NFL Wild Card Weekend Recap: The Spiciest Discourse From Every Game

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Happy playoffs everyone! I’ll get straight to this one, as the postseason waits for no one. In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe and share this, particularly with anyone you may be watching the Super Bowl with. You don’t want to be having to explain over this while the buffalo chicken dip is on the stove!

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Wild Card Round Games Ranked By Discourse, Using the Spice Scale From My Friend’s Hometown Thai Restaurant in Wisconsin

I’m just going to call a spade a spade here: this was an uneventful weekend, particularly by playoff standards. All but one game was a blowout, with really only one big upset. This happens sometimes, and given the matchups we have going into the divisional round this week, I have hope that the rest of the postseason will bring more action.

Thankfully, even though the games themselves weren’t all exciting, there are always things to overreact to and discuss about them. Playoff performances have a unique ability to formulate discourse, too, because they are the final time we see a losing team until next season, coloring eight months of offseason analysis.

In that spirit, I’m going to recap the games in order of least to most interesting narratives they leave us with, using a spice scale made famous (in my personal life) by friend Jacqueline’s local Thai restaurant, Sa-Bai Thong in Madison, Wisconsin: Tiny, Careful, Adventure, Fire.

#6 Commanders Defeat #3 Buccanneers, 23-20: Tiny

Pressing Discourse: Is Jayden Daniels already one of the best quarterbacks in the league?

It feels a little odd putting this game first, given that it was certainly the most entertaining matchup we saw all weekend. The Buccaneers and Commanders traded punches all evening—there were five lead changes in this game—and then, Washington did what they’ve been doing all season. The Commanders got the ball with under five minutes left to play and moved the ball methodically down the field to get into field goal range, draining the clock so they could have a walk-off, game-winning kick. Then, because this team has had a flair for the dramatic, the 37-yard chip shot hit the upright and doinked in, handing the Commanders their first playoff win in nearly 20 years.

It was a tough loss for the Buccanneers, who had a strong season and at points looked poised to win this game. After stopping the Commanders on fourth down while up 17-13 at the start of the fourth quarter, Tampa Bay had the chance to drain some clock and go up two scores. They’d been moving the ball well all night, and their defense had just come up with a big stop. Instead, disaster: a miscommunication on the Tampa Bay offense led to a botched handoff and fumble, giving the Commanders the ball back deep in Buccaneers territory. Washington quickly scored a touchdown to go up 20-17.

For as dramatic as this game was to watch, it was a somewhat predictable outcome. The Commanders have been winning close games all season, and even though the Buccanneers were favored at home, these teams felt pretty evenly matched. Baker Mayfield’s fumble may have cost the team the game, but that felt less representative of his abilities and more so of the razor-thin margins that exist in the NFL, particularly in the postseason. You just can’t make those kinds of mistakes and expect to win. In full transparency, as happy as I was to see Washington get this long-awaited playoff victory, I did turn the game off as soon as the kick went in, because I didn’t want to see Baker looking so sad after his career-best season came to an untimely end.

The real takeaway from this game is about Jayden Daniels, who not only seems like the best rookie quarterback in this class by quite some distance but may already be one of the best quarