2022 Super Bowl Recap

The wildest NFL season in recent memory wrapped up with a Super Bowl to match. The game swung back and forth several times and ended with each team having a chance to win it in the final minutes. The Rams came through, and the Bengals did not, which is why Los Angeles is celebrating while Cincinnati is pondering all the little moments that went against them that might have swung things their way.

Here are a handful of thoughts about what happened on Sunday night. 

Boom or Bust Bengals

It’s who they were the entire season, so we shouldn’t be surprised they followed this same pattern in the biggest game of the year. But man was it dramatic to watch Cincinnati’s offense on Sunday. When they succeeded, they ate up yards in huge chunks, as they did with the 46 yard pass to Ja’Marr Chase and the 75 yard touchdown to Tee Higgins. And when they failed it was an epic disaster, with the seven sacks that Joe Burrow endured.

It's no secret where to point the finger on this. The Bengals offensive line has been a disaster all year long, and they had probably their worst game of the season against the Rams. In the first half they managed to keep things at least somewhat under control against a fairly vanilla Rams rush scheme. They sent three players at Aaron Donald on every play, and they counted on Burrow to get the ball out before the edge rushers could close in. When they tried to hold on for more than two seconds, either they succeeded and were able to hit a big play down the field, or they let the rush through and the play died quickly.

We all knew this was going to be a problem for the Bengals in this game. The question for their offense was whether their receivers could do enough to make up for it. And the answer ended up being a fairly middling “maybe”. Those two successful deep shots were obviously hugely impactful, and they did a decent job working the weak points in the middle of the Rams defense. Cincinnati moved Chase around much more in this game than they have through most of the season, asking him to run out of the slot on routes cutting across the middle of the field to get the ball in his hands quickly before the pressure could close in on Burrow. And they had moments where they were able to move the ball this way, combining quick passes with effective runs to pick up yards in small chunks working their way down the field.

The problem with this strategy is that it takes only one bad play to sink a drive. And the Bengals had plenty of those. Not just the seven sacks, but a drop by the usually reliable Tyler Boyd, a missed read by Burrow on fourth down, and a couple of contested catch opportunities lost by Higgins. A bunch of little plays that would have been forgotten if the Bengals had won, but now will be looked back on as crucial moments in the game where Cincinnati’s offense fell short.

This boom-or-bust style got them to this point, but any team that wishes to follow this path (including Cincinnati next year) will have to carefully evaluate the costs. Counting the playoffs Burrow was sacked 70 times this season, the third most of any quarterback in NFL history. The fact that he was able to remain standing and functional to the very end is a remarkable achievement, though it’s hard not to wonder how much he was impacted down the stretch of this game by the leg injury he suffered in one of the second-half sacks.

But the fact is that it did almost work for the Bengals. Putting up 20 points on offense isn’t a performance to celebrate, but it isn’t a disappointment either. If their offensive line had been simply bad in this game rather than historically atrocious, the outcome could easily have swung the other direction. And with lots of salary cap space to work with, the Bengals have an opportunity to retool the line and run the offense back next year, maybe with a bit more balance.

Stars in the LA Sky

The Rams approach to team-building has been fairly obvious for a while now. They have gone all-in on a handful of superstar players, paying huge costs in both draft picks and cap space to lock up a handful of the best in the league and counting on them to overcome their lack of depth. And on Super Bowl Sunday this strategy paid off big time, as the biggest names on the Rams stepped up in the biggest moments to win them this championship.

Cooper Kupp and Matthew Stafford had their moments, and I’ll get to them in a little bit. But right now I want to keep the focus on the Rams defense. And, as always, there is only one place to start there. Aaron Donald is the best defensive player in the league, and he was the best player on the field last night. He should have won the game’s MVP, but he’ll have to settle for knowing he was the real key to the victory.

Everything that happened for the Rams defensively flowed from Donald. He finished with two sacks, an impressive performance for any player, but that stat line actually understates his impact on the game. For most of the first half he barely appeared on the stat sheet, thanks to a Bengals protection scheme that was geared almost entirely to stopping him. They sent two or three players his way on every pass-blocking snap, which engineered one-on-one matchups on the edges that gave players like Von Miller and Leonard Floyd opportunities to make plays in the backfield.

