The Ringer NFL Show - How Does Each Team Get to the Super Bowl?

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Kevin and Nora go through each matchup of the Super Wild-Card Weekend and discuss potential ways for each team to reach the Super Bowl.  Host: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti  Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, long-time writer with the Atlantic Magazine on tech, culture, and politics. There is a lot of noise out there, and my goal is to cut through the headlines, loud tweets, and hot takes in my new podcast, plain English. I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know to give you clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. Plain English starts November 16th. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Nora Pinciotti, joined today by my buddy, Kevin Clark. Kevin, how are you? Hey, pal. I was supposed to come on the Nora and Mallory show.

I know, but now it's just you. So now it's just us doing a normal show. How the turntables turn, I get to ask you how you're doing. I'm choking. I have nothing to set. I've never been asked this question in my life. It's fine. It's just an incredibly difficult moment. Speaking of incredibly difficult moments, The New York Giants fired Joe Judge. Yeah.

Was that difficult? Wasn't great. Well, there's some difficult moments associated with the firing, I would imagine. We saw a few on our television screen. A few quarterback sneaks come to mind. What wasn't hard was Joe Judge sending the text message to his assistants because he had his secretary to do that. It was, you could argue that apparently it was very difficult because his secretary sent

the message instead of he, himself. self-communicating it. But I agree with you that maybe that is a little bit of leeway that we should not provide. Anyway, for more on that situation, you can check out New York New York's latest pod. Danny Highfits was on that episode. They've got

a lot on judge being fired, where the giants go from here. Obviously, they're looking for both a coach and a general manager and I think there's a lot of hope that that place could totally hit the reset button. That said,

It's all up to ownership and That's all I'm going to say on that. What a track record recently. What a track record recently from ownership that they just keep botching higher after hire. From Giants ownership or just like all ownership? Well, I mean all ownership. But Giants ownership in particular, they've botched three straight hires and given them two years each.

Great stuff. I would rather, if you botch a hire though, this is what I will say. it is obviously makes sense that he got fired because it was just a train wreck there for the last however many weeks this season. It still did not feel like a completely done deal that he would get fired just because a lot of owners don't like to admit mistakes. Right. So having somebody get fired after two years, I am team do not hold out for things to change in the 30 year when they're that bad. They almost never do. They almost never do. I mean, I was talking to someone a couple weeks ago about this. There has to be a proof of concept by the end of year too. Has to be. You have to see something.

And Judge We saw something. Well, his team got worse as the season went along. He made excuses at every turn. He's the textbook example. He just made up stories, just straight up made up stories. And he's a textbook example of somebody you should fire. That's why I was baffled when they said,

oh, we'll let the GM make the determination. You have to show something, anything, by the end of year two. And he just showed the opposite of that. Again, you can check out New York, New York. I'm sure that'll be great. We today are going to talk about how each team in the playoffs can win the Super Bowl. Very exciting, Kevin. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

This is sort of the cousin of the show we do every year about which teams can win the Super Bowl. And the number is less than 14. I'll say that. I'll leave it at that. We'll get into the details in a bit here. But there's some of these teams really got to stretch here. Yeah, it's the cousin of that concept, but it's not that concept because you got to find a way

where there's a will, there's a way. We have split up the teams. We're going to go game by game, make the case, talk a little bit about some of the weaknesses for each team too, why they might not win the Super Bowl because only one of these teams,

Newsflash, is actually going to do it. We will go through the wild card teams in line with when their matchups are scheduled first, and then we'll talk about the number one seats. At the end, obviously, some of these teams is a little bit more self-evident

than others. But why don't we kick things off? I'm going to tell you, Kevin, how the Las Vegas Raiders, who I almost just called the Oakland Raiders, still doing that, can win the Super Bowl. And I think the answer is that

Derek Carr, first of all, the tweet lives, but Derek Carr has to find a way to air it out without throwing picks and their defense has to, particularly Max Crosby, has to just go off. So this offense has been significantly less explosive than it was before they had to release Henry Rugg's. Car's averaged up the target was 9.2 from weeks 1 through 7,7, and then coinciding with that release,

it's followed to 7.8 yards since. Now, I don't think they're going to get all of that back suddenly in the playoffs. They obviously don't have the same personnel. they are getting Darren Waller who is out from weeks 12 to 18. So hopefully that helps a little bit. And I think if they could make a concerted effort to have a slightly more explosive offense without, and here's the tricky part, letting Carr start making more and more mistakes. Because he's actually at a career high 14 interceptions this season. I think this offense could find a way to keep up with.

teams like the Chiefs that they have just not been able to do so far this season. Obviously, this one is a little bit of a stretch. But if they can do that and then they can get Crosby, who's been their best defender this season, to just absolutely go off because he is going to get, you know, he's going to get a matchup this week with Isaiah Prince, which is good luck, is all I'm saying. If he can do that on a regular basis, I think that gives them sort of a game wrecking element, and they can couple that with the fact that they've been a very, very, very good tackling team. They've actually been very fundamentally sound. They're ninth in yards

after contact per carry and first in yards after catch allowed per reception this season. Put those two things together, and I'm saying the Raiders can make a run for it, starting with the Beggles this weekend. Incorrect. Okay. So first of all, Max Crosby is an animal, and him and Gokwe, they're one of the Bengals coach said that they might be the two best pass rush duo in the NFL. That's not true. But they're at least in the extended conversation. So Crosby didn't have a sack when the two teams played earlier this season.

