DIVISIONAL ROUND CHAOS REPORT: 2 Wide 2 Right
THE WEEK IN CHAOS
–Divisional Week always delivers some of the best football all year. I can’t say this weekend was much different. We didn’t have the narrative chaos from last weekend but the games, as a whole, were more competitive and interesting. We started with Texans/Ravens, which was probably the least competitive game of the weekend. The Texans kept it close for one half but the Ravens are just such a strong team and they opened it up in the second half. Texans fans have a lot to celebrate and should be proud of this season but don’t allow yourselves to get cocky for the future. It wasn’t that long ago they were pretty much in this same position with DeShaun Watson. Bright future, franchise QB, nothing but hope. One year can change everything, but feeling good? Yeah, that’s fine. Hell of a season, Houston.
SF/GB delivered the goods once more. To be honest the entire game felt to me like a Green Bay upset until the last moments. San Francisco could not get anything going and the Packers were largely keeping pace with them, despite making more mistakes. Purdy could not consistently get the ball to his guys in the rain with his gloves on. Back and forth the game went and then Jordan Love had his chance at a legacy drive. So that means on first down he scrambled off to his right, hurled the ball across his body into double coverage, and was easily picked off. If you didn’t immediately have flashbacks to Brett Favre’s throw against the Saints, you haven’t watched football very long. So instead of an upset, Green Bay goes home thanks to San Francisco for the 5th time since 2012. It must be infuriating to be a Packers fan when the subject of SF comes up.
Lions/Bucs was a solid game too! The first half was tight and low scoring with both teams grabbing a field goal and the Lions scoring a solid touchdown. Then Baker unleashed the dragon right before half and the Bucs went into the locker room tied up. Again, this looked like it could be an upset. The Bucs were an inconsistent team at best this year with waning talent, but they held their own. The scoring ramped up in the second half but the Lions appeared to pull away by 14 points. Suddenly the Bucs got a TD and got the ball back with a minute to go. We had a game. That’s when Baker finally got too greedy and got picked off to end an outstanding match. The Detroit Lions are playing in the NFC Championship game. Can you believe it?
The true chaos was saved for last.
GIANTS IRRELEVANCY CORNER
–The Wink divorce was finalized last week. That was weird.
CHAOS OF THE WEEK
–We saved the stupidest and most competitive game for the end. Bills/Chiefs is an incredible rivalry that has produced some of the most enjoyable games of the past few years, from 13 seconds to the Toney offsides game and now Wide Right 2: Wider Right. What a rough way to lose. This game had it all. Numerous lead changes. Stupid turnovers. The Bills tried to run a fake punt with Damar Hamlin when the Chiefs only had 10 men on the field and the fake went incredibly poorly, like the very gods trying to deny Damar his Disney storybook moment. About a minute later the Chiefs gave the ball right back when they got struck by the most controversial rule in football: the fumble endzone touchback rule. That entire sequence was probably the dumbest 2 minutes of football these playoffs so far. But the Bills saved their masterpiece for last, staying alive on a must-have-it drive to reach field goal range. Tyler Bass lines up for the kick. Jim Nantz brings up an anecdote from Sean McDermott about how he believes that Tyler has them when it matters. Bass hits the kick hard and the wind just rips the ball into the void far to the right of the goalposts. I think every football fan watching the game probably involuntarily said the same thing. Wide Right. Unbelievable. Buffalo is cursed.
CHAOTIC MOMENTS OF THE WEEK
–Dan Campbell seems like the good version of the analytics nerd Brandon Staley was trying to be. He goes for it. He always goes for it. I don’t know if Dan Campbell even knows basic math but he does know that touchdowns are more points than field goals and that punts are for wimpy boys.
-I had no idea Dalvin Cook had ended up on the Ravens until he suddenly had a big run against Houston. Dalvin just looks good in purple.
-An anecdote from Matt LaFleur about his kicker: “Everytime he goes out there, I just pray”. Seems like a bad vibe to have about your kicker. Anderson shanked a kick before halftime. Of course, this didn’t matter too much as San Fran would doink a kick of their own. Offsetting shanks!
