NFC’s best stacked 1-2 heading into playoffs
“This was an emotional change”, Pete Carroll announced after his Seattle Seahawks locked up the No1 seed in the NFC with six straight wins. “Another MVP performance by Aaron Rodgers”, hailed Mike McCarthy after his Green Bay Packers sealed the No2 seed against Detroit behind a banged up quarterback.
It’s a scary, scary time for the rest of the conference with everything going through Seattle – just as it did last year – and a Packers team who’ve gone undefeated at Lambeau Field in 2014.
When Seattle lost to Kansas City to fall to 6-4 in Week 11, back-to-back championships seemed far-fetched considering the problem was reportedly coming from the locker room. Never a good thing, all those egos put together, fresh off success but clearly wanting more. And so to Carroll’s comments once again after his side defeated the Rams 20-6 Sunday: “All the credit goes to the leadership of this team. We had to make a shift, and they proactively got it done.”
They got it done on the defensive side of the field, with Michael Bennett claiming this is the best group to ever play in the NFL. They led the league in scoring defence for a third straight year, something that last happened with the “Purple People Eating” Vikings from 1969-71, allowing just 81.5 rushing yards per game, 20 less than last year.
In Green Bay it’s less fierce but just as daunting. 8-0 at home, Aaron Rodgers had a scary moment when he reaggravated his sore left calf during the second quarter of their 30-20 win over the Lions. Matt Flynn came in to start the second half but Rodgers returned to outscore Detroit’s defense 16-6, not at all aided by Ndamukong Suh, who stepped on Rodgers’ left calf not once but twice.
Losers Detroit will head to Dallas next weekend while Seattle and Green Bay await the winners of the two wildcard games. It’s exciting to think the NFC Championship game should be a rematch of Opening Night this season when Seattle handed it to the Packers, 36-16. No doubt about it, the NFC’s best are locked and loaded as the 1-2 punch. MW
Sixth place goes to Baltimore
Instead of boring you with the multiple permutations, let’s just say one of San Diego, Kansas City, Baltimore or Houston could have made the sixth and final playoff spot in the AFC entering Sunday. Providing no tease whatsoever, it was the Ravens who eventually made it. The Chargers had the clearest entry into the field; win and you’re in. But they never led in Arrowhead Stadium, falling to the Chiefs.
During the fourth quarter, Houston – who had the worst record in the league last season – were in the playoff standings, and you won’t believe the odds they had to overcome for that to hold. They needed their fourth string quarterback, Case Keenum – perched in a tree, hunting deer just two weeks ago – to beat Jacksonville at home. Check. They needed Chiefs backup Chase Daniel to beat San Diego. Check. Finally, they needed Cleveland’s third-stringer Connor Shaw to beat Baltimore, and for three quarters he was doing a fine job before Joe Flacco completed 8-of-9 passes for 161 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to pull out an unconvincing but necessary 20-10 win.
Kansas City’s victory was fruitless because they needed both Houston and Baltimore to lose in order to advance. Perhaps more staggering is their finishing 9-7 without a single touchdown catch from a wide receiver all season long. Yes, you heard right, and that hasn’t happened since 1950 when teams played 12 games during a season.
Houston’s near-miss at 9-7 is an unbelievable turnaround from rookie head coach Bill O’Brien, who has banished all indiscipline from the team while juggling a quarterback depth chart which has seen starts from Ryan Fitzpatrick, Ryan Mallett, Tom Savage and Keenum. JJ Watt’s MVP candidacy went up a notch with three more sacks against the Jags, giving him 20.5 for the season. He became the only player in NFL history to record two seasons of 20 or more sacks and will clearly win Defensive Player of the Year, but Houston’s sharp improvement – and his role in that - may push Watt closer to Aaron Rodgers for MVP.