Riley Reef was the right tackle at that point. If you watched some of those spin moves, Crosby had Reef in hell. I believe I saw a stat earlier this week that Crosby had the best pass rush win rate of any team, of any player this year against the Bengals. And the fact that they ran at them, so they're able to neutralize a little bit. But Ngakwe got after it. It was bad. Burrow was hurried on 31% of his throws against...

I almost said Oakland again. You've intercepted Oakland in my brain. I played at the state. I'm sorry. Earlier this season. So the offensive line has to hold up. That's the debate we've been having for eight months about the Raiders. Excuse me.

That's the debate we've been having for eight months about the Bengals. So we'll put that aside here. Max Crosby's really good. This comes down with the Bengals to Mar Chase and Joe Burrow. So Jamar Chase has unleashed this home run ability to the point that as long as the defense plays well, and they've got enough talent to play well. I mean, Trey Henderson, real good, DJ Reader, sturdy. I mean, you just look at that, the secondary pretty good.

As long as the defense plays, okay, they've got this home run ability that will put them in any game. his, Jamar Chase has six catches of 50 yards is, uh, the only, I think only three players have done that in the last 21 years. That was a stat. Okay. Um, that is special. And I know the whole meme about Jamar Chase, you know, go down there, he's somewhere there, but that's real.

I mean, that was one of the things I've said this before, but Chase told me that the, the best play he had at LSU with Burrow was Burrow saying, I don't know, just run down there and jump up for it. Like, that's real. And there's not, I would say, I mean, obviously, they're not doing with Devonda Adams, but it's the same kind of thing we're going to get to with the Packers, where it's like if you have those two guys on the field, they can play a two-man game that changes the entire calculus of the game. So this is on Burrough. And Dominic Foxworth, who was on Sunnius Day today,

he made the point on Twitter the other day that the Joe Burroughs is who Brown's fans thought Baker was. Culture builder, culture changer, badass. I understand he has 14 picks this year. But if they keep him upright, he's capable of literally any. You know, the, the, the, the, the, 20 yard downfield throws. I think he's got 15 completions as to chase alone. This is special, special stuff. And I think that we're not paying attention enough to the fact that, I mean, you think about, this is crazy to say, but he's better than this guy.

But you think about like the Joe Flacco Ravens team, right? That was a home run team that just made a handful of plays. And obviously, it's a completely different team. I'm not comparing it. I'm just saying that when you have the deep ball working, anything can happen in the playoffs. they're going to win this game. But I'm talking about when they play the Chiefs. I'm talking about when they play a top top AFC team.

It's only going to take a little bit for those home run balls to connect. Okay. Strikeouts, three true outcomes, right? Strikeouts, walk, home runs. Like, there's going to be some strikeouts here, but there's going to be a lot of home runs if they have enough of those, like, wins Super Bowl. I think that's right. It's essentially like does Burrow continue to perform at the level that he has performed

over the last month under pressure, right? Right? Because their offensive line is their weakness. They give up too much pressure. The difference is that over the last month, Burrow hasn't minded the pressure. It's not like there's been less pressure. He's just performed better under that. If he keeps that up, I mean, I really think that we've already seen this team beat the chiefs. They become genuinely a team that you think about being in the Super Bowl.

Nevertheless, I had to make my case for the Raiders and doing it. I agree. I want to say this. college fans know this. Joe Burrow was unflappable. And it was funny because Tomlin said they said that about Robbinsberger and obviously Robertsberger is at the end of the line. But he said that Robertsburg,

everybody else gets funny in the fourth quarter and Robertsberger stays the same. And we've talked about that. It's all Bill Walsh thing, right? That's, there are not many people I want in a big spot right now in the entire NFL, any position than Joe Burrow. He is unflappable. He just got the exact right personality for a franchise player.

And that's why, even earlier this year, when it looked like it was Herbert Mania, that's why people who spent time with Burrow were like, wait, wait, Burrow is still the guy. And that debate's just going to keep going for a number of years. But there's a reason there was so much conviction on the side of the people who spent time with Burr. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's not like the results weren't real, right? Like the first three quarters of the season, he played worse under pressure. So I don't think that the chance that there's some regression there is like completely absent.

from the discussion. But I get what you're saying. We'll talk about this. I'm just trying to spread. I'm just trying to spread pro-bropaganda propaganda and so like it. Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know. Getting my shots. All right. I'm going to move us on before you saying anything else too outlandish. Kevin, how can the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl? So first of all, by the way, Belichick will not say whether or not Jaylon Mills is out for Saturday. He was put on the COVID reserve list. That's a big one. I think Mills is one at top of the NFL as far as snaps per target. defensive back. So that's something to watch. Mack Jones has gotten real back over the past couple of years.

He is held onto the ball longer. He is, I think, he's at a high, since week 11, he is holding onto the ball for over three seconds at an alarming rate. He is going to be pressured a lot. I think he's the most blitz quarterback in the NFL over 30 percent. and the bills are going to play a man against him, and the bills are going to get after. And it's going to be fascinating to see how that develops. On the defensive end, Matthew Judon has not done a lot in the last couple of weeks.

He started off. Henry McKenna had a good piece about this the other day. He's had 12.5 sacks and 14 games, has none in the last four. Pressures. He had 59 in the first 13 games, four in the last four games. They have stars. He doesn't touch a quarterback in a month. He didn't have a sack. He doesn't have a quarterback pressure.