CHAOS WATCH
–The only away team to win this weekend was the Chiefs, who I would argue was the least surprising possible away team to win. The Chiefs managed to catch passes against the Bills and the injuries in Buffalo seemed like they finally caught up to them. The Chiefs are now, somehow, the Chaos team. Right with them is the Lions, who have a chance to upset the top-seed 49ers. The Chiefs probably have the harder ask as the Ravens are the only team this weekend to come out and win convincingly. The 49ers looked a lot more vulnerable than I expected even taking into account the weather. I desperately want the Lions to win because if they don’t, we are guaranteed a boring playoff rematch. The 49ers have lost Super Bowls to both AFC competitors in the past 12 years.
FRAUD WATCH
–The 49ers I would argue have the most to lose this weekend. The Chiefs are an underdog to Baltimore and losing would be understandable. The Lions have reached the House Money stage and are the other underdog. The Ravens losing at home would be rough and contribute more nonsense discourse to the Lamar haters, but losing to Patrick Mahomes and a Chiefs team with grit and playoff experience isn’t a huge embarrassment. The 49ers? Claiming the #1 seed and having multiple players on your offense get MVP chatter during the year only to get bounced by an upstart young team with such a woeful playoffs history, at home, would be pretty rough.
DISAPPOINTMENT DUCK
–I guess probably the Bills. Favored at home against the weakest Chiefs team we’ve seen in years and they still couldn’t do it. Feels like how Peyton could never get past the Patriots for the early 2000’s.
MOST UNWATCHABLE TEAM OF THE WEEK
-The Texans were simply outmatched. Sometimes you hit a wall.
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Teams I want to see win the super bowl: Lions, Ravens (specifically for Lamar)
Teams I would prefer went away instead: 49ers, Chiefs
LIONS @ 49ERS
Here we are. The Detroit Lions are in the NFCCG. It has been 66 years since the Lions won a road playoff game, and guess which team they beat? I don’t know if this Lions team has quite enough grit and grind to pull off the upset but I know anything is possible. The Lions defense held up alright against the Bucs but Shanahan is a tougher challenge. Can Hutchinson get to Purdy and throw him off? Goff looks like butt under pressure so keeping him safe will probably give the Lions the best real shot here. I want to believe, but hard to pick against the 49ers.
If the Lions win, I will draw Dan Campbell as Godzilla destroying Silicon Valley
If the 49ers win, I will draw Brock Purdy as a trendy Tech CEO
CHIEFS @ RAVENS
I see no reason to think the Ravens won’t keep it up.
If the Chiefs win, I will draw Mahomes, The Walrus, and Kelce as Taylor Swift’s backup dancers
If the Ravens win, I will draw Lamar Jackson sweeping Taylor off her feet
Yeah, Peppa Pig does my head in too.
I appreciate The Pit.
It’s about the only thing I appreciate from this weekend. RIP Bills
LETS. GO. LIONS.
Not freakin peppa pig lol. I was at the Harp in Boston. Laughed my ass off the moment it happened and yelled “WELCOME TO THE 90s”. Honestly I expected it, we have the pieces, just never the luck.
As a Packers fan, it doesn’t feel as bad as some losses, since they were, as many have said, “Playing with house money”, and to be a 7th seed and to have knocked off the 2nd seed handily and then to take the 1 seed down to the wire and for the most part outplay them, while also having the 5th youngest playoff team in NFL history is a good thing. It would still sting significantly less if it weren’t against the friggin’ 49ers, though.
Go Lions!
When the Chiefs got gashed for like 180 yards through 3, I said to my buddy “Man, Baltimore’s gonna have a field day with this defense next week”. I was so confident the Bills were gonna blow it, I was already on to next week. I had no clue they were going to tap into history and relive Norwood’s Folly all over gain. I feel bad for them because clearly something has to change, but in the NFL that ends up closing the window more often than not.
The final quarter of that game was hilarious for all of the wrong reasons. Where their 2021 matchup is forever etched in history as the ultimate display of offensive fireworks led by two of the league’s best QBs, this season’s matchup is going to be remembered as the worst batch of late-game trolling anyone has ever witnessed.
