The Browns will have their revenge
Recapping a Super Wild Card weekend that was indeed super for lots of reasons!
The NFL’s inaugural Super Wild Card Weekend (™) is over. It proved that a quarterback with a broken thumb can beat the Seahawks, Nickelodeon can broadcast a live football game (f-bombs and all), and that late-stage Ben Roethlisberger is just early-stage Drew Bledsoe:
The league’s six-game slate started hot and ended with a pair of blowouts, some expected (Mitchell Trubisky vs. anyone in the playoffs) and some not (the Browns taking a 28-0 first quarter lead in Pittsburgh). It was a tremendous amount of postseason football, and given the perpetual stew of awfulness swirling around us it was, if nothing else, a welcome distraction from, uh,
/gestures wildly
In the end, we saw the Browns could win without a head coach and the Washington Football Team could compete with a starting quarterback who rose all the way to backup in the XFL. The chaff has been separated from the wheat, with the Rams’ defense doing enough work to ensure their entire team didn’t end up as compost in Seattle.
This sets up an extremely fun slate of games for next weekend. That aforementioned Los Angeles D gets to see if iron sharpens iron when it goes from shutting down a discarded MVP candidate (Russell Wilson) to this year’s presumptive winner (Aaron Rodgers). Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson will wrestle to see who is truly the league’s top dual-threat quarterback. Tom Brady and Drew Brees will be the league’s first-ever playoff showdown between passers who are a combined 85 years old.
We’ll dive into as much of this as we can before we hit Monday’s word limit. Let’s start with Baltimore’s affirming road win in Tennessee.
The Ravens won in Nashville by being so Raven
Derrick Henry came into Sunday’s matchup having gained 328 rushing yards in his previous two games against Baltimore. With their season on the line, the Ravens made him look like the Dr. Thunder knockoff of his typical 2020 self.
Henry’s 40 yards was his lowest total since Week 6 ... of 2019. His 2.2 yards per carry were four less than his average over the final five games of the regular season. A Ryan Tannehill sneak on fourth-and-inches in the final quarter was Tennessee’s only rushing first down of the game.
This is all remarkable from a Raven defense that had given up 130+ yards on the ground seven times this year. It led to Lamar Jackson’s first career playoff win and a spot in the Divisional Round. How did it all come about?
The easiest answer is that Baltimore refused to be beaten on the ground, instead daring Ryan Tannehill to beat them through the air. That meant anchoring several defenders near the line of scrimmage and forcing Henry to run between the hashes against defenses that looked like this:
This is second-and-8 in the first quarter. The Ravens have 10 guys within five yards of the line of scrimmage, effectively putting Henry a man down before he even touches the ball. This static proved to be too much, and he gained just two yards in an opening three-and-out that set the tone for the Tennessee rushing game.
Here’s the lineup before another Henry second down carry one drive later. Once again, Baltimore swells around the line of scrimmage and Henry has few viable options. This run would be stopped for a gain of one:
It didn’t help that Tennessee coordinator Arthur Smith’s gameplan was fairly predictable. The Titans ran nine plays on second down with eight yards or fewer to gain. Six of those were runs … and the Ravens loaded up the box on all of them to allow just 15 yards on those plays.
Defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale also made key adjustments as the game went on. The Titans feasted on his coverage in the first two quarters by springing their tight ends free for strong gains. Tennessee was 6-for-6 for 63 yards on tight end targets in the first half.
This stopped after halftime as Baltimore devoted more safety help to those short routes and opted to let cornerbacks Marcus Peters, Marlon Humphrey, and Jimmy Smith sink or swim in single coverage. This extra help taking away lanes near the line of scrimmage led Ryan Tannehill to only attempt one pass to his tight ends after the break. It was expertly blown up on a key third down by human missile DeShon Elliott:
Martindale knew he didn’t have to worry about the Titans’ tight ends roasting them up the seam because that’s not really what they do. Anthony Firkser’s average catch came 6.2 yards downfield, while Jonnu Smith’s came 5.1 yards from the line of scrimmage (Baltimore’s Mark Andrews, for comparison, clocks in at just under nine yards per catch). Sneaking these safeties up also added the benefit of extra bodies in the box, further gumming up Henry’s running lanes.
This left opportunities downfield, but only A.J. Brown was really able to capitalize on them. Even when he did, his big plays (six catches, 83 yards, one touchdown) were more a function of great placement, big one-on-one wins, or some borderline offensive pass interference.
Those plays, as good as they were, weren’t sustainable — especially after Corey Davis left the game due to injury. That meant Martindale could continue to crowd the line of scrimmage and trust his corners to limit damage downfield. That’s exactly what happened, leaving the rest of his defense to stomp all over the Titans’ logo once the game was mostly in hand.
And Lamar Jackson? He shook off a rough start to do very Lamar Jackson things, running for 136 yards and connecting with Hollywood Brown for seven catches (on nine targets) for 109 of his 174 total passing yards. He got his first playoff victory while simultaneously lobbying his team to add another top wide receiver threat this offseason. That’s a win/win for the Ravens. — CD
Is this the end?
It seems likely Alex Smith, after proving to himself and the rest of the world that he could complete his near-miraculous comeback, will decide to retire this offseason. It’s also possible we’ve seen the last of Philip Rivers as an NFL quarterback (though it can’t be cheap, even in a relatively low cost-of-living state like Indiana, to take care of all those kids). The same for his 2004 draftmate Ben Roethlisberger, as well as Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey (both have one year remaining on their contract).