He doesn't have a quarterback hit. Right. He had COVID. He played sparingly against the bills. We'll qualify that. But he's just not, he's not what he was at the beginning of the year. So,

Mack Jones, for all of the great things he's done, saw staff the other day that they're pushing the ball downfield in New England over the course of the season. And the catch rate is like top five in the league. It was bottom five last year.

year. So Mac Jones done some amazing things. At one point, he liked the best rookie in football. But right now he doesn't. So this is going to come down to Bill Belichick. Bill Belichick devised the perfect game plan for Mac Jones this year, which is, I saw a phrase, pretend that modern football never happened. Just run the ball, just let him play very conservatively, let him win the game, but pick your spots. That was perfect. There was one elite thing in this. game for the Patriots and it's Bill Belichick. And so this is going to be game plan. And I don't think, by the way, that's good enough to win three games or certainly four games. I don't think it's good. But I do think you can steal a game because you have one great game plan and you have

the talent to do. I'm not saying this is, you know, this is not Kent State here, okay? This isn't Toledo. They're a good team. But they don't have the talent in the AFC to stack up. They've got one thing and it's Bill Belichick. This is a, we need the best game plans of the decade from Bill Belichick. And don't necessarily know if he can do that consistently for January. Yeah, it's tough unless there's a real reversion to how Mac was playing earlier in the season. It is, it's funny. I was talking with one of Bill's most famous game plans is from the Super Bowl in 1990, Giants against Bill's, which was when he comes into the meeting room and says,

you know, we're going to let Thurman Thomas get 100 yards. Which is really funny. If you've read about that, it's really funny because, it's such a different time that the Giants defense was like, no way, we pride ourselves on stopping the run. And it's like, when was the last time anybody said that? No, it's like, it's hysterical because. But they don't, like coaches don't care.

But it is, in a way he described modern defense. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, but at first he says it and the whole, like, the whole room goes up in arms, right? And they're like, we're not going to let anybody do anything.

We're a great run defense. We pride ourselves on that. Like, what are you talking about? But then at least how the story. goes is that he starts showing film and he's basically like if we, if they are comfortable enough running the ball, they will keep doing it. And if they keep doing it, then they are not doing what they are best at. And we will be in a better position to win and we can just hit their receivers over and over, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The thing I think that gets left out a

a little bit is by the end of the meeting, they're all like, oh, we get it. Which I think is sort of fascinating because it's like somehow we still have these ongoing debates about, you know, running efficiency and run defense. That group of players, like we shouldn't discount. We're able to sort of get it within like, I don't know, the 20 minutes that they were sitting there looking at cutups. But, you know, that's an example. The Patriots changing their defense completely for the Super Bowl against the Rams.

He does have this ability to kind of craft a bespoke game plan for a given situation. situation. And it's fascinating because this will be the third time that they'll have played the bills this season. The other thing, I was having a phone conversation with somebody like 15 minutes ago who's played for him who was saying there's prepping for bad weather. Was it Tom Brady? You'll have to find out. Ringer.com. Great website. There's prepping for weather and there's prepping for weather, right? There's prepping for weather saying, please remember to wear gloves. please remember to do the things that make you more comfortable when it's frigid out. Then there's prepping for weather where it's like,

no one can wear nylon because it's slippery. The quarterback is not going to be able to throw in breaking routes going in this direction because the wind is going to be X, Y, Z. And so I do think, like, sometimes the weather stuff gets a little bit silly and I think it's going to be overblown for this game just because the weather was such a factor in their first matchup. It's going to be cold. Both of these teams are used to that.

But I will say, understand that when we talk about planning for the weather, I know for a fact what's going on in that building is like, how many degrees is the wind going to be blowing out in this direction and how is it going to impact

what routes are available to which receivers going which direction on the side of the football? It's not just like, please bundle up guys. I agree with you that that is, that that's the path. The Bill's path, I think, is simpler because they are a more talented team

with a more talented quarterback. The Bills will win the Super Bowl if Josh Allen essentially goes into kind of God mode, but it's not... Beast mode. Beast mode. Beast mode, Josh, so, like, JV. Beast mode. It's not so, like, unfathomable, right? So if he gets, I think if Josh Allen gets 250 plus passing yards and 10 plus carries per game, the bills can win the Super Bowl.

Because they have remade themselves over the last half of the season where Josh Allen is essentially their running game. His rushing grade per PFF is second only to taste some hills. And they have essentially given up on their running backs. And like, I don't think that you can get over that. but when they use Allen to stress the edges of a defense and to make it a little bit more dynamic where a defense can't just say like, okay, they're going to go pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, like they did in the first half when they played the bucks, got down 24 to 3. And then after halftime started running a little bit more, running Allen quite a bit,

and came back to make it a game. They've never lost when Allen has over 50 rushing yards. And I think other than in that game, and again, they only switched it on after half time. I think if they stick to that, that is their best path here. Because I don't think that they are going to be able to keep

pace with teams like the Chiefs unless they are truly two-dimensional because they probably have to factor in a few more mistakes. I agree. I think this is a Josh Allen. This is a Josh Allen playoffs.

And I completely agree. I know it sounds simplistic, but this is, if Josh Allen plays as well as Josh Allen has played, they can literally make the Super Bowl. If not, they could lose this weekend. Like, there's not much more to it. And obviously, Leslie Frazier is a fantastic defensive coordinator. It was a reason he's getting head coaching

interviews and a head coach interest. But we know what that is. They have great safeties, all that stuff. They'll do their job. This is down to Josh Allen. So anyway, what's next? Eagles at Bucks. All right, you want me to tell you how the Eagles come win the Super Bowl? I do. I had to

think long and hard about this. I also, we have a text from Ben, from our buddy Ben Solac, who we needed to consult on how the Eagles can win the Super Bowl. He gave a full-throated go-birds. Here's what it is. They have to possess the ball

for at least 40 minutes per game. They have to run into the best possible string of bad run defense matchups, which is not the weakest possible string of opponents. So if they could navigate a path that is Tampa, Dallas, Green Bay, and Kansas City, at the very least, they are playing in one facet of the game, strength on weakness. I genuinely think that they can exploit that against Tampa Bay. I don't know what's going to, if they're missing Levanti David,

and if Devin White continues to be a little bit of a liability against run. I genuinely think that they can give the bucks a little bit of trouble. I think it gets farther fetched from there. But if all of that comes together, and this is important, Jake Elliott does not miss. Who knows? Maybe a miracle run. Ben said that Jake Elliott needs to consistently hit from 60 plus. I didn't want to go that far. We're turning Jake E.O.

