland as a death trap for veteran players, and after a year and a half there he was shipped out to Arizona for a sixth round pick.

That was supposed to be the end of Carson Palmer, but clearly it wasn’t. Somehow, ten years and two torn ACLs removed from his breakout year, Palmer finally became one of the best quarterbacks in the league. While he isn’t a Hall of Famer, he has certainly shown himself to be one of the best of the next level, and even though he’s put together a damn fine career (which definitely still has more to be written), it’s hard not to wonder what he could have been.

2004: Eli Manning

Eli Manning is the quarterback for the New York Giants, which means everyone already knows everything there is to know about him. Younger brother of a superstar, he went first overall to San Diego, then was immediately shipped to the Giants. He got off to a slow start to his career, not truly breaking out until the Super Bowl run in 2007. He’s been up and down since then, putting together some very good seasons to go along with some decidedly mediocre ones.

Manning is the third best quarterback to come out of his draft class, but when the time comes for the Hall of Fame to give him consideration, his two championships will likely get him in. And he has certainly earned those championships, playing at a spectacularly high level in both games (even if he probably doesn’t deserve two Super Bowl MVPs). This is a rare situation where things worked out for everyone. Eli got to play in a big market, the Chargers got the superior player in Rivers, and the Giants got two championships. If Manning has been disappointing at times, that’s only reasonable. It’s a rare quarterback who can constantly live up to the superstar billing.

1998: Peyton Manning

And now we come to it, that rare quarterback. There isn’t much to say about Manning that hasn’t already been said. He struggled some at the very start of his career, but for nearly fifteen years he was among the five best quarterbacks in the league, often at the very top of the list. Five MVPs, just about every passing record you can name, and insane success during the regular season. He is the greatest quarterback the NFL has ever seen, and I almost wish I didn’t have to address the one thing everyone will continue to hold against his legacy.

But in the end, it is about Super Bowls, and over the course of his career Manning only has two appearances and a single victory. Time and time again he came up short in the playoffs, a blemish that stands in particularly sharp contrast to his contemporary Tom Brady. The two face each other once again today to decide which of them will make another appearance in the Super Bowl, and right now everything seems to be in Brady’s favor, with Manning playing like a shell of his former self.

But that’s the thing about judging quarterbacks by championships. While it certainly helps to have a superstar under center, no single player can win a championship by himself. And for the first time in nearly a decade, Manning is actually at the head of a more talented team than Brady. If the Broncos manage to win a championship this year, it will be because of their defense and their running game, not because of the Hall of Famer they have at quarterback.

And that would be as fitting an end as any to Manning’s career. His teammates have held him back for far too long, and if he was put in the exact same situation as Brady he likely would have just as many Super Bowls, perhaps even more. A second ring wouldn’t be diminished at all by his ineffectiveness this year, because he has already done more than enough to earn it. Football is a team sport, and there is no greater example of this than Manning, the most valuable individual player the league has ever seen stuck with only a single championship as he draws near the end of his career.

The Slimmest of Margins

When you actually sit down and think about it, the NFL playoffs are kind of ridiculous. In every other professional American sport, the playoffs are conducted as a series of games, either five or seven contests to pick out the better team. And more often than not, the better team is the one that advances, and the champion is usually the most deserving team in the field.

That isn’t the case in the NFL. In the NFL you only get one shot, and it only takes one game to end a team’s season. Looking at the playoff field now, with the top two seeds remaining on each side, it’s easy enough to proclaim them the four best teams in the league, that this was inevitable over the entire course of the season.

This ignores the reality of just how close each of the four games were on Sunday. In every one of the games, the final margin of victory was within a single score, and in every one of the games, the losing team had an opportunity to pull it out late, either with the ball in their hands or a chance to get it back. In all four games the two teams that played were extremely evenly matched, and in the end it came down to a few small factors to decide that New England, Arizona, Carolina, and Denver were the ones to advance while Kansas City, Green Bay, Seattle, and Pittsburgh were sent home for the season.

Luck

The first factor is one I’ve discussed often enough before, and one every losing fan ends up grumbling about at the end of the game. Sometimes (a lot of the time) a football game can come down to a few lucky or unlucky bounces. Fumble recoveries, deflected passes, onside kicks. There is so much randomness involved in a game that it often becomes difficult to extract who got lucky and who got screwed.

There may not be a game in the history of the league that exemplifies this better than the contest between Green Bay and Arizona. This game was sheer lunacy, from the very beginning and ramping up as it reached its conclusion. Plenty of Packers fans (and players) have complained about the outcome of overtime, in which Arizona won the coin toss and proceeded to score without giving the ball back to the Packers.

There are a couple of things I want to go into here. First was the coin toss. In a game as ridiculous as this, it actually doesn’t seem that absurd that something as simple as throwing a coin into the air would go awry. Somehow the referee managed to toss the coin up into the air without getting it to turn over even a single time (I just spent ten minutes trying to pull this off in my apartment, and it is actually pretty doable). The first toss came up in Arizona’s favor, and the Packers demanded it be redone, which the referee did without much hesitation. In this case I think the referee actually screwed up, since there’s no reason to believe the initial throw was in any way biased. Fortunately, the second toss came up for the Cardinals again, so no one could complain. Except for Aaron Rodgers, who protested that he wasn’t given a chance to pick another random outcome after the first random outcome failed to go his way.