As the game wore on, the Rams began to change up their pass rush plan in order to take advantage of Cincinnati’s unusual protection designs. With multiple linemen so focused on Donald, that opened up easy rushing lanes on the inside for creative stunts and blitzes. And they have the perfect rusher to take advantage of these opportunities in Miller. He’s been one of the best in the league for a long time thanks to his flexibility and explosiveness, and when he comes around on an inside loop opposing linemen have essentially no time to adjust if they take even a single step out of position. He finished with two sacks as well, both on opportunities created by Cincinnati’s obsessive focus on Donald.

As the Rams found success with these pass-rushing schemes, the Bengals were forced to adjust to a more balanced protection setup. This meant that Donald suddenly found himself in true one-on-one situations, and he took full advantage. He registered two sacks in the second half, and he got the pressure that was as good as a sack on the fourth down play that decided the game. This came one play after he helped stuff Cincinnati’s running attempt on third and short, one of multiple plays in the game where he managed to stop a running back just by sticking out a single arm and using his impossible strength to halt a grown man in his tracks.

This is where I should mention the one superstar on the Rams who didn’t have a game he’ll want to remember. If Los Angeles had lost, much of the conversation that followed the game would have pointed the finger at their star cornerback Jalen Ramsey. He was in coverage on both of the huge plays for the Bengals I mentioned above, which isn’t what you want to see from a supposed shutdown cornerback.

It wasn’t the best game Ramsey has ever played, but the criticism of him is probably unwarranted. Those two plays came on a spectacular one-handed catch by Chase and on one of the worst missed offensive pass interference penalties I’ve ever seen on Higgins. And while Ramsey allowed a couple of deep opportunities, he was lights out slowing down the quick passing game underneath. He made multiple plays on slant routes where Burrow tried to get the ball out of his hand quickly, and his ability to take away these passing lanes gave the Los Angeles pass rush the time they needed to collapse the pocket.

Of course, this only worked because Ramsey could trust the pass rush to close in on most plays. He played extremely aggressively and only got burned two or three times, because those were the only plays where the receivers actually had time to generate separation from him. Perhaps the most underappreciated part of the performance by the Los Angeles front was the discipline they played with. Not only did they get pressure on Burrow, they did so without giving him any lanes to escape through. He is a quarterback who excels at making plays outside the pocket, but he rarely had a chance on Sunday night. The pass rush closed in from all sides, leaving Burrow nowhere to go and no hope of escape.

The Year of the Wide Receiver Continues

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how this postseason was demonstrating the value of the wide receiver position, and I’m happy to say that the Super Bowl only reinforced my argument. Obviously I’ve already mentioned the importance of the plays the Bengals made on the outside, but the real key to the game was on the Rams offense, which swung wildly based on the performance of its receivers.

After the first few drives, it looked like the Rams were going to run away with the game. They marched down the field with relative ease on two of their first four possessions, scoring a pair of touchdowns to put them up 13-3. They then proceeded to score only three points over their next seven drives, which is how they found themselves trailing in the final minutes of the game. 

It isn’t some great secret what changed. On the drive following their second touchdown, Matthew Stafford threw a short crossing route to Odell Beckham. Beckham had been their most effective receiver in the early part of the game, with a contested catch for a touchdown for their first score and a 35 yard reception on their second touchdown drive. He was open once again with room to run on this play, but a step before the ball arrived his knee gave out and he sprawled onto the turf.

Beckham was later diagnosed with a torn ACL that ended his Super Bowl with just those two impactful catches. And from that point on, the Rams offense was basically dead in the water. The Rams picked up one more first down on that drive following the injury before Stafford threw his first interception of the game. And from that point until their very last drive, Los Angeles could do basically nothing with the football.

There were other issues that I will get into below, but the lack of depth at receiver played a significant role in their offensive struggles. The Bengals came into the game with a clear plan to take away Cooper Kupp, and in the early part of the game that just meant they left lots of space for Beckham to run into. With him out—and with Robert Woods and Tyler Higbee already sidelined—there was no one left on the Rams to step into the gap.

Even Kupp struggled until the very end of the game. When Beckham went down, Kupp had two receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown. Over the next seven drives he had only two more receptions for another 22 yards, before his performance on the final drive earned him the game’s MVP award.

