Month: January 2023

The Pittsburgh Steelers played the Oakland Raiders five years in a row in the playoffs in one of the best rivalries in NFL history.

No two teams have done that since.

In the last three years, the teams played in AFC title game and the winner won the Super. The first game was the Immaculate Reception game in 1972 but the Steelers lost to the Dolphins the next week. In 1973, the Raiders beat the Steelers, but also lost to the Dolphins. The Steelers wound up winning three of the five games.

This history is relevant because the Bengals and Chiefs play Sunday in the AFC title game for the second year in a row.

They appear to be the two best teams in the AFC and nobody will be surprised if they meet again next year. They are likely to be the top two seeds again next year although Buffalo might rebound after its one-sided loss to the Bengals last week.

It would be unusual in the salary cap era for two teams to remain on top.

But both have young quarterbacks and Joe Burrow is on his rookie deal and Patrick Mahomes has signed a long term deal so it will be interesting to see how  long they can keep it going.

And since both seem likely to continue to dominate their divisions they will keep meeting in the regular season every year.

That will be the game of the regular season each year.

Get the popcorn ready. It could turn out to be one of the best rivalries in NFL history.

Three of the four teams in the conference title games last year are returning this year.

The Kansas City-Cincinnati game is a rematch of Cincinnati’s 27-24 victory over the Chiefs last year. San Francisco lost t the Rams 20-17, but Rams didn’t make the playoffs this year and the Eagles have the top seed.

These two games will be critical for the reputations of the two coaches and quarterbacks who advance to the Super Bowl.

Patrick Mahomes has made it to the AFC title game five consecutive years. And made it to the Super Bowl twice, winning one and losing one. He didn’t play his rookie year so he has made it every year as a starter. He has already lost three times to Joe Burrow in the last 13 months so he would probably be the underdog even if he didn’t have a high ankle sprain.

Andy Reid has a 20-16 record in the playoffs with three Super Bowl appearances and one win.

Burrow is in his third season and made the Super Bowl in his second year last season but lost to the Rams.

Zac Taylor is in his fourth season as the Bengals coach and is 5-1 in playoffs with one Super Bowl loss.

Jalen Hurts is in his third season and his second as a starter and is in his first conference title game with a shot at his first Super Bowl.

Nick Sirianni is in just his second year as the Eagles and is aiming for his first Super Bowl appearance.

Mike Shanahan is in his sixth year as 49ers coach with a 6-2 playoff record and this is his third appearance in a conference title game in the last four years. He has one Super bowl appearance and lost. He also was the offensive coordinator in Atlanta in the 28-3 Super Bowl game against the Patriots.

Brock Purdy is only the fifth rookie to start a conference title game. The other four lost so he is trying to become the first rookie to make it to the Super Bowl as a starter.

The NFL is overdue for some good matchups and exciting finishes in the playoffs.

It didn’t get them in the divisional round, which is often called the best weekend of the season. but was disappointing this year.

The two lowest seeds who were big underdogs, Giants and Jaguars, lost as expected. The Giants were routed by the Eagles and while the Jaguars kept it close because Patrick Mahomes played the second half on one leg, they were guilty of two late turnovers and allowed backup Chad Henne to put together a 98-yard drive in the first half. They also didn’t put much pressure on Mahomes  when he was hobbling in the second half. 

The two Sunday games were expected to be classics but the Bengals dominated the Bills and the Cowboys made too many mistakes against the 49ers. Two picks by Dak Prescott were devastating. The Cowboys have now gone 27 years in a row without making the conference title game with Jerry Jones as the owner. Jones should hire a GM, but he likes running the show. 

The Bills were the underdogs because the Bengals were missing three offensive linemen but the backups blocked well and Joe Burrow got the ball out quickly as he picked apart the Bills defense. The Bills have lost in the playoffs now four years in a row and they may need to give Josh Allen a better supporting cast..

Burrow now takes on Patrick Mahomes, who will likely be limping because of his high ankle sprain. Burrow has already beaten Mahomes three times in the last 13 months so he could be on his way to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. The 49ers are in the conference title game the third time in the last four years. They are 1-1 in the previous two games.

The Eagles, the only top seed left, will host the 49ers in a duel between Jalen Hurts and rookie Brock Purdy.

The NFL hopes these two matchups will be .the best of the playoffs. So far, the playoffs have not been memorable.

In 2004, the San Diego Chargers selected Eli Manning with the first pick in the draft, but he never played a down for them.

Eli was adamant he wouldn’t play for the Chargers so they traded him to the Giants, who gave them Philip Rivers, the player they drafted with the fourth pick.

Not much has changed for the Chargers except they moved to Los Angeles to share a stadium with the Rams since then. They haven’t appeared in a Super Bowl since 1994. It was their only appearance and they were routed by the 49ers.