And then there is the overtime rule. A lot of people were upset after the Cardinals scored, angry that the Packers didn’t have the opportunity to get the ball themselves. This happens every time a game goes like this, and I have a feeling we’ll eventually see the overtime rules tweaked again, either giving both teams a chance to possess the ball or going to the idiotic college system.

But as the system works right now, I don’t think it needs any changes. A couple years ago there was a problem, as kickers became so strong and so accurate that a team realistically only needed to reach the opponent’s 40 yardline to have a chance to win the game. They changed the rule, and now on the first possession a touchdown is required to end things, a system that should be perfectly acceptable. If a team is told that all they have to do is keep the opposing offense out of the endzone and their offense will come on the field with a chance to win the game, that should be a perfectly reasonable request. If they can’t do this, then they don’t deserve to win the game. And if it really is such a guarantee that the first team will score a touchdown, then we need to look at the rules that make it so easy for them to score, not the rules that reward them for doing so.

The Packers may complain about luck going against them in overtime, but they got plenty that went in their favor in regulation. The Hail Mary is the obvious example, but even before that they got a ten point swing after Rodgers’s brutal pick-six was erased by a penalty that had no effect on the play. And the Cardinals had their share of luck as well, with the dropped Carson Palmer interception on the goalline followed by miraculous deflection touchdown.

And that’s the truth about luck. Here or there it may swing a game, but the breaks we remember are always the breaks that go in the favor of the winning team, when in truth a football game has so much randomness that it usually balances out in the end.

Health

Football is a brutal game, and every team suffers injuries over the course of the season. But each year there are some that have it worse than others, and some that have to deal with injuries at the worst possible time. The Cincinnati Bengals are a perfect example of this, a team that was rolling steadily along until Andy Dalton went down with a broken thumb and left them with no choice but to start AJ McCarron in their playoff loss.

We saw a couple more examples of that in the first round of the playoffs. The Panthers-Seahawks contest was the only one of the weekend that wasn’t competitive from start to finish, thanks to an explosive first half from Carolina that allowed them to endure a second half surge from the Seahawks. Carolina’s offense definitely deserves credit for how they were able to ram the ball down the throat of Seattle’s defense, but a bigger factor was the utter domination of the Seahawks offense. The very first series set the tone for what we would see the rest of the half, as Carolina started by stuffing a run in the backfield followed by a pick-six that was caused by pressure in Russell Wilson’s face.

For the first half of the game, Carolina absolutely dominated Seattle’s offensive line. This is a unit that was bad from the start of the season, then had to deal with injuries, which only got worse when Russell Okung went down in the first half. At full strength this line might have been able to at least hold their ground, but as they were there was nothing they could do to stop Carolina from sprinting out to an insurmountable lead.

Green Bay was hurt by injuries as well, and like Seattle’s theirs were at one particular position. By the end of the game the best receiver they could put out on the field was James Jones, and they were stuck throwing to Jeff Janis down the stretch. (Random trivia: Janis had 101 yards receiving on the final drive alone, which isn’t actually an NFL record. That record belongs to Mike Evans, who had 104 yards receiving on a single drive in 2014.) It certainly didn’t help matters, but their passing offense wasn’t the reason they lost the game, and it’s unlikely that the presence of Randall Cobb or Davante Adams would have significantly swung the outcome. If both had been healthy and Jordy Nelson was still around, maybe things would have been different, but that was a ship that sailed a long time ago.

The one team that can truly point to injuries as the reason for their loss is Pittsburgh. Coming into the game everyone’s focus was on the previous weekend’s injuries to Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger, and those certainly did have an impact on the game. Roethlisberger looked mostly fine despite playing with ligament damage in his shoulder, and even though their passing offense worked to surprising effectiveness against the Broncos defense, Brown is the sort of player who can’t be replaced. The Steelers moved the ball thanks to big plays to Martavis Bryant, Darrius Heyward-Bey, and Sammie Coates, but they didn’t have a reliable underneath threat to keep their offense running smoothly from the beginning to the end of the game.

When it comes to injuries we tend to turn our attention to whatever is most recent, and this is a case where we overlooked the biggest hole on Pittsburgh’s offense. Fitzgerald Toussaint and Jordan Todman performed effectively enough against Cincinnati, but it was inevitable that the absence of Pittsburgh’s top two running backs would come back to bite them. And it certainly did, with a game changing fumble by Toussaint as Pittsburgh was driving at the edge of field goal range with the lead in the fourth quarter. This is the sort of play that likely wouldn’t have happened with DeAngelo Williams in the game, and certainly wouldn’t have happened with Le’Veon Bell. Through three seasons in the league Bell has fumbled exactly one time, and his reliability as a ball handler is just another part of what makes him the best back in the league.

A season ruined by injuries sucks, but the Steelers have to be optimistic going into next year. If they can keep their offense healthy—including the return of Maurkice Pouncey and Kelvin Beachum on the offensive line—this could be a historically great group. Against Denver they showed that they have the best and deepest group of receivers in the league, to go along with a quarterback who just makes plays no matter what is happening around them. Their defense looked strong as well, and if they can make some improvements to the secondary, this team has a very reasonable case to make as the Super Bowl favorites going into 2016.