For 90% of the game the Bengals were able to contain the best receiver in the NFL. The cost of this was to leave them exposed for anyone else who might step up to beat them. We saw this same thing three weeks ago when the Chiefs manage to shut down Stefon Diggs, which resulted in 200 yards and four touchdowns from Gabriel Davis.

It is possible to take away an elite receiver. And if that’s all an offense has to offer in the passing game, that can be enough to slow down the entire offense. A series of freak injuries to a crucial position on the team that has been the healthiest in the league for the past several seasons was almost enough to cost them the game. The late-game heroics of Stafford and Kupp, combined with the solid consistency of the defense for the entire game, was just enough to overcome this obstacle.

The Erratic Quarterback Hits Big

I’ve been pretty critical of Matthew Stafford for a while now. It wasn’t that I thought he was a bad quarterback. I just didn’t think he was the quarterback to put the Rams over the top as many people seemed to. And in the end I was clearly wrong, though I still think this was less to do with Stafford than with a general misunderstanding of what “over the top” means in the modern NFL.

Stafford is the exact same quarterback he was in Detroit, and that was enough to win a Super Bowl with this Rams team. He found himself in an almost perfect situation with a proven defense, a star wide receiver, an elite offensive line, and a (schematically) intelligent head coach. And on the biggest stage of his career, he played the most Stafford game imaginable, in that I’m not entirely sure it was good but am almost certain it wasn’t bad, even if it did have plenty of bad moments I can point to.

Let’s start with the good. Stafford started extremely hot, with nine completions on ten passes over the opening four drives that resulted in two touchdowns. And he finished mostly strong as well, making several key plays on the final drive to get the Rams in the endzone. Most notable was the no-look pass he completed over the middle of the field to Kupp that will be on highlights for decades to come. This is the sort of spectacular play Stafford’s been making for years, the sort of play that only he and a few other people in the world can make, the sort that can make you overlook his shortcomings and believe he is truly one of the best in the league.

Now, for the bad. Stafford led the league with 17 interceptions this season, so it’s reasonable to start there. He’s always had a propensity for throwing the ball to the wrong team, and Sunday was no exception, even if his two interceptions weren’t the most egregious in the world.

The first came on a third and 14 play where simply throwing it away likely would have led to a Rams punt, and it was deep enough down the field that the end result was basically the same as if they had just punted the ball away. It’s the sort of chance I don’t mind a quarterback taking, even if it never had much hope of being completed with Van Jefferson showing little interest in playing the football. There’s always a chance that Jessie Bates might have panicked instead of turning to play the ball and picked up a pass interference penalty to give the Rams an easy 40 yards. It’s a play that looks bad on the stat sheet but really had no downside.

The other interception is a bit more complicated. The ball went off the hand of Ben Skowronek and set up the Bengals in tremendous field position, already sitting on a four-point lead and in Rams territory. Some heroics from Donald kept them from making it into the endzone and minimized the damage, but still this interception came close to sinking Los Angeles’s championship hopes.

So how much is Stafford to blame? It’s hard to say. People tend to excuse quarterbacks for interceptions that go off a receiver’s hand, ignoring that balls are far more likely to be deflected if they come in off-target. The throw certainly wasn’t in a place where Skowronek had a realistic shot to catch it, but that may have been as much due to a poor route by him as it was to Stafford.

This was in the stretch of the game when every pass he made seemed to come in off the mark. And this certainly shouldn’t be a surprise for a quarterback who has struggled with accuracy his entire career. But also at times it seemed like his receivers weren’t hitting their marks. Some were clearly on Stafford, like the miss of Jefferson wide open in the endzone on the final drive. Others might be easy to write off as a product of replacement level targets.

It was an uneven night for Stafford, as it’s been an uneven career. But he made the plays they needed him to make down the stretch, the plays that Jared Goff certainly wouldn’t have made in his place. I’ll still fight tooth and nail if people start trying to put Stafford into a Hall of Fame conversation, but there’s no question I was wrong about him being a crucial piece on a Super Bowl team.

Sean McVay Blew It, And Then He Didn’t

The last section of my Super Bowl preview addressed my worries about the two coaching staffs in this game, so it’s good to circle back here again, especially after one of the most frustrating performances I’ve seen from a coach in a long time. Three years after his offense got absolutely suffocated in the Super Bowl against the Patriots, McVay nearly let it happen again, and was only bailed out by a complete reversal of his gameplan in the final minutes.

