NFL Playoff Takeaways: Wild Card Round

Photo by Stephanie Scarbrough from the Associated Press

Playoff football!

The time when legends are made, and narratives, whether right or wrong, are etched into everyone’s brains forever.

Let’s get into the wild card round.

Texans defeat Chargers 32-12

Justin Herbert had a very good year, but an absolutely atrocious playoff game.

Now, I’m not going to use this game as a Herbert narrative.

I’ve been very clear that I think Justin Herbert is fine.

He’s a good QB, but he doesn’t wow me like he does everyone else.

But, he has now played two playoff games.

In the first one, he had one of the worst playoff collapses in NFL history, and in the other, he had a putrid game in another loss.

Like I said, I’m not going to use it.

But there are a lot of people who are much quicker to judge quarterbacks from playoff performances, and I’d like to see that energy here as well.

Don’t shy away from it just because he has the prototypical QB tools.

Ravens defeat Steelers 28-14

The concern for me with the Ravens was their offensive play calling.

Multiple times, they’ve been one of the best running teams and, multiple times, they’ve abandoned the run come playoff time to their own detriment.

So it was a joy to see Saturday night, with the game still 7-0 and the Steelers still hanging around, the Ravens got a touchdown drive where they ran the ball on every single play.

They wasted 8 minutes of clock and said “go ahead and try to stop us” and just kept going until the Steelers could show they could, which they never did.

They didn’t get cute. They didn’t get complicated.

They stuck to their identity.

Watch out…

Bills defeat Broncos 31-7

Bo Nix looked really good on the first drive opening script, and really good in the final drive of the half.

Other than that? The Broncos offense did nothing, Nix did nothing, and frankly, the offense didn’t let him do anything.

There are training wheels on rookie QBs, and then there’s whatever that was.

As for the Bills, they’re really good.

Not shocking there.

Eagles defeat Packers 22-10

Jordan Love’s absolute carelessness with the ball was, as expected, a detriment to the Packers chances, but the Eagles should have absolutely clobbered the Packers and simply never put them away.

The team is good. They started good. Then, things just slowed down and got sloppy and stale.

It’s hard to trust this Eagles team and yet, somehow, I still do?

But it’s hard to keep doing so.

Commanders defeat Buccaneers 23-20

The Commanders were on the road, without a great defense, and a rookie QB making his first ever playoff start.

What do you do to make things a little easier?

Shorten the game.

The Commanders ran 69 plays. The Bucs ran 44.

Drain clock, take care of the ball, and get out of there with a victory.

A perfect gameplan that was ran to perfection.

Rams defeat Vikings 27-9

Aaron Glenn, the Lions defensive coordinator, gave a blueprint to beating the Vikings.

Blitz, blitz, and blitz.

The Lions spent all night in week 18 pressuring Sam Darnold and, even though they only sacked him twice, they forced him to mistime throws and make careless mistakes and get off his game.

It’s safe to say the Rams noticed, as this time they pressured Darnold and sacked him 9 times.

Although, a lot of this was Darnold’s own fault for holding the ball forever.

Darnold was being touted as getting MVP votes this year and then, in the Vikings two most important games, absolutely laid an egg.

It was still a good year, but a reminder to not get too swept up in the spur of a moment.

It may just be a flash in the pan.