I mean a fake punt to DAMAR HAMLIN at your own 30 on a 4th and 5? You cannot possibly write a dumber script. And it only got dumber from there.
The Buffalo wide right in the Chaos of the Week banner is *chef’s kiss*
Definitely have to disagree with the Ravens being so far on the “Fun to watch” scale.
That entire game was just a blowout from start to finish and nothing unexpected happened. Lamar was Lamar and it was a boring game in general. Even the Ravens were just kinda like “Yeah, we’re clearly better”
Obviously this is subjective but Bills/Chiefs should both be further along that Fun to Watch axis. That was an amazing game.
(I was kinda hoping for a 49ers/Bills Super Bowl because that would be a Tecmo Super Bowl since those two teams always made it in that game)
I remember the Joe Montana led Chiefs being pretty great in some versions of Tecmo as well.
It wasn’t a blowout until the 4th Quarter. The Texans had missed opportunities in the first half, such as getting out of Field Goal range because of self inflicted penalties, and missing a crucial field goal before the half ended. We held Lamar Jackson in check (Except for one drive) and played great defense. It was really the second half where the wheels came off. We were simply outcoached as the Ravens made the necessary adjustments to open up their offense and our offense struggled even worse in the first half. In the end, our offense couldn’t do anything and our defense was tired from being out on the field all day.
“If you didn’t immediately have flashbacks to Brett Favre’s throw against the Saints, you haven’t watched football very long.” As a Vikings fan, my whole football life is nothing but flashbacks to unpleasant playoff departures.
The Packers season, summed up musically:
“What is Love?”
“Love Stinks”
“Is this Love?”
“Love is All You Need”
“Stupid Love”
I agree about Texans fans not getting cocky, but I disagree about the Watson comparison. The team now is just so much more complete and so much better run. Watson popped up basically right as Bob McNair died, so Cal fell into a pit of depression over the death of his dad and let BoB and Easterby run the teams themselves. He’s snapped out of it now (everyone’s crediting his wife Hannah for lighting a fire under his ass and I agree with them) to get active in running the franchise, and now not only does he have a better team in a much better cap position, he’s got a fantastic GM in Nick Caserio and what appears to be the franchise HC in DeMeco Ryans with a lot of years of coaching ahead of him.
Nothing is certain, of course, but the team as a whole is in a much better position now than it’s been in probably a decade or more, and is much more capable of fixing the holes Baltimore exposed. Whether or not they do we’ll have to wait for Free Agency and the Draft to see, but if any Texans team could do it, it’s this one.
I Completely agree, our team hasn’t this much excitement since the Kubiak era. Our team was very boring during the O Brian era and even with Watson, the team felt off. While we were certainly good during 2018/19, our team never felt like a true contender in the AFC.
Free Agency is especially looking good. You’ve got a potential generational QB talent in CJ Stroud, you’ve got DeMeco Ryans as a young energetic HC who has his team fired up and sold on a complete cultural shift that he’s pulled off in just a single season (an HC who was a fantastic player in his own right, so the ability to Walk the Walk just makes him even more genuine), PLUS you’ve got Houston’s already good qualities as a franchise. Remember, the FA report card the NFLPA put out last year had the Texans at #4 in the League, with the only major knock against the team being not having a sauna. Add in all the cap space we have available, and the Texans are going to look VERY attractive to free agents. Not only can the team afford to pay well, they’ll get a good team to play for out of it.
I have to couch all this in “You never know until it happens”, but I do genuinely believe that the Texans have a lot more advantages going into the 2024 season than they ever had under Watson. The franchise as a whole feels like it’s completely and totally different than it was in 2022, even if you take the generational QB talent into account.
By the very same arguments, the Ravens ought to be on fraud watch as well.
I already want the Lions in the owl. That comic concept just makes me want it more.
If the Ravens win I would go with the Distracted Boyfriend meme but with Taylor as Distracted Boyfriend, Lamar as Hot Chick, and Travis as Jilted Girlfriend
That would be an all time classic.
Do it Dave!
As disappointed as I am that we missed out on a Lions/Bills Super Bowl, I gotta admit that it warmed my Dolfan heart a little seeing Buffalo lose at home.