What Could Have Been

The second round of the playoffs is in the book, and we’re down to four teams remaining. After an opening weekend that saw four blowout victories by home teams, this weekend saw the exact same thing for the first two games, until Sunday hit us with a pair of thrilling road upsets. The Falcons, Patriots, Packers, and Steelers are moving on, while the Seahawks, Texans, Cowboys, and Chiefs are heading home disappointed after promising seasons.

The first round of the playoffs was very straightforward. Four good teams beat four teams that were only slightly above average, exactly as we would have expected. There was never any real hope for the defeated parties, and the games ended with more mild disappointment than jagged heartbreak.

The same cannot be said of this weekend. Even the blowouts of the first day came with a hint of pain, possibilities of what might have been for the teams that ended up getting sent home. Sunday’s games were pure brutality, as a pair of top teams saw late comebacks dashed to pieces on their home turf.

It will be another eight months before these teams get a chance to play meaningful football again. Eight months to ruminate on how things might have gone differently. Because every team that played this weekend had a chance to win, and if they had just done a few small things differently the outcome might have swung in the opposite direction.

Seattle Seahawks

This first one is the hardest to justify under a “what might have been” scenario. Seattle was thoroughly handled by the Falcons, raced over on defense and stifled just enough on offense that they had no prayer of keeping up. Atlanta was the better team, and if these two played ten times the Falcons would probably win eight or nine.

But the way these teams were constructed, and the way this game was ultimately decided, has to leave Seahawks fans a little bitter. I know I’ve driven this point into the ground, but the abomination that Seattle calls offensive line was bound to catch up with them eventually, and it happened on Saturday against Atlanta. Russell Wilson spent the entire day running for his life, and it wasn’t just Vic Beasley chasing him. The entire Falcons front tore Seattle to shreds, ending any hope they had of sustained offense.

The larger issue of how they are attempting to construct this unit remains something they need to address, but there was more they could have done even within this game. Despite being loaded with receivers who do their best work underneath. Seattle seemed desperate to stretch the ball down the field. They left Wilson repeatedly exposed, rarely utilizing screen passes or quick drags to get the ball out of his hand before the rush could close in.

The other failure was not getting their quarterback more involved in the running game. Injuries limited Wilson this year to a career low in rushing yards, but he has gotten healthier as the season has gone along, and with everything on the line you would have figured they’d turn to him more. He did end up leading the team in rushing with 49 yards, but those came on only six carries, most of which were scrambles rather than designed plays. A few keeps on zone reads would have gone a long way towards slowing down the pass rush and forcing the defense to play with more discipline, cleaning up the pocket for Wilson to work down the field.

But as much trouble as they had on offense, Seattle’s real problems came on the defensive side. This has to be particularly frustrating for a team in the middle of a historically great defensive run. The Falcons got whatever they wanted in the passing game on Saturday, with receivers running wide open against anything Seattle threw out in coverage. Matt Ryan finished with 338 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions, the first time any quarterback to hit those marks during Seattle’s run.

The very obvious place to point the finger is the absence of Earl Thomas. Thomas is the quietest player on this defense, but he’s also the best, an athletic, instinctive centerfielder who erases every mistake a defense could make. Without him on the field, those mistakes were magnified. Richard Sherman could not keep up with Julio Jones without the security of a safety covering the middle half of the field, and the other Falcons receivers similarly overwhelmed Seattle’s secondary.

Injuries happen, and they suck, and there probably wasn’t much Seattle could have done to mitigate the loss of one of the ten best players in the NFL. But their unwillingness to try something different certainly didn’t help matters. They ran out their same fundamental defense the entire game, the defense that is built around Thomas’s inimitable skillset. They put far too much on Steven Terrell taking his place, and the entire defense fell to pieces when he wasn’t capable of stepping in.

Houston Texans

The Texans put up a surprisingly good fight in what was supposed to be one of the biggest mismatches in playoff history. Coming in as 16 point underdogs, they trailed by only four at halftime, and that was due only to a long kickoff return by Dion Lewis. For the first half of this game, Houston was the better team, and they had an opportunity to win before the Patriots pulled ahead late.

The key to their success was their total domination of the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. The combination of Jadeveon Clowney and Whitney Mercilus hounded Tom Brady the entire game, and their offensive line kept Brock Osweiler clean behind them. They didn’t find a lot of success running the ball, but they had opportunities to make plays on offense.