Cincinnati’s defense came out with an excellent plan for slowing down the Rams. As I mentioned above they focused on Kupp in the passing game, sending multiple defenders his way to keep him in check. They followed a similar blueprint to the one they used against Kansas City two weeks ago, relying on coverage to frustrate the quarterback and rarely sending extra pressure up front. They sacked Stafford a couple of times, but for the most part he had a clean pocket to work from the entire night, and just didn’t have anywhere to go with the football.

Even more impressive was what Cincinnati did against the running game. With so many defenders dropping back into coverage, you would expect them to be a little weak in the box. But they came with a plan for that as well. They had a good feel for the Rams snap count that allowed them to shift their front right before the snap, messing up the blocking rules for the Rams offensive line. And at the back end their linebackers and safeties filled aggressively whenever they saw run, charging downhill to make plays in the backfield.

This approach allowed the Bengals to essentially erase the Los Angeles running game. If you just look at traditional runs by running backs the Rams finished with 19 carries for 30 yards. Three different running backs saw carries, and none of them averaged even two yards per attempt. The Rams running game was absolutely suffocated from the start of the game to the end.

And yet, even as Cincinnati proved over and over again that there was nothing to be gained by running against them, the Rams didn’t give up. As troubling as the 30 yards stat was from the paragraph above, the 19 attempts were the real issue. The running game wasn’t working at all, but McVay remained stubbornly committed to it, regularly throwing away plays and sticking his offense in disadvantageous situations on second and third down.

It was frustrating to watch an offense that is capable of so much creativity be rendered so bland by their own doing. There are definitely ways to counter Cincinnati’s gameplan, and for most of the game the Rams simply didn’t do them. On their second touchdown drive they found success with play action to take advantage of the aggressive fills from the Bengals back seven. They got Kupp wide open in the endzone with a simple play fake. And then they didn’t come back to that for most of the remainder of the game.

It's possible that the injury to Beckham scared McVay away from leaning more on his passing game. But even if he didn’t trust his other receivers, slamming the ball for no gain into the middle of the line of scrimmage was hardly a good alternative.

The best solution was the one they didn’t figure out until the final drive of the game. The Rams offense is typically built around a lot of tight formations, using congestion to confuse defenses to create running lanes and open receivers. This works well when everything is running in perfect rhythm, but it doesn’t work when you lack receivers who can play with precision and when the defense is a step ahead of you.

The entire game the tight formations of the Rams fed directly into what Cincinnati was trying to do defensively. It allowed them to play light boxes to entice Los Angeles into running, while still keeping defenders close enough to come down hard in support. It allowed them to send multiple defenders to Kupp at every opportunity, robbing him of one-on-one matchups where his route-running is so deadly. And once the Rams were down to the bottom of their receiver depth chart, their ability to create confusion backfired, as their receivers started tripping over each other just trying to get out on their routes.

It's both puzzling and frustrating that it took McVay almost an entire game to figure this out, but when he did he pointed the team towards the perfect solution. On the last drive, when they absolutely needed to move the ball, the Rams went away from what they typically do on offense. They spread the field with their wide receivers, robbing themselves of the ability to create easy separation with well-designed plays but giving their best players opportunities to create space on their own.

That’s ultimately what it came down to. For the first 55 minutes of the game, McVay refused to get out of his own way. It was only at the end when he decided to trust his players over his scheme that the Rams were able to overcome the issues that had plagued their offense all night. Kupp was let loose to work on the outside, and Stafford was freed to feed the ball to the only reliable target he had left. It was very nearly too little and too late, but in the end the Rams were able to do just enough offensively to make their defensive effort worth it.

2022 Super Bowl Preview

I have a lot to say about the Super Bowl, so let’s dispense with the preamble and jump right to it.

How We Got Here

Before we get to the game itself, I think we should take some time to look at how these two teams made it to this point. It’s always an interesting exercise, and it’s even more so this year, because I’m not sure two teams can come from more opposite directions than these two have. 

To really put it in perspective, let’s jump backwards three years. In early 2019 the Rams were preparing for a Super Bowl appearance, with a core led by Jared Goff and the young, exciting coach Sean McVay. In two years with McVay they had gone from four wins to thirteen wins, and they looked ready to compete at the highest level for a long time.

