NFL Playoff Fulcrums

 

The playoffs are here, and we’re down to fourteen teams competing for the Super Bowl title. We’ve seen all these teams play sixteen games, and we have a good idea of which teams are good at what. The Packers and Chiefs are driven by elite quarterbacks. The Steelers and Rams are carried by dominant defenses that support wildly inconsistent offenses.

There are a handful of teams whose strengths can carry them through to a championship, and every team has weaknesses that could sink them. The final outcomes will likely be decided by the other parts of these teams, the parts that could go either way. In some cases these are strengths throughout the season that could go away. In others, unreliable units that have the potential to get hot at the right time and elevate these teams to elite levels.

AFC

Kansas City Chiefs
Pass Protection
Patrick Mahomes is obviously a special type of superstar, and his performance in the playoffs a year ago will be difficult to ever forget. But quietly a big part of that was an offensive line that kept him pretty much spotless the entire postseason run. He faced virtually no pressure until the Super Bowl against San Francisco’s dominant and deep defensive line, and this made his big comebacks against Houston and Tennessee possible.

The offensive line has been a bigger issue this year for Kansas City. They’ve cycled through a bunch of combinations on the interior of the line, while their tackles have both been in and out of the lineups. It seems unlikely they will have Mitchell Schwartz available in the playoffs, an All Pro player now missing from the right side. If there’s any way to disrupt this Chiefs offense, it’s by getting pressure on Mahomes and forcing him to get rid of the ball when he doesn’t want to. Fortunately the only team in the AFC with a real dangerous pass rush is Pittsburgh, though this could present a problem if they make it to the Super Bowl.

Buffalo Bills

Non-Diggs Weapons
After years stuck as a second receiving option in Minnesota’s run-first system, Stefon Diggs broke out this year as the primary weapon in the Bills aerial attack. He led the NFL in both receptions and receiving yards, as he immediately became Josh Allen’s favorite target on every level of the field.  

Allen got off to a hot start primarily by feeding Diggs, until defenses steadily adjusted to try to take him away. Allen’s performance dipped in the middle of the year, but over the final month both he and Diggs exploded through the finish line, helped by the additional weapons that emerged on Buffalo’s offense.

Cole Beasley has been a staple in the league as a third-down pest for almost a decade now, and he just wrapped up his best season, as he has mastered the art of finding holes over the middle of the field when his team needs him most. As John Brown has struggled with injuries, Gabriel Davis has stepped up as their primary deep threat. These other options have only opened things up more for Diggs, and they have the Bills offense clicking right now as well as any in the league. 

Pittsburgh Steelers

Ben Roethlisberger
There have been a lot of different issues that have plagued the Steelers offense over the second half of the season. Their offensive line has quietly become very mediocre over the past couple seasons. They have no explosiveness from their running backs. Multiple receivers have been best by drop issues. Defenses have adjusted to their quick passing game, tightening the field and giving them very little space to make plays underneath. 

But all these issues eventually do come back to Roethlisberger. The line hasn’t been reliable in pass protection, but he’s exacerbated the issue by being so terrified of contact that he gets the ball out of his hand extremely quick even if there is no pressure to be found. This has limited their ability to attack the intermediate areas over the middle of the field, and has enabled defenses to suffocate the Pittsburgh offense.

Roethlisberger needs to start trusting the players around him and taking more risks. In the second half of their final meaningful game he seemed to realize this, and the offense opened up allowing them to come from behind to beat the Colts. The most obvious change was getting Chase Claypool more involved, but Roethlisberger himself was more aggressive and more accurate down the field. Can he sustain that for more than a half? At this point it seems unlikely, but we’ve seen this before when Peyton Manning looked done and then did enough to get a defense-first Broncos team to the title. 

Tennessee Titans

Defensive Disruption
Tennessee’s defense is bad. There really isn’t much more to say about it. They rank in the bottom five in defensive DVOA, alongside Detroit, Jacksonville, Houston, and Las Vegas. They are comfortably the worst defense to make this playoff field, and it’s quite possible they get run off the field right away with a defense that couldn’t stop someone moving at a slow walk.

Tennessee is in the playoffs because their offense is loaded. Loaded enough that they need just a little bit of life from the other side of the ball to give them a chance against just about any opponent. If that life is going to show up, it will come from the front four. Harold Landry took a step back with only 5.5 sacks this year, but he is still an explosive presence off the edge capable of racing around a pass blocker and striking the quarterback before he’s even completed his drop. And Jeffrey Simmons is an emerging star on the inside. When the Titans have found something resembling an effective defense, it has been because of Simmons utterly wrecking opposing offensive lines. They are going to need a lot of that to stay competitive in this postseason.