Credit to Baltimore, who only need to sneak into the postseason in order to make a noise, as they showed in 2012 when they unexpectedly won the Super Bowl. They will travel to Pittsburgh in a tasty battle of AFC North rivals. It was an up-and-down weekend that showcased what a great regular season it has been, but now the fun really begins. MW
Panthers wash away the stink of rotten NFC South
The scene was, as one journalist from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution observed, almost “too perfect”. As the Falcons’ players slunk back to the locker room in the wake of their 34-3 rout by Carolina, a burst sewage pipe churned waste-water into a nearby hallway at the Georgia Dome. A rotten six-win season had arrived at a suitably stinky conclusion.
Not far away, the Panthers’ players were celebrating a playoff berth. They had won just one game more than their division rivals, posting a 7-8-1 record, but finished top of the NFC South. Sometimes the margins between success and failure in the NFL really are that fine. Within a day, Atlanta head coach Mike Smith had been fired, while a gif of his Carolina counterpart, Ron Rivera, celebrating was being touted by SB Nation as the “NFL’s best new meme”.
Carolina are just the second team in league history to reach the playoffs with a losing record, yet have finished the season so strongly that they somehow feel worthy of inclusion. The Eagles and 49ers – both of whom missed out – have more victories overall, but it is the Panthers who won all four of their games in December.
A revived running game has given Rivera’s team balance on offense, but it is on the other side of the ball that the greatest transformation has occurred. Through the first 12 weeks of this season, the Panthers were giving up an average of 27.6 points and more than 360 yards per game. In the last month, those figures have dropped to 10.8 points and 278.25 yards.
The promotion of rookie defensive backs Tre Boston and Bené Benwikere into the starting lineup has had a clear galvanising effect. Drafted in the fourth and fifth rounds, respectively, neither was expected to start right away, and both missed the beginning of the season with injuries, but each has excelled during this four-game winning streak.
It was Boston who capped Carolina’s scoring on Sunday, returning an interception 84 yards to the end zone. Veteran safety Roman Harper had already recorded a pick six of his own in the first quarter. This was the first time in team history that the Panthers had posted two defensive scores in a single game.
Such improvement in the secondary bodes well as Carolina prepare for a wildcard meeting with Arizona. The Cardinals’ third-string quarterback, Ryan Lindley, played much better during his second professional start at the weekend, while second-stringer Drew Stanton could yet recover from a knee injury in time for this weekend. But either way, Arizona will be fielding a backup under center.
The last time a team with a losing record made it into the playoffs, they (Seattle) shocked everyone by squashing a heavily-fancied Saints team. It is a testament to Carolina’s recent growth that a similar success this weekend would not even come as that big of a surprise. PB
Cincy sink but Dalton’s not the only one to blame
It would be easiest just to blame Andy Dalton. The Bengals quarterback threw two interceptions as his team was beaten 27-17 by Pittsburgh in Sunday’s AFC North decider. This latest defeat dropped his career record in prime time games to 3-7 (and that’s not counting the 0-3 mark he holds in the playoffs). Four years into his NFL career, the Red Rifle is yet to convince anyone he can keep his sights steady when the pressure starts to rise.
And yet, placing the responsibility for this defeat on his shoulders alone would be quite unfair. Dalton made his share of mistakes, but he was also let down by the one wide receiver that fans might unanimously define as ‘elite’.
Drafted one round ahead of his quarterback in 2011, AJ Green has been named to the Pro Bowl in every one of his four seasons on the league. But on Sunday he was guilty of costly mistakes. Both of Dalton’s interceptions were on passes thrown in Green’s direction, with the first sailing over the receiver’s head and the second skipping off the receiver’s fingertips.
Head coach Marvin Lewis was inclined to split the blame. “Green felt like the ball [for the first intercepted pass], he couldn’t get to it but he has to go and make a play on it. You have to protect the quarterback in that situation. Then Andy Dalton was high on the second one and then it goes off Green’s arm. They each were having a little bit of fault.”
