The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Divisional Round Recap: Chiefs, Bills, Eagles and Commanders advance to Championship Sunday

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

And then there were four. So how did we get to Bills-Chiefs on the AFC side of the bracket and Commanders-Eagles on the NFC side? Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen break it down on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownRavens-Bills recapCommanders-Lions recapRams-Eagles recapTexans-Chiefs recapHost: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert May's. Divisional round weekend is here. The best football weekend of the year, in my opinion, and we broke down all of it with me and Derek Classen. All four games from this weekend started with the Bill's massive win over the Baltimore Ravens. Obviously, everyone was pumped about that game. Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, everything on the line. It lived up to the billing. We get a two-point play in the final two minutes that end up swinging that thing.

You can't ask for much more. After that, hit Washington and the Lions an unbelievable win. for Washington for Jaden Daniels. A fantastic performance from that offense, from their free agent signings. A real kind of exclamation of what this Washington team was the entire year and what Dan Quinn and Adam Peters have put together there.

Hit the Rams and Eagles game, a monster game for Sequin Barkley, a continuation of his phenomenal season. And then we finish things off with the Chiefs taking care of business against the Houston Texans. So let's get to all of that with Derek Klesson right now. All right, Derek.

First divisional weekend of the year for you on the show. How are you feeling right now? My heart's still racing a little bit. I mean, we wanted this game, this last game, the Sunday night game, to be something to remember. And the fact that it goes down to literally the last play, I'm going to remember it for a while. So I'm still feeling pretty jumpy. I have a wall of notes in a document, and I'm very ill-prepared to have this conversation in a concise and organized way. But let's get to it.

We might as well start with that two-point play. It's just a heartbreaking way for that game to end if you were the Ravens. Mark Andrews has a huge fumble in this game, and then he ends up dropping the two-pointer at the pylon with a minute and 30 left that would have sent this thing potentially to overtime. It's just a sick way to lose a game where you have real championship aspirations and you felt like you might have had the most talented roster in the league. It was for it to end on like one moment like that. If they could have at least pushed it into overtime, Josh Allen does what he does and you

have a drive like that. you can probably live with that a little bit better. The fact that it ends on one play like that on a two point where it's open and the throw is, it's not perfect, but it's more than catchable. Andrews doesn't haul it in after having the earlier fumble like you mentioned on a huge Lamar play where he finds him late in the down. And then earlier in the game, if we go back and remember when Lamar Jackson had that fumble where he, it's like a high snap.

Lamar does the thing where he gets a little bit jumpy with the ball in his hands and kind of gives it up. The play before that, Mark Andrews had it passed. hit him right in the chest and he drops it. And so, like, it just, it was this huge snowball effect of all these really weird moments for the Ravens where otherwise, I actually thought they played a pretty good game. It was just these three, four moments that they just didn't have it. The turnovers end up becoming huge. And that's why, yeah, the two point play is a horrible way to lose. But you put yourself in this position. I mean, the turnover difference is what ends up swinging in this game. You have the Lamar fumble. You have the Lamar interception. You have the Mark Andrews fumble. That combined with some of the

things that I think Buffalo did really well in this game that are absolutely worth pointing out, that puts you in a really big hole on the road against a very good team. So yeah, the two point play goes a little bit differently. Great. But this was something that a lot of self-inflicted wounds for the Ravens put them in a position that was very difficult for them to overcome in the end of things. Because if they hit that two-point play earlier in the game, this wouldn't have been a problem. And they could have just won the game right here. So like you said, there were just a lot of moments where they didn't play a bad game wire to wire. They just, in these moments, Buffalo didn't shoot themselves in the foot almost at all for

the entirety of this game, whereas Baltimore, as they were prone to, did about four or five different times. Incredibly impressed with the Bill's overall game plan approach and performance in this game. I think that this today, everything that we saw from the bills is really a statement about what the organization has done over the last few years and what. what they're capable of in a single game sample. And that's coming from a few different avenues for me here. One, the way they ran the ball in the first half and their ability to assert themselves

on the ground in the first half, we've talked about this a bunch. It's just not something Bill's teams prior to like last season could have done. And I think this is the best version of the Bill's ground game we've ever seen for a few different reasons. One, from a personnel perspective, the six offensive linemen stuff that they can do, having guys like Mack Hollins to insert on some of these runs. The improvements we've seen from the offensive line, I said this earlier today. I think Spencer Brown's ascension into the player that he is, is a defining piece of how

this Bill's team has arrived at this moment. You combine that with getting a little bit bigger on the interior with moving McGovern to center. There's just a physicality of this team that there's never been. James Cook's, James Cook is a really, really good back. Like, he had an excellent game tonight independent of what they were doing up front. You combine all of that on offense where you can really kind of minimize Josh Allen's impact as a passer and still beat a team like the Ravens. And then on defense, I thought the game plan was awesome. And for them to come up with these single game kind of tweaks that they thought were the best way to approach this Ravens team,

I think Baltimore overall found their footing over the course of the game on offense. But I think early on, some of the things that the bills were doing really gave them some issues. We can dig into that. But in totality, I think this is just such an impressive performance from the game. the people who built this Buffalo team and from this coaching staff that, you know, we have Joe Brady in year one full time as an offensive coordinator. We have Bobby Babbage in year one as a defensive coordinator. There was a lot of transition for the bills heading into this year. And I wasn't sure how that transition was going to go. For them to get to this at the end, I think says a lot about

the people who were in charge in that place. For me, it's, and this isn't to take away from the defense, it's about the offense to me. The fact that if you told me really at any point other than maybe by November of this year, I would start to believe this. If you told me at any other point in Josh Allen's career that they won a playoff game where he threw for 127 yards, I wouldn't believe you. Like, they must have shut out the other team and held him to three points. Like, there's just no way that I could conceive of this Bill's team being able to do what, funny enough, what Baltimore wants to do to you, which is choke out the clock, be able to run

the ball, play really low stakes play with your quarterback, really just control the ball that way. Like Josh Allen only completed one pass beyond 10 yards in this game. And it was on the third play of the game where they hit that Brandon Stevens is supposed to be the Tampa dropper in the middle of the field. Josh Allen just hits Shakir right over him. It's the only pass he completed over 10 yards all day. Other than that, it was just six yards to James Cook here. It was all balls. It was all ball control when they were throwing the ball.

All of it. All ball control, which again, two years ago, that was not Josh Allen. The fact that he's turned into this quarterback is truly amazing. And then even on the ground, this is obviously something they turn to whenever they get into high leverage scenarios. they let him get unleashed there. So, like, I think offensively, the fact that they have come to this point with this team and this quarterback, especially with the way that Baltimore has been playing on defense, right, where they've been a really good run defense all season.

It's just, this is such a bow on what you've been trying to build for four seasons now. 59% design rush success rate for the bills in this game against what has been a very good Ravens run defense. And I think that says so much about what the bills have evolved into on that side of the ball. I think we're minimizing a little bit some of the tweaks on the defensive side, though, because I do think what they did and the game plan of saying, hey, we're not just going to sit back and play zone against this team. We know what Lamar can do if that's how we're going to sit back and play. And that's what this team wants to do. And so for them to play as much man as they did and blitz as much as they did, it pushed some variance into how the game went, especially early on.

I mean, that throw, the Lamar corner throw that he lets go a little bit too quickly to Bateman, that gets picked off is against one of these looks. If you look at the percentages of it, the bills played man cover, the bills blitz on 48% of their dropbacks in this game. Their previous single game high this season was 42.5%. They only had two games above 40%. They also played, I believe, 42% man in this game. It was up around 50% before that final drive.

And I think that was the right way to approach it. You had some chunk plays that the bills ended up getting, but they had to work for them. I mean, think about that play to Thailand Wallace, where Lamar has to escape to his right, makes the throw all the way back across the field. He's going to be able to do that. But I think the game plan sending him into that mode as often as possible was the correct approach from the bills on that side of the ball. I think the Ravens did a good job over the course of the game adjusting to it.

But I do think them throwing this curve ball at the beginning of the game, kind of like you said, threw in a little bit more volatility. And you could tell Baltimore was not ready to be blitzed as much as they were. And again, over the course of the game, they started to find out answers and stuff, but this was clearly not what they were expecting to get from the first whistle in this game. So I do think them not letting Baltimore get out to a hot lead, like they are typically able to do and be able to run the ball.

I think the flip side of it for me was I thought Baltimore did a really bad job of identifying what they needed to be in the run game early on. Early on in this game, it was a lot of under center. It was a lot of like split zone type stuff, which again, I know worked in the last matchup, but it was very obviously not working for the first quarter of this game. When they started to pick it up, he was all gap scheme, baby. They were pulling guards.

They were getting four hands on people, just moving them. And so I think there's a world where maybe they moved to that a little bit earlier. And that starts to solve some of the problems here, gets them into some down in distances where maybe the bills don't want to run man in Blitz a lot. But again, I think it was a good curveball from the bills to kind of play this way. In the second half, they didn't need to throw the ball. They were running the ball at one drive where the second half where they were just, And I think that the couple of tweaks I saw is, so the bills came out in this game, we were wondering how this would go.

When the Ravens were in these two back sets, what were the bills going to do? The bills did play a lot of base defense against those looks, and they had often Dorian Williams lined up on the line of scrimmage and some five down fronts. And I think they actually did a good job of defending the run in the first half out of those looks. The Ravens in the second half, this is anecdotal, but something I thought I saw, they were getting into a lot of condensed looks, and they were running to the tight end nub side. where Rasul Douglas was and just trying to hit the ball onto the perimeter with him as the outside player over and over and over again and just making him tackle. So they were combining that with some more 12 personnel zone looks into some lighter bodies. So I think they found the running plan that they wanted in the second half. But by that point, you're down 10 points.

You've turned the ball over a few times. I think the bills had already started to send the game down a path that they wanted to play. Yeah, I agree with that. like I said, I think them throwing the curveball early and making, forcing them to adjust from the start, even though I do think Baltimore did a good job of it. To me, the other part about the slow start is too, like some of these turnovers were just nonsense. The interception that Lamar throws, well, I think it was his only interception where he's trying to hit Bateman on the corner route. That to me seemed like a very obvious miscommunication where Lamar is trying to throw it high.