Things were a bit bumpier than expected for the Rams over the next three years, but they remained as committed to competing in the immediate-term as any team we have ever seen. The Rams haven’t had a first round pick since 2016, as they have traded away those selections for proven stars Brandin Cooks, Jalen Ramsey, and Matthew Stafford. Ramsey and Stafford are still crucial parts of this team, and they’ve added other impact veterans like Von Miller, Odell Beckham, and Leonard Floyd. Outside of Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp, basically none of the most important players on this team were drafted by the Rams.

Cincinnati has followed as different a path as possible. Three years ago they were on the verge of starting over, having parted finally ways with Marvin Lewis after sixteen years with him at the helm. At the time they may have internally entertained notions they could still win with a core built around Andy Dalton, AJ Green, and Geno Atkins, but everyone looking from the outside knew they were in store for a major rebuild.

I don’t think anyone expected the rebuild to happen quite this quickly however. They crashed hard in 2019, and they timed it perfectly to end up with the first pick the year the best quarterback prospect in the past decade was available. They got further luck when Joe Burrow went down early in his rookie year, leaving them in position to add Ja’Marr Chase to their offense.

Nailing these two selections was the key to their rebuild, but they weren’t the only crucial selections the Bengals made in this time. Jonah Williams and Tee Higgins aren’t stars, but they are solid contributors on an explosive offense. And the fact that so many of their most important players are on rookie contracts has given them the ability to build depth through free agency.

While the Rams are a top-heavy team supported by expensive superstars, the Bengals are built from a lot of young, cheap players supplemented by a supporting cast of smart veteran additions. Not all of these moves have worked out—Trae Waynes and Riley Reiff have both been stifled by injuries—but they have had the flexibility to make so many moves that they could weather a couple of misses, as they’ve built a defensive core quickly with players like Trey Hendrickson, DJ Reader, Chidobe Awuzie, and Mike Hilton.

If you had told anyone three years ago the Rams would be playing in the Super Bowl in 2022, they would have rolled their eyes and told you that was the most obvious prediction imaginable. If you had told them they’d be facing the Bengals, they would have laughed in your face. The contrast in these two teams is an exciting reminder that there are multiple paths to success in the NFL, and should give other teams plenty of possibilities as they try to map out their futures to reach this point.

 

Aaron Donald vs No One

The best player on the field on Sunday will be Donald. He has a case for being the best player in the NFL right now, and when you look at his career as a whole, he might be one of the five greatest players in the history of football. This clearly isn’t news, but it bears repeating as much as possible. He can single-handedly destroy an opposing offense, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to do so against the Bengals.

I honestly struggle to think of a bigger mismatch in the entire NFL than Donald going against Cincinnati’s interior offensive line. The Bengals have one of the worst pass-protecting units in the NFL, and its weakest point is right in the middle, where Donald does his best work. Cincinnati surrendered the third-most sacks of any team in the league this year, and just three weeks ago they gave up nine in a single game to Tennessee. Most of these came up the middle, including three to Jeffrey Simmons playing the same role in the Titans defense that Donald does in the Rams.

I’m not really sure how the Bengals line hopes to do anything to slow down Donald. They can send two blockers his way, but Donald faces more double-teams than any other player in the league, and two competent NFL linemen are usually not enough to stop him, much less what Cincinnati has to offer. They can send three players his way, and hope that their tackles can hold up totally isolated against Miller and Floyd on the edge. And even then, I’m not sure three of Cincinnati’s best will be more than just speedbumps to Donald.

Donald is going to spend most of this game in the backfield. He’ll blow up their running game, and he will harass Burrow from the opening snap to the final whistle. I’d honestly be tempted just to send one blocker his way, because I’m not sure a second or a third really adds that much marginal value. He’s going to get pressure on the quarterback, and Burrow will likely spend another day picking himself up off the ground.

That’s where things could get interesting though. Maybe I am overthinking this, but in a weird way I think there’s a chance Cincinnati’s weakness on the interior of the offensive line may make them the perfect team to face Donald. Because ordinary offenses are completely thrown off when their line breaks down against such a superhuman force. But for Cincinnati, a defensive tackle running untouched into the backfield is pretty much just another day in the office.