Coaching

So far I’ve talked about luck and injuries, two factors outside a team’s control. But now I get to something that is entirely within a team’s control, yet something that can be just as enigmatic. Coaching is the great immeasurable of the NFL, but it should surprise no one that arguably the three best coaches in the league are among the four left alive. (Gary Kubiak is an exception, but you could make an argument that Peyton Manning is a great enough football mind to lift a mediocre coach.)

This past weekend, we saw excellent examples of just what a difference coaching could make. The most obvious was in the one game I haven’t touched on yet, the contest between Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots and Andy Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs. Late in the game down by two touchdowns, the Chiefs showed a stunning lack of urgency in getting the first score they needed, letting the clock run down to the two minute warning then actually huddling up with time running after that. The odds were always long against them, but their use of the clock stripped them of whatever hope they had, letting New England’s defense off the hook and pushing them to the next round.

Reid has been an NFL coach for a very long time, and at this point everyone knows about his shortcomings in clock management. But Saturday’s defeat was astounding even for him, and he needs to spend this offseason seriously reconsidering how he manages games. Because Reid is a very, very good coach, as evidenced by the consistent success he’s had at both of his stops, and this one major flaw may be the only thing holding him back from competing for a championship. The Chiefs are probably still a step below New England on a talent level, but Reid’s coaching kept them in the game, until his coaching knocked them out of it.

The one game in which the better coach lost was the Pittsburgh-Denver contest, and in a lot of ways it swung on a poor decision by Mike Tomlin. Tomlin has done an underrated job this season, leading his team to the playoff despite all the injuries I mentioned above plus four regular season games without Roethlisberger. He was the only coach in the league to truly embrace going for two, and his aggression in playing for a touchdown on the final play against San Diego got Pittsburgh a win that proved crucial to making the postseason.

And yet, he still has occasional lapses in decision making that are as baffling as they are misguided. In the cases I mentioned above he showed aggression that helped push his team over the top, but he also has a conservative streak that holds the Steelers back. We saw this in Sunday’s game, when he elected to punt the ball from the 34 yardline rather than trying a long field goal.

Tomlin has always been strangely reluctant to trust his kickers on long field goals, and even though Chris Boswell has been playing extremely well, he didn’t get the chance for a makeable kick. 52 yards is definitely within his range (I personally saw him put a 60 yarder off the crossbar in a game between Northwestern and Rice in 2011), and he was absolutely booming the ball in the high altitude of Denver.

It’s impossible to say exactly what would have happened the rest of the game, but if he had made the kick it would have extended the Steelers lead to four points. When the Broncos scored later, they would have kicked the extra point rather than going for two, and the Steelers would have gotten the ball back needing a field goal to tie rather than a touchdown. And even if they had failed on the ensuing drive like they did in reality, a Broncos field goal would have kept it to a one score game, giving Pittsburgh the ball back with an opportunity to win it with a touchdown.

Lapses like these are difficult to defend, not like the grayer circumstances we saw in the two NFC games. There’s been some talk about whether Green Bay should have gone for two after completing their Hail Mary pass, and while some very strong cases have been made, I am still rather ambivalent on the subject. I don’t think the percentages are strongly weighted in one direction or the other, and I wouldn’t have had any problem with either decision McCarthy made.

Instead I want to talk about a decision made by Bruce Arians on the play before, the completed Hail Mary that allowed the Packers to be in that situation. I’ve looked into Hail Mary passes a bit in the past, and I have some very strong opinions about how they should be defended. I despise teams that send only a three man rush, and I was excited as anyone when I saw the Cardinals lining up to bring seven rushers. This is a strategy that should be able to work, getting to the quarterback before the receivers have a chance to make it to the endzone.

It failed in this situation because Rodgers managed to escape the pocket. If they had kept him contained, there is no way he could have completed the pass, and at first I blamed poor design for sending such a lopsided blitz. With seven players rushing, they could easily have spared two to keep contain. As someone who despises the Packers, I was furious with the Cardinals coaches, until I saw a replay of the play in question. It turns out that they did have someone in contain, one of their best players Calais Campbell. He came up the field and bent inwards, keeping his outside arm free in textbook technique. And it would have worked too, if it wasn’t for one of the most egregious holds I have ever seen by David Bakhtiari.

Again, it comes back to luck. Sometimes the ref throws the flag, sometimes he doesn’t. It worked out for Arizona in the end thanks to some more aggressive coaching, and I hope in the future they don’t let this one failure stop them from using similar tactics in the future.

Another difficult and controversial decision occurred in the Seahawks-Panthers game. Late in the first half, Pete Carroll elected to send his offense out for a fourth and 5 rather than attempting a field goal. They failed and went into halftime down 31-0, in a decision that seemed meaningless at the time. It didn’t seem quite so meaningless late in the fourth quarter, when the Seahawks were down ten and a field goal would have made things a one score game.