Bateman obviously snaps it over to the sideline. It's hard to tell exactly who's wrong in that scenario. I do think not to fully take blame off of Lamar. I think even if you're going to make that throw, your margin of error should be to the sideline rather than back to the field, which is, so like, I think even if Bateman runs the higher route like he's thinking, that's still a dangerous throw. And then obviously Lamar having the fumble. So I do think it was a good curveball from the bills, but I also think a lot of it was, the Ravens just kind of shooting themselves in the foot, almost regardless of what Buffalo was doing in some of those spots. I also appreciate the game plan knowing that you don't have Zayflowers on the field. And it's one less guy that you

have to worry about in-man coverage with it actually I think makes a lot of sense. And we talked about this a lot in the preview show, just what the front players for the bills were going to have to do to keep this thing close. And I know the Ravens kind of ran the ball at will in the second half, but they didn't really in the first half. And it was funny. If you heard Tony Romo talk about this game, it was as though the bills were like a middle school football team in terms of how big they were.

It was talking about Ed Oliver. He's talking about how Ed Oliver, it's like, yeah, you know, Ed Oliver for his size, he's a really good player. It's like, at Oliver's like sort of an undersized defensive tackle. He's not like a 230 pound guy. But even if you consider that framing where the Ravens are this huge physical team and the bills are a little bit undersized, I think that you saw tons of, I mean, whether it was Epinessa, Greg Russo, Ed Oliver, the linebackers, I thought the physicality that the

bills brought on that side of the ball was extremely impressive giving the opponent on the other side. Even Dequan Jones had that one play where he just knocks Tyler Lindermbaum off the ball immediately. It forces him to trip up Lamar Jackson when he's trying to go stretch out the ball in his own play. So just stuff like that, I agree. They were a little bit more physical than I anticipated. And I kind of said coming into this game, what the Ravens do is a lot more like, they win with eye candy and pulling people and using Lamar in the run game. It's not necessarily putting two hands on you and moving you the way that you think. So I think for Buffalo to kind of answer the bell there and be like, all right, they're not quite as physical as they look. Let's knock them around a little bit.

I do think that was pretty impressive. Anything else just in terms of what you saw on either side of the ball, detail-wise, that stuck out to you that you thought was important in how the game ended up playing out? So obviously, I think Baltimore or Buffalo running the ball as well as they did and, you know, kind of taking more of an approach with the passing game where they were playing it a little bit more safe. I think obviously that worked out for them and they were able to put up a lot of points. I didn't mind the game plan from Baltimore, though, where that's what they were giving up, where they said, hey, man, we're going to allow you to run the ball a little bit. We're going to allow you to get some of this underneath stuff and hope that you're not going to get huge jack. And we're going to not let Josh Allen get the five, six plays down the field, not let him get all the scramble plays, not let him make the creation plays that are going to beat us.

So even though it didn't work, and I know the bills had a decent offensive day, I actually didn't mind what the Ravens tried to do here defensively. Josh Allen average 4.6 air yards per attempt against zone coverages today. And it actually worked. Like, I mean, the way that they were able to control the ball on some of those underneath throws, I actually thought was really impressive. Even just like a little man-beater designs, like the little return route to Curtis Samuel. I thought that their ability to just attack those underneath areas in intermediate downs and distances combined with how they ran the ball.

It's just a version of the bill's offense we haven't seen in moments like this. And it's a little bit risk-averse. I also think that it prevents you from the downside of some of like living in the explosive world that they used to have to on that side of the ball. And the fact that they no longer have to do that, I think just allows this team to feel like a very different version of itself in games like this. I think that's especially too, because there were two different moments I can remember in this game where Josh Allen is getting tackled at or behind the line of scrimmage. And he very obviously wants to throw the ball back to somebody. You could see the hamster working

in his head where he's like, I got to make the play. And so the fact, that they were limiting his chances to even do that. Yeah. Credit to the bills. The Ravens side of this, obviously, you know, you have a team that arguably, you know, if you look at it, just all the numbers and what they were capable of on both sides of the ball. This is a team that is absolutely championship caliber and these teams are even coming

into the game. And now you have another year where you don't even get to the AFC championship game with a team like that. And now you're sitting here looking at, you know, a season where you're. are you going to have a historically good offense again potentially? You're going to get this season from Lamar. Are you going to lose Todd Munkin? And I think those are some of the bigger kind of existential questions

that the Ravens are going to have to be asking themselves after this again. And it's just, it's a frustrating place to be if you're a team like Baltimore that thought, this was maybe our chance with, you know, the chiefs are a good team, but maybe they're slightly diminished. Like, could we go in there and feel like we had a better shot than we've ever had? And so for it to end like this is a tough, tough thing to stomach when you're a team that is built like these Baltimore Ravens are with the talent that they have. I think they should not feel that bad about where they are, but I do think what you bring up with

the Chiefs where it's like, man, this was supposed to be a slow and down year for the Chiefs. And then that was even true of the Bills. This was supposed to be a little bit of a reset year for the Bills. And the fact that next year maybe they have the potential to be even better and younger on both sides of the ball. I think the fact that those teams have some obvious room to make the jump next year where you as the Ravens are kind of just hoping, okay, let's try to see if we can get Todd Monkin back. I have a good amount of faith that Lamar will be able to play at a relatively

high level again. The offensive line, I think you should be able to put it together again. We'll see if Derek Henry can continue to do this until he's 40. And to me, maybe they just add one receiver, but like, I feel pretty good about their ability to get back to this spot again. It's just, yeah, next year you're looking at a spot where potentially the chiefs are a little bit scarier and younger. Maybe the bills are the same. They have $17 million in cap spaces they head into next year. Not a lot of huge name free agents. It's like a lot of depth pieces. Like McCarrie is a free agent. Hopefully you can replace him with somebody in house. You know, you had Andrew Voorhees on the bench. He got hurt. McCarrie ends up going in there. Ronnie Stanley is the

big one. So Ronnie Stanley is going to be hitting free agency at age 31. We'll see what the market looks like for him. There's a chance that they won't be able to bring him back at the number he might fetch on the market considering the season that he had. So that might, as you're looking at it, that's probably the biggest hole that they have to worry about heading into next year. But for the most part, a vast majority of this core comes back intact. That is a big one because he actually, he started to play like Ronnie Stanley again this year, finally. So that does make his what he's going to end up getting paid a little bit complicated.

But yeah, hopefully they can get him back. This game, just kind of wrap a bow on it. It was what we wanted it to be. You know, when you have a matchup between two quarterbacks playing at this level, two teams of this quality. It was always kind of leading to this when we knew the chiefs were going to get the one seat in the AFC. And so for this game to kind of live up to what we wanted it to be, for it to come down to a two-point play

in the final two minutes, I think we got what we wanted. We got our money's worth with this one in a way that I think we can all be satisfied with. You said coming into this on the preview show, this is what you do this season for. This is what you live through some downed week 12th for and some ugly Thursday night games for. And yeah, we got it. The last thing I wanted to mention, this is the only wrinkle that I didn't point out on the defensive side of the ball for the bills. And I thought this was kind of a good for pushing the levels to one side or the other. It was either man while they were blitzing or they were doing a lot of rushing three with Milano as kind of like a quasi spy where he was kind of playing the scramble or escape to the right for Lamar.

And even if the results on that were mixed, there were times where he did actually escape. There were times where he outran people. He scrambled more in this game than he probably has it other times this year. But I just think that the nuts and bolts of the game plan that the bills had on defense against this sort of offense where you kind of are just hanging on for dear life. I mean, very few teams have had a lot of success against them. I understand everything the bills were trying to do on that side of the ball. And I think that's a credit to what Sean McDermott and Bobby Babbage have done on that side. And that's, that's again, an area where I just didn't know what the defense was going to be.

You know, you had so many pieces coming in and out. they lose Taylor Rap in this game. Cole Bishop comes in. And for them to kind of maintain the sort of defense they've been in previous years with all of these personnel changes, I just think we kind of underrate what Sean McDermott has been keeping this all together. He's not one of those young, hot shot offensive coaches. You know, he doesn't have a 20-year track record like John Hartball or Mike Tomlin

do. But he's a really, really good football coach who continues to put this team in the right position over and over and over again. And I thought tonight was a good example of that. You at least felt like they were actively trying to find what the answer was. And like you mentioned, the Milano thing, the first time they tried it, Lamar scrambled and converted. Because he kind of, he was, Lamar started to shift out to his right. Milano starts to track him.

He gets caught in all the traffic of the remaining lineman. Lamar jumps out to the left side. That's going to happen. But over the course of the game, like you said, the fact that it was a change up that they could throw in there and kind of keep Lamar off beat a little bit, even if it didn't necessarily slow him down all that much. You at least felt like the bills were trying to punch back against what has been a giant for most of the season, whereas you just didn't want to come out of this game feeling like, man, I wish the bills tried this, or man, I wish they had done this or I wish they'd given this a shot. Win or lose, you really did not feel that way about their defense. And I'm sure we'll be subject to plenty of Lamar playoff conversation here over the next week or show so that I don't really have any interest in. The last thing I would like to say about the law thing is we actually didn't really talk about him for a lot of this.

Because so in a lot of his other playoff losses, I do think you can look at the box score and some of the moments that he had and say he did not play to his standard. And that is part of why they lost. I think there are a lot of other reasons that he's lost a lot of these other games. This game, other than the ridiculously stupid fumble that he has, which he's obviously prone to. He played lights out, man. For like the last two and a half quarters of this game, he was really, really good. This to me did not feel like a man, Lamar and the Ravens have done it again. This just felt like the build. found away in the end against two really, really good teams. Exactly. You have a couple turnovers that put yourself in a hole. You get jumped on a little bit by a game plan you might not have expected. And then you have to really fight back and claw back from a deficit over the final two and a half quarters. And they did that. They put themselves in a position to at least tie the game and potentially win it. And they come up short.

And sometimes that's as simple as it gets when you lose the turnover battle by three in the way that they did today. All right. Before we move on, let's take a quick break. Let's get to our next one. Speaking of turnover battles, we're going to talk about Washington and the Lions next because I think that was, other than this game, the headline game from the weekend,

just because of what Jaden Daniels and that Washington team did on the road against the number one seat in the NFC. I mean, I think we have to start with the way that Jaden Daniels played. He was unbelievable again in this game. I thought the entire performance from Washington's offense,

Jaden Daniels, Cliff Kingsbury, everybody in charge of how this was going to go. They put their best. best foot forward against a lion's defense that, yeah, it's depleted, but they had still been okay as they've had to overcome a lot of those injuries in the second half of the year. And I thought that Washington pushed all the right buttons at all the right moments. I thought this was the best game that Cliff Kingsbury has called the entire season. And I don't mean that to take away from any of the players of the way that they played.