The key to all of this is Burrow. Part of the reason an interior pass rush is so effective is the mental strain it places on the quarterback. Edge pressure strikes unexpected, but interior pressure is right there in front of the passer. He sees it the entire way, and after a few series of watching someone like Donald charge into the backfield, most quarterbacks get flustered and begin to make mistakes.

Burrow is great at a lot of things, but where he really separates himself from most NFL quarterbacks is his sheer indifference to pressure. He is the heir to the Brett Favre/Ben Roethlisberger/Andrew Luck mantle of “I’m going to hold the ball as long as I want to, and I don’t care how many players are draped over me”. As the game wore on against Tennessee and the hits piled up on top of him, he really didn’t change his play style at all. He stood in the pocket, he scrambled to buy himself time, and he attacked down the field even as everything was collapsing around him.

Donald and Burrow are going to become well acquainted on Sunday. And Donald might just find one of the few quarterbacks who is not bothered by that at all. The sacks will still disrupt drives and knock the Bengals offense off schedule, but Burrow isn’t going to start throwing the ball into the dirt just to get it out of his hand.

 

How Healthy Are They

The Super Bowl is the game everyone plays their entire career trying to get to, and no one wants to miss it for any reason. Injuries that would typically sideline a player in the regular season are pushed through, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Every team enters the Super Bowl banged up, and this year is no exception, as both the Bengals and the Rams have key players who may be limited on Sunday.

Andrew Whitworth

The clearest strength on the Rams roster is their pass protection. After a couple of down years they are back to the elite unit that took them to the Super Bowl three seasons ago, and that more than any change at quarterback or addition of flashy players is why they have found their way back in 2022.

Whitworth has been the rock of this unit that entire time, somehow still holding down his quarterback’s blind side at the age of forty. But he suffered a knee injury in the first round of the playoffs and missed their victory over Tampa Bay the following week. And even though he made it back onto the field against San Francisco, there were moments where he still looked limited by the knee.

An extra couple weeks of rest will help, but going against Trey Hendrickson will not. Stafford is extremely good at attacking blitzing defenses, but he can be thrown off by four-man rushes that don’t open space in the secondary for him to target. The Bengals are one of the least blitz-happy teams in the league, and I expect they will back off from that even more this week, leaning on their front four on almost every play to beat the Rams offensive line. The key matchup will be between the best two players on these units, and anything less than full strength from Whitworth could spell trouble for this offense.

CJ Uzomah

The star head-to-head matchup on the other side of the ball is on the outside, where Chase and Ramsey will likely spend much of the day facing each other down and fighting for balls in the air. It will be a fascinating matchup to watch, as Ramsey is one of the few cornerbacks who has the physicality to bother Chase, while Chase is a rare receiver who may be able to run by Ramsey over the top.

Cincinnati has another good young receiver in Higgins, but like Chase he plays mainly on the perimeter of the field, using his size and his ball skills to work along the sidelines. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best way to attack the Rams. Ramsey controls things on one side of the field, and while they have some vulnerabilities opposite him, the real weakness of this defense is in the middle.

The middle of the Los Angeles defense was an issue even before they lost both their starting safeties at the beginning of the playoffs. Eric Weddle has performed as well as can be expected for someone who hasn’t played football in two years, and Taylor Rapp might make it back from his concussion to play in the Super Bowl. But there are still gaps to be found in the space patrolled by the Rams linebackers and safeties. The question is whether the Bengals have anyone to exploit that.

Normally the answer would be Uzomah. He’s never put up big numbers, but he’s been a reliable target over the middle, and this is the sort of game where he’d be an invaluable relief option when the pocket starts collapsing on Burrow. But he suffered a sprained MCL early in the game against Kansas City, an injury that typically takes at least four weeks to recover from.

I expect he will try to make it onto the field on Sunday, but even if he does he will likely be limited. If he can’t contribute, that puts increased pressure on the other Bengals weapons in this part of the field. The key player may be Tyler Boyd. He’s gotten lost some as the younger receivers have taken over the Bengals offense, but he has a couple of 1000 yard seasons in his career, and he has the skills and savvy needed to exploit the weakest part of the Rams defense.

The Erratic Quarterback

Not long after I started this blog, I wrote a post that tried to draw a line between two groups of quarterbacks, one of which I named “game managers” and the other “erratic quarterbacks”. The basic premise of my argument was that if the goal is to win a Super Bowl, you are in better hands with the high volatility provided by an erratic quarterback than with the steady, middling performance of a game manager. Someone like Alex Smith or Kirk Cousins can carry you to a solid record through the regular season, but to pull off three or four straight wins against playoff caliber teams you need a higher level of play they simply can’t access.