We're turning Jake Ely into Justin Tucker? Yes. All right. Ben actually also said that they needed to immediately hire, they needed to teleport Vick Fangio in to coordinate the defense. And Jake Elliott needed to turn into Justin Tucker. So I'm in agreement with you that there are matchups for them. If they could engineer, that'd be good.

I'm not saying they could beat the Packers. I'm just saying you could run on the Packers. and it would be nice if you're the top rushing team in the NFL to play a team that can't stop the run. Having said that, I'm going to make the Bucks case here. So first of all, big news in that Levanti David, Leonard, Fornett, Giovanna-Binnard been designated to return from IR. That's important, especially Levante David. It's one of these guys where you don't realize how important it is until you watch them,

watch them without him, and you kind of get it. So the receiving death. Again, like, we don't know how healthy, how, like, ready to go to those guys will be, but still, like, right direction. They're windows open. I saw this a couple of days ago. A lot of people talking about it, and it's probably right,

which is that the receiving depth is such on the bucks after the Godwin injury and the Antonio Brown. By the way, is the Godwin injury just the only season-ending injury that the guy didn't randomly return in January? I no longer believe any season-ending injuries. Achilles ACL, it's like, oh, this guy, this guy's done for the year.

and then it's like, okay, he's back, he's designated to return. He's a fast healer. There are no more season-ending injuries. I guess Gobbin got hurt too late in the season. Okay, so having to that, so this is going to become a tight end game for Brady, and it's going to be Grong, and it's going to be O.J. Howard, going to be in the mix, okay? Cameron Bray, that's the depth that he's going to be worried about.

Saw Stad, I think Doug Ferrer had it, that he's, You had 42 of the 71 passes were with two or three tight ends this year. That might increase. You know, one of the things, Nora, that you saw with the Patriots so often was, okay, it's shut down on the outside. We're going middle of the field. And normally that was personnel driven. And normally that was season by season. And there's a reason Belichick went to two tight ends.

He tried to do it this year, again, with Johnny Smith and Hunter Henry. There's a reason that he, when they zig, he's ag. all that stuff. But this is Brady is going to have to do that in the middle of the season. He's going to have to adapt around that. And if he does that successfully, they still have a fast defense. They still have Bruce Aaron.

This is a really good coach. They still have Tom Fricking Brady, who is as efficient as anybody in the league passing the ball right now. So there's a path here. It's just going to take a massive amount of adjustments over the next couple of weeks. Who do you think has the highest PFF passing grade? Well, actually, there's no way that I can ask this without giving it up. Tom Brady has the highest PFF passing grade in the NFL since Chris Godwin got hurt.

Hard mode. It's ridiculous. This man is ridiculous. I think you're really on to something about the tight ends thing, particularly the Eagles have struggled covering tight ends. They've given up 107 receptions and 14 touchdowns to tight ends during the regular season, which is most in the league. And then we've also seen, you know, particularly Brady and Grog.

Like those two doing it in the playoffs, I think would shock exactly nobody. and they've basically put Tyler Johnson and Chris Godwin spot in the slot and then Cyril Grayson and Brashad Parraman kind of splitting Antonio Brown's old snaps opposite Evans on the outside. Again, so far, so good in terms of Brady keeping it at the same level, throwing to those guys. I do think that, you know, you would rather have a higher talent level, like that that is another thing that should surprise no one.

but if the argument that their receiver depth is what should hurt them, which I think is true, it is not backed up by any meaningful drop in efficiency, productivity, passing grade in Brady since those injuries happen, which I just think is like a little absurd. The most important thing I think we can all do is just have Brady. Brady's last act is to make O.J. Howard a legitimate NFL tight end. He's like game plan.

with Bruce Aris. He was like, oh, come on. Like, written that guy off. He's like, no, no, I'm going to do it. It's going to be fine. When I was doing research earlier today, when I was doing the tight end's point, I just saw, like, the most recent headlines from a fantasy site that just said, O.J. Howard, colon, minimal involvement again.

Sounds like a challenge for Brady. All right. What's next? Okay. This is the game this weekend that I'm most excited for. 49ers at Cowboys. You want me to give you the Niners first? then you can give me the Cowboys.

