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What We Learned in the NFL’s Wild-Card Round
The Titans, the Vikings and the Seahawks all won on the road in a weekend that included two OT games and the exit of Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
NY Times by Benjamin Hoffman Jan. 6, 2020
It was a wild-card weekend that delivered on its name, and it set up a divisional round for next weekend that looks far different than most people predicted. Here’s the quickie summary:
Texans 22, Bills 19. Josh Allen beat himself up quite a bit in the aftermath of Buffalo’s loss. But the second-year QB may want to keep something in mind: According to Pro Football Reference, he was only the 3rd player in NFL history to have 250 or more passing yards and 90 or more rushing yards in a playoff game. The loss might be on his teammates as well.
Titans 20, Patriots 13. Derrick Henry’s running and Tennessee’s defense were enough to get the Titans past New England. But if they are to have a prayer against Baltimore next weekend, they will need a lot more from QB Ryan Tannehill, who completed just eight passes for 72 yards, and WR A.J. Brown, who had one catch for 4 yards.
Vikings 26, Saints 20. Highly visible because it came against New Orleans, TE Kyle Rudolph appeared to commit something akin to offensive PI on his game-winning TD catch, which made Saints fans cry foul. “There is contact by both players, but none of that contact rises to the level of a foul,” Al Riveron, the NFL’s SVP of officiating, said when asked about the play. “This is consistent with what we’ve done all year long; we left the ruling on the field. We let it stand.”
Seahawks 17, Eagles 9. The disappointment in Philadelphia was palpable, as Carson Wentz, who missed the previous two postseasons with injuries, was forced to leave with a concussion after attempting just four passes. Josh McCown gave it his best effort, but he could not keep up with Russell Wilson and Seattle.
While some Eagles players believed that Jadeveon Clowney’s hit on Wentz was a dirty play, the defensive end tried to make it clear that there was no intention to cause injury. “It was a bang-bang play,” he told reporters. “I don’t intend to hurt anybody in this league, let me just put that out there. I’ve been down the injury road; it’s not fun. My intention was not to hurt him. I was just playing fast.”
Here’s what we learned:
RBs are cool again. The most valuable player this weekend was Tennessee’s Derrick Henry. The supersize back rumbled over the Patriots for 204 yards and a TD, makubg up for QB Ryan Tannehill’s no-show. “When you can run it when the other team knows you’re gonna run it, that says a lot,” Coach Mike Vrabel said of Henry, whose big performance came on his 26th birthday.
Henry was not alone in reminding people of the impact a good RB can make. Dalvin Cook played a huge role in Minnesota’s upset over the Saints, totaling 130 yards from scrimmage and two TDs. Devin Singletary, a rookie out of Florida Atlantic, had 134 yards from scrimmage for Buffalo, yet lost thanks to a thrilling Houston comeback in which Duke Johnson provided two key blocks on a 2-point conversion, and then reeled off an 18-yard catch-and-run, on a 3rd-and-18 play, that kept a drive alive long enough for Deshaun Watson to win the game.
Marshawn Lynch had at least one more Beast Quake in him. Speaking of RBs, Lynch, who was retired as recently as two weeks ago, followed up his flying TD in a Week 17 loss to SF by powering his way into the end zone against Philadelphia on a play in which he appeared to be stopped by several defenders, multiple yards short of the goal line. While the run was not as lengthy as his famous Beast Quake against New Orleans in 2011, it provided a similar feeling of helplessness for his opponent and made a more convincing victory than the 17-9 final score showed.
Karma is not always instant. Way back in 2009, Josh McDaniels, then the head coach of the Denver Broncos, cut his team’s punter, Brett Kern. The Titans quickly snatched the promising 23-year-old off waivers. In 2017, eight seasons after McDaniels deemed him expendable, Kern earned his first trip to the Pro Bowl. On Friday he was named the NFL’s first-team All-Pro punter, and a day after that he got some sweet revenge on McDaniels, now the Patriots OC. Kern played a huge role in Tennessee’s come-from-behind victory, contributing four punts in the second half that gave NE an average starting position of their own 8-yard line. His last punt pinned the Patriots at the 1-yard line, all but sealing their fate.