I just thought they were constantly ahead of what Aaron Glenn was trying to do. You could even see it from pretty much the first drive of this game. like on I think it was the first play that Washington had the ball, Detroit goes corners over, which means they are, instead of having a left and right cornerback, they take Terry and Arnold, who's supposed to be the outside cornerback, they let him go follow to the slot players. So they don't have an outside cornerback to the other side.

You would think that that means man, because the corner is running with the guy. Instead, the Lions bail out into this cover two look. You would think rookie quarterback first play in this big playoff game. He's going to absolutely go on the fritz. Daniels just looks like it's the most. easy play in the world, finds Erds underneath for like six yards, and they just go move on. That to me was like, okay, they are immediately not going to get beat by some of the

lines changeups here. That is really cool. And then I think on the very next play, the Lions send a pressure from the open side into where Washington likes to throw with a lot of their RPO's and checkdowns. They immediately hit a short route behind the line of scrimmage. Washington takes it for a bunch of yards there. So it just felt like from the jump in this game, Cliff kind of had the beat on what Glenn wanted to do, and then just over the course of the game, and we'll get into the 800 million ways they did this, it just felt like Cliff had answers, run and pass for everything they wanted to do. Jaden Daniels finishes this game, 0.5 EPA per dropback.

0.59, 0.59. Just for context, that is a top 20 mark all season. 10 of those performances of the top 20 came against teams that fired their defensive coordinator after the season. So if you have that little bit of context against the defense that wall injured has still been okay, it's even more impressive. And the part of the game plan that I thought was curious, and we can talk about this, I was surprised at how aggressive the lions were in the amount of pressure that they set in this game. And I just didn't think it was the right answer against this Washington offense for a lot of different reasons. I understand if you're Aaron Glenn, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

They did not get a single pressure while rushing forward in this game, not a single one over the course of the entire game. So you're worried about that. But at the same time, I think that the simulated pressures that they were using every once in a while, some of the six-man pressures that they were using, I just wouldn't approach him this way. And his entire season would lead you to believe that isn't the right approach. In this game, Jaden Daniels, 0.76 EPA for dropback against him. the blitz. Among quarterbacks with at least 10 attempts against the blitz in a game, that is the 13th best mark of the season. Okay. Daniels has six of the top 23 games. He's been doing it all year. That's the

thing. This wasn't any sort of surprise, especially if it's going to be, like we said, coming in, zone blitzes, which a lot of it actually was. A lot of it, I thought it would be a lot more man pressures coming into this game, but a lot of it actually was zone blitzes, and that was kind of the weirdest part of this to me. He is so good at finding voids as a passer and finding them quickly. He does them in two different ways. Against Zone, we've talked about this, he's really, really good at quickly and progressing to windows and finding windows of space.

But if you're going to vacate space because you're blitzing, that also allows him to find voids in the defense. And he consistently was doing that throughout this game. On plays where they played man, the Lions, and only brought four or five pass rushers, Daniels had a 41% success rate. He was 8 to 14 for 96 yards. 59 of those were on the McLaurin touchdown. So when they weren't bringing six and they were playing man,

it actually was working and they didn't do that. They went away from it so often. And I get it where we're hurt. We lose and meet Robertson on the first drive of the game. Now can we even hold up in coverage if we don't bring extra bodies? I understand that. I feel like they took it to the extreme a little bit too much. given the quarterback and the team that they were playing against.

I couldn't agree more. And so much of it, too, is not even just Daniels' ability to beat the Blitz, which he obviously showcased in this game. A lot of it was, we know Washington wants to get into a lot of these RPO looks where you're throwing these perimeter screens, bubbles, smokes, all that fun stuff. Detroit, anecdotally, it felt like I haven't like charted this or anything, but it felt like they were open side blitzing all of the time, which open side means that's the side you don't have the tight end on the line of scrimmage, too.

like this is where you're putting your trip side, your trips bunch all the way pushed over to the to the sideline. Detroit just kept sending one or two guys from that side all the time. Okay, well, what if they pull it and throw the screen? That's exactly how you get the McLaurin touchdown. They had a number of other big plays off of stuff like that. So it just felt to me like the times and the areas in which Detroit chose to vacate the, you know, middle underneath part of their defense were just very confusing to me. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense. The last thing I said I'll throw out on plays where the Lions just rushed four and played man. Okay, that's it.

Daniels was three of seven for 16 yards. So when they had enough bodies and coverage and when they were willing to play man coverage, in the way that I thought they were going to because of how Washington has relatively struggled this year, they just didn't lean into it very much. And again, they had zero pressures on plays where they brought four. So I get if you're a defensive coordinator, you start feeling a little bit antsy about that, but I still feel like it was a little bit of an overreaction that pull Washington in very, very good possessions throughout the entire game.

And part of it too, Robertson leads the game like immediately. And I think a lot of, I'm assuming a lot of their comfort in their ability to play man coverage, especially since Carlton Davis has left, is his ability to be able to do that. And so now when your only guy that you probably trust in man coverage is Terry and Arnold, who I think it's been good for a rookie, but also a little grabby and you can beat him on some double moves. There was one that McLaurin would have got open if they weren't shading the safety all the way to his side. And it could have been a touchdown. So I think the fact that they lost Robertson pretty early in this game, I would assume they would have wanted to play a little bit more man than they did. But the fact that

they showed from the start, they were willing to blitz and play zone. Then Robertson goes out. It's like I guess they just thought that that was their best answer, but it just never felt like it was actually working the way that they wanted. I thought that the game plan put Daniels in positions to succeed, but he also made a couple just unbelievable, like nails throws. The Diami Brown throw is like a dog. The Diami Brown throw, that's against man coverage, by the way. And that was like, when you play that way, you have to hit the fight. When you play against man, you have to hit the high variance place.

And so on that play, he sees, I believe it was Kirby Joseph, shaded to McCorn's side and immediately let's that thing go. With pressure in his face, while kind of having to like dip his angle down a little bit and throw it before. he wants to. It is one of the best down the field throws any quarterback has made this season, period. And it came in a huge moment in a divisional round game where you are almost a double-digit underdog on the road. He throws that ball almost like he's on a river and like turning and like skipping a rock across the, like, and that's the way that he almost ends up throwing it. And obviously the launch point's a little higher because he's actually throwing a football instead of a rock. But like it looks about as close to that as you possibly could. And for it to land right in Diami Brown's breadbasket was incredible.

And that's not even one of the, that's not even the only throw he hit to Diami Brown against man coverage. There was one earlier in the game where he hits him on an over. He puts it right on Diami Brown's face mask and Kindle Vildor just like makes an incredible punch out from over the back. But that could have been a huge play that Daniels, yeah, I mean, Daniels does make the play and he just doesn't get rewarded. But the fact that he had like two or three moments in this game where he just

pins the most insane throw on him. I think down the field, his ability to do that really at every single point this season has been phenomenal. Because like there have been points where I think with like Jalen Hertz, for example, we say, oh, he's a great deep passer. Okay, well, a lot of it is he's just throwing a go ball to H.A. Brown. And so like, it's a little bit easier when that's the case. When you're throwing this deep post across the field under pressure against tight man coverage the way that Jaden Daniels can sometimes, it's a different gear than a lot of these other guys that we can lodge for being really good deep passers. The other deep ball chunk that I think is worth pointing out, because I think this is a good combination of smart design and some of the injuries on defense, the big scissors route that they hit, I believe that was to Diami Brown as well.

So they have two big kind of posts that cross each other against the single high cover three look. And when you watch the all 22 of that play, this is where the injuries start to come into play. Arnold is trying to communicate to Vildor on the other side. Like we're passing this off. Like this is now yours. He drops it. and Brown is wide open for a huge chunk game. So I think that's where, again, some of this team, when they're at their best,

this alliance team, it was because of the communication on the back end. And as you start to chip away at the cornerback depth and you get some of these backups in there, it's not just about the drop off in talent. It's about the drop off in cohesion. And I think that there were a couple moments in this game where that really stood out. That one was to me also interesting too because I think Diamie Brown is on those two deep overs. the one that goes under just slightly by a couple yards, and McLaren is the one taking the one high over the top.

Kirby Joseph, typically when you get that kind of concept, the free safety, if he's pinning down on something, is going to go for the underneath guy. So it should be Diami Brown in this case. But I don't know if this was a game plan thing or just you want to go cover Terry McLaren instead, but the fact that he drifts to Terry McLaren almost like automatically instead of doing the thing that typically would make sense out of that coverage,

it's just like you said, another one of those things that it felt like Washington just found the right ways and found the right guys to attack in these moments. There are also some stuff in the run game that you wanted to point out, just like the way that they approached it. What about the way that Washington ran the ball in this game stood out to you? So I think, first of all, they just simply moved people better than I thought they were going to. I think that was certainly part of it. But there were a couple of runs specifically where I thought Cliff just had a really good call. There were multiple times in this game where they have a nub tied end to the right side and they have a trips bunch over.

over to the left side. And they have, I believe it was Robinson in both cases as the back to the left. So you would think in shotgun, if you're going to run and the back is to the left, you're going to run to the right side into the nub. So in both cases, Detroit has their bigger bodies overloaded to that side. In both of these cases, Washington pulls the right tackle to the left side. They just out leverage them. And Robinson pops like, I think the first time it went for like 20 yards. And then the second time it was like eight or 10 yards. Just like finding those little ways to manipulate their leverage and where they want to play and what they think they're getting. I just thought Cliff in so many of these moments, both run and pass, he had like five or six just perfect play calls in this game. I think a lot of people after that performance and just the way that the season is gone for Washington are going to be pounding the drum for like, well, why wouldn't Cliff Kingsbury get a head coaching opportunity? And I understand that based on the way that we award these opportunities. Based on everything he has said this year, I kind of just want him to stay there. I just kind want him to stay there. It feels like he might just be more comfortable being the

offensive coordinator for a team where all he has to do is draw up ball plays. He's in charge with that side of the ball. He doesn't have to worry about personnel meetings. He doesn't have to worry about all these media obligations. He doesn't have to worry about discipline on both sides of the ball. Like this scope for him and getting to work with this quarterback, every time he's talked about it, he seems so energized about the chance. And I kind of don't want to break this up. Like the way that this is going, their partnership, I kind of want to watch this for a little bit longer before we just throw him back into another head coaching job. And if that wasn't something I could tell he secretly was interested in, that I wouldn't want to deprive him of the chance. But I think he'd be okay with that if I were reading the tea leaves everything he has said this year.

