Why Every Wild Card Game Rocked Even Though Most of Them Sucked

Browns/Texans

In a weekend full of would-be top headlines had the Cowboys not lost by a hundred, the CJ Stroud story would be up there as most snubbed from public limelight. The first half of this game was awesome. Back and forth, back and forth. You get a touchdown. YOU get a touchdown! 31 points in the first 18 minutes. And it was scoreless the first 10! Fireworks all over the place, little to no defense, looking and feeling like we were in for an all-time classic shootout. 

While the story of this game could be the obituary of Joe Flacco’s career, throwing back to back pick sixes in the third quarter to end the Cinderella run he had mustered up the last month and a half, likely ending his chance at another starting gig (not sure even he thought he would get another anyway), we’ll instead do what I seldom do: focus on the positive. 

And that was CJ Stroud. Hand up, I feel like I disrespected CJ. I never said he was a bum or called him overrated or any of the insults I frequently embellish calling athletes that have amounted to far more than I ever will. I simply didn't recognize his greatness. 

I’m not sure many did. I know he’s had one of the best seasons in the history of pro football (yes, the history of pro football). I know he’s set many rookie records and is already in the upper echelon of QBs in the league. And I know he haunts the dreams of Carolina Panthers fans and will continue to do so with each spiraling fast ball he throws on a dime. 

But I wasn’t expecting him in his first playoff game to torch the supposed best defense in the NFL like a Call of Duty flamethrower without even breaking a sweat. Hand up, I didn’t.

I liked the Browns in this game. I liked what Flacco had done, the down field explosiveness of their air attack with the threat of a run game, and I liked their defense. But I think I fell in love with the story. The idea Joe Cool could lead a cursed franchise, his longtime enemy, to the promised land. I wanted something better for Cleveland, but in doing so forgot they were Cleveland.

CJ threw for 274 yards, three touchdowns, and 13 yards per attempt with five incompletions. CLINICAL. The moment never sniffed too big for him, cause I’m not sure a moment can. Dude's got ice in his veins. He’s got another beast in front of him this week, but wouldn’t surprise me if he shocked the world again.

Dolphins/Chiefs

Andy Reid’s icicle mustache stole the show. That mustache got more airtime than Taylor’s custom jacket (shoutout Kristin Juszczyk). 

This game was great because sometimes narratives are so accurate you couldn’t post it on Wikipedia. The narrative that the Dolphins were soft, and wanted nothing to do with the frigid temperature in Arrowhead.

I’m on record last week saying I thought that hype was exactly that. Hype. That these were grown men playing football, and cold weather wouldn’t automatically disqualify a team from having a chance to win. In many cases I’ll stand by that, but boy was I wrong on this one. 

The Dolphins played pussy ball. They were simply outmanned. They got dominated on both sides of the line of scrimmage, and stood no chance at competing in this game from the moment the opening kickoff left the tee. 

The Chiefs drove the ball down the field like it was 2021 their first possession and never looked back. They moved the ball with ease all game, getting to the red zone on every possession which they got a first down (6 of 9). Their red zone shortcomings are a story for another day.

The Dolphins RB duo who I lauded as underrated last week notched a combined 14 carries for 41 yards. They barely tried to run, quickly realizing their O Line was no match to the Chiefs defensive front. 

And Tua wasn’t much better. 51% completions for 199 yards, 53 of which came on a wildly underthrown ball that Tyreek Hill Tyreek Hill’d. 

This was a mismatch, no other way to say it. And one team looked from the jump they wanted it more than the other (a surprising theme of the weekend). 

The Dolphins narrative is laugh out loud funny after this game. 1-7 against playoff teams this year. Sometimes, there’s a narrative for a reason. 

Packers/Cowboys

Do I need to explain why this game was awesome?

I don’t hate the Cowboys as much as a lot of people do. But I do hate how much they’re talked about on TV and everywhere else. So I love watching them flail out in epic proportions like they did Sunday. I guess I do hate the Cowboys.

I couldn’t get enough of this game. Shock, secondhand embarrassment, and blissful joy simultaneously pulsed through my veins. I couldn’t believe the beat down the Packers were putting on, and I didn’t want it to stop.

Blowouts when it’s the underdog doing the blowing out are infinitely more entertaining than the other way around. You go in expecting a possible blowout by the better team, so when that happens it’s time to start meal prepping for the week ahead. But not this game.

It happened so fast and so abruptly I stayed in a state of shock until the fourth quarter, when I stayed glued to the TV to see the pans to Jerry Jones, and the thousands of Cowboys fans leaving early.  

Similar to the Dolphins, the narrative surrounding the Cowboys not only reigned true but shined so bright it reached the gates of heaven. And this time it wasn’t a last second narrow defeat that leaves you starving for more. It was a beat down so embarrassing it makes you want to transfer schools and leave your past life behind. And that’s the decision the Cowboys are now left with.

What sucks is who he beat diminished the brilliance Jordan Love displayed while beating them. He was perfect. 99.3 QBR, 157.2 passer rating perfect. No matter which ridiculous algorithm you use to measure QB effectiveness, he was perfect. I’m talking CJ Stroud perfect (two yards away from the exact same stat line as CJ). But we didn’t expect this from JLove like some (not me, ugh) did with CJ. Green Bay has once again zigged while the rest of the league zags with QB development, and may be on the brink of having their third straight all world QB at the helm for the next decade plus. Can everyone else please take notes?!

What sucks even more is the day that Aaron Jones had, which got covered up by how great JLove was, which was already covered up by Cowboys hate. Ole Jonesy is BALLING. Four straight games of 115+ yards rushing balling. The Pack, like I said they would, won the toss and took the ball, ran it down the Cowboys throat, and before even taking the field, put a feeling of doubt and uneasiness in Dak and the rest of the offense’s souls. 