So the 49ers have to win, they have to win early downs on both sides of the ball, essentially. And on offense, I think it's particularly important because as a general rule of thumb, the longer the drop back, the worst Jimmy Garoppolo performs. And there's, I think, no better sort of example of this than the game that they're going to play this weekend,

against the Cowboys, where they'll be facing this super aggressive pass rush. And I think this is one of the most fascinating sort of like within a game matchups that we're going to see is how Kyle Shanahan tries to slow down that pass rush. Because out of their, you know, they have their outside zone based run game, but they do so many different things to sort of window dress the plays. They use so much motion. And whether or not that can successfully basically like put Micah Parsons in, a blender, right? Like, get those guys moving in the wrong direction, make them hesitate a little

bit so that they can be productive on first and second down, which would deny the cowboys the ability to do stuff like, okay, it's third and long. We're going to put Parsons out on the edge in that edge rush position and let him just pin his ears back and go. If they can't do that, then I think the 49ers offense has a decent chance to just sort of like plug down the field, keep the chains moving. But they really, really need that because if they don't get it, then all of a sudden it's just, hey, Jimmy, take a seven-step drop and win me a game here. And that is not the situation that you want to be in. I think that's sort of the formula for them over the course of the playoffs. But we're going to get a really, really, really good example of it this weekend.

defensively it's it's kind of similar just in the sense that their front is the strength of their defense. So if they stay ahead on first and second, the Cowboys will be interesting because they don't get a lot of big plays. Generally, they don't have, even though they have the personnel theoretically, their offense does not really get a lot of explosives. So if they can keep them in third and long, I think you put more of the game on the front, less of it on the secondary, which is good. And you probably don't have to worry quite as much this weekend as you would with some other opponents about them being able to get just like 25-yard chunk plays and get themselves back in it in 45 seconds. What do you think about the Cowboys, Kevin? Okay.

So I want to piggyback off the Niners thing because I really like this team. It was funny because I like this team. I love this game. Yeah. So I did Peter King. Peter King had some folks vote on a war. earlier this week. I was lucky enough to be asked. And I was texting with a couple of people and just kind of trying to feel them out. And I was just joking around with Soak and I chose

Kellan Moore for assistant of the year. And Solac really pushed me on Domingo Ryan's, who's a defensive coordinator, first year defense coordinator, who's got that D-line playing nasty right now. And the improvements they've made his season goes been remarkable. I like this. Debo's in Mill I'm obsessed with. I mean, that was one of the things in, in watching Samuel, first of all, he leads the NFL in depth of target or yards per catch. Like he, this is not like a, he can do anything.

He's a wide receiver playing running back who can also be just a pure wide receiver who catches deep ball. Like he's amazing. Let's put that aside. So what's about the Cowboys? I, I picked the Packers win the Super Bowl.

But every since I did that, I've been worried that the Cowboys are in Super Bowl. And I've gone back and forth because it's legitimate. They have the top 10 offense and top 10 defense the first time literally decades since the 90s. There's no mystery on why they're good.

They have a ton of talent, a lot of different spots. Micah Parsons is a legitimate unit changer. Dan Quinn has been not only addition by subtraction, but huge, huge addition just as a defensive mastermind. Stefan Diggs, excuse me, Strayvon Diggs is creating turnovers at, season long, at an incredibly

impressive rate despite his fault. It's a net positive for him. And by the way, having a nasty pass rush

and having a cornerback and take the ball away, pretty good, pretty good recipe in January. So I looked

at all this stuff and I tried to talk myself into these things. It comes down to the head coach. So how do the Cowboys win the Super Bowl?

Mike McCartney. Game management, not screwing it up, keeping all your timeouts. That's how you win. When you're going to play Green Bay,

and it's going to be really hard and it's going to be three minutes off in the fourth quarter that's a matchup game situation situational football you cover the Patriots you know situation football better than anybody Mike McCarthy is not Bill Belichick, he's not Matt Lafleur okay and so this is going to come down

to how well does Mike McCarthy operate when the game's in the line the answer is usually not that great this isn't college you can't just have a bunch of talent and beat everybody you've got to play situational football if they win the Super Bowl it's because Mike McCarthy pressed all the right buttons.

That's why I'm... Leveled up. And that's why I'm picking a different team. Yeah, that's a good one. Really good one. All right. Steelers at Chiefs. The Kansas City Chiefs

can win the Super Bowl, if they, win the turnover battle, get better tackling on defense, and keep Hill and Kelsey basically healthy. So, first thing, their turnover situation has completely changed since the first half of the year.

Weeks 1 through 8 and Mahomes threw 19 touchdowns to a league worst 10 picks. A lot of them were bad luck interceptions. They were tipped at the line or basically dropped passes, whatever. Last nine games, completely flipped. 18 touchdowns, three interceptions. They've had the most efficient offense by EPA per place since week 10. Pretty good, right? Keep that up.

You're in good shape. defensively, they've given up 7.6 yards per play and a total of 839 yards to the Bengals and Broncos in their last two games. You can probably deal with not exactly that, but something a little bit subpar against the Steelers, but when you're dealing with the bills and the Bengals, that is not going to cut it.

Ultimately, they have shown over the course of the season that they've figured out how to put their guys in the right spots. I don't think there are any big sort of like personnel or schematic changes. They need to tackle better. They just have not been, it's an execution issue above anything else. And, you know, maybe they get back to it during the playoffs. But if it's similar to the last couple of weeks, I think some of the other more high-powered offenses that they could see further down the line would be able to exploit that.

And then the health has to be okay. obviously this offense without Hill and or Kelsey is really different. Kelsey got hit hard at the end of their last game and had to like see trainers and stuff, but seems okay. And then Tyree Kill is dealing with a heel injury. So obviously those are things to monitor. Clearly, like no one has season ending injuries anymore. So it's probably fine.

But I do think that that's one of the things that could all of a sudden sort of change the complexion of the entire playoffs. Obviously, they're the Chiefs, so seeing them in the Super Bowl would not exactly be surprising. Speaking of surprising, Kevin, how can the Steelers win the Super Bowl? I want to talk about the Chiefs first. I want to talk about an actual... An actual realistic scenario. So, a couple of things.