He seems like he's chilling, bro. Like he's not necessarily ready to jump right back into the head coaching thing. It might be in two years, three years. He wants to get back into it again. But it feels, obviously, this is super early. and I'm not saying he's quite this level of coach, but it feels like Spags a little bit. Like he's settled into like,

I'm just going to be the defensive coordinator for a while. Because at any point in the last three years, he probably could have gotten a head coaching job if he really wanted it. But I think he feels comfortable kind of building what he's done on that side of the ball. And so if you're Cliff's Kingsbury and you kind of stumble into what is one of the best young quarterbacks in the league, yeah, I would kind of want to just sit here and call some plays for a couple of years,

see how high we can take this thing. I don't, I'm not going to just throw this out. because I haven't really considered the history of it. And I don't remember watching like Dan Marino was a rookie and all this other stuff. Jane Daniels is absolutely in the conversation for the best rookie quarterback I have seen since I started doing this. And I just think that it's all the stuff that we've talked about this, or all the stuff we've talked about this entire season. The poise, the calm, and just the processing overall.

And I remember being there in training camp and talking to people on the offensive staff just about what he was bringing to the table and what they liked about him. And that was the word that they kept using. And obviously, that's something that's nebulous and you can't really understand it before you see it in practice. And the assertiveness that he has played the position with this entire season, how quickly he's triggering on this stuff, how fast he's making the decisions when there are those voided areas in coverage, where there is a free runner, that combined with the fact that he just never seems phased by anything that's happening to him. There are elements to his game that are unique. He doesn't do everything that we see elite quarterbacks do in terms of how he moves around. on the pocket. But the fact that he plays so quickly from the pocket, it's made that stuff matter so much less. It has made him such a better player immediately than I expected him to be. And I think

that's such a testament to the way he plays the game between the ears and really has since from the moment he started. In high leverage scenarios, whether it's third down, blitz, late in the game, whatever, with almost any rookie quarterback, you just feel tense. Like even with a good quarterback, you just feel like, man, like something could go wrong because you're just a young guy. You haven't done this very, very much. With Daniels, I just don't feel that way at all. And like that probably changed by like week six. I was just like he just seems like this game moves a little bit slower for him in a good way than it does for almost every other guy.

And like you mentioned the best rookie quarterbacks you've ever seen. Luck and Herbert are probably up there. And then other than that, like you can kind of start the conversation with what Daniels has done. And it's tricky, right? Because he's such a different player than those guys. but I think with all three of those guys, you just saw someone who very obviously, okay, he comes in, he's not scared of the blitz.

He's not scared when he's under pressure. And that's to me, obviously, the big thing with Daniels that I've said over and over again, his ability to hang in the pocket and play from the pocket and not take sacks as of late, especially in this game, it's just like the fact that he is consistently leveling up already looks as mature as he is,

is already this explosive, is already this accurate. It's about as good of a starting point as you can hope for for young. quarterback. The offense for Washington was about as good as it could be. The offense for Detroit, down to down, actually played fine. This is another situation where the turnover just completely did them in. You get the strip sack from Dorrance Armstrong, which that's a play where Amon Raus St. Barnes trips and Goff has to hang out to it for an extra beat. Doran's Armstrong

beats clam gasco, sack, fumble, ball goes to Washington. Goff gets greedy against the cover two look where he has an underneath option, tries to push it down the field, sails it, gets picked off, Mikey Sainer Still makes a phenomenal play on a post route to Jameson Williams where it's actually the right throw. It's a post against quarters. The safety clamps down. He's got him. He probably should lay that out a little bit more than he did, but Sainer Still makes a fantastic play on it. And then the Jameson Williams end around pass, which is probably one trick play too many. I'm fine with the trick place. You get the JMO end around. It's great. You get the toss shovel. those are fairly limited in downside in terms of how the ball is moving through the air.

The offense was playing well enough that I cannot support one of your wide receivers throwing a pass at that point in the game. Just one step too far. That is, that's a fair point, actually. I don't mind the trick play as an idea because to me this was like you died as you lived. This is what the, this is what the lines have done for the entire season. You can do it within reason, though. That's the thing. is like, because the other trick plays were, what was it, the Jameson Williams end around

and then that weird, they toss and then they do the shovel pitch. All of that stuff, like you said, is a little bit more, if it goes wrong, it's a three-yard loss. Whereas this, you are allowing Jameson Williams, who is still a very young and inconsistent player in your offense and not your most reliable player to go through a plass. So maybe the call itself, the design, probably should have went to a different one. But I, in general, I still don't even think I mind going to a trick play here. You as you lived. I think this is how it always needed to end for the for the lines. I think that running a trick play with a guy who you are trusting to throw the ball, that your wide receiver coach has had to have multiple conversations with on the sideline

at points during this season and had to again after that play, that's not a level of variance I'm inviting into the game, even if you put yourself into a hole because of some of the other turnovers that have happened. I actually think though, because of how automatically Washington was scoring on the other side, I always, I almost think you did need to make the super volatile play. Like, I think they were kind of in a position where they were, they were down and out, and they needed something insane. Anything else just with the way that the Lions' offense played, other than the

turnovers that you feel like were your big takeaways from this game? I really thought, and I know this is crazy because he already had a really good game. I thought they could have forced the issue a little bit more with Jameer Gibbs and really just unlocked him as a player who was going to get them over the finish line. because even for, I think as well as Washington's defense has played, certainly relative to what I thought coming into this season, but even compared to what they were for the first half of the season, I think they've been playing better, they're still not the fastest defense. And you saw that with the way that Bobby Wagner was getting out leverage, gives his ability to make almost every player in the secondary miss at the second and third level of the defense. Like, I think if they could have found different ways to keep him on the field, give him five or six more touches over the course of this game, you might have got one that popped more and that could have been the difference. I will say, I thought that Washington's run defense in the second half was significantly better than it was in the first half. The production will tell you that, but I thought that's just the play overall. In the first half, 14 carries for 161 for the Lions, 64% rushing success rate in the first half for Detroit.

In the second half, nine carries 40 yards, 44% success rate. And I thought everybody kind of got into the mix there. The guy that really stood out to me in the run defense area of things for Washington, I thought that Dante Fowler played like a bad out of hell. this entire game. What was it the first play of the game? Or maybe the second play, he just flies where they're trying to pull into his side. And he literally gets out of his stance so fast that he gets there before the puller can meet him. And then, yeah, he just did that for the rest of the game. They were playing a lot of five down fronts too in Nickel. And I think that that was obviously the kind of linchpin of their run defense game plan. In the second half, it started working a little bit better than it did in the first half. And I think Fowler kind of is indicative of just the overall impact that the smaller team building moves from Washington. had over the course of this entire game. Dorrance Armstrong has two sacks in this game. Dante Fowler has a really nice game. The offensive line, which is made up of mostly mid-tier free agents,

again, a lot zero pressures against four-man rushes throughout the entire game. And that was even after losing Sam Cosmey at one point and having to throw, I think, believe Trent Scott in their right guard for the rest of the game. So what Washington did, this entire thing is obviously going to be headlined by Jaden Daniels. But I think that every move they made, and you picked out

Peters as the executive of the year, you know, but when we did our ends of season award show, every move they made seemed to fall into place in the right way and showed up in this sort of game. I think that using free agency, when you have a ton of money, to just fill holes, fill out sort of the connective tissue of your roster is probably the right way to do it. And that's exactly what Washington did. And there's so many like individual units that are kind of built through these mid-tier free agent signings. And they've been so much better than I think anybody could have anticipated.

it's accelerated by the quarterback, but overall, what they did to turn this roster around in a single year is incredibly impressive. If you were to really, like, rattle off the free agent signings, the draft stuff, they like really didn't make a single bet that didn't work out for them. Like almost every single one, I guess like outside of maybe your third round pick and Luke McCaffrey not being that huge of a thing for you. But if that's your biggest complaint when almost every free agent, like, then that's fine because a lot of third rounders don't really give you anything as a rookie. didn't have a big season. Right. That's really it. I mean, other than that, every single free age, me, you can list them off.

Allegretti, Biotish, what they did on the defensive line, Dorrance Armstrong, Dante Fowler, Frankie Louvre, Bobby Wagner, Jeremy Chin. I mean, those are all guys who were contributors for them at pretty modest prices. And you combine that with what they did in the draft with Daniels, with saying we're still getting Jerry Newton. And the other guy I want to mention, Jonathan Allen had a big game in this game. Jonathan Allen being back in this game ended up becoming really. important. I thought that the front for Washington, with him and Payne, Armstrong, Fowler, they played so much better in this game than Detroit's depleted front did. And this is a theme.

Like, if you can get after the quarterback with four in the playoffs, it goes a long way. And I thought Washington did a very good job of that in this game. On the lion's side of this, this is horrendous. Like, we talked about it coming in. There's no way around that. Like, this is absolutely horrendous. You're the one seed. You win 15 games. You have this moment before your quarterback is going to start making a ton of money. You have both of these coordinators that you built this thing with. There is a very good chance you were about to lose both of those coordinators to head coaching jobs within probably the next week now. And you're going to be sitting there after this season and view this as a pretty huge missed opportunity.

And part of that is getting absolutely decimated by injuries on defense. You need a little bit of luck to get there. They were unlucky on that side of it. but they had been able to overcome that often enough where you thought they might be able to again. And then you see some of the cracks with the quarterback in certain situations and with what the defensive personnel looked like. And now suddenly you're sitting here and your season is over. And Dan Campbell talking last year about how it was going to get hard to get back to that place. I think that now it becomes even harder to get back to that place if you're Detroit,

given kind of where they are in the lifespan of how organizations work. I think the toughest part of this for me to swallow, if I were in the organization or a fan or whatever it is, it's not that you lost. It's not even that you lost to a rookie quarterback. It's that from basically the first snap of this game, you did not feel like you had control of the game. For a Lions organization and team that really for the last two years has been in full control of a majority of the games they played, and especially this year and especially against really good teams, for you to walk in off of a bunch of a bunch of, by and pretty immediately, even again, I know with some of the injuries and like even Zaitler on the offense didn't play in this game, I know all of that, but for you to immediately not feel like you

had control of this game against a team that wasn't supposed to sniff the playoffs this year. And I know we should change the way that we frame these teams, but like it's just crazy that we're going from a team that should not have been anywhere near the playoffs to the team that was kind of expected to get the one seat in this conference and it just immediately never feel like you have control. And like you said, it's probably never going to be this consistent. for you again, where you have two coordinators that have been there for three and a half, four years now.