If this is it for Big Ben, then at least he went out with a bang. And by that, I mean throwing four picks and one-upping Sad Tom Brady in the meme game with this indelible, “hello darkness, my old friend”-esque video Sunday night:
However, the best maybe-swan song moment this weekend belonged to another player. Tight end Jimmy Graham hauled in the Bears’ only touchdown of the afternoon as time expired in the fourth quarter. It was an impressive one-handed grab, yet a meaningless score in what was still a double-digit loss to the Saints, the team that drafted Graham in 2010.
The touchdown itself wouldn’t really be noteworthy if not for Graham’s follow-up act: He nonchalantly got to his feet and jogged straight up the tunnel and into the locker room (and triggered the slime cannons on Nickelodeon!):
If that was his way of signaling his career is over, then his retirement announcement belongs up there with Marshawn Lynch tweeting during the Super Bowl and Vontae Davis walking off the field at halftime.
Graham signed a two-year deal with the Bears last offseason and he led the team in receiving touchdowns in 2020, but he’s 34 and there’s an out clause in his contract. Whether that was his final play in the NFL, or he was simply ready to leave the Superdome after another dud from the Chicago offense, I have no choice but to applaud such a badass move. — SH
Wild Card Revenge Index
During the regular season, we reserved this space for our weekly pain index. In the postseason, though, every loss is a gut punch and only in certain circumstances (see: every Saints playoff loss of the last decade; the Bears’ double-doink) is one so excruciating that it merits special attention.
So let’s try something a little different. I’m not sure if this will be a recurring feature or just a one-off — it depends on whether this trend continues next week. For now, we’ll call it the Revenge Index, Wild Card Round Edition.
3. Buccaneers (but really Bruce Arians)
No team got off to a better start in 2014 than the Cardinals, but then season-ending injuries to Carson Palmer and backup Drew Stanton forced Bruce Arians to turn to third-string quarterback Ryan Lindley (the Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman version of Ryan Finley). Arians’ 11-5 squad ended up as the No. 5 seed in the NFC, which meant they had to visit the No. 4 seed in the Wild Card Round.
That No. 4 seed was the NFC South champions: a 7-8-1 Panthers team coached by Ron Rivera. Carolina won the entirely unmemorable playoff game and advanced to the Divisional Round.
Almost six years to the day later, Arians and Rivera faced off in a similar situation, with a major difference (well, besides the fact that both coaches had moved on to new jobs). Arians’ Bucs were 11-5 and the No. 5 seed, on the road against Rivera’s seven-win Washington team that squeaked out a division title. This time, however, it was Rivera’s turn to start a third-string quarterback (one who had just been signed off the street a month before). Although Taylor Heinicke played his Heinicke off, the Bucs prevailed. And, in a way, Arians got a little payback against Rivera.
2. Ravens
The Ravens seemed unstoppable a year ago. Behind Lamar Jackson’s electric MVP campaign, they earned the top seed in the AFC and entered the playoffs on a 12-game winning streak. Then they slammed into a freight train: Derrick Henry, who ran over Baltimore for 195 yards in the Titans’ shocking 28-12 win.
Many of the Ravens’ offseason moves were about making sure that could never happen again. But it kinda happened again this season in Week 11, when Henry rushed for 133 yards and the game-winning touchdown in Baltimore. Before kickoff, the Titans had huddled at the Ravens’ midfield logo, which led to a bit of a clash and intensified the bad blood between the two sides.
They met again in the playoffs, this time in Nashville, and once again the Ravens fell into an early hole in part because of a Jackson interception. However, Jackson bounced back soon after with his signature “how is that humanly possible?” scramble-turned-touchdown:
That was the turning point of the game. Well, that and Mike Vrabel deciding to punt on fourth-and-2. Jackson’s touchdown allowed the Ravens to relax and play their own game (they totaled 236 rushing yards). They weren’t entirely crisp (a couple of dumb penalties, Justin Tucker missed a field goal *gasp*), but they did what they set out to do: shut down Henry and control the clock.
Marcus Peters’ interception with two minutes left sealed the win — andJackson got the playoff monkey off his back —and the team celebrated in fitting fashion.
And if you need more evidence of how satisfying that felt for them, and how much the Ravens still despise the Titans, may I present to you this iconic photo of Jihad Ward leaving the field:
1. Browns
I didn’t have much hope in the Browns pulling off the upset over the Steelers, but I thought if there was any reason to believe in them, it was this: They could easily tap into the “chip on our shoulder” type of motivation.
And by god, the crazy kids did it.
They can partially thank JuJu Smith-Schuster for that. His Dabo-level “the Browns is the Browns” talk leading up to the matchup helped fuel the Browns’ rage on Sunday night, which was clear as soon as the game ended.
They didn’t just feel disrespected by the Steelers, but by everyone who counted them out when their challenges kept piling up, including having to play a lineman who was just introduced to Baker Mayfield before the game. And that was evident from the very first play of the game, because the Browns came ready to shut up all their doubters — and the team across the field from them, who had dominated them for so long.
It had been 26 years since the Browns last won a playoff game (they beat the Patriots, then lost in the Divisional Round to the Steelers).
It had been 18 years since the Browns last made the playoffs (they lost in the Wild Card Round to, you guessed it, the Steelers.
It had been 17 years since the Browns last handed the Steelers a loss in Pittsburgh.
It had been six years since the Browns last beat the Steelers in a game started by Ben Roethlisberger.
The Browns didn’t exorcise all their demons Sunday night. But after so many years of frustration, of ineptitude, of misfortune, and of failure, they couldn’t have asked for a more cathartic win. They got to embarrass their most hated rival and earn their respect in the process. — SH