This is a case of hindsight ignoring some very important details. Seattle was down 31 points at the time of the decision, and Carroll knew that he had to be aggressive if he had any hope of getting back into the game. This same aggression that failed him in the first half proved to be vital in the second half, as the Seahawks launched deep shot after deep shot to claw their way back into the game. That’s the thing about aggressive coaching decisions. Sometimes they don’t work out, and the coach has to face the blame for the consequences. But in the long run they average out to help a team more than they hurt it, and that’s why three of the most aggressive head coaches in the league are still alive right now.

How the Wild Card Was Won

After one week of thrilling playoff action, we are just about ready to start the next. Last week was filled with surprises, with every home team falling for the first time in NFL history. Of course, surprise is an entirely relative term, considering that the favorites ended up winning each and every game.

There was nothing shocking about last week’s outcomes, as everyone with a minor familiarity with football kindly pointed out. As overly simplistic as ever, much of this analysis pointed towards a single player on each team. It was no coincidence, these people claimed, that the better quarterback came out on top in each and every game. Alex Smith beat Brian Hoyer, Ben Roethlisberger trumped AJ McCarron, Russell Wilson outlasted Teddy Bridgewater, and Aaron Rodgers ran away from Kirk Cousins.

I’m not going to deny that there’s some truth to this, but there was a lot more happening in these games than just the quarterback position. For one, Smith was the only quarterback in the entire field to play what I would describe as a “good game” over the first weekend, and Wilson was actually outplayed by the passer across the field from him. These teams certainly benefited from having a quality quarterback, but there are other aspects of their teams that were just as crucial for their victories, aspects that will prove just as critical for any deeper postseason run.

Kansas City Chiefs: Lockdown Coverage

This is the most obvious case of a quarterback situation being used to oversimplify the outcome of a game, but it’s hard not to blame people for doing so. Brian Hoyer was simply awful on Saturday, and while Alex Smith didn’t do anything spectacular, the gap between average and Hoyer was about as large as it is possible to get.

But as bad as Hoyer was, and as many of the mistakes go entirely on his shoulders, we need to give the defense of the Chiefs some credit as well. This unit has been playing at a top notch level for the past three months, and they delivered their best performance of the season when it mattered the most. Shutting out any NFL team, even one quarterbacked by Hoyer, is quite an accomplishment, and it shows just why Kansas City can be dangerous the rest of the way.

Things started up front where, even with Justin Houston clearly at reduced strength, the combination of Tamba Hali, Dontari Poe, and Dee Ford was enough to apply consistent pressure in the backfield. A couple of Hoyer’s interceptions were thrown with pressure in his face, forcing him into ill timed or inaccurate throws. The easiest way to build a great defense is by pressuring the quarterback, and Houston did that to great effect on Saturday.

If the pass rush was where Kansas City’s defense stopped, they would still be a dangerous unit. But there is more to this team than just the front seven, as they showed in absolutely strangling Houston’s passing game. With a pair of athletic and physical cornerbacks on the outside and an absolute lightning bolt in Eric Berry at safety, it is nearly impossible for any receiver to get open against this team.

I was critical of Marcus Peters last week when picking the Defensive Rookie of the Year, pointing out that his interception numbers are inflated and that he was beaten far more often than a Pro Bowl level cornerback should be. But being second to Ronald Darby among rookies still makes him a pretty damn good cornerback, and as a number two guy opposite Sean Smith he is certainly an excellent piece to have on the defensive side. Smith himself is incredibly underrated, and since coming back from an early season suspension he has been among the top pass defenders in the game.

Houston’s receiving corps doesn’t have the depth to scare anyone, but few teams can boast a receiver with the talent of DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins finished third in the league in receptions and receiving yards despite the rotating door at quarterback in Houston this year, and the Texans did their best to force the ball to him against Kansas City. But eleven targets turned into just six catches for 69 yards, and Houston’s offense was rendered impotent without the contributions of their best player.

The Chiefs will be facing a different sort of test this weekend against New England. With Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola both reasonably healthy, the Patriots will once again have their full stable of unique receivers to attack the opposing defense. The quick and shifty pass catchers will be a difficult matchup for Kansas City’s larger and more physical cornerbacks, and they could struggle chasing them around the field on New England’s quick passes. This isn’t a great matchup for Kansas City, but if they can find a way to get their hands on the Patriots receivers at the line, they can push them around and disrupt the offense, giving their pass rush the time they need to close in on Tom Brady.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Run Defense

The book on Pittsburgh has been extremely clear this year. Apart from the games they played without Ben Roethlisberger, this has been a team defined by their offense, an explosive unit that needs to put up points to cover the holes on their defense. At times it works, like in their first matchup against the Broncos, but at other times it fails, such as in their shootout loss to the Seahawks. For the first time in recent memory, the Pittsburgh defense is a genuine liability for the team, something that would hold them back even if they didn’t have to worry about the injuries dotting their offense.

There is no way to sugarcoat the wretchedness of the Steelers pass defense, but quietly have been one of the better run defenses in the league this year, a strength that showed up last weekend against Cincinnati. With AJ McCarron under center, it was obvious from the first snap of the ball that the Bengals were going to try to feed their running game, and with a pair of talented backs in Jeremy Hill and Giovanni Bernard, this seemed like an effective strategy. But 78 ground yards later, the Bengals found themselves on the wrong end of the outcome, scoring only 16 points and letting the Steelers take it with a last minute field goal.