Like, that's just, that doesn't happen anywhere in the NFL and the fact that they're going to lose that. Yeah, this was worst case scenario and it actually happened. When you lose a coordinator, especially on offense, it's obviously important. I think it's more important when you don't have, I mean, this is very obvious, but I think it's really telling based on the way that that game went. When you don't have one of the alien quarterbacks, the circle of the circle. the circumstances offensively are extremely important.

They have to be very specific for you to have consistent success. In this game, Jared Goff was 4.14 for 65 yards with two interceptions when he was pressured. Oh, man. That is worse than I thought. I hadn't looked at the pressure numbers there. It felt that way. But 4 or 14, that is like a vintage golf under pressure performance. That is like 2019 Rams golf under pressure performance.

And he's been better in those moments. And I think that Jared Goff has played very, very good football over the last couple years. And I understand giving him that contract when you did and why you did based on the way that he has played. But when you have some limitations as a player, especially in big games where you can't do these breaking case for emergency stuff where you're extending plays against a free rusher or just, again, the circumstances have to be correct. When you start shipping away at those circumstances, there's real downside for you as an offense. So now you potentially lose Ben Johnson. you lose Kevin Zitler and free agency this offseason, potentially. He signed a one-year deal.

You drafted Chris Mahogany for this reason, but again, we start shipping away at this. They have $57 million in cap space heading into next year. Carlton Davis and Zitler are both free agents. When you're trying to win championships, those one-year hits on guys, whether they're trades or free agents, you've got to bottle those. Both of those guys were huge hits, and now you move on. You have Mahogany and Ennis Rake Straw to replace them, but who knows how that's going to go. And so next year, they're in a very good position to bring most of this core back.

Derek Barnes, John Kaminsky, Levi-Oen-Zerrique, all free agents. They're important depth pieces, but you'd hope with some of that cap space and with another draft and with some of the guys that you drafted who are waiting in the wings, you can fill this out. In 2026, right now, without doing anything else, if the cap ends up being at like 290 like it's projected to be, they will have $22 million in cap space. Gough, Amonra, St. Brown, and Pane Soule are slated to make one third of the cap combined. Goff has a $70 million cap hit in 2026. That's why these years are really, really, really, really important.

This was the window. This was the window. And like, even that cash issue is not going to come up as much next year, kind of like you mentioned. But if they lose even just one of the coordinators, but probably both, that is like a of an issue with this specific roster in the way that it's been built where like you don't have that many stars like you're kind of built by being this like we've insulated this thing for three four years now and we have the offensive line obviously that kind of makes everything better but I think if you were to lose kind of the glue that keeps everything together on both sides of the

ball with the coaching and then maybe you don't hit on your one year free agent deals this offseason it's again this is why this was worst case scenarios that this needed to be the moment. It can still happen. This is a team that deserves the benefit of the doubt based on how everything has gone over the last couple years. The entire point here is that it's harder. The margin for error when you start losing coaches, when you have brain drain on that side, when players get more expensive, the needle you have to thread becomes so much narrower. And that's going to be the case with the 2025 Lions. And it's especially going to be the case with the 2026 Lions where unless you keep drafting guys and keep hitting and replenishing the roster with

of these cheap pieces after you've paid the guys who used to be the cheap pieces, it's going to be hard to sustain success like this. So there is a chance. And I'm not saying they can't do it. There is a chance that this season for the Lions in an NFC that's watered down was potentially their best shot. And now it's just over before we even get the championship Sunday. Yeah, they'll be good again, but 15 wins again, that that is not happening. Like this was the window for that. The last thing I wanted to mention about this game, I meant to bring it up earlier, the fourth down aggressiveness by Dan Quinn in this game and just how this offense and he operated, knowing they

had four downs throughout this entire season. They get stuffed on the first drive and the fact that he didn't give a shit and kept going back to it over and over and over again. Fourth and three hits Zach Ertz on a huge conversion inside the, and that's another play where there was a free rusher and Daniels hits him. Third quarter, fourth and two. Daniels with the keeper under center gets that. That was a nifty play call, by the way.

Very, very nice play call. Very nice play call. And then fourth quarter, fourth and two, Daniels hits McCorn for 12 yards. Jeremy McNichols taps that off with the touchdown run. And it goes a long way in this game. So I think that combined with some of the details we saw from Cliff Kingsbury. The touchdown is accurate. It was a beautiful design.

It was the same thing they hit at the end of the game against the Falcons, where they know they're getting man coverage down there. He does a quick, quick like exit motion, fakes the flat, comes back to so many decisions, game plan things, everything in a complete and very impressive win for Washington. Specifically them not getting the first one and then still being willing to double down. It's the exact same thing that happened to them last week. And again, they still just didn't care and they kept going back to it because they trust that

they go for four or fourth downs. They'll get at least two of them, maybe three. I mean, they've converted over to like 80%. of the ones that they've taken this year, which is a completely ridiculous rate. But if you're running hot, keep running hot. Let's get to our next one here. The Eagles knock off the Rams 28 to 22. This was a tale of monster plays and turnovers yet again.

And if you look at it, even on the ground, okay, the Rams had a better rushing success rate in this game than the Eagles did. The difference in this game is that the Eagles had 3 40-yard touchdown runs and the Rams put the ball on the ground twice. That's it. That to me swings this game. And I know that, and I think the Rams struggle to deal with the conditions in the second half,

and that was part of it. But those five plays end up determining this whole thing in my mind. This was, I think, the most frustrating way for the Rams to lose. We're like on a down-to-down basis, I think they were the better team outside of eight plays in this game. But those eight plays did so. much to swing the way that this game went that ultimately didn't matter. Like, you mentioned the Rams being able to run the ball in this game.

Obviously, they're never going to be as explosive as the Eagles are. But the rate at which Kyrin Williams was ripping off these eight plus yard runs, that's not what this offense has done consistently for a lot of the year. They are the, we can consistently get three, four, five yards. The fact that they were popping eight, Kyron Williams had like a 30-yarder. He had a different 20-yarder, I think. The fact that they were getting those, that to me felt like they were, getting the best out of what they could possibly get from this run game outside of

Kairn Williams randomly discovering that he runs a four three, which was never going to happen. And then even in the passing game, I thought they were doing a lot of interesting things. It was just, like you said, I think Stafford's inability to move in this game hurt them. And then the two fumbles, like you mentioned, like that almost by itself kind of put this game away for them. Yeah, again, they struggled to deal with the conditions in the second half. You had the ball security problems, and then they had that driver. They had two straight drops on second and third down on plays that. were wide open. And so when it starts coming down like that, who makes fewer mistakes will ultimately

probably determine how things go. And that's pretty much exactly what happened in the second half of this game. Yeah, that was basically what happened. And then, too, you mentioned some of the drops with obviously the Rams Pass game and why it slowed down a little bit. I think to me, too, it was just you really saw, I think even in a dome in perfect conditions, this is probably the least mobile that Matthew Stafford has ever looked. I think when you saw what it looked like in, especially the second half, or like it was like late second quarter when it really started to come down with all the snow, you could really see Stafford not be able to move at all. And I don't mean like take four steps out of the pocket and go find my check down from there. I mean like get to

the top of your drop and hitch up one time to make a throw. Like all of his best plays by the time it really started to come down with a lot of the snow was they were in gun and it would be like three step drop and he would just kind of hang on that exact spot. and he would find the throw. But whenever he had to move off his spot a little bit or the platform got weird, I mean, shoot, the last play of the game, he's getting a rusher right in his face and he's got to kind of adjust his platform a little bit and throw with not the strongest base under him.

And he completely sails the throw to Pukinaku out of bounds. Like that just, I don't want to like blame the game entirely on the conditions because I always think that that's a cop out. But I do think in Matthew Stafford's particular case, you could see how much it was really, really affecting him. Yeah. And I think that the team that is able to hit home runs on the ground, that's a massive advantage in a game like this.

And like you said, the Rams had eight-yard chunks, 10-yard chunks, a 30-yard chunk. That's different than being able to rip off two 75-yard touchdown runs in the way that Saquan and the Eagles are capable of doing. And this is one of those games. Again, I thought that the Rams overall did fine down-to-down run defense was. But this is one of those games where your gambit to, play the sport without linebackers ends up becoming a huge thing. There are several lowlights in this game for Christian Roseboom in a way that as the Rams kind of have some existential

conversations this offseason about who they want to be, I would like them to do something at linebacker that they have not been willing to do. If they had Ernest Jones in this game, I feel like things might have gone a little bit better. How funny is that? I couldn't agree more. If they had a guy who could just, yeah, come up and hit Landon Dickerson a little bit and start to change the math a little bit, that would have really gone a long way for them in this team. I really hope that this has been, it's not like this was a one-year thing for the Rams and linebackers, like multiple over multiple defensive coordinators. This is the third one now, going all the way back to Brandon Staley, where they just have not cared that much about the position. And obviously they had Ernest Jones at the time, but he was like a mid-low-level pick. They were just hoping that it would work out.

and then as soon as he got good, they shipped them off. So this to me, like, I would like to see them. I know we don't love linebackers in the first round, and I know that this is not a draft show. Go draft Jehad Campbell in the first round. Like, I don't care. You have to make... That's never going to happen.

There's a zero percent chance to Los Angeles Rams draft a linebacker in the first round. They need to do it, man. I don't care. There's one freak athlete in this class. Go get him. So I just, I know that's like an aside, but they definitely need to change that part of the defense. And I think you definitely saw it in this game.

I mean, even you mentioned all the Barkley runs. Jalen Hurts, started off the scoring with a 40-yard quarterback power run where Jordan Milata is running to nobody. He's pulling and he's running to nobody. That was probably the most empty he's ever felt as a player where he's, you built this entire offensive line and run game for him to be able to go out into space and go hit people. And he runs out and there's nobody to hit and you score anyway. It was funny that he didn't even have to do his job on this play. But that is kind of what it felt like on the Eagles' best plays.

On that play, specifically, Roseboom just freezes. It does not move. It's a counterbash where they have Sequin coming to the left and then Hertz keeps it to the right. It's a difficult play to defend. There's a lot of movement. We see linebackers have their heads exploded a lot when people run it. These linebackers had their heads exploded when the Eagles decided to run that.