Number one, I was digging into some of homestats earlier today. And I saw that, first of all, the only... The biggest drop-off for him has been in throws over 2.5 seconds when he holds onto the ball. his rating went from I think 92 to mid-70s this year didn't drop in a quick game he is still really efficient there so it's changed a little bit as far as just what happens when he's holding under the ball

something actually he and I talked about in August about how he felt like he needs to play more in rhythm and try to stop making the super play on every play you can kind of see that in the numbers so he probably should do that less having said that he has pended a really good piece this week about how bad the chiefs are when they get off script. So they script their first 15 plays, however much that is at the first quarter.

And they are, I believe, tops the league in first quarter points, and then touchdowns on opening drives. And then things go south from there. So they need to pick it up after the script is over, and they need to get in more of a rhythm thrust. the game. That's just Mahomes. That's Reed. That's everybody. So I think that there's a pretty easy way for them to win the Super Bowl. Daniel Sorensen, in a, in a defense that has gotten much better, defense is still a weak-link

kind of system. And Daniel Sorenson is still playing a lot of snaps. That concerns me on like January 30th when the Super Bowl is on the line. Okay. Now, when we talk about this to your surface like. So Ian Hart did this really cool thing where he basically ranked every, not just position group, but every trait the team would be good at, right? Like pass rush, you know, explosive plays, whatever. And the average where those teams were.

And the cheats were actually 15th, which is second lowest of any playoff team. And the Steelers were 20th, which is, by the way, lowest of any playoff team, obviously. And this is not a good team. The point of that was to give a picture of like which teams were the most complete. Yeah, that's correct.

And the Steelers were not complete. Spoiler, the Steelers are not complete. Fifth worst rating, Rathesberger of any quarterback when he'll go on to the ball for 2.5 seconds. He's no longer the old Big Ben. If you hadn't seen them with the eye test, numbers bear that out. He can't just extend plays. I actually remember

speaking of this match, I remember Veach talking about how when he was scouting for Mahomes, he used to look at Ralthusberger and Antonio Brown and say, these guys extend plays better than anybody maybe ever. And let's find guys like that. Well, Kevin, I don't mean to cut you off, but it was funny

when you were talking about Borough, kind of like, Rothersberger is not this anymore, but there are these quarterbacks who, it's not that they avoid pressure really well. It's just that they deal with pressure really well. Like when someone is in their face, they are unflappable.

And I actually think there's, you know, sometimes like Ben this season will, and last season too, will do these things when he's under pressure. And their offensive line is not, like, thriving. where he'll just go, what the heck is going on? He looks like he's spasming

or just like has forgotten how to play quarterback. And, you know, I think sometimes you see this in different facets of a very physical game with players who get older where the things that they used to be able to do really well when they can't do them as well anymore,

it completely exacerbates it because they're like, what the heck is going on here? I used to be able to make plays with guys like hanging off my shoulders and it was totally fine. And the fact that he can't do that, I don't think that he has learned to compensate for it. I think Craig Horlebeck, our buddy Craig Horlebeck made the comparison, like, he's like the grandpa that says he can still drive.

Oh, God. Yeah. I got this. Don't worry about it. Or move the TV maybe was, I forget what it was. But that was, it's all very similar. So my first advice. All right.

Tell me how, tell me how the Steelers. Current day, Ben Rathesberg. can exploit Dan Sorensen. A time machine. Yeah, Daniel Sorensen. I mean, like, I honestly, he made plays that were really fun, really interesting, made it happen. But over a consistent 60 minutes, I don't think he's even got the game to take Ben to Danes-Sorrensen. So look, look, there's a scenario in which T.J. Watt goes off.

Ben makes enough plays. The schemes are great on the homes. They keep a lid on that offense, and they win this game. I would put it about 4%. But if you're asking me what the path is, it's that. It's the superstars playing like superstars

and a bunch of lucky breaks. If I have to make the case, that's it. But it's not, I'm not all that invested in. It's their defense, right? I mean, they did down the stretch. They beat three teams that were fighting for, either playoff seating or spots, and they held the Titans,

Browns, and Ravens to 13.3 points per game. And they're going to face teams that are better than the Titans, Browns and Ravens, although obviously the Titans are in the playoffs. But if they can do something like that, I think that's sort of the only thing that exists. The thing about Dan Sorensen, when he has made plays this season,

he's been okay when he gets to be in that sort of like died linebacker role, be a little bit closer to the line of scrimmage, not be exposed in coverage. I don't know what about the Steelers offense led by the only quarterback who averaged, the quarterback who,

the only quarterback who averaged fewer air yards per pass this season to Ben Rothesberger was Jared Gough. I'm not sure what about that is going to force Dan Sorensen to play safety and drop back. So it's a tough scene. anyway, let's move on. Please. Cardinals at Rams.

All right. Cardinals. Tough draw for you, but. Yeah, well, so now we have to talk about, like, is D'Andre Hopkins coming back unclear, one of the season-ending injuries that may or may not be season-ending? I think the formula for the Cardinals is they need to get better defense against deep balls, better protection for Kyler.

J.J. Watt back. And look, the Hopkins thing, I don't, I don't know what's, what's going to happen there. He got hurt on December 13th. It was pronounced a four to six week injury at that point. They would probably have to make a decent run. But they are in the type of situation where they have just like folded down the line to the extent where I do think that they need some reinforcements there. they can do some things that don't have to do with getting guys back, right? Like Kyler has taken 31 sacks this season. But when Rodney Hudson went out, they had to shovel a line quite a bit and they just got him back. They gave up a lot of pressure and we gate team.