The Bengals have one of the best offensive lines in the league, and over the course of the regular season they were one of the most complete and balanced offenses in the league. They should have been able to shove their way through the Steelers, and the fact that they didn’t is a testament to just how underrated Pittsburgh’s front seven is.

Cameron Heyward and Stephon Tuitt don’t get the credit they deserve, but they are two of the best defensive ends in the league, trapped in a scheme that limits their sack numbers and keeps them from drawing national attention. And against the Bengals they were absolute wrecking balls, consistently controlling the line of scrimmage and letting the linebackers flow to the ball behind them.

The linebackers are another story as well, a group of high draft prospects who have unfairly earned the label of disappointments. Each of their four starting linebackers is a former first round pick, including the past three first round picks the Steelers have had. Bud Dupree is still a rookie, and after an up and down season most people have already stopped paying attention to the athletic but raw draft pick out of Kentucky. He had his usual bumps and bruises through the Cincinnati game, but he made several nice plays as well, and he will come along for the team eventually.

The one player that everyone has called a bust is Jarvis Jones. After tearing apart the SEC to the tune of 28 sacks in two years, his lack of athleticism has proven to be a fatal flaw in the NFL. Though he did manage to sack and strip McCarron on Saturday, he still has shown no sign of applying a consistent pass rush. But in his time in the NFL, he has developed into a very quality run defender, a stiff presence on the outside that plays with discipline and closes down running lanes.

And then there's Ryan Shazier. I'm not sure I can put into words what he did this past Saturday. He was absolutely everywhere against the Bengals, making plays in parts of the field no other NFL linebacker could even hope to reach. His speed has always been at another level, but so far in his career he has struggled to stay on the field. He made up for it against the Bengals however, by covering every single part of the field. In the run game and in the pass game, he was the true difference maker for Pittsburgh, keeping the Bengals down even as the Steelers offense was struggling.

Things are going to be difficult for the Steelers this weekend, facing off against a Broncos team with both their leading rusher and receiver sidelined. Ben Roethlisberger will be asked to carry this team on his own, but there’s no way to know what condition he will be in. If the Steelers are going to win this game, they will need to do so by keeping things to a reasonably low score again, hoping they can make a few big plays to fight through a better and healthier Broncos team.

My thoughts on the Broncos are difficult to make sense of. While I agree with the decision to start Peyton Manning, I think that Brock Osweiler might actually give them a better shot to win this particular game. Going forward the Broncos will need the upside brought to their offense by the experience and intelligence of Manning, but against the Steelers their best hope is to simply avoid mistakes. The Steelers will once again stack up against the run, and they will force the ball into the hands of the quarterback. Despite missing a large chunk of the season, Manning still finished second to only Blake Bortles in interceptions, and if pressed he could very easily end up throwing the game back into Pittsburgh’s hands.

Seattle Seahawks: Avoiding Negative Plays

The part of me that is still bitter wanted to make this all about luck, but I have to give Seattle credit for doing some things right. They put themselves in a position where a few breaks were enough to win them the game, and there is no shame in advancing through a few fortuitous bounces. Simply staying alive is the key at this point in the year, and Seattle has found an excellent formula to keep themselves in any game.

After the botched snap and faceplant by their punter on the opening drive, Seattle played an extraordinarily clean final three and a half quarters. They didn’t make a lot of big plays themselves, but they avoided any disasters, and in a game played in these conditions, that’s all a team really has to do. Sooner or later someone is going to make a mistake, and that team is likely going to be the one to lose.

For the Vikings their first mistake came in the form of an Adrian Peterson fumble, setting the Seahawks up for a lead taking field goal. But even before that, Seattle had managed to dodge a major bullet, with the unforgettable play in which Russell Wilson turned a snap over his shoulder into a forty yard gain. The completion was absolutely incredible, but it was really just a bonus on top of an already great play. The Vikings had Wilson dead to rights in the backfield, and he somehow managed to break their contain, to get away from a potential twenty yard loss that would have eliminated their excellent field position and killed the drive.

The key to avoiding negative plays on offense is usually an offensive line, but this is one case where all the credit has to go to Wilson. Though Bridgewater outplayed him in most measurable ways, Wilson did enough of the smaller things necessary to keep his team in the game. Time and time again he avoided pressure and made a play, either a completion or a throwaway that kept their offense on schedule. He contributed in the running game as well, carrying out fakes to slow Minnesota’s aggressive defense and keep Christine Michael clean in the backfield. The Vikings were tearing apart Seattle’s offensive line, but the versatility of Wilson kept them from making the big plays they are normally capable of.

There is no better example of this than a play that took place on the drive following Peterson’s fumble. Seattle took over at the 40 yard line of the Vikings, in excellent position but still not within reach for Steven Hauschka on this frigid day. Three plays gained them eleven yards and a new set of downs, getting them just barely inside their kicker’s range. The Vikings defense needed a play, and Everson Griffen nearly delivered. On first down Seattle ran a play action with a bootleg to the left, hoping to get Wilson clean to the perimeter. But Griffen stayed home on the fake, and he was in perfect position to bring down the quarterback for a significant loss. But somehow Wilson managed to stay upright long enough to throw the ball out of bounds, avoiding a sack and keeping them in range for what proved to be a game winning field goal.