And then on the Eagles touched out, the first Barkley touchdown, that's a situation where it's blocked up perfectly. The Rams are another one of those looks where they have five guys walk down. There's nobody on the second level. The second level pursuit from the safeties in this game by the Rams were an abomination on all of those long runs. I know the conditions are bad, but it was very, very bad consistently. And on that play, specifically, the block by both Landon Dickerson and Jurgens, the two reaches one gap over, it makes that thing easy. And so the ability to weaponize that offensive line and have a home run here to get you two or three of those in the game, that ends up becoming really all the Eagles needed on offense, given some of the,

self-inflicted wounds that we saw from the Rams throughout this entire game. And that play to me, too, spoke to some of the answers that I think the Eagles were able to come to specifically against this defense. On that play, they have, the Rams have down on the Eagles's right side of the line. They have like their linebackers and safeties walked up. Like, that's where they're putting all their light bodies. They have all their defensive linemen to the other side because Sequin Barkley starts to play, a line to Jalen Hertz is right. So again, if your shotgun on the right side, you're probably going to run to the left. So they have all their big bodies to the left. Jalen Hertz makes a call to flip it and he gets Sparkley to his left and they run obviously run

him to the right side into all those light bodies. And yeah, like you said, when you get like all pro guards on guys like Christian Roosboom, I mean, it's, that's kind of how you end up having multiple 70 and 40 yard runs for touchdowns in this game. Other than the turnovers, the Rams also had multiple short yarded screw ups. And I mean, even the fumble that Kyron Williams recovers in the first quarter on that loss of seven, that ends up leading to a field goal when they were potentially driving to score a touchdown. That combined with, you know, C.J. Gardner Johnson play, that TFL was just a fantastic play with him coming downhill.

But then they just don't block Josh Sweat on that other third down short yardage run. So you have two short yardage third down plays where you get blown up and they torpedo drives combined with the turnovers against a team this good. It doesn't matter if they can't throw the ball throughout the entire game, the Eagles. That's probably going to be enough for. for you to dig yourself a big enough hole to not be able to climb your way back. Right, because even for as close as they kept this game, you knew the second Sequan Barkley touchdown run was coming.

You knew it had to come at a certain point. Like you, there are two teams in the NFL where I'm certain that run is going to come, even if it doesn't necessarily, it's them and the Ravens. Like you just feel like when they're in a position of power or on like even playing field, they're going to get that run. And the Eagles, especially in these conditions, especially against this type of run defense, that play was always going to come and it did. We've talked about this with the Eagles,

it feels like there's an inevitability because of the talent on the roster. That happened with Sequin Barclay in this game. And the other guy had happened with is Jalen Carter. Jaywin Carter, two straight off seasons with the Jalen Carter pick and then what they did with Sequin, just monster home run acquisitions that end up coming up huge in this game. Like the defining pieces on either side of the ball

have been acquired in the last 18 months for the Eagles. Carter was ridiculous. I mean, those two plays at the end of the game where there's that miscommunication between the center and the right guard, and he's just wreaking havoc. He causes the fumble on the Kyron Williams play. So what Seek on offense, what Jalen Carter did on defense, this team has those guys. And you were going to feel those guys most likely by the end of the game. And that's exactly what happened today. Carter legitimately calling game, where he gets the last two pressures and sacks that really fully end the game. That is like peak. Aaron Donald's. It's like Aaron Donald, Chris Jones, like, where you like, okay, you get into the playoffs. You feel like that guy is going to have

the moment. And the thing is like the Rams were driving on that drive. And they were, they were, it really looked like they were going to go do it. And for him to all in those final two plays, just call game and say that this is my time. We knew the Eagles had those players on offense for a while now. I think obviously coming into this year, we weren't sure if the defense overall was going to be good enough for those moments to even matter. The fact that the Eagles defense was good enough as a whole and then he has those superstar moments on top of it. Again, it's kind of just like a good encapsulation of the journey that we've been on with this defense. The fact that he is very obviously a star for them in the middle goes a long way. We talked about this coming into the

game where the Eagles ability to make you communicate with the way that they're stunting the front, moving people along the front in some of those defined passing situations. That ended up becoming a huge thing in this game. Same thing was true for the Rams. I mean, we were wondering how the Rams pass rush was going to be able to get after Jaywin Hurts just because of the quality. this offensive line, the size of this offensive line compared to the play style that the Rams have. And what they did was they made Jalen Hertz hang on to the ball, but also just a crazy amount of like stunts and twists and all of the nonsense that they were doing.

That was the right way to do it. I mean, Jared Verst had a monster impact in this game because they weren't just asking him to line up over Jordan Milata and rush the entire game. He had one nasty bull rush on a third down. But other than that, a lot of his impact came as a penetrator on loops and stunts. I thought that the overall game plan structurally from the Rams against the run and how they were trying to get after him made a lot of sense. And I think it really is sort of an indication moving forward, like what this front is going to be capable of in these moments when they get a couple more pieces on the rest of the defense. I'm very excited for it.

These two, not that I thought Chris Shula had done a bad job for a majority of the season, but these two playoff games have really sold me on his ability. And I know they still got beat up in the run game, but we talked about like just personnel-wise, that was. was going to happen. I thought what they did on the coverage end where the best way to beat Jalen Hertz is to make him hold onto the ball because I think even though he's been an effective scrambler this year, you see when he holds onto the ball. He is not as decisive or immediate or explosive as a lot of the other guys like Jaden Daniels or Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson about like I see Lane, I am immediately going to run. Like he'll kind of bounce around there for a second. He's not a twitchy player he's not it takes him a second to kind of get going and that's why i think he bounces around and

waits for the perfect opportunity well if like you said you're throwing all these twists and these twists and slants and like late droppers and late blitzers it's going to be hard for him to find that exact lane that he feels like is perfect and that's why you end up with multiple times in this game where he's just eating a sack like he he had chances to throw the ball away or do something earlier and he just kind of allowed himself to be sacked multiple times in this game i know he tweaks that knee early in the game. And it clearly was affecting him, even before that. And I just think if you're an Eagles fan watching the way that he has played as of

late, I would be a little bit worried heading into next week. The health thing, obviously being a part of that, but independent of that, the way that he is playing right now, you win this game because the Rams shoot themselves in the foot five times and you have three 50 yard touchdown runs. I'm just not sure you're going to be able to consistently rely on that week in and week out, especially against the quarterback who has done a very, very good job of avoiding catastrophic mistakes. Yeah, exactly.

Like, yeah, you have Jalen Hertz just taking sack after sack in this game, and you're, you're going to go up against the guy who theoretically that has been his problem, but he's actually shown a capacity in these big games to not allow that to be a problem for him. So I think the other thing, too, with Hertz is in the 22 run, I thought he was playing more decisive. I thought his ability to throw down the field was a little bit better. And I thought he was even more effective as a runner than he is right now. I could at least, even though I have not always thought he's like the best quarterback,

I could at least squint and see why you would think that he's like an above average, like top 12, top 10 quarterback. Right now, I just think it's almost impossible to squint and see that right now with the way the offense is functioning. They're winning around him, even if I'm not going to say they're winning in spite of him. And that is a concerning place to be as you get into the NFC championship game and potentially in the Super Bowl. When you can run the ball and find explosives in the ground like they,

can, that goes a long way. And obviously, AJ Brown drops a back shoulder ball that was potentially a touchdown. First of all, the last thing I want to say about that, that point, dropping, right? The guy gets a hand on it. Hanging on to a twisting back shoulder catch in the snow, I think if we're looking at just the overall pluses and minuses of what J. Or what A.J. Brown has done for J.1 Hertz over the last couple years, A.J. Brown is definitively in the black in that conversation.

So this idea that he like let Jalen Hurts down on that play is just very funny to me. He drops a very tough catch in the snow. I think that we can give A.J. Brown a little bit of grace in that moment. Right. That's also like he's almost a victim of his own super sardom where like because he's AJ Brown, do you expect him to be able to do that? And I'm sure that he can. But if you insert X average receiver, they miss that throw or miss that catch and you're probably like, well, that was tough, but okay.

It would have been nice to have it, but I'm not going to hit him for it. But AJ Brown is one of like five guys where you're like, oh, come on, he should have had that. Let's get to the Rams part of this. And we're doing post-mortems for all of these teams that lose these playoff games. You're looking at it for the Rams. I think this season overall is a testament, kind of in the ways that we talked about Buffalo, even though they didn't get all the way there, where this is like a real reset moment, especially on defense for this team. We've discussed this.

They're spending like $40 million against the cap on their defense. It's pretty much 70% or 60% of what any other team in the league is spending on their defense. They're going to go into next year with like $46 million in cap space as it currently sits. The starters you have to replace DeMarcus Robinson, Akele Weatherspoon who's starting for them right now, Alaric Jackson, they're starting left tackle, and then Roseboom. That's really it. So for the most part, this core is going to come back intact again, especially on offense. They have to find a left tackle somewhere along the way.

But other than that, you're going to bring back all these component pieces. Stafford didn't play his best football throughout this entire year, but we've still seen the level he's capable of playing at when this offense gets hot. I can talk myself into that for another season. So now you have some excess resources. You can spend a little bit on defense, hopefully, to fill a couple of those holes. I have no reason to think if they stay moderately healthy, this team can't be competitive again next year.

I think beyond that, we're talking about Stafford getting 37, 38 years old. We've already seen him start to diminish a little bit physically. I'd be worried about this team in like 2026 and beyond. I think that this offseason, you have to start thinking about what the quarterback future plan looks like. But I can squint and see this team competing again in 2026 with the right series of offseason moves. I think I pretty much agree.

And like for me, I think what I thought the ceiling for a team like this and for the offense specifically, what I thought it could be coming into the season, we're probably never going to get that again. Like I. No, I agree with that. Like, I know 2022 was supposed to be a down year for Stafford. And we were like, oh, is he hitting the cliff, all that stuff? When I went back and charted it that summer, I was like, wait a minute. He was actually still really good. This team just was in a reset period.

And so going into 2023, I didn't feel like we were in a bad spot with him. Obviously, he played incredibly well in 2023. So coming into 2024, I was like, yeah, wheels up. We're going to do this again. This was the year where even though I think he played pretty well and the highs are still pretty high, especially as a thrower, I just think that there were more downs and I think that you could see a little bit more holes in his game where he couldn't be quite as dynamic off platform.