But, you know, if you kind of overlook that as just getting their feet wet, maybe they can get better if they have some time to get comfortable. If Kyler was better protected, I think it would go a long way. And then their defense has to defend the deep ball a little bit better. In the past five games, opponents have completed 62.3% of passes of 15 or more air yards for six touchdowns and no

interceptions. That's not the type of defense I want to have against Matthew Stafford and the Rams. Right. So I worry about just the trajectory of this team. Obviously, they started 7 and 0. They finished 4 and 6. I do think that Watt coming back will make a difference. Definitely monitoring the Hopkins situation. But those are the things that I think if they shored them up quickly, we might see them look a little bit more like the team from earlier than the season. And they would have the best chance to make a run. I don't know if I'm giving it up here. I'm not super bullish on the Cardinals, but that is what I think their path would be.

I was just thinking about how mad because we're running enough time, how mad Titans fans are going to be if we don't get to them. So I'm going to make this quick. If they Titans just become Matt Damon. Sorry, sorry, we didn't have time for you. Okay. So a couple things. Number one, the other day I was when I was doing research for this.

I was looking into Matthew Stafford a lot. And I saw a headline that was Matthew Stafford has an explanation for his interception. And I was, oh, good, like the bad interception. And I was like, good, really dig in. And then the quote when I clicked on it was, I just left it short. Oh, good. So you're just bad. Good.

Great. Good explanation. Matthew Stafford is a very good quarterback. And I'm as high on him as anybody, this side of our buddy, Danor loves. And, you know, I wrote about him when he was. in Detroit. I think he's a hell of a football player. He needs to get better. I think that the Robert Woods injury probably played a bigger role than we think. Talk about the jet swoop stuff. Doug Ferrer had a really, really, really good breakdown of what's happened to Stafford. And part of

this is that when he has a three-strap drop, he's crushing it. When he's doing anything else, he's a mess. And defenses, according to Doug, are sitting on his first read. By the way, that's fly there's so many pick sixes. And this is up to make vet. When you know that there's one thing that Stafford is doing well, and then when he gets off script, when he holds a ball too long, when he starts to try to extend the plays, it's not working, well, figure out a way to get him in the situations that, you know,

one of the best offensive coaches in football of the last 20 years, okay? Figure out what he does well and get him in those situations. when he holds on to the ball I think Lawrence and Trevor Lawrence and Josh Allen are the only guys who have more interceptions with throws over 2.5 yards so we know what this looks like

and Cooper Cup is going to be a huge part of this I mean some of his of Cup stats are just unbelievable like he doesn't make mistakes it's high volume of targets but he's still able to

be really really efficient he's amazing and so kind of what we're talking about with the other guys this is going to be a two-man game It's going to be Stafford to Cup. It's going to be Stafford, understanding his mistakes, limiting those mistakes. I think they're going to beat the Cardinals because I don't think the Cardinals very good right now.

They just think that they've regressed over the course of the season. But this is down to McVeigh to understand the types of mistakes that Matthew Stafford is making right now and put him in a position to not make those mistakes. Stafford is Stafford. I mean, there's kind of a scorpion and the frog thing here with Matthew Stafford. We've seen over a decade of Matthew Stafford football. We understand what it looks like. We understand that he's making mistakes on deep passes.

And we got to figure out a way here to minimize it. So this is more than Stafford. It's easy to say, okay, Stafford's not making mistakes. This is on Sean McVeigh. He's my key to them making super bowl. They can do it. They can easily do it. Yeah, the Rams, I do think there's like a huge coaching element for the Rams,

which is kind of funny because like Sean McVeigh has sort of been, you know, the Wonderkind. He's also been, I think more lately. like that's been second guest a little bit. And I do think a ton is on that coaching staff in these playoffs because they have to put Stafford in the right positions to succeed. I also think that, you know, they have this challenge with their defense being sort of top heavy, particularly in the secondary because it is a weekly challenge to figure out how to maximize

Jalen Ramsey. And there have been times like the Packers got Devante Adams away from him on more than half of his snaps when they played. There are these sort of like game within the game. coaching matchups where I think it puts like, there's a lot on Sean McVeigh's brain in this one, which I think is really fascinating. Or even like the 49ers kind of looked at them and said,

we don't think that your linebackers can tackle very well. And we're going to try to exploit that. And so much of covering up those weaknesses comes down to coaching when your roster is superstar heavy, but then lack some depth beneath that. And it's funny, I wonder if we will end up feeling like this playoffs is kind of like a referendum on, how we look at that staff.

All right. I'm not going to model a lot of you longer. I just want to leave one stat out here. First five games in the season, there were three total turnover plays from Stafford. In the last three weeks, there have been nine,

including two in each of them. Like, this has got to be clean. Yeah. We can't go on anymore on the Rams because we have to get to the number one seeds, the Titans and the Packers.

We'll make these quick because they are the number one seeds for a reason. But I will give the Titans they're due. The Titans can win the Super Bowl if they have Derek Henry back and if A.J. Brown goes for 100 plus yards in each game. I think it's been incredibly impressive that they were six and two and they lost Henry and they've been six and three the rest of the way. I do also think that that, you know, record is nice, but it shouldn't obscure some real drop in productivity. They've gone down

by 30% in scoring without Henry and they only played two playoff teams during that span. That said, in their best performances this season, so when they beat Kansas City, when they beat the Colts when they beat the 49ers. A.J. Brown just went off. And he got 26 passes for 433 yards and three touchdowns in those games. Kansas City would be a really fascinating matchup in terms of that for them. Because I actually think that their offense is a pretty bad matchup for the Chiefs because both Leo Jones and AJ Brown just excel on in breaking routes.