Baltimore Ravens

Down the Field Passing Attack
Baltimore’s offense has come alive over the past few weeks, and they are once again playing at the level that earned them the top seed in the AFC a season ago. The running game remains the heart and soul of this offense, but it’s been the development of their down the field passing attack that has really opened things up for them.  

All season defenses tried to counter the Ravens by packing the box and closing off the middle of the field, and Lamar Jackson struggled when he was forced to throw into other areas. Marquise Brown has been a major disappointment in his second year, though lately he’s had a knack for finding the endzone, with touchdowns in five of Baltimore’s final six games. The real find though has been Miles Boykin. He’s still only getting about one catch a game, but these are typically big catches, with three of the last five going for touchdowns and two of these covering around 40 yards. The Ravens don’t need much from their passing game, just one or two explosive plays to keep defenses honest and soften things up for them to grind underneath.

Cleveland Browns

Keeping Baker Calm
The biggest change from last year to this year for the Browns was the improvement of their offensive line. The draft selection of Jedrick Wills locked down the left tackle spot for the long term, and Bill Calahan once again demonstrated why he’s one of the two best offensive line coaches in the world (Mike Munchak has been fighting him for that title for the past two decades). The line has paved easy lanes for their dominant running game, but it has been even more impactful protecting Baker Mayfield.

Three years into his career, Mayfield is a solid quarterback capable of some remarkable plays who still has absolutely no idea what an NFL pocket is. If he feels even a little pressure, he immediately tries to break away to the edge, often only running himself into even more trouble. Last year this led to erratic play and a ton of turnovers, but this year they’ve managed to keep him so clean that he never even has to think of pressure. When the Browns can do this, they have the weapons to be a dangerous passing attack. But it only takes a little pressure to throw this Mayfield completely off his game.

Indianapolis Colts

Running Game
Philip Rivers has bounced back after a couple rough seasons to end his time with the Chargers, but this passing game still doesn’t have the juice to light up opposing teams consistently through the air. Their defense is strong, but it may not be enough to keep them in games against the tougher teams in the AFC. 

That’s where the running game comes in. The Colts have a better chance with a balanced attack, and with one that can keep the ball in their hands and shorten the game. For most of the season they didn’t have this running game, but Jonathan Taylor came alive down the stretch. He had 741 yards over his final six games, culminating in a 253 yard performance last week (against the Jaguars I know, but still). I’m still skeptical of how far a running game can actually carry a team in the postseason, but it’s a useful tool for an underdog, as Tennessee proved a year ago.

 

NFC

Green Bay Packers
Fast Start
Green Bay has settled into a steady rhythm as they’ve coasted through the mediocre teams on the schedule over the second half of the season. They explode out of the gate, put up a ton of points before halftime, and then go mostly silent on offense as they ride this early lead to an easy victory. There are a few possible explanations for this—they take their foot off the gas, Matt LaFleur is better at scripting the start of the game than adjusting as the game goes on—but so far it’s been an effective strategy.

The Packers are excellent front-runners, but this isn’t a team that is built to play from behind. The arrival of LaFleur has caused them to switch to an offense heavy on misdirection and play-action, which has revitalized Aaron Rodgers’s career while also leaving them vulnerable to the same flaws many teams that use this scheme have. When things are going well, they can keep opposing defenses on their heels and carve them up. When things aren’t going well, they struggle to beat a defense that knows to expect a pass-heavy attack.

Green Bay’s defense is also built to play with a lead. They are excellent against the pass, but they can be gashed on the ground when an opponent is able to stay committed to the run. This is what killed them in the playoffs against San Francisco last year, and it’s how they lost to the Vikings in Lambeau earlier this season. The Packers have to hope they can keep up their early-game success, because if they wind up in a competitive contest or fall behind, they are going to have to play a style they are not comfortable with. 

Seattle Seahawks

Pass Defense
The bigger questionmark for Seattle entering the postseason is an offense that has been lifeless down the stretch of the season. But, if I’m being totally honest, I’m not really sure what they have to do to fix this, aside from saying, “Russell Wilson needs to stop playing like shit.” So I’m going to address a different part of their team. 

In the early and middle parts of the season Seattle’s pass defense was on a historically terrible pace. They couldn’t stop anyone or anything, and it only got worse when their secondary sustained multiple injuries. They’re healthier now, and they are playing much better, thanks in part to an improved pass rush. Carlos Dunlap has looked surprisingly spry since his midseason trade from Cincinnati, and Jamal Adams remains a unique contributor as a pass rushing safety. There are still holes blown wide open in their coverage units, and I worry what will happen when they face some of the elite quarterbacks in this playoff field. But they are at least getting some pressure now, which will keep them from surrendering fifteen yards every time the opposition drops back to pass.

