NFL Playoffs: What We Learned From the Divisional Round
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat We Learned From the N.F.L.’s Divisional RoundThe Buffalo Bills rode their defense to victory while the Green Bay Packers thrived on offense. The Kansas City Chiefs, who lost Patrick Mahomes to a concussion, simply survived.Chad Henne is not known for his legs, but the veteran backup scrambled for a 13-yard gain late in the game helping set up his game-sealing pass to Tyreek Hill.Credit…Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesJan. 17, 2021Updated 8:02 p.m. ETHome teams won the first three games of the N.F.L.’s divisional round, but there was plenty of fretting along the way. The Buffalo Bills rode their defense to a win, the Green Bay Packers relied on their offense and the heavily favored Kansas City Chiefs, who lost quarterback Patrick Mahomes to a concussion, mostly survived.Here’s what we learned:The Winners’ BracketChad Henne sealed the deal for the Chiefs to get to another AFC Championship game 🔥 @PatrickMahomes @Chiefs pic.twitter.com/Yk3Kay5CnW— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) January 17, 2021
Andy Reid trusts Chad Henne. Forced into action after Mahomes’s concussion, Henne, a 35-year-old backup, showed determination, skill and a bit of recklessness in protecting Kansas City’s lead over the Cleveland Browns, helping to give the Chiefs a 22-17 victory and sending them to their third consecutive A.F.C. championship game. Henne’s performance wasn’t flawless — he threw a particularly ugly interception in the end zone — but Coach Andy Reid’s decision to have his backup attempt a pass on fourth-and-short to ice the game, rather than running or punting the ball away, was about as strong of an endorsement as a player can receive. And Henne will undoubtedly be reminding people about his wild 13-yard run on the preceding play for years to come.There is no question that Kansas City is hoping Mahomes can be back for next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills, but his injury — and injuries sustained by Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams in their divisional round games — showed just how precarious each game can be in the N.F.L. Having a reliable backup can be the difference between winning and losing.A crowd of 8,456 fans was spread out in the stands of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field on Saturday. The team had not allowed fans to attend games during the regular season.Credit…Sarah Kloepping/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLambeau Field is ready for its (frigid) close-up. Green Bay’s stadium opened in 1957, and has been the site of several classic games, but it has seen relatively little action late in the playoffs. Thanks to Green Bay’s 32-18 win over the Los Angeles Rams in Saturday’s divisional round game, the Packers will host the N.F.C. championship game next Sunday — the 10th time in franchise history that Green Bay has played a game with a trip to the Super Bowl at stake. Most of those games, though, were on the road, with this being just the fourth time Lambeau has hosted such a game. The last resulted in a loss to the Giants in the 2007 season; Aaron Rodgers, still serving as Brett Favre’s understudy, watched from the sideline.The Packers’ raucous fans will not have much chance to affect next week’s game — Green Bay allowed only 8,456 people to attend the divisional round game — but Wisconsin’s weather could play a role. Weather.com’s 10-day forecast is calling for possible snow on Sunday, with temperatures in the 20s. That’s cold, but by Packers standards it wouldn’t qualify as particularly harsh: It was 3 degrees Fahrenheit at kickoff in 1997 when Favre led Green Bay past Carolina; and it was a bone-chilling minus-15 — with a wind chill bringing things down another 20 to 30 degrees — when the Packers, on their path to Super Bowl II, beat the Dallas Cowboys in the 1967 N.F.L. championship, better known as the Ice Bowl.Buffalo’s defense was lying in wait. After a 2019 season in which the Bills’ defense ranked second in points allowed and third in yards allowed, it was expected that Buffalo would live and die on that side of the ball in 2020. Instead, the Bills’ defense was routinely overwhelmed, leaving quarterback Josh Allen and the team’s much-improved offense to bail out that unit. In Saturday’s divisional round game, those roles again reversed. Defensive stars like linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, safety Micah Hyde and cornerback Tre’Davious White were at their best, and cornerback Taron Johnson delivered the key play of the game with an incredible 101-yard interception return for a touchdown.Johnson’s pick-6 should result in his never buying another drink in Buffalo, and the Bills are back in the A.F.C. championship game for the first time