But there are other quarterbacks out there who swing between more extreme outcomes, and if the right pieces align these quarterbacks can run off a string of excellent performances to carry their team to a title. At the time the two examples I named were Eli Manning and Joe Flacco, but at the very end I threw out another name as an example of an erratic quarterback with the upside to win a championship if he ever got a better supporting cast: Matthew Stafford.

Eight years have passed since I wrote that, and I have had time to reevaluate this take. And while it may have been an oversimplification, I think there is still a measure of truth to it. We’ve seen quarterbacks like Cousins, Derek Carr, and Ryan Tannehill regularly flame out early in the postseason, while quarterbacks like Nick Foles and Jimmy Garoppolo have made deep runs. And now we can add Stafford to the list, as he’s finally in a situation where getting hot at the right time actually matters.

The Stafford experience with the Rams has predictably been a roller coaster this year. For the first few weeks his name was front and center in the MVP conversation, as the Rams got off to a strong start to the season and he looked like he was providing the boost they had hoped for when they surrendered two first-round picks to add him. But the Rams hit bumps along the road, going winless in November and dropping out of the running for the top seed in the NFC. And Stafford was just as crucial to these struggles as he was to their early-season successes. After throwing only four interceptions over the first eight games, he three thirteen over the remaining nine, finishing tied for the league lead in that category.

Most people were skeptical of the Rams headed into the playoffs. But the thing is, this is exactly who Stafford has been his entire career. He is capable of sensational, high-level plays, stepping up in the most important situations. He will also make some of the most excruciating mistakes a quarterback can make.

You don’t even have to look outside this postseason to find examples of both. Against the Buccaneers he made maybe the best play of the postseason as he stood his ground in the face of the blitz and found Cooper Kupp down the field in range for the winning field goal. A week later he led a sensational comeback over the 49ers, one that likely would have been dead in the cradle if Jaquiski Tartt hadn’t dropped an interception that was basically a punt.

I’ve seen enough from Stafford to know not to have any expectations in one direction or the other on Sunday. He could play a sensational game and run away with MVP. He could play excellently on 90 percent of snaps and then absolutely kill his team on the other 10 percent. Or he could fall completely flat out of the gate and kill the Rams before they can even get going.

I’m less sure what to make of Burrow at this point. He hasn’t done enough to convince me that he is one of the true elites of the league, but his performance over the past two months certainly has me leaning that way. His stats from this season look like those of an erratic quarterback, but he’s a young player coming off of a serious injury, and there’s an easy excuse to ignore the tumultuous early part of the season.

Either quarterback is capable of putting together a sensational performance on Sunday. Stafford has a better supporting cast and is going against a less dangerous defense, and he has performed better than Burrow so far in the postseason. But the danger with an erratic quarterback is the constantly lurking possibility of getting him on a bad day at the worst time. And of the two, I think Stafford is much more likely to fall flat on his face on the biggest stage.

 

Who Chokes First

Trying to judge NFL head coaches is a difficult exercise. So much of what they do happens behind the scenes, and the parts we do see often lack very important context. It’s hard to say that either of these coaches is bad at his job, as they both have their teams on the precipice of glory. They clearly are doing some things right to get their teams this far. It just so happens that the parts of their jobs we can directly observe are where they struggle the most.

Let’s start with McVay, since he’s been around for a while and is a more known quantity. For years now he’s been the go-to example of a young offensive genius that is revolutionizing the game, and while this has become a bit of a cliché at this point, there is some truth to it. McVay’s ability to consistently produce good-to-excellent offensive production with a variety of schemes and a rotating cast of players suggests that he really does have a special understanding of what makes offensive football work.

It's just unfortunate then that he doesn’t trust himself or his offense. That’s the only possible interpretation of his consistent non-aggression in crucial fourth-down situations. For years now McVay has been one of the most conservative coaches in the league while also carrying a reputation for being a bold, innovative force. The contradiction is baffling, if not unique, as his division-mates Kliff Kingsbury and Kyle Shanahan also regularly throw opportunities away.