The defense ended up surrendering 34 points, but in reality they did everything they needed to win this game. This was the worst performance by Brady that I have seen in several years, constantly harried by a defensive front that was getting to him quicker than even his legendarily fast release. He threw two interceptions and had another three or four passes that probably could have been picked as well. His rare success down the field came on wobbly prayers that his receivers made excellent adjustments to, the sort of passes that usually do not work out.

On the other side, ten of Houston’s eleven players did what they needed to win as well. The offensive line kept the pocket clean, the receivers generated separation down the field, and there were plays to be made out there. It just so happens that they didn’t have a quarterback capable of making those plays.

Brock Osweiler finished the day 23 out of 40 for 198 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions, and those numbers give him more credit than he deserves. Beyond the turnovers and beyond the sub-5 yards per attempt, his accuracy in this game was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. There were plays in this game where I genuinely didn’t know who he was trying to throw to, as the ball skipped into an open patch of field ten yards away from a wide open receiver.

Osweiler was brutally terrible in this game, not that this is a surprise. He was brutally terrible all year long, which is why he was benched for Tom Savage late in the season. An injury to Savage gave him another chance, and he apparently did enough that Bill O’Brien was willing to stick with him even after Savage was healthy.

But why? Why stick with a quarterback you benched only a month ago, even as he’s falling to pieces and costing you a chance at a winnable game? Because he looked okay against Oakland’s historically terrible pass defense last week?

I’m not a fan of O’Brien as a coach, and this game only strengthens my doubts. The fact that Osweiler took every snap is inexcusable. I don’t know if Savage would have been better, and they probably would have lost this game by just as much with him under center. But at a certain point, when your quarterback cannot deliver the ball to an open receiver ten yards away from him, you cannot possibly justify putting him on the field.

Osweiler’s contract will force the Texans to keep him around next year, but they can’t do it as anything other than a backup. There are good options available in the quarterback market this offseason, and they have to make some effort to improve this position. I still think this is a flawed team even beyond the player under center, but they showed on Saturday that they can compete with the top teams in this league, if only they could find a modicum of competence at the most important position.

Dallas Cowboys

 

There are a lot of different ways to go with this one, and they’ve all been pretty thoroughly dissected already. The Cowboys should have stuck more with Ezekiel Elliott in the first half. They should have done a better job containing Aaron Rodgers in the pocket. Maybe they should have switched to Tony Romo several weeks back. Dak Prescott played well on Sunday, and he did a lot of great things to lead their comeback against the Packers. But he didn’t do enough to take advantage of the constant mismatch on the outside with Dez Bryant, and he didn’t generate as many opportunities down the field as Romo would have.

These points all have some measure of validity, and they are all being debated in various locations around the internet. I don’t think I have much more to add, except that I think any criticism of their offense is probably off base. Yes, they could have done more, but the bigger issue was that they couldn’t do anything to stop the Packers during the first half of the game. Rodgers is a nightmare made flesh, but he was getting everything he could want in the early part of the game, and the Cowboys defense deserves more blame for this loss than they’re receiving.

This was the most exciting game of the week, and it will continue to be discussed from every possible angle over the next few days. So here I think I’m going to take a slightly different approach. Rather than looking at the grand plan of the game from start to finish, I’m going to focus in on a single decision made in the final minute.

Dallas received the ball down three with 1:33 left in the game and one timeout to work with. They drove fairly easily down the field, ending up with a first down at the Green Bay 40 with under a minute to go. At that point, they hurried up and spiked the ball, setting up a second down and 10 with 47 seconds remaining. A quick pass to Cole Beasley gained them six yards and got out of bounds, and then a third down pass was batted down, giving them a fourth and three at the Green Bay 33 yardline with 38 seconds on the clock.

We can poke holes in several pieces of this, starting with the decision to spike the ball and waste a down rather than using their timeout or trying to run a play. I don’t have particularly strong feelings in this case, aside from my general aversion to spiking the football. With a young quarterback inexperienced in this situation (another case where Romo would have helped) it was probably good to take a moment to pause and collect themselves, though maybe not worth the down they sacrificed.