Seattle’s offense was clicking on all cylinders at the end of the regular season, but things will become more difficult going forward. Against Carolina this weekend they’ll be facing a defense even tougher than Minnesota’s, and though the conditions will be friendlier, they could wind up playing a similar low scoring game. They will need their quarterback to once again use his athletic ability to avoid serious negative plays, because chances are good that Carolina won’t let them off the hook as easily as the Vikings did.

Green Bay Packers: Offensive Playmakers

 

After 35 points in a win against the Redskins, it's easy to forget how bad the Packers offense played over the second half of the regular season. Three times in their final six games they failed to eclipse 20 points, after doing so in all but two of their first ten games. After six straight victories to open the year, the Packers won only four games the rest of the way, in a large part due to the collapse of their offense.

This failure came out of nowhere, and it inevitably provoked a lot of speculation about what could be causing it. The most obvious explanation for the Packers was injuries. Their offensive line fell to pieces after being spectacularly healthy a year ago, and with Jordy Nelson out their receiving corps was as thinner than any that Aaron Rodgers had every worked with. The regression of Eddie Lacy only compounded the problem, stripping any hope of versatility from their offense.

Rodgers was stuck behind a broken offensive line throwing to receivers who couldn’t get open or catch the football, and even great quarterbacks would struggle in this situation. But there was more to Rodgers’s problems over the second half of the season than just the players around him. He was missing throws he normally makes, holding the ball too long and throwing inaccurately when he finally let it go. In a lot of ways, Rodgers was simply bad down the stretch of the season, and he deserves his share of the blame for what happened.

After Green Bay’s performance on Sunday, it is easy enough to give the credit to Rodgers for elevating a mediocre supporting cast. And while he certainly played better than he has recently, it wasn’t by enough to explain Green Bay’s jump in performance. Rodgers still missed a number of easy plays he normally makes, and he still is a reason to be concerned about the Packers going forward. But the performance of the rest of their offense is a reason for optimism, on the off chance they can keep it up.

For the first time all season the combination of Lacy and James Starks flashed the potential they’ve shown over the past two years, controlling the game in the second half as the Packers pulled away from the Redskins. Though Green Bay hasn’t run the ball well this year, their running backs have proven effective on screen passes, and that’s something they can exploit against Arizona’s aggressive defense.

But the real change was on the outside, where Green Bay's depleted and mediocre group of receivers made the sort of plays that have been missing from their offense all year. Randall Cobb looked genuinely elusive for the first time since signing his new contract, and James Jones and Davante Adams actually looked like quality NFL receivers. At times they looked like more than that, pulling contested catches away in crucial situations to keep the Packers offense moving.

Things will naturally become more challenging this weekend against a significantly better defense than Washington’s. As vulnerable as a defense is to a screen when blitzing, Arizona is one of the few teams in the league with the athletes who could make it work. And on the outside they have playmakers to match Green Bay’s, and they will make life significantly more difficult for the Packers receivers. It’s very likely that last week’s performance was just a flash in the pan, but if the Packers are going to have any hope going forward, they will need the players around Rodgers to continue to make plays like they did this past Sunday.

The Next Step

Eight teams are left in contention for a Super Bowl title, and I should probably use this space to write about them. But in truth, none of the four teams that won last weekend particularly impressed me, and it wouldn’t shock me if all four were eliminated in a week’s time. All season it has seemed as if there was a set of teams that was a step ahead of all the others, and very little we saw in the Wild Card round dissuaded me from that impression.

So instead, let’s not talk about the winners. Let’s talk about the losers, the teams that fought all year to reach the playoffs then dropped out in the first round. Disappointment has clouded what should be considered successful seasons, and there are a lot of teams out there who wish they made it as far as these four.

But the NFL never stops, and these teams can’t focus on 2015 for too long. Already the coaches and front offices are turning their attention to 2016. Because a taste of the playoffs only leaves teams hungry for more, and a first round exit can often be a prelude for something more. Taking the next step is always more difficult than people believe, but here are my thoughts on how each of the four first round exits can accomplish it.

Houston Texans

I think it was pretty obvious on Saturday what the biggest problem on Houston’s team is. Brian Hoyer is a below average starting quarterback in the league, but no one could have expected what we saw against Kansas City. Four interceptions and a lost fumble robbed the Texans of whatever hope they had of winning the game. Their defense kept them in it for most of the first half, but Hoyer couldn’t turn it around after halftime, and the game quickly turned into a rout.

Texans fans are justifiably furious with Hoyer, and they’re going to be even more furious when he’s their starting quarterback again next season. Because even though that’s the most obvious hole on Houston’s roster, it isn’t one they’re going to be able to fix. With the 22^nd pick in the draft they won’t be in position to take a franchise quarterback, or at least not anyone who is ready to start off the bat next year. They might be able to grab someone with high upside in the second or third round, but their best bet for next year will be to start with Hoyer back out there.