There are no bad matchups in the playoffs. The NFL buried Buffalo-Houston in the Saturday afternoon time slot, then got burned when the Texans came back from a 16-0 deficit, eventually winning the weekend’s most exciting game in OT thanks to a Deshaun Watson play that will live forever on highlight reels.
The Vikings, written off by everyone in their matchup with the Saints, took the best shots New Orleans had to give. Kirk Cousins then engineered a beautiful game-winning drive in OT. When Cousins dropped a perfect 43-yard pass just over Adam Thielen’s shoulder to set up his game-winning, 4-yard TD throw to Kyle Rudolph, the QB shrugged off years of disappointment and mockery. The weekend’s “good” matchups could hardly compare to the “bad” ones.
They should make the whole team out of Taysom Hill. The sport of football owes Hill an apology for his singular performance in the wild-card round not having come in a win. The Saints’ Swiss Army knife completed a 50-yard pass to Deonte Harris, ran the ball four times for 50 yards, caught two passes for 25 yards and a TD, and was credited with a solo tackle on special teams. And because of the realities of how memory and highlights work, the performance will be largely forgotten by next weekend. Maybe if Hill can master punting or kicking by next season he won’t suffer this type of indignity again.
Life is rough for wild-card teams. As the lowest-seeded teams in the playoffs, the Titans and the Vikings were assigned the nearly impossible task of beating Tom Brady and Drew Brees on the road. Both teams delivered. Their reward? Tennessee will travel to Baltimore to face QB Lamar Jackson and the 14-2 Ravens, and Minnesota will travel to San Francisco to face defensive end Nick Bosa and the 13-3 49ers.
Las Vegas is expecting the divisional round to be far less exciting than the wild-card round: The 49ers are favored by 7 points over the Vikings, the Ravens are favored by 10 over the Titans, and the Chiefs are favored by 9.5 over the Texans. The closest line has the Packers favored by 3.5 points over the Seahawks.
The Weekend’s Top Performers
Top Passer: Deshaun Watson
It was not the most exciting weekend for QBs, with a grand total of six TD passes thrown in the four wild-card games (one of which was thrown by the above-mentioned Taysom Hill/Saints). Watson, however, stole the show by refusing to go down on a game-saving play in OT in which he spun out of two potential sacks before finding Taiwan Jones for a 34-yard catch-and-run, setting up a game-winning field goal in OT. DeAndre Hopkins said it all when asked about the play. “I hope everyone watched this today, but he’s amazing,” Hopkins told reporters. “You can’t put too many words on it.”
Top Runner: Derrick Henry
Minnesota’s Dalvin Cook scored one more TD, and Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch had a throwback game, but Henry, who was the NFL’s leading rusher this season, gets the nod as he was a one-man show in Tennessee’s upset over New England. In the second half of the game, when the Titans needed him most, Henry seemed to take the ball on every play, and the Patriots never found an answer for him.
Top Receiver: D.K. Metcalf
Minnesota’s Adam Thielen had one of the prettier catches you will ever see — and it set his team up to win in OT — but the Seahawks’ Metcalf ended up with a slightly better game thanks to an edge in receiving yards, and a wild TD in which he made the heads-up decision to get up and run before anyone touched him after he fell down making a catch near the end zone.
Next Week’s Schedule (all times EST)
Saturday
No. 6 Vikings at No. 1 49ers, 4:35 p.m., NBC. Favored: Niners
No. 6 Titans at No. 1 Ravens, 8:15 p.m., CBS. Favored: Ravens
Sunday
No. 4 Texans at No. 2 Chiefs, 3:05 p.m., CBS. Favored: Chiefs
No. 5 Seahawks at No. 2 Packers, 6:40 p.m., Fox. Favored: Packers