2019 Playoff Preview - AFC

The NFL regular season has run its course, and 20 teams are now stuck at home watching with the rest of us. That leaves 12 teams alive, all with their eyes set on the ultimate prize.

Of course, “alive” is a relative term. As we’ve seen over recent years, where a team starts its playoff run has a great deal of impact on where they end up. Each of the twelve Super Bowl representatives over the past six years started with a first round bye, and at this point we have to consider those teams the overwhelming favorites to reach the Super Bowl this year. The combination of home field advantage, one fewer game, and the overall higher quality of these teams give them a huge edge in claiming a conference title.

But that doesn’t mean victory is guaranteed. After all, if it did we wouldn’t bother playing the games. For the eight teams playing this weekend, there is still reason to hope, to believe that if everything comes together they can make a run and win four straight to claim a Super Bowl title.

Starting today with the AFC:

AFC

6. Tennessee Titans

The Titans have what, on paper, looks like the most difficult road in the AFC. They have to start by going to New England to face the traditional big bad of the conference, and a win there would only send them to Baltimore before a likely matchup against Kansas City. They would have to play at an extremely high level for three straight games just to get out of the conference, to say nothing of what would be an even tougher test against the NFC in the Super Bowl.

And yet of the four teams playing this weekend in the AFC, the Titans might be the one I’d most likely bet on to make such a run. Because while Tennessee’s 9-7 record is the least impressive in the conference, it isn’t representative of who the team is now.

Tennessee’s season turned around when they made the switch from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill at quarterback and got AJ Brown more integrated with their offense. If you credit the loss to the Broncos when they made the change to Mariota, that means they are 7-3 in the ten games since they made this change, a record during that stretch that is better than the three other teams playing this weekend.

I’m still not sure if a ten game sample is enough to say that Tannehill actually is as good as the superstar numbers he is putting up. During that stretch they played only four opponents who finished with a winning record—two losses, a win over a Texans team resting their stars in Week 17, and a win over the Chiefs in Patrick Mahomes’s first game back from injury. That’s not a bad performance necessarily, but it’s not something that suggests they can go out and beat elite opponents.

Of course, I’m not sure their first opponent would qualify as “elite”. After a hot start to the season, the Patriots have been fairly pedestrian down the stretch, culminating with last week’s embarrassing loss to Miami that forced them into playing this weekend in the first place.

This is a good matchup for the Titans to have in the first week. Their weakness is their defense, particularly against the pass, and New England’s offense is not threatening to anyone. New England doesn’t have the weapons or the quarterback to attack them down the field. In fact, the only AFC playoff team that really scares me with their passing attack is Kansas City, a team they wouldn’t have to face until the championship round and who they’ve already beaten. Baltimore’s running game will give them trouble, as they will for any defense, but Tennessee’s ability to avoid turnovers will keep them in games against teams that live on profiting from short fields.

5. Buffalo Bills

This is one of the harder roads to envision, because I think Buffalo has one of the lowest ceilings of all the playoff teams. Their roster is built around a dominant defense, which is good for winning a steady stream of a games through the regular season but not for going on a sustained run in the playoffs. Eventually their offense is going to have to step forward and be more effective than they have been to this point in the season.

That isn’t to say that their offense is bereft of talent. They did a good job rebuilding their offensive line this offseason, and now they have a reasonably stable unit to protect Josh Allen. An elite pass rush could pose problems, but I don’t see much of that on the AFC side of the field. They are a team that wants to run the ball, and I think they have the ability to do so against most of the playoff field. There aren’t a lot of dominant run defenses that they will be likely to face, with most of the AFC teams sitting in the middle of the pack.

Of course, keeping the ball on the ground only works if you can get out to an early lead or at least keep the game competitive. And to do that, Buffalo is going to need perfect performances from Josh Allen.

Allen took a step forward this season, but he is still clearly outmatched by every other quarterback in the playoffs. He isn’t going to win a game going pass for pass with Deshaun Watson or Lamar Jackson or even Tom Brady. But he could very easily lose the game for the Bills, if he makes the mistakes that still occasionally plague him. He did a good job cutting down on interceptions this year, but those aren’t the only negative plays a quarterback can make. He was in the top ten in times sacked this season, and he still has moments of erratic accuracy, particularly on down the field throws. If he kills drives with sacks, or misses big play opportunities, this defense isn’t enough to carry Buffalo against elite competition.