Less ambiguous was the Bengals’ final turnover. With the scores finely poised at 20-17 late in the fourth quarter, Green made a reception over the middle before having the ball torn from his grasp by Pittsburgh’s Antwon Blake. The receiver was concussed on the same play by a hit from safety Mike Mitchell, but only after he had committed the fumble.
Green’s mistake cost the Bengals possession just at the moment when they were moving into range for a game-tying field goal. For once, Dalton could not reasonably be blamed.
None of it will matter if Cincinnati win in Indianapolis next weekend. On paper, their chances would appear to be diminished if Green cannot obtain clearance to play following his head injury. But are things really so straightforward?
The truth is that Dalton has a bad habit of locking in on Green when he is present, forcing the ball to him at times when checking down might have been the better option. According to ESPN, Dalton “has more interceptions (seven) than touchdowns (six) when throwing in the receiver’s direction this season”.
Might the quarterback benefit from having his crutch taken away? Between Mohamed Sanu, tight end Jermaine Gresham and running backs Giovani Bernard and Jeremy Hill, the Bengals are not short of alternative weapons.
Perhaps that is not enough to pick up the slack for such a talented receiver. Perhaps Dalton and the Bengals will fail regardless. But at the very least, Cincinnati head coach Marvin Lewis must consider what he and his team can do differently in Indianapolis next weekend. As easy as it is to criticise Dalton, doing so will not get this team any closer to winning a playoff game. PB
Quick outs (Black Monday edition!)
• The 49ers did not wait for Black Monday to announce their parting of ways with head coach Jim Harbaugh. His departure was confirmed by San Francisco in a statement released shortly after their 20-17 win over Arizona. The news came as a surprise to nobody. Speculation over the coach’s future had been mounting since September, with various reports asserting that players had grown tired of his confrontational coaching style.
Harbaugh will not be out of work for long. He is widely expected to become the next head coach of the University of Michigan, even if the Detroit Free Press mistakenly implied on Monday’s front cover that the Wolverines were after his brother, John.
Where San Francisco go from here remains to be seen. Some players might be happy to see the back of their coach, yet his impact on the 49ers should not be underestimated. The team had not gone to the playoffs or posted a winning record in eight seasons prior to his appointment in 2011. This will be the first season since when they have failed to reach the NFC Championship game.
• Rex Ryan was the first head coach to go on Monday, fired by the Jets along with general manager John Idzik. “We’re in the win business and we’re not winning,” explained owner Woody Johnson at a press conference, and few would quibble with that logic. The Jets have not finished above .500 in four seasons and, while Ryan did well to keep his players fighting to the end, this year’s 4-12 record was the worst of his professional career. That is not all Ryan’s fault, of course, and it is right that Idzik also carries the can for his shoddy work constructing the roster. Between the two of them, the coach is the more likely to find himself in demand this offseason – with both NFL teams and broadcasters.
• As mentioned above, Mike Smith had his contract terminated by Atlanta in the wake of their loss to Carolina. There had been speculation beforehand that his job might not be safe even if the Falcons did make it into the postseason. Smith’s 66-46 regular season record is the best of any coach in team history, but the team’s regression over the last two years has been pronounced. Even during his best years, Atlanta had a habit of coming up short when it mattered most – winning just a single playoff game in four trips to the postseason.
• Last to go on Monday were Chicago head coach Marc Trestman and general manager Phil Emery. Their shared tenure will be remembered most of all for the decision to award Jay Cutler a new seven-year contract this January, with $54m in guaranteed money. It is a deal which will continue to impact their successors, who will have little choice but to give the quarterback another chance.
• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have the first pick in the 2015 NFL Draft after sliding to 2-14 following their season-ending defeat to New Orleans. They had led the Saints 20-7 in the fourth quarter, but collapsed dramatically at the end after pulling a number of starters out of the game – prompting even the NFL’s own website to ask whether they had tanked intentionally to secure the No1 pick.
• And if all that talk of firings is a bit heavy for you, here’s a video of Russell Wilson dancing with his grandmother at Christmas to lighten the mood. () PB