Eli went on to win two Super Bowls for the Giants, while Rivers put up a lot of good numbers but never made it to the Super Bowl.

This is some history that Justin Herbert needs to study and understand that if he spends his career with the Chargers, he will probably be like Rivers. Put up good numbers but never make it to the Super Bowl. There is even a word for the Charger mishaps – “Chargering.” The Spanos family has a history of falling short.

After the 27-0 meltdown against the Jaguars and the decision to keep Coach Brandon Staley, it is obvious the Chargers are still spinning their wheels. They only fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, the grandson of Vince, and quarterback coach Shane Gray. They should have cleaned house and gotten rid of Staley and GM Tom Telesco.

It should have been obvious after two years that Staley isn’t a good fit for the Chargers. To start with, he’s a defensive coach and they should have an offensive guru with an asset like Herbert.

And Staley’s management of the game is suspect. He tends to go for it too often on fourth down and last year his timeout with 38 seconds left in overtime of a tie game against the Raiders in the season finale when a tie would have put both teams in the playoffs helped hand the Raiders a win and knock them out of the playoffs.

This year, he played his starters in a meaningless season finale and lost Mike Williams for the Jaguars game when he broke a bone in his back.

 And Daniel Popper in The Athletic detailed all the mistakes they made on both sides of the ball once they got the 27-0 lead.

With less than three minutes left they had a 3^rd and 1 at their 27 and Lombardi sent in two plays – an interior run or a jet sweet if the Jaguars were stacked against the run. They were so Herbert called the jet sweep. Lombardi sent it in even though they had a negative 21 yards using it four times in the past. They also had a backup at the position who missed the switch in plays and wasn’t looking for the ball. The exchange was fumbled and the Chargers had to punt and the Jaguars scored to make it 27-7.

In the second half, the Jaguars used a dozen no huddle plays compared to three in first half and the Chargers didn’t adjust. The plays averaged 10.5 yards a play and three completions of 20 yards or more including a 39 yard touchdown pass against a busted coverage.

Then there was the undisciplined play as Joey Bosa was called for two unsportsmanlike penalties. He threw his helmet after the second one when officials missed a false start by Jawaan Taylor as Trevor Lawrence threw a touchdown pass. Bosa’s second penalty gave Jaguars a chance to go for two and Lawrence jumped over the top for the conversion and the Jaguars won with a field goal on final play.

In the end, the Chargers lost despite having a 5-0 edge in turnovers. Teams with that margin were 142-4-1 since 2000 and yet the Chargers lost.

Staley seems to be almost oblivious to the way it looked at his Wednesday press conference.

“I have a lot of confidence in the way we’ve done things for two years,” he said.

Huh? Is he serious?

Meanwhile, Herbert has to think about whether he should stay with Chargers. Unless they give him a Deshaun Watson contract — $230 million for five years – he should make a Kirk Cousins move and get franchised a couple of times and then leave as a free agent and sign with a team that has a Super Bowl shot..

As long as the Spanos family owns the team, Herbert is likely to be the next Rivers in a town in which the team plays second fiddle to the Rams.

The dynamic of the divisional games on Saturday and Sunday will be very different.

On Saturday, the two bye teams, Kansas City and Philadelphia, host Jacksonville and the Giants will be heavily favored to advance to the conference title games.

The question is whether the Chiefs and Eagles will be overconfident or whether the Jaguars and Giants will already consider their season a success.

Jaguars coach Doug Pederson was asked if his team is playing with house money and he said, among other things, that since the Jaguars are in the final four, “Whether we win or lose, our season was a success from that standpoint.”

That is true. Even if the Jaguars lose their season is a success. But Kansas City has already been in the last four AFC title games and two Super Bowls the last four years. Their mindset is Super Bowl or bust.

On the other hand, since week 11, Trevor Lawrence and Mahomes have had virtually identical stats.  Both are 7-1, Lawrence has completed 66 per cent of his passes and has 16 touchdown passes and six picks. He was 4 and 4 in both categories last week as the Jaguars overcame a 27-0 deficit against the Chargers. Mahomes has completed 67 per cent of his passes and is 16-5 in TD passes and picks. 

It will not be a surprise if both the Jaguars and Giants cover the spread. The question is whether either can pull off a big upset.

On Sunday, it is a different story with both the Bills and 49ers favored by less than a touchdown against the Bengals and Cowboys.

The Bills and Bengals, of course, had their last game called because of the Damar Hamlin injury. The Bengals, meanwhile, scored a touchdown on their first drive in the Hamlin game but now have issues on their offensive line.

The Cowboys haven’t been in conference title game since winning their last Super Bowl in 1995. Meanwhile, the 49ers are trying to make it with rookie Brock Purdy, who is 7-0 but has faced only one top ten defense.