4. Houston Texans

Houston has been in this spot before. They’ve won the AFC South six of the past nine seasons. On three of the previous five occasions, they actually won their first playoff game and advanced to the Divisional Round. But never in their franchise history have they made it farther than that, and entering this postseason most people seem to be assuming this will just be the same old story.

So why might this year be different? The simple answer is star power. Previous Texans teams have made the playoffs based on a weak division and a solid overall roster, with a team that can struggle to grimy victories over the Jaguars and Titans and Colts of the world but don’t have the players capable of elevating their games when facing quality opposition across the board. Depth is essential to winning in the postseason, but when the margins grow this thin games can often swing on having a player who can simply go out and beat whoever he’s put up against.

The Texans didn’t have many of those players in their past postseason visits. Their first four playoff appearances they were represented by quarterbacks like Matt Schaub and TJ Yates, players who could be counted on to avoid shooting themselves in the foot against mediocre competition but were unable to create plays on their own. They got the Texans as far as they could, and that was when Houston decided to try to go a step farther.

Deshaun Watson has been fantastic for the Texans during the regular season, but the postseason is why they traded two first round selections in order to take him. He excelled in pressure situations in college, and they are going to need him to step up his game over the next month as well. Buffalo is an immediate challenge, a team with an aggressive secondary and dangerous pass rush that could force the sort of negative plays that still pop up for Watson here and there. He is going to need to attack their secondary to avoid going down behind his still shaky offensive line, and he is going to need to make plays with his legs to get the most out of an offense that still doesn’t have a great deal of talent around him.

The other critical factor for the Texans is going to be health. The biggest name out there is obviously JJ Watt, their future Hall of Fame game wrecker on the defensive line. They had thought him lost for the season, and it’s still unclear whether he will be able to return in time for any sort of playoff run. But if they can get him back, he is the sort of game changing force that could elevate a defense that has been occasionally rocky this year.

The other player to watch in terms of health is Will Fuller. Fuller is an inconsistent player, but at this point there is no debating the impact he brings to this offense. When he’s healthy, his speed as a deep threat reshapes how defenses play against the Texans, both providing opportunities to hit big plays and opening up space for DeAndre Hopkins to work underneath. They’ve managed to replicate his impact somewhat in recent weeks with Kenny Stills, but the numbers still clearly show how crucial it is to have him on the field.

This isn’t the same Texans team that has floundered in the past. They aren’t as well rounded, but they may have a higher ceiling, thanks to players like Watson, Watt, and Hopkins. They knocked off both New England and Kansas City earlier this year, proving that they can play with the elites of the AFC, even if they have yet to show the consistency required to do so.

3. New England Patriots

This feels kind of weird. Normally the Patriots are the clear favorites, and I find myself having to talk myself into a way that they don’t emerge from the AFC. But even if they had beaten Miami this past weekend and earned a first round bye, I still would have found myself skeptical about their path forward. The defense has predictably regressed after their early season dominance, and their offense hasn’t stepped forward to pick up the slack. If anything they’ve gone the other way, looking limp and ineffective behind a weak stable of weapons and a quarterback showing all the signs of being thoroughly washed.

But still, these are the Patriots. And even as they have struggled over the second half of the season, they do most of the things you look for in a championship team. Over their final eight games that saw them go 4-4 they turned the ball over only seven times total, and won the turnover margin more often than they lost it. They committed fewer penalties this year than any other team in the playoffs, and they are not going to beat themselves.

This is New England, so I can’t rule out a scenario where Bill Belichick draws up some brilliant defensive gameplan or Tom Brady chews apart an opposing defense with precision passes underneath. They still have a lot of talent at key positions, and it’s possible to imagine them getting back to the team that was boatracing opponents at the start of the season.

But that would require them to change everything we’ve seen from them over the past two months, and while I’ll admit it’s possible, I think the most likely route to a title is to play it safe and hope their opponents shoot themselves in the feet. New England will want to keep these games low scoring, and they will want to keep them messy. Work at a slow pace, play a field position battle, and hope they can reach the end of the game within a single score. At the right moment, call for a creative blitz or a trick play that could mess the other team up.

The Patriots have dominated the league for the past two decades not because they have a consistent formula for success, but because they have been able to adopt a number of different formulas. At times this has meant racing away from opponents in high scoring shootouts. At others this has meant winning ugly, like they did in both their Super Bowl victories over the Rams. It’s a harder road ahead of them this year, but it’s one they are better equipped to follow than any other team in the league, with a coach and quarterback who have been there so many times before.