And the Cowboys weren’t ready for it. The vaunted defensive line was out to pasture all day. The DBs, including Steph Gilmore who I love, had a day to forget to put it nicely. And Dan Quinn played small ball zone, and watched the Packers run it wherever and whenever they wanted, and when they wanted to throw, had Jordan Love frolicking around the backfield for five seconds until his receivers found the zone's soft spot. 

Dak played his worst game of the year, and you can’t help but think the pressure of winning in January played a role. He was slow on his reads. He was inaccurate. He wasn’t on the same page as CeeDee Lamb after he was all season. And his lack situational awareness, which was put on display in the first quarter taking a sack to put them out of field goal range when he easily could’ve thrown it out of bounds, was penetrating the walls of AT&T Stadium.

Good for Green Bay. Football is better when the Cowboys choke.

Rams/Lions

I said Detroit might burn down Sunday night, and I feel like I was close to being right. Ford Field was ROCKING. The first home game since before Ford Field was the home of the Lions did not disappoint. 

Everything about this game rocked. The storylines. The atmosphere. The matchups. And the game itself. This was a 10/10 football game.

Stafford returning home was the big one of course. I think the boos when you play for the opposing team in the playoffs are warranted. I mean even Brady got booed in New England when he played for Tampa once the game started. You may love him, but for today, you’re enemies. 

The Goff revenge was an insanely underplayed storyline. This was a bigger one to me. I get the Stafford thing, but Goff being shipped out for not being good enough after making a Super Bowl to Detroit, the place promising football careers go to die, only to be the kingpin of one of the great franchise turnarounds in all of sports just three years later? THAT’S a storyline. 

And Goff delivered. He played a mistake free, highly effective game. Leaned on the run game in the red zone and between the 20s was, like other QBs I’ve mentioned, nearly perfect. The lack of second half production is a bit overblown seeing they only had three drives and got points on one of them. But when they needed it, Danny Boy Campbell and Ben Johnson put the ball in Goff’s hands, and threw his patented wobbly dart to Amon-Ra to give Detroit the night of their lives. What a moment.

On the other side, Stafford had the classic Lions’ Stafford game. Nearly 400 yards, multiple TDs, a near trip to the hospital before battling through the pain and still slinging it, all ending in a narrow, heartbreaking loss. Puka Nakua was another awesome storyline that got buried this weekend, matching CJ Stroud for breaking all the rookie records for his position. Too bad he’s not a QB so no one cares. I care, Puka. Thank you for what you did for my fantasy team this year.

This was the only game this weekend with real drama down the stretch. And of all the things you could guess, it was the Lions defense that came up big. Three Rams’ trips to the red zone finished with three field goals, and a big stop in crunch time to stop them from entering field goal range was the difference. No matter who you root for, Sunday night, we were all Lions fans.

Steelers/Bills

Snow game! 

I can’t pretend this game was all that great with Buffalo opening up a quick 21-point lead, stalling for a bit and giving Pittsburgh the curtesy of believing they had a chance for a miniscule moment in time before putting the game out of reach. 

But I also can’t pretend watching the snow fly through the air after each Bills touchdown wasn’t one of the best things I watched all weekend. Like I didn’t wish I was there with them tossing snow around like it was a 2005 snow day.

Those camera shots never get old. There just aren’t enough snow games in the NFL, and maybe because of that it allows each one to hit different. What a great day to be at a game.

The storyline of the actual game is that the Bills can beat anyone if they don’t turn the ball over. Which I'm not sure is new news. If they don’t get off to their typical slow start, they can control both sides of the ball and let their talent, which they still have plenty of despite a ton of injuries, make plays in big moments. We all know what the Bills can be, and although we’ve hardly seen it, Sunday proved that if they play clean, they’re as tough as they come to beat. Josh Allen vs. Mahomes is must-see TV.

Eagles/Bucs

Save the worst for last, and in this case it’s the Eagles. What the fuck happened here?

An all-time collapse down the stretch for a team that was 10-1 fresh off a Super Bowl heartbreak. Unfathomable almost. 

The Eagles never played great ball even when they were 10-1. I among many others much more keen on football were saying that in real time. But how they went from that to this is harder to digest than Stephen Hawking on a not-to-be-named island indulging in not-to-be-imagined activities. 

Their offense looked more lost than Sawyer and Hurley looking for Hurley’s next meal. The offensive line who was supposedly a top-tier group couldn’t block to generate a semblance of a run game. Hurts seemingly lost the ability to scramble, and the play calling was pedestrian at best (stop running stop routes against a cover 0 all-out blitz!).

The worst defense in the league since their 10-1 start sure looked like it on Monday. They couldn’t be bothered to make a tackle. Troy Aikman was at a loss for words when describing the defensive and overall effort of this team, and so was the rest of America. 

This team (outside of the defensive line) didn’t look like they wanted to be there. There was no urgency, no collaboration on the sideline, and blatantly less effort than their counterpart. I don’t know if something happened in the locker room that no one knows about, or if the roster chock full of all-pros simply forgot how to play the game they love, but there needs to be answers inside those walls. Fuck us losers out here. Figure it out Philly. For the mental health of your fans no less.

I’ll give Tampa the credit for actually wanting to play and win the football game. But I can’t go far beyond that. Almost any team in the NFL would’ve beaten the Eagles yesterday.

The Bucs are a great story. Baker’s a great story. As someone who called for the Bucs to be one of the surprise teams in the NFL this year, I will say again I told you so. But I didn’t believe they’d win a playoff game. I didn’t even think they’d win this game. Shame on me. Good on them.

In a weekend which many would and should classify as lots of shitty football, I hope after reading this you realize there is no such thing as shitty football. Because football rocks.