since the 1993 season. But Buffalo faces an even stiffer test next week in the form of Kansas City.The Losers’ BracketBaker Mayfield of the Cleveland Browns was forced to watch from the sideline as the Kansas City Chiefs successfully ran the clock out in their divisional round game. Cleveland had wasted two timeouts earlier in the second half.Credit…Jeff Roberson/Associated PressTimeouts are important. The Cleveland Browns had the franchise’s best season since it was resurrected in 1999, and the team’s defense, its running game and even quarterback Baker Mayfield should provide fans plenty of optimism going into next season. But Cleveland’s wasting two timeouts in the second half — one on a challenge of a play that wasn’t particularly close and one when there was miscommunication at the line of scrimmage — lowered the Browns’ chances of getting the ball back one last time when trailing by 5 in the game’s closing minutes.The Browns and their fans will probably view this as a lost opportunity to knock off the vaunted Kansas City Chiefs — the injury sustained by Mahomes had seemed to kick the door wide open — but the franchise should instead see this as the start of what could be a strong A.F.C. rivalry. The Browns are young, talented and came close to a win on the road. Given another shot, perhaps the outcome would be different.Slowed by a rib injury, Aaron Donald of the Rams, right, couldn’t find his typical burst. That gave Aaron Rodgers of the Packers plenty of time to pick apart the Los Angeles defense.Credit…Matt Ludtke/Associated PressThe Rams’ defense goes as far as Aaron Donald can take it. After a disappointing 2019 season that ended without a playoff appearance, Los Angeles surged back into contention in 2020 thanks to its defense. Multiple players stepped up to look like stars and the Rams were not only the top-rated overall defense in the N.F.L. — both in total yardage and scoring — but they showed balance, finishing as a top-three unit in both run and pass yards allowed. All of that, however, was built on the dominance of Donald, an All-Pro defensive tackle who anchors the team in all facets of the game. There was concern entering Saturday’s game against Green Bay that Donald could be limited by a rib injury sustained in the wild-card round, but he insisted he was healthy. It was clear from the beginning that was untrue. Donald was on the field for 40 of the Rams’ 75 defensive snaps and he was limited to one tackle and one pressure. He didn’t hit Aaron Rodgers a single time, and the lack of pressure had a cascading effect for the rest of the Rams’ defenders, who did not produce a sack and hit Rodgers just once all game. A devastated Donald was seen crying on the Rams’ sideline at the end of the game.Struggling against Rodgers hardly makes the Rams unique, but the final numbers were stark: It was just the second time all season that Los Angeles allowed more than 30 points, and it was the team’s worst effort of the season against both the pass (296 yards) and the run (188 yards).Justin Tucker missed two field-goal attempts of less than 50 yards in Saturday’s loss to Buffalo. In nine seasons for Baltimore, and two college seasons at Texas, the steady kicker had never missed two such kicks in a game.Credit…John Munson/Associated PressThe Ravens are familiar with Murphy’s Law. The adage states anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Baltimore got an extreme lesson in that during Saturday’s 17-3 loss to the Bills.Justin Tucker, the game’s most reliable kicker from inside 50 yards, missed 41- and 46-yard field-goal attempts, with both attempts bouncing off the uprights. It was quickly reported that Tucker had not missed two such kicks in any single game over his 154 career regular-season and playoff games in the N.F.L., but that was understating how unusual it was for Tucker. He also never missed two such kicks in any college game.Lamar Jackson, a quarterback celebrated for efficient passing and thrilling runs, had the third-worst passer rating of his 41 career starts (including postseason) while gaining just 34 yards rushing. He had a mistake in the red zone turn into a 101-yard pick-6 and he had a bad snap get away from him, leading to a hard hit that gave him a concussion.Tucker and Jackson were hardly alone in their misery. Mark Andrews, one of the game’s best tight ends, caught just four of the 11 passes thrown his way, dropping at least one pass that looked like a sure touchdown. He was also Jackson’s target on the play that turned into a pick-6. Only Patrick Mekari had a worse day. A second-year player out of Cal, Mekari inherited the starting center job from an ineffective Matt Skura during the regular season. On Saturday, two of Mekari’s snaps resulted in fumbles — one of which was the play in which Jackson was concussed.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