And the Chief's defense is sort of built to force everything inside. Like we talked about sort of the opposite thing with them. and the Bengals. But for what they want to do defensively, the Titans receivers are actually pretty happy to say, totally fine, we will work in those little spaces. And then the presence of Henry helps them control the ball, keep Mahomes off the field.

I do not think that they are the best team in the AFC that should come as no surprise to listeners of this podcast. But I do think that they are well equipped to play the best team in the AFC. So that's the Titans' path. Okay, so a lot of this comes down to health. I saw a statis this morning that the Titans have lost 112 skill position games due to injury. Skil position guy games due to injury. Most in the league.

Giants said 110. Giants use injuries and excuse. Guess what? The Titans had more and decided to go ahead and get the number one seat in the AFC. Probably going to write about the Titans next week. Had some conversations with John Robinson and Mike Brayble earlier in the season. I haven't seen the right today. Probably going to do something on that.

But this is, I think this team is built in a really smart way. And we've gone back and forth, and I think that they've built a really good culture. I think we're really minimizing what Mike Vrables built, frankly. And I don't want to get into that again. But what I know is that if Julio Jones is healthy, and if AJ Brown, you know, Seth Galena talks about this, but this team is built on end-breaking routes, and they can just do that really, really well. They can win a game with that kind of thing. If Derek Henry comes back, I don't want to do that argument, but that's going to help.

Okay? You don't want, like, there's just a psychic thing. I don't want to stop showing me charts about Derek Henry. There's just a cosmic thing where you don't want to tackle Derek Henry. I talk to guys in football. And they say, oh, man, I don't want to tackle Derek Henry. And then someone just gets in my mentions and it's like, well, actually, stop. Stop.

Having Derek Henry out there is better than not having Derek Henry out there is better than not having Gary Henry out there. Agreed. Fully agreed. Packers, Kevin. Okay, so first thing is health, obviously. If they get back Jaira Alexander, David Bakhtiari, I mean, you're getting all pros back.

You're getting all pros back for the players. That's why the buy is so important. That's why weeks ago, someone said to me, the buy has never been more important because there's only one of them, but also, I mean, everything, home field, the whole thing has all been neutralized. The only thing that matters is having an extra. your week in which is press the reset.

And you're seeing that now. So, you know, Dan Olavski has a really good podcast, Scott Yolwley. I was listening to it the other day. And he was saying that one of the things with the Rogers and Devante Adams connection is that there's all sorts of rules quarterbacks have that you would never make this throw in a million years. And Rogers feels comfortable making those throws to Adams because he knows he can trust. I got roasted, roasted, what's called five.

year's spell because I was at a training camp practice and Aaron Rogers was throwing interceptions and practice and I talked to my McCarthy afterwards and McCarthy was like well what he's doing is he does know these receivers so he's seeing if he can trust them and I tweeted that and everybody was like you're making excuses okay well it's a training camp interception okay I'm not going to go ahead and make excuse for that but there's a brilliance to the way Aaron Rogers practices that I think people in Green Bay see you all the time. Also, did he's for like four picks that year or something? Yeah, he's pretty good.

We have some data on Aaron Rogers being pretty good as far as not throwing turnover scope. But that's what I'm talking about when you're talking about the trust he has with Adams. It's like supernatural because of those things, because of the way they practice, because of the way Adams runs his routes. It's not just Rogers.

This is an Adams thing. Adams is an absolute thing. technician. And okay, you can run on them, whatever. But this is a reason I think we can see to win the Super Bowl. So over the last five regular season games, this is being a match tournament, Devante Adams leads the NFL with six touchdowns. Alan Lazard is five. He's number two. And that's what you need to know right now, is that they have the best connection in the NFC between quarterback and receiver. And then they've got a number two who's performing exactly like a number two should. And one of the things that we're going to be the next to the number two should. And one of the

things about Rogers at this point in his career is that he can make any throw, high-risk throw, and he doesn't rely on it. It's something that Chil Capadilla has talked about, where he only does those throws when he has to, right? Like, everything we keep joking about with Zach Wilson, where he's just going out and trying to make off-scheduled throws or whatever, I heard Scott Bielas said that actually the workout that Zach Wilson did was the worst thing that ever happened to him because of just the expectation that he would play with, right, like Rogers and doing all this weird stuff. Rogers only does that when he absolutely has to. And that's what's so interesting to me.

He's playing in rhythm. He's doing exactly what he needs to do. And then when he needs that extra gear, by the way, like two people have, he's able to do it without making a mistake, without making a mistake. So there's just so much to me. You think about, you know, Adam Zedarius Smith, his practice window open today. There's so much to me the points in the practice winning in the Super Bowl that it's going to be incredible when it about the first round.

I was going to say I've liked this pod, Kevin, because it's been very hopeful. Everybody's got a shot. But now the Packers are going to lose in the first round. I'm doing it. The first round that they're not playing in. All right. That is how each team can win the Super Bowl.

Thank you to Kevin Clark. This has been the Ringer NFL show. Next up on this feed, Ben, Kaelin, and Stephen will be previewing super wildcard weekend. Kevin Stephen and I will recap all of Saturdays games. Ben, then will join Kevin and I on Sunday to break down the Sunday games. Jason Goff, Ryan Chazier, and James Jones will break down Monday's game on the Tuesday show.

Kevin and I will be back next Wednesday with Mallory Rubin. Thank you to Stefan Anderson for production on this episode and to Arduna Ramgapal for additional production supervision.