I think you certainly saw that in this game. So I would be a little bit worried about the ceiling. But like you said, with the floor, I think the offense is always going to have a floor with McVeigh, obviously. And then the defense, the fact that they look like they actually have two or three guys that you can truly build around and now seemingly infinite money to go play with on that side of the ball, I do feel really good about where they can be. I think it's a very good point. And I think that you talk yourself into or you can talk yourself into the highlight moments and the stretches where they're like really playing well on offense. But it was way more inconsistent this year than you want it to be. So what do you do this off season? Do you just say we're going to roll with Stafford again and hope that we get hot at the right points? Or do you think about, maybe trying to figure out some sort of change this spring if you think that this is the sign of what's to come. Because that's a tough conversation. You've kind of painted yourself into a corner

a little bit here. They really have. I think with all the conversations we're having about the quarterback class, I would assume that this is not the time that they want to do it. Maybe there's a guy in the second or third round. They feel like they could put behind Stafford for a year. I don't know. I think with how well Stafford has played generally, I'm fine with writing this out until the bitter end. If he just completely falls off a cliff next year, so be it. I think he's given the organization enough over the last three, four years that you can give him that, you know, give him that chance and let him go play out to the end. So even if it ends up ugly, I still think that is actually ultimately the right thing to do. I think this is a team that should try to find its low-cost reclamation project somewhere.

But can you do something like the Rams or the Vikings that would darn all this off season? Like, is there somebody out there where you think they've proven they can with Baker? this guy. Right? So that's kind of my thought. Is like, do you start, even if you're not going to use high-end draft capital on a guy this year because the draft doesn't necessarily warn it, is this the offseason where you try to start getting a little bit creative about what the future quarterback plan looks like? I don't think that's Jimmy Garoppolo. I don't think they should think it's Jimmy Garoppola. I'm going to be honest. There have been many times this year where I've forgotten that he's the backup quarterback, even though I know he played a game like two weeks ago. Yeah, I, I'm with you, though.

I think that the highest level version of this offense, like what they were in 20, 23 when everybody was healthy, that's probably gone. You're probably not going to be a top five-ish offense, even if things break right for you next year. And so can the defense get a little bit better this off season? Can you get to a point where, you know, again, Stafford can just get hot in the right moments. It's probably, the margin for error is probably bigger going forward than it ever has been.

And so the ceiling on this team is probably lower. but I don't know if you're going to have a better option next year. It still feels like even this version of Stafford is your best chance. Before we move on, we're going to take one more quick break. Let's get to our next one here. The Chiefs knock off the Texans 23 to 14. Chiefs again, do just enough to tough out a very gutsy playoff win. The Texans go 10 of 17 on third down and do not turn the ball over and lose.

Only the Chiefs, dude. I'm telling you, this was the perfect way for the Chiefs to win their playoff, their first playoff game this year, right? Isn't it where it's a close first half? They're getting outgained by the Houston Texans. The Texans are getting some of what they want. And then sporadically, the Chiefs piece together one or two slow drives. They get them into the end zone.

The Texans make one or two huge mistakes at the end of the game. And boom, you just lose the game. Like it feels like somehow you are just in quickstand and the game just falls away from you somehow. How you do that, how you go 10 of 17 and don't turn the ball over and lose is that you give up eight sacks, you miss two field goals, and you have a very weird turnover on downs that we will discuss. So it's not necessarily surprising that they landed here given some of the issues we've seen with the Texans offense. So that part of it, the eight sacks, that to me is where it has to start on the Houston side of this. The story of this Texan season is that they cannot pass protect. that's it.

Like the defense is capable of playing very, very well. They played very well again in this game. Like the defense put forth, I think, a really impressive effort minus like three or four little flubs against Travis Kelsey. And we can talk about that. And I thought that the Chiefs actually did a very good job of picking on this defense where you should. But the pass rush was impactful early in the game.

I thought the game plan made a bunch of sense. They played a lot more zone in this game than they did the first time around. There weren't as many easy answers for the Chief's passing game. the Chiefs didn't run the ball that efficiently over the course of the game. So the defense held up its end of the bargain against Patrick Mahomes. That is undeniable. You give up a 51.2% pressure rate in this game for C.J. Stroud. They gave up eight unblocked pressures in this game.

That is tied for the third most in a single game this season, according to NextGen. There were only two games that had nine unblocked pressures. Spags is responsible for one of them against the Raiders earlier this season. Oh, I thought you were going to say both of them were Houston games. No, they actually didn't have, I think that Stroud had won with seven at one point in the season. Was it the Packers game maybe? I think it was the Browns game maybe. Oh, okay.

When they played against the Browns. But for the most part, this was the worst, like unblocked pressure kind of past protection game that the Texans had all year, which shouldn't necessarily be surprising when you're playing against this Chief's team. But we talk about teams dying as they lived. The 2024 Houston Texans died as they lived when you think about just how their season led to this moment on offense. And in this case, it's not even honorable. Like, at least with the Lions, it's like you were actively doing something, even if it wasn't the right thing. With the Texas, it's you are just passively losing in this exact way. And so on one hand, it is less honorable and like, I want to give you less credit.

On the other hand, my like copium spin on this is because the offensive line, has been the issue for you for the entire season. And that is, to me, almost exclusively why you lost this game. Like, like you mentioned, the defense was lights out. They were getting pressure. They were sacking Mahomes. Like you mentioned, they played a lot more zone in this game, which I thought was really impressive. And they did a really good job mixing it up there. The offensive game plan and structure, I actually thought looked good. Like the chiefs, on the other hand, were playing a ton of man coverage on their side of the ball. And they were playing a lot of these two high shells. The Texans did an unbelievable job of finding all of these inbreakers,

whether it was just slants against man coverage or some of these like dig routes and like glanced routes right underneath the too high safety. Their game plan was really good. It was just that when that throw wasn't there, it was a sack every single time. And a lot of them were like, you had a lot of these unblock pressures and then you just had a lot of one-on-one losses. I remember Chris Jones gets a sack because he's lined up right over the rookie right tackle with no ship help and beats the hell out of him because of course he does. Why wouldn't Chris Jones win that pass rush rep? And then at the very end of the game, Karloftus kind of seals it where they try to put the back and the tight end on Carloptis. And I get why that's a decent answer every now and then, but they just,

Carloptis just bends right around the tight end, running back gets too white on his path, and he's able to bend it back to the quarterback. Like it just, both from a schematic standpoint and a one-on-one standpoint, they lost everything. And so it's like, you feel better in that you lost in the one way that you've been losing all year and maybe you can fix it next year. But for it to look as bad as it did was still very frustrating as well. the Texans, I mean, this is the case all season. Teams have been able to manipulate their past protection rules so consistently. This isn't just about offensive line talent.

This is about teams being able to attack you in ways that, you know, puts you on your heels consistently. The unblock pressures in this game, but like you mentioned, twice, they tweak the protection to have a full slide one way and have Dalton Schultz deal with Carl Loftus on the backside. and he's in, he's walked up in like a staggered two point stance next to the tackle. They're in silent counts. So he's having to look at the ball. And then he's having to block George Karloftus one on one. So many moments in this game, that stuff, the sack that a mena who had where check Mason just lets him go.

And that happens because they're an empty protection. And Bolton has walked up a little. bit. Still, not on the line of scrimmage, but walked up a little bit, and a menahue's also there in the B gap. The center slides to the left on that play, even there are there only two threats on that side because of Chris Jones. That's my guess as to why they did that. And it's away from the back. And an empty protection often slide the center away from the back. So on that play, Mason has to choose. And Bolton drops out, he lets Aemahue go, and it's immediately a sack. And I understand based on some of the rules, how you get to some of the things that happen in this

game. But so many times over the course of this game, my prevailing thought is there has to be a better way to do this. Like there just has to be a better way to do this. And I think some of it is, again, being in silent count on the road for the entire game, your guys are, I was talking to Mitchell Schwartz about this yesterday because I wanted to go over some of the rules and why some of this was happening. And so when you're in silent count on the road like that, it's just, it's harder to pick up stuff. You're not seeing safety rotations. That you're not seeing guys walked up late. it's harder to really be buttoned up in your pass protection rules. But I think the last two off seasons we have seen this, where Spags has put a Shanahan-based pass

protection team into walls of Jericho in like a huge, huge game. And something about that has to change. Like in terms of building more flexibility into your pass pro plan, something. Because this team specifically was just way, way too easy to manipulate over the course of the entire year. Some of this is offensive line personnel, but I also think some of this is just the pass protection plan overall. And that has to change, like whether that's an offensive line coach situation, whether

that's you really taking a long look at how you deal with some of this stuff. The pass protection throughout the entire season for this team was just not at a level that it has to be at for you to be a competitive football team. Yeah, not even close. And again, for as bad as it looked, I do think there is part of me that like I think the silver lining with this team, honestly, is that because that was so obviously the thing that went wrong, there's a part of me that actually still feels pretty optimistic about this moving forward. Like, even if this was a good Houston team, you probably never go into a game against the

Chiefs feeling like you're going to win because they're the Kansas City Chiefs. And so I think the fact that, like, you already kind of had your season going the way it was, you lose in this particular way. I think I would have been more worried about this game if either the defense got manhandled, which obviously was not the case, or if Stroud, just like. looked like he was lost. And there was no part of me where I thought Stroud looked underwhelming or lost in this game. I actually thought he played outside of some of those sacks where he just doesn't really have a chance. I thought he played one of his best games of the season, actually. And so for

me, for him coming off a year where he had a lot of his first performances, he had, you know, weeks in a row where he was not playing good football, the fact that even with the offensive line crumbling again, against a really good defensive coordinator, the fact that he stepped up, I can at least go into next season be like, all right, quarterback defense is good. We can fix this thing. Yeah, quarterback defense, Nico Collins. You can build with that even if there are some holes.

And we'll get into that in a second, just the outlook moving forward for this Texans team. The Chiefs defense, a really, really nice performance from game plan wise from Spags. Karloftus had a big game. McDuffie had some really nice moments. Medahoo, again, getting him back in the second half of the season, you saw him show up in this game. On offense, it was really a pretty simple story. Travis Kelsey had three or four monster catches in this game against the interior defensive, like the spine of the defense defenders for the Texans, whether it was Miles Bryant,

whether it was Aziz al-Shire, whether it was Henry Toe. The chiefs avoided the outside corners for the Texans throughout this entire game and picked on the two or three guys on this defense that they thought they could. In this game, Travis Kelsey, the rest of the chiefs receivers, combined for 60 receiving yards in this game. 60. 21 of them came on that wheel route out of the backfield to Xavier Worthy, which was a cool play.