New Orleans Saints

Pass Rush
The obvious answer here is Drew Brees, but I would pretty much just be copying a lot of what I said above about Roethlisberger. So instead I’m going to talk about the biggest change in this Saints team that occurred midway through the year, one that will be crucial if they are going to reverse their early season loss to Green Bay. 

For the first few weeks, the Saints defense looked lifeless without any ability to get pressure on the quarterback. They have good players in their secondary, but not so good that they can hold up if the quarterback stands in the pocked for four or five seconds. As the season wore on, the defense came alive with a pass rush that stifled Tom Brady and held Patrick Mahomes in check, while carrying the team through their quarterback issues.

The big difference seems to have come with the return of Marcus Davenport in Week 5. While Davenport has only produced 1.5 sacks himself, his presence as a speed threat on the edge has opened up the rest of New Orleans’s pass rush game. The big question going forward will be leading sack artist Trey Hendrickson, who had 12.5 through the first fourteen weeks before a shoulder injury knocked him out. Without him this defense is vulnerable, but if the pass rush is at full strength they can cause problems for any offense. 

Washington Football Team

Secondary Receiving Options
There are a few reasons Washington was able to turn things on over the second half of the season. Alex Smith is getting most of the credit, but he was basically just as effective as the quarterbacks they had playing before. The defense coming together certainly played a part as well, but the biggest change as the season went along was the development of receiving threats outside of Terry McLaurin. 

Early in the season McLaurin was all they had going. Over the first four weeks he accounted for 41% of the team’s receiving yards, an insanely high total for a single receiver. He was banged up a little down the stretch and only managed 16% of the team’s yards over the final four weeks, while the rest of the passing game stepped up.

McLaurin is still the best player on this offense, but it’s good to have some other options. Cam Sims and Steve Sims have alternated in the role as the second wide receiver, while both JD McKissic and Antonio Gibson have contributed out of the backfield. But the biggest find has been tight end Logan Thomas, who finished second on the team with 670 receiving yards and made huge play after huge play as Washington fought their way to the NFC East title. 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Coverage
Tampa Bay sort of flipped what sort of team they were halfway through the year. Early in the season their offense hit some bumps while Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski got up to speed, and they won games mostly through a dominant defense. While their offense pulled together into an elite unit over the second half of the season, their defense lost the edge that made them look like a championship contender over the first two months.

Losing Vita Vea in the middle of their line was certainly a tough blow, but the bigger difference has been on the outside. Early in the season they excelled with a pair of lockdown cornerbacks in Carlton Davis and Jamel Dean, two players who both excelled by playing on a knife’s edge. As the year has gone on, Dean’s aggression has left him susceptible to big plays on double moves, while Davis’s physical style has drawn more penalties. If they can clean these issues up, they have the talent to lock down some of the dangerous passing attacks they will have to face to reach the Super Bowl.

Los Angeles Rams

The Brilliance of Sean McVay
Some of the shine has definitely worn off of McVay since Los Angeles’s run to the Super Bowl two years ago. But he remains a clever offensive mind, just one no longer playing with an absolutely stacked pool of talent. Fortunately, the Rams defense has ascended to an elite level this season, so they no longer need an offense lighting up the scoreboard to keep things competitive. 

It’s still a little unclear what the Rams will do at quarterback, but either way they are left with someone far short of most of their playoff peers. Jared Goff has established what he is at this point—a solid option when everything is working smoothly around him, and a potential disaster when it isn’t. Fortunately, McVay is second probably only to Kyle Shanahan when it comes to putting his quarterback in position to succeed. He isn’t going to turn Goff into a superstar overnight, but if he can craft a few clever plays each game, the Rams can claw their way to a few ugly upsets.

Chicago Bears

Mitchell Trubisky on the Move
Trubisky is still a major liability for this team, but since his return to the starting role the Bears have found ways to use him far more effectively than in his prior time on the field. They are getting him outside the pocket a lot more on designed bootlegs to both the left and the right, which has a few different effects. It simplifies the reads by giving him only half the field to work in. It gets him away from an offensive line that has struggled all year. And it gives him the option to tuck the ball and run using athleticism that his backup Nick Foles simply doesn’t bring to the table.

The Bears face a steep climb in the playoffs, and if they are going to have any hope of pulling upsets they are going to need major contributions from Trubisky. He’s capable of spark plays with his arm, but they are likely going to need him to give them more on the ground. He’s averaged below 20 rushing yards per game in each of the past two years after contributing 30 per game in 2018, and this offense is going to need even more from him. Scrambles when the play breaks down, designed runs in timely situations, even some options with David Montgomery. Everything should be on the table for an offense desperately trying to conjure points.