This is a no win situation. Replacing Hoyer could erase the progress they made over the second half of 2015, but sticking with him will limit their upside in 2016. With Andrew Luck coming back and Blake Bortles developing, a mediocre quarterback won’t be able to win this division like he did this year.

The quarterback situation makes it hard to look at Houston with much optimism, but there are still pieces to build around on this team. Obviously JJ Watt is a nightmare, and both Whitney Mercilus and Jadeveon Clowney performed well as complementary pass rushers as the season went along. Add to that the continued growth of Benardrick McKinney and Kevin Johnson, and this is not the aging defense around Watt that we saw coming out of last season.

The offense, however, is a problem. Arian Foster is still a productive back when healthy, but his health has become too unreliable to build an offense around. They need any sort of weapon to rely on besides DeAndre Hopkins, and they need an influx of youth on their offensive line.

These are issues that can be addressed early in the draft. I’ll hopefully be able to get more in depth with my breakdown of the prospects, but from the early looks I’ve seen, both receiver and lineman have decent depth in the latter half of the first round. The best bet for Houston would be to add through the draft, bottom out in 2016, and hope they can find a quarterback solution after that. Because even though this team has talent to work with, they aren’t ready to take the next step until a couple years down the road.

Cincinnati Bengals

 

This is hard. I mean, how do you figure out the next step for a team that has been trying to figure it out for the past four years? For the fifth season in the row the Bengals dropped out in the first round of the playoffs, and at this point it has become more of a joke than anything else. This is a solid football team, but they haven’t been able to put together what they need to win a playoff game, and right now people are justified in asking whether they should make drastic changes in the way they run things this offseason.

The most obvious place to start is at head coach. I was an advocate of them letting Marvin Lewis go after last year, and it would only seem reasonable to be even more vocal after another year of stagnation. But strangely, I find myself rather ambivalent on the topic. Lewis did a good job this season, managing to win the division and nearly earn a first round bye. Had Andy Dalton stayed healthy, they would very likely still be alive right now. He fixed their pass rush, showed a willingness to embrace creativity from his offensive coordinator, and very nearly won a playoff game without his starting quarterback.

Lewis has received a great deal of criticism for how their playoff loss went down. He’s been accused of losing control of the team, and while I’m not going to argue that the Bengals weren’t out of control, I’m not sure it’s fair to give Lewis the blame. Everything about that game was out of control—the Bengals, the Steelers, the referees—and at a certain point there is only so much a coach can do.

Vontaze Burfict in particular was a major problem, but I’m not sure there’s a force on Earth that can keep him under control. He is simply emotionally unstable on the field, as everyone has known for the past five years. That was part of the reason why the Bengals were able to find a player of his talent as an undrafted free agent, and at this point it might be something that simply can’t be fixed. Some may criticize Lewis for bringing in a player like Burfict in the first place, but this is out of his control as well. He is living under the mandate of owner Mike Brown, who believes that he can bring in and fix any character issues.

It wouldn’t be a mistake if the Bengals fired Lewis, but it wouldn’t be a mistake to keep him around either. If this team is going to take the next step, the key will be getting better on the field. It’s become popular to heap scorn upon free agency as a tool for building a team, but the Bengals are a perfect example of how crucial it can be. No team (except maybe Green Bay and Pittsburgh) spends less on free agency than the Bengals, year after year not even bothering to pursue anyone on the market.

Despite what many fans believe, free agency is an invaluable tool to building a roster. People roll their eyes at failed big money deals like Albert Haynesworth and Mike Wallace, and they forget about the smaller deals given to championship contributors like Michael Bennett. Free agency is a bad way to build a roster, but it is an essential tool to filling in the gaps. Cincinnati (and, to a lesser extent, Green Bay and Pittsburgh as well) has found consistent success in the regular season thanks to the core of their roster, but they haven’t been able to add the talent to get over the top.

The Bengals need to be aggressive in improving their roster. There are plenty of places for them to attack in free agency. Another receiver opposite AJ Green would be nice. A situational pass rusher or another cornerback would push their defense to an elite level. One way or the other, the Bengals have to acknowledge that business as usual isn’t working, and they need to take advantage of all the tools they have to improve their teams.

Minnesota Vikings

The first two breakdowns have been a bit depressing, so let’s get into some optimism. There may not be a team in the NFL with a brighter future than Minnesota. A year in which they were expected to improve and compete for a playoff spot turned into a division title and a near victory over the defending NFC champions, and as crushing as this Sunday’s loss was, the game showed that this team is capable of competing with anyone in the league.

A couple days have passed, and I think I am now in an emotional state where I can talk about this game. By my reckoning this was the fourth most painful loss I’ve experienced as a Vikings fan (behind, in no particular order, 2009 against the Saints, 2003 against the Cardinals, and 1998 against the Falcons). The Vikings absolutely should have won this game, having outplayed Seattle almost from start to finish. And it isn’t just the field goal that sticks in my mind. There was the fumble by Peterson, the dropped interception by Sendejo, and that ridiculous play by Russell Wilson on the botched snap. The Vikings had so many opportunities to win this game, and it hurts that they weren’t able to grab them.