At some point in this game the Rams are going to face a fourth and short. And in all likelihood, McVay will choose to give the ball to the other team. Time will tell how costly a decision that will be, but it’s something that has to be in the back of the mind for every Rams fan headed into the game.

Zac Taylor has some of the same game management issues, but of far bigger concern is his play-calling. He’s managed to build an offense that plays to the strengths of his young stars and to get them up to NFL speed in a hurry, an impressive feat for any coach. But he remains frustratingly conservative when it comes to actually trusting his players to make the plays he knows they are capable of making.

We need only to look back at the AFC Championship Game against Kansas City to see what I’m talking about. In that game, their offense seemed to fall into a frustratingly consistent rhythm:

1^st Down: Run the ball for virtually no gain.

2^nd Down: Well we don’t want to face third and long, so we have to run the ball again.
3^rd Down: Burrow does something sensational and crazy to convert.
1^st Down, again: Well that was nuts. Let’s calm things down by running the ball for no gain.

It was bad enough that Tony Romo basically pleaded with Taylor on the broadcast to open things up and stop running when there was nothing to be gained. Do you understand how conservative you have to be for an NFL broadcaster to call you out for it? That sort of approach almost got them run off the field by the Chiefs, and it could doom them if they try it again against the Rams. Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase are the ones who got them to this point. It’s time for Taylor to let them take over.

 

What Will Actually Happen

When the championship round wrapped up and I first started thinking about the two teams that would be facing off in the Super Bowl, my instinct was to pick the Bengals. But the more time that goes by, the more I have begun to question why I felt that way. On paper the Rams are clearly the superior team. They’re better than the Bengals at every position except defensive back and maybe wide receiver and quarterback. They were the better team on both offense and defense during the regular season by most metrics. Just running the numbers, this seems like a game that could be pretty one-sided.

This feels like a case of numbers versus the eye test, but I’m not sure what the eye test is really saying at this point. The Rams have had a slightly ugly path through the playoffs, but Cincinnati’s has been, if anything, uglier. Burrow seems like he has played better than Stafford during this run, but Stafford is way ahead by every statistical measure. At a certain point I have to just toss aside whatever opinion I had coming out of the last round of games and face cold reality.

That isn’t to say there’s no path for the Bengals to win this. Their defense played extraordinarily against Kansas City in the second half, and the formula they used to do so should work well against the Rams too. They dropped back into coverage and let a quarterback with a tendency to get impatient sit in the pocket until he felt he had no choice but to try something superhuman. It worked on Patrick Mahomes, and it’s the exact same sort of strategy I’d use on Stafford.

I don’t think they can win a shootout. I tried to justify Burrow as the perfect quarterback to face down Donald, but a couple times the Rams pass rush is simply going to win. If this Rams team starts firing on all cylinders offensively, the Bengals won’t have the luxury of letting possessions go to waste. And between Burrow’s proclivity for sacks and Taylor’s passive attitude, I don’t think we can count on the Bengals to score every time they have the ball.

But if they can frustrate the Rams offense, Cincinnati has the ability to cause real problems for this defense. The depth of their receiver group will be key, as they attack a Rams secondary that was thin even before it was blasted by injuries. Higgins has had an up-and-down playoffs, and Boyd has been invisible at times. They will need them to play flawless games to take advantage of the opportunities they will find while Ramsey follows Chase.

That’s the tough part about this for Cincinnati. Because while I can definitely see a path to victory for the Bengals, it requires multiple different pieces to align at the same time. If even one of these pieces falls short, the Rams will be in position to take this game even with a middling performance.

Maybe my gut is rebelling because it just feels wrong to align myself with Stafford. I’ve seen him throw away too many crucial games to feel comfortable vouching for him now. But I’ve also seen him try to throw away games this year and still emerge with the victory because this Rams team is good enough to cover up his lapses.

So here’s how I think it will actually play out. The Bengals will jump out to a lead in the first quarter as they get off to a hot start offensively. The Rams will take a series or two to get it going, but once they figure out what the Bengals are doing defensively they will be able to march down the field more-or-less at will. They will have the lead at halftime and will never surrender it from there. Stafford will throw at least one interception and will have a couple more heart-racing moments, but any attempt at a Bengals comeback will fall just short.

Final Score Prediction: Los Angeles Rams 31 – Cincinnati Bengals 27