Nobody will be surprised if both games Sunday are close.

Super, it wasn’t.

The NFL tried to promote its expanded three day wild card weekend as Super, but it featured sloppy play, bad coaching and good teams often not bringing  their A game.

The weekend ended Monday night with that was expected to be an exciting game with Tom Brady facing the Cowboys, but Brady looked old and the Cowboys routed the Bucs 31-14 for their first road playoff win in decades. Now Brady has to decide whether to return next year at age 46.

And the results didn’t have much of an impact on the road to the Super Bowl. The two top seeds, Kansas City and Philadelphia, had byes and the four other leading contenders – Dallas, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Buffalo –all won.

All the wild card teams except for the Giants lost. The other survivor was Jacksonville, which overcame a 27-0 deficit to beat the Chargers.

As expected the two seventh round seeds both lost to the second seeds. Miami lost to Buffalo and the Seahawks lost to the 49ers, the hottest team in the league who will now host the Cowboys.

But Miami made it a closer game than expected, thanks to mistakes by the Bills, who weren’t at the top of their game. As it turned out, Miami made mistakes of its own on the last drive, including failing to get a 4^th and one in time and getting called for delay of game. Seattle made it a game for a half before the 49ers pulled away as rookie quarterback Brock Purdy continues to show he can lead a good team.

The Chargers had a 5-0 edge in turnovers but lost to the Jaguars, a loss that cost the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach their jobs although head coach Brandon Staley survived even though the team was undisciplined. Joey Bosa got two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, including throwing his helmet to the ground after the officials missed Jawaan Taylor’s false start that should have nullified a touchdown pass. 

Baltimore, the sixth seed in the AFC, was down to its third quarterback but also made a game of it against Cincinnati, the third seed. Baltimore was the victim of its own mistakes. Tyler Huntley went high instead of low on a quarterback sneak at the goal line and the Bengals knocked the ball out of his hands and it was returned 98 yards for a touchdown as the officials missed a block in the back. And at the end the Ravens tried to score without leaving time on the clock, botched the clock management and didn’t score

The wins by Buffalo and Cincinnati sets up the best divisional game of next weekend,  but the shaky performances by both teams raises the question of whether they both can bring their A game next week.

Meanwhile, top seed Kansas City will be favored over the Jaguars. The Jaguars lost to Kansas City in the regular season to fall to 3-7 but then went 7-1 and are now 10-8. After their comeback win over the Chargers, they can’t be counted out.

The Giants win over the Vikings wasn’t a major surprise because the Vikings had won 11 one score games during the regular season and they don’t have a good defense and the Giants exploited that.

The Giants also played well on defense to neutralize Justin Jefferson and even though Kirk Cousins played well, he had a Cousins moment when he threw short on fourth-and-8 on the final play. The Giants will now go to Philadelphia where they will be big underdogs.

The league will probably keep calling the wild card weekend Super, but the format of matching the second seed against the seventh seed is not a formula for good games.

More is not always better.

That is the lesson the NFL is learning this weekend. They knew adding a seventh playoff team to each conference would increase their revenue by adding two playoff games to the schedule and the NFL is all about the bottom line.

But it doesn’t do much for the fans this wild card weekend.

The two seventh seeds, Miami and Seattle, figure to have little chance of beating the two seconds seeds, Buffalo and San Francisco. Miami’s quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is in the concussion program and backup Teddy Bridgewater has an ailing pinkie. That leaves Skylar Thompson to face Josh Allen. San Francisco has already beaten the Seahawks twice and are favored to do it a third time..

And even the sixth seeded Ravens in the AFC figure to have little chance against third seeded Cincinnati because Lamar Jackson has been out over a month.

That leaves three games that could be interesting – Chargers at Jacksonville, Dallas at Tampa Bay and the Giants at Minnesota.

 But those three games feature a third seed, two fourths and three wild card teams although there is a lot of buzz in Jacksonville because it will be the Jaguars first playoff game but it may not cause a lot of buzz around the league.

Still, the Chargers-Jacksonville winner probably goes to Kansas City next week.

Tampa Bay is an attraction because of Tom Brady and the Cowboys are always an attraction but neither team figures to make a Super Bowl run.

It’ll be interesting to see what the TV ratings will be for these six games. The NFL is not putting on much of a show for the fans on wild card weekend. 

Things will likely get more interesting next week when Cincinnati is likely to face Buffalo.

The final week of the regular season was a week to remember but not for the football.

What will be remembered is the way the medical personnel saved Damar Hamlin’s life when he suffered cardiac arrest. A truly inspiring story.

But when it comes to the football, the NFL once again didn’t handle a crisis well. There are still denials but it appears the league’s first reaction was to try to finish the game. We may never know exactly what happened but it was obvious the players weren’t going to play. Technically, the players can’t refuse to play but under the circumstances there was no way the NFL could threaten them.