That said, one major factor keeps this loss from joining the other three a the top of my list. Even if they had won on Sunday, the Vikings still would have been long shots to win the Super Bowl. This team isn’t quite at that level yet, and as much fun as it would have been to see a deeper playoff run, I came into the game with very reasonable expectations. The Vikings weren’t in position to compete for a championship this year, but they will be next year, and in the years after that. A team loaded with young talent, they are a few pieces and a little development away from being one of the best teams in the NFL.

Like Cincinnati, this is a team that would benefit from being active in free agency. The Vikings can clear up $11 million in cap space by releasing Mike Wallace, and they can create a similar amount of space if they do as I’ve suggested and part ways with Adrian Peterson. He doesn’t fit with the rest of the talent on their team anymore, and Jerrick McKinnon performed well enough down the stretch to show that he can be a full time runner going forward. By freeing themselves of underperforming veterans, the Vikings can create more than $50 million in cap space, enough to give extensions to some of their young players and to sign free agents to bolster their roster.

There are three positions where the Vikings most obviously came up short this season. On the defensive side of the ball, while they could benefit from less Chad Greenway on the field, their only real weakness was at safety opposite Harrison Smith. This is a position that could definitely be addressed in free agency. Some of these players will ultimately be franchised or resigned, but for right now the league is looking at a free agent field headlined by Eric Weddle, Eric Berry, and Reggie Nelson. A good value choice would be to go after Tashaun Gipson, an excellent cover safety who has become lost in the mire of Cleveland. His skills would perfectly complement Harrison Smith’s and would solidify the Vikings on the back end.

The offense will be more difficult to fix. The offensive line has been the most glaring problem throughout the season, but it may not be the most pressing area to address. They will see immediate improvement with the return of John Sullivan and possibly Phil Loadholt (though Loadholt could end up cut for age, health, and money reasons). Matt Kalil was quietly okay at left tackle, and I still like the potential of TJ Clemmings on the right side. And between Joe Berger, Brandon Fusco, and Michael Harris, they should be able to find two starting caliber guards. Minnesota’s offensive line was a mess this season, but I wouldn’t be hugely disappointed if they made no major changes.

The same cannot be said about the receiver position. Stefon Diggs came on strong early in the season, but he struggled once coverage was directed his way. He has the look of a very good number two receiver, but the Vikings still need a primary option. What I would really like to see going forward is more aggression from Teddy Bridgewater, a willingness to force a ball into tight windows and let his receiver make a play. This year, however, they didn’t have any receivers capable of winning contested catches, which is why Bridgewater ended up sailing so many passes out of bounds.

Unless the Bears let Alshon Jeffery slip through their fingers, free agency doesn’t offer a lot of solutions here. Fortunately, the draft has a good collection of big, physical receivers. Josh Doctson of TCU and Michael Thomas of Ohio State could be available when the Vikings pick at 23, and I wouldn’t be stunned to see a fall from Laquon Treadwell of Ole Miss, who won’t impress anyone with his 40 yard dash time. Any of these three would give Bridgewater a big, physical target who can attack the defense underneath and in the middle of the field.

That brings me to the final big adjustment they have to make on offense, and that’s to the scheme they are running. While I don’t think they necessarily have to replace Norv Turner, the entire coaching staff does need to sit down and discuss how their offense is run. Because right now, the scheme they’re running does not fit the players they have, and at this point it is far easier to change their playbook than their roster. Bridgewater’s sophomore year was a disappointment after a stellar rookie season, and most of the blame for this goes to the coaches for not putting him in a position to succeed. But with better play calling and some key additions to their roster, this team is capable of competing for a Super Bowl as early as next year.

Washington Redskins

This team is harder to figure out, because it still isn’t clear whether or not they were any good this year. Over the course of a 9-7 season they faced only three teams that ended up making the playoffs, losing by 17 to New England, 28 to Carolina, and 17 to Green Bay this past weekend. They looked good down the stretch of the season, but right now there is plenty of reason to wonder if they were just a mediocre team that happened to get hot against an easy schedule.

Even if they weren’t all that good this year, there is still reason to hope for improvement next year. Preston Smith became a force as an edge rusher over the final month of the season, capped by his sack of Aaron Rodgers for a safety on Sunday. They still need a lot of help on the back end of their defense, but with Smith and Ryan Kerrigan coming off the edges, this has the makings of a competent defense.

The key to their offseason will be Kirk Cousins. After what he did over the second half of the season, they cannot possibly justify letting him leave in free agency. They will have to spend big money to bring him back, either with a new contract or the franchise tag. If I was them, I would probably go with the latter option, giving him one season to show that he can repeat his success this year. He played extremely well down the stretch, and more than anyone else he is responsible for their playoff appearance. But eight games doesn’t justify a long term deal, and if they give him more time than he’s earned, they could end up digging themselves into a deep hole next year.

There is more reason for optimism for the Redskins than for either AFC team, but they still have to tread carefully going forward. If everything breaks right, this could be the first year of a serious run. The keys to this making this happen will be adding talent to their secondary (a likely target in the draft), trusting that their offensive line can come together, and hoping desperately that Cousins works out where so many similar quarterbacks have failed in the past.