That's it. Yes. Which also, Worthy on that, Worthy made a catch there that I have never seen him make in my life. Like, he does not make those plays. And the fact, isn't that just so chiefs, by the way, that they call this kind of gadgety play, and your one undersized receiver who does not make contested weird catches

just bails you out with an insane, insane catch. Like how, it's just so Kansas City. Other than that, it was all Kelsey, just getting lost over the middle of the field with miscommunications. Al Shire not picking him up on that ridiculous third and 11 touchdown throw from Holmes. But that was all they needed. That they needed Travis Kelsey to have like a mildly vintage Travis Kelsey game and they needed, they needed their defense to dismantle the past protection for the Texans. And that was enough. The third and 11 where Al Shire lets him go. They're in a three deep, three under pressure where they're sending five. Al Shire is the middle hook player. He's supposed to be sitting there waiting for any

threat. He, for whatever reason, gets, and I said this coming in, they can get a little bit cat chasing a laser. And Al Shire kind of does that with, I think, the back coming out. It might have been another tight end who was chip releasing, whatever it is. He runs out into the flat and lets Kelsey just sit there in the middle of the field. And for me, the funniest part in this game was multiple times when Kelsey caught those intermediate balls. Three years ago, you knew when he caught those, he could instantly get up the field. It's very funny watching him now, like, take a few more steps to really turn around and get himself situated to get up the field.

But like you said, all it had to be was halfway throwback, halfway vintage game. And it definitely was. And then all you needed was one insane Mahomes play, the touchdown that he throws to Kelsey, where he is literally like falling forward, diving forward in the red zone, pins it on Kelsey. Kelsey, by the way, does the coolest thing I've ever seen him do where he catches the ball. and he just looked straight down at the defender who has fallen in front of him for like five seconds. I was like, that is cold. They are not losing this game.

So you just get a couple of those moments. Even like you said, when Houston played well generally, sometimes that's all it takes with this team right now. I mean, I'll list off the five that he had that ended up swinging in this game. Immediately after the personal following Will Anderson, which we'll talk about in a second, the Chiefs run like a little sailish concept with Kelsey and like kind of on a like a semi-corner out. He essentially just bent it out that way. I believe the Texans were in cover three. Corner gets run off and Toa Toa just doesn't sink underneath it enough.

So you're picking on that linebacker in coverage. The 49-yarder. The Texans are in man coverage with the safety blitzing. Miles Bryant goes with Noah Gray and Al-Ghizal Shire drops Travis Kelsey. I don't know what the screw-up was there. They dropped somebody dropped Kelsey in coverage. It's a 49-yard completion. On the drive where it was 13 to 12, it's cover two, both.

both Eric Murray and Tootow clamped out on Juju. So Mahomes just finds Kelsey releasing late over the middle of the field. It's an easy game. Second two, they pick on Miles Bryant and man coverage for a chunk and then the third and 11 play. That's it. Those are the gains in the passing game for the Chiefs in this entire game, and that was enough for them to win.

So you pick on like the three or four worst defensive players on the Texans, and you have like three or four moments between Travis Kelsey and Patrick Mahoms, and that's enough. It's just so funny, too, how we spent so much time about this game talking about, like, man, how are the Chiefs going to be able to beat man coverage? They don't have anybody who can do it, and Houston does it a lot. Turns out Houston didn't want to do it a lot, and then they didn't even have to really beat man coverage for the most part. Like, it's just, I don't know. This was a funny game in the way that it turned out.

I do not like to talk about the referees in this game or on this show. It takes a lot for me to talk about the referees. For example, in the Bills game, Dionne Dawkins, I believe a very bad holding call. There is a very bad pass interference call on the bills that probably should have been OPI. Over the course of the game, these things will very likely wash out. Things are going to go your way. Things are not going to go your way. The roughing call on Will Anderson, the late slide roughing call that the ruffing call in Will Anderson gives the chiefs three points.

That drive should be over, right? Like that's a huge play. The roughing call that's late, I believe, I can't remember if it was on to-toe or on Miles Bryant. I think that's a second and seven, right? Like it's a big penalty, but it's not a drive-swing penalty necessarily. But it's still bullshit. And so is the flop. Like all of that stuff, the flop and the two personal files are absolute nonsense.

And we need to do something about removing that stuff from the game. The way that Russell Yerke explained it as it was happening is that because there was some contact to the head or neck area on the Anderson play, that they couldn't overturn it. That needs to change. Like, that needs to be a situation where New York can watch that play. They can see it happen. Just be like, that is not a penalty. It causes too much of a swing for you to have no mechanism to correct that. And the fact that teams are getting penalized for these calls in huge moments like that,

I just don't understand how we can continue to allow that to happen. There needs to be legislation where we can review it because I think in terms of impact, that is obviously the bigger penalty, at least to me, in the most of the most, moment. It happens so fast. I think when it happens live, it does look like helmet to helmet, even though obviously with the replay, it doesn't end up looking that way. That one, at least in the moment and like why it gets called in the moment and can't be picked up, you can explain that to me, even if I think it's wrong and we should change it. The one where Patrick Mahomes is scrambling around to the right side, he slides super late and Henry Toa Toa goes down and hits him. That's the part

that needs to be legislated out to me because that is a player cheezing the rules of the game. And like, I know we get some of the Josh Allen throws on the sideline where he's doing something similar. And like Mahomes has had a number of plays like this. But like it is, you cannot make yourself a runner past the line of scrimmage and do this stuff where you're cheesing it until the very, very last quarter of a second. Like it just doesn't feel honorable to me. And it just doesn't feel like that is good for the game. Even if protecting quarterbacks obviously is good for the game. Being able to exploit it in that way is not good for the game.

It's exploitive in those moments. And also, I think that that would lead to more quarterback injuries when you're doing stuff like that. If you're still getting hit, yes, you're still getting hit. And if you're incentivized to slide late like that, I feel like that's probably a more dangerous situation than trying to get that out of the game. So again, it takes a lot for me to talk about calls on this show. Those were bad enough. And I feel like we're notable enough that you can't talk about this game without at least mentioning them. All right.

Before we get out of here, let's talk about the Houston Texans outlook here. moving forward. You mentioned this a little bit. This is a team that defense has a lot of talent on it. You feel good about where the defense is. The quarterback, I think we're still pretty excited about, even if it's been an up and down year in pretty horrendous circumstances, giving some of the past protection issues and their injuries at receiver.

The problem with this, your view of it, your framing of it is, you know, if they get that fixed, they'll probably be still, you know, they'll be in a pretty good position. They'll have to be because this is the team. they spent so much money on some of these acquisitions this offseason. They have $6 million in cap space as it currently sits heading into 2025. And maybe they move some stuff around. Maybe they convert some base salaries, whatever.

But for the most part, if you look at it, they've spent on Tunsell, they've spent on Daniel Hunter, they've spent on Titus Howard, they've spent on Shaq Mason, they've spent on Dalton Schultz, as Ezal Shire is a big free agent signing. Those guys, all of them, have deals that you can. can't really save a lot of money from moving on. And they are paying Stefan Diggs $16.5 million in dead money based on the way that they moved his money around and the tweak that they gave to that contract. So there's a chance with a couple small tweaks and better pass protection that this team can still be good again next year. But there probably aren't a lot of reinforcements, reinforcements coming. And this is the problem when you go all in. When you go all in and it doesn't work, this is what you're left with.

And that's kind of where the Texans are right now. The offensive line, the biggest issue to me is how much they have invested in it, and that is why they are so money-pinched right now as a lot of those investments are on that. They've obviously also spent a couple of picks there. I do still think, though, that because so much of the issue with the past protection, and even the run game to a certain extent, was schematic, like just poor rules or the run game was planned for a lot of the season. I do think there's a world that even with four out of five, maybe of the same offensive

linemen, there's a world where you could convince me that this gets bad. back to at least average. And that to me is enough to allow CJ Stroud to play like a top 8 to 10 quarterback again. And so if that can get fixed, which I assume they're going to make changes on that front, even if they don't bring in that many reinforcements, that still gives me some peace of mind. And then again, when the quarterback still looks this promising and the defense is as explosive as it can be with some really young pieces on that side of the ball. Like a lot of their best players are their young guys outside of, you know, DeNeal Hunter they

had to go out and pay for. I think that that's really promising. So I know this season as a whole was not what they wanted it to be. I'm sure this is a Texan team that wanted to be in the AFC championship game, win 12 games this season, all that jazz. I still feel like you can be okay coming out at the end of this season. Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think that the offensive line personnel, it was better near the end of the year than it was the beginning of the year.

And so moving Titus Howard to left guard, you get Blake Fisher heading into year two. I thought that Jared Patterson, I thought the run game. with Patterson at center in the final stretch of the year, they were actually getting some movement in ways that they weren't earlier in the season. Like, I can talk myself into that personnel. The problem is, Shaq Mason did not have a good year. And you've already paid him.

So if you're trying to move on from that, it might be a little bit more complicated. But I think that there is a version of this offensive line personnel-wise that will be better next year. I think that the past protection plan and what that looks like, that is the thing that absolutely 100% has to be better. And then the other consideration is we talk about, oh, well, they got hurted receiver. They lost Stefan Diggs.

They lost Tank Dell. It was just Nico Collins. But that's kind of what it might be next year. Who knows when Dell is going to be back? That is a devastating, like, catastrophic knee injury. And Diggs is a free agent. So that's another thing that you're going to have to at least replenish this offseason or at least look at it.

And that's not something that's necessarily a, guarantee to be better next year. That's a really good point. I do think I've gotten to the point with Nico Collins where like Nico Collins and some guys is good enough. But now you're even at the point where filling in who are those some guys is starting to become a problem. All right.

That is all we've got today. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We will be back with our midweek show in the middle of this week. I'm going to do another look at the coaching carousel and just some of the updates there. obviously things are going to accelerate a little bit with the alliance guys now being on the market. I feel like we're going to have some solutions and some decisions that are going to happen a little bit faster than they would have elsewhere. So we're going to have a couple people come on and talk about that on the midweek show. And then it is time for a championship Sunday.

So for now, that is all we got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.