The more interesting decision came on that fourth down. Dallas kicked the field goal, which is what every NFL team would do, hoping they would be able to win the game in overtime. The Packers proceeded to take the remaining 35 seconds and their two timeouts to go 43 yards and kick the game winning field goal.

Every NFL coach would have done what Jason Garrett did. I happen to be a bit more aggressive than most (all) NFL coaches. At the time I saw how much time Green Bay had to work with, and my gut reaction was to go for it, to try to pick up the first down and continue going for the touchdown or to at least run more time off before kicking the field goal.

That probably sounds crazy, but let’s work through some of the numbers. This year on third or fourth down with three yards to go, NFL teams converted at a rate of 54%. Given the offense and the defense in question, I feel comfortable rounding that up to 60%. That means that 40% of the time Dallas would fail to convert, and the game would be over.

Let’s look at what would happen the other 60% of the time. Even if they picked up the first down they would have roughly 30 seconds to go 30 yards to win in regulation, which is still a fairly long shot. I don’t have any good numbers on historic success rates, but I feel like 20% is a good rough approximation. The other 80% of the time they would likely have to settle for a field goal. They would likely end up somewhere in the 30-40 yard range for this field goal, which NFL kickers convert around 90%.

Since the Packers wouldn’t have time to respond in this scenario, the game would go to overtime, which is a 50/50 proposition. This means the Cowboys win in regulation 12% of the time (60%*20%) and in overtime 22% (60%*80%*90%*50%) of the time for a total win probability of 34%.

That seems low, but let’s look at the probabilities for the decision they made. First you have the question of field goal success. NFL kickers hit 50 yard attempts at about a 75% success rate, and even though Dan Bailey is one of the best in the league I don’t think we can bump that higher than 80%. So even if we guaranteed that the game went into overtime, the Cowboys would only win 40% of the time.

And there is still the matter of the time they left for the Packers. The break even rate ends up being 15%. If they believed the Packers had less than 15% chance of scoring in regulation, then the field goal made sense. If their chances were greater than 15%, then they made a mistake not going for it.

I don’t know what to think of this. My first guess before running these numbers was 20%, which suggests they should have gone for it. But I am also more terrified of Aaron Rodgers than I am of basically anything else in the world, and I won’t pretend I am judging this from a rational position. The fact that the Packers needed a miraculous 36 yard completion on the penultimate play does mitigate the decision somewhat, but I still feel like the Cowboys made the wrong call in the end.

Kansas City Chiefs

Let’s start with the obvious one. Despite being one of the ten best head coaches in the league, Andy Reid somehow remains terrible at clock management. Down eight points, the Chiefs meandered down the field before scoring a touchdown with less than three minutes remaining and only a single timeout. Then, after failing on the two point conversion, they passed up the opportunity for an onside kick, and they never saw the ball again.

I’m not going to try to justify this. This was bad. Reid fell into the old mistake of treating an eight point contest as if it’s a one score game. That is technically true, but only if you can convert on the two point conversion, which is roughly 50/50. In reality it is better to think of an eight point deficit as a one-and-a-half possession game. You may need to score one, or you may need to score twice. And it demands the same urgency as any other two score game.

But it’s hard to be too bitter about the end of the game, considering that Kansas City had absolutely no business having a chance to win this. They were dominated by the Steelers in every facet of the game, kept alive only by Pittsburgh’s strange reluctance to give the ball to Le’Veon Bell in the red zone. Pittsburgh moved the ball at will, and they shut down Kansas City’s offense for most of the game.

There isn’t much I can point to that the Chiefs could have done better. Mostly they were just physically beaten by a superior team. Bell danced for as many yards as he needed. Antonio Brown ran free through the secondary. And the Chiefs could not provide Alex Smith with a comfortable and consistent pocket.

Still, Kansas City had a chance, and they might have done even better if they had opened things up on offense earlier in the game. They spent most of the night trying to force the ball to Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill, the two players Pittsburgh was keyed on. It was only late in the game that they began to get their wide receivers involved, exploiting Pittsburgh’s vulnerable cornerbacks.

Chiefs receivers other than Hill combined for only six receptions and 50 yards. But four of those completions and 37 yards came on Kansas City’s final two scoring drives. They had receivers open down the field earlier in the game, and even though Smith missed them they should have been willing to come back to it. There wasn’t a whole lot that the Chiefs could have done to pull this out, but a little more variation on offense might have been enough to steal it.