And once the game was cancelled, the league decided that if the Bengals lost a second time to the Ravens, they would have a coin flip for home field advantage in the playoffs. The Bengals weren’t thrilled about that but beat the Ravens anyway.

And the final weekend of the season was anti climactic. The NFL is learning seven teams in each conference making the playoffs is at least one too many. They don’t have seven good teams in each conference.

Going into the final week, New England, Miami and Pittsburgh were alive in the battle for the AFC seventh spot. Buffalo knocked out New England and Miami clinched by beating the Jets. The Steelers beat the Browns but were eliminated.

The Steelers were the real winners. They got to end the season with a win and not have to go to Buffalo where the Dolphins are a huge underdog. It didn’t matter which team got the seventh seed. All three had little chance in Buffalo.

Seattle got the seventh spot in the NFC when they beat the Rams to knock out the Lions, who then knocked out the Packers to hand the spot to the Seahawks

All the Seahawks won was a trip to San Francisco, which has beaten them twice.

And Philadelphia sewed up the top seed in the NFC by beating thtie Giants, who rested their quarterback.

The best game game Saturday night was the Jaguars beating the Titans and will host the Chargers Saturday night in what should be a good game except that the winner is likely to go to Kansas City.

The Chiefs figure to once again be in the AFC title game. If Buffalo also makes it, the game will be played at a neutral site. Buffalo is likely to play Cincinnati next in a game that will have a lot of drama.

Philadelphia and San Francisco figure to play in the NFC title game.

The NFL has never had the final week of the regular season resemble this one.

The concern about Damar Hamlin, who is sedated and in critical condition in a Cincinnati hospital after underdoing cardiac arrest on the field Monday night, has overshadowed what will happen on the field Saturday and Sunday.

Nobody knows if the Cincinnati-Buffalo game that was postponed when Hamlin was injured will even be played or whether the Bills players will be mentally ready to play their season finale at 1 p.m. against New England.

The weekend starts with two games on Saturday – Kansas City at Las Vegas at 4:30 and Tennessee at Jacksonville at 8:30. Both will be on ABC and ESPN.

The winner of the Tennessee Jacksonville game will win the AFC South and host a playoff game. Kansas City needed a victory over the Raiders and a loss by the Bills in one of their two games to get the No. 1 seed but nobody knows if the Bills will play their last two games. It is even uncertain if the Bills will be ready to play NewEngland Sunday. The Patriots need a victory to clinch the final AFC wild card spot.

The Sunday night game will feature Detroit at Green Bay and Green Bay can clinch a wild card spot with a win.

Baltimore and Cincinnati have both clinched playoff but the winner of their 1 pm. game may decide which one wins the division.

Philadelphia has lost its last two games with backup Gardner Minshew at quarterback but can still win the top seed with a victory over the Giants or a Dallas loss to the Commanders.

Once the games are played Sunday, the NFL will decide what happens next.

Never has the NFL dealt with so much uncertainty at the end of the year.

This is usually the most exciting time of the year for the NFL. The regular season is ending, and the playoffs are just a week away.

But all that seems trivial after Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest while making a tackle in the Buffalo-Cincinnati game Monday night on national television..

Medical personnel quickly revived him and he was rushed to the hospital where he remains sedated in critical condition.

Meanwhile, the game was postponed and it is uncertain if it will be played. It is also uncertain if the Bills regular season finale against the Patriots will be postponed. The Patriots can clinch the final wild card spot with a win if it is played Sunday. 

The Bills have clinched their division title and needed to win their final two games to clinch the top seed but that is the last things on the Bills’ minds these days.

The injury he suffered was another reminder of how dangerous it is for the players to play in the NFL and the risks they take.

It is believed the only player to actually die on the field because of heart problems was Chuck Hughes in 1971 while playing for the Lions against the Bears. It happened with about 62 seconds left and they finished the game but the NFL wasn’t then what it is today. His widow, Sharon, now 77, told NBC News she was very emotional when she saw Hamlin go down. She said she never blamed football for her husband’s death.

But Hamlin’s injury will raise more questions what the NFL can do to protect the players and whether parents even want their sons to play football. And many players suffer negative effects from playing decades after they leave theg game.

In the NFC, Philadelphia, which has lost two games with backup Garden Minshew at quarterback, can clinch the top seed with a win over the Giants or Dallas loss to the Commanders. Jalen Hurts may return for the Eagles.. Green Bay can clinch the final playoff spot by beating Detroit.

 The Jacksonville-Tennessee winner will win the AFC South and host a playoff game. Tennessee has lost six in a row after being 7-3 and is still alive.

But Hamlin’s injury has overshadowed the rest of the NFL season until the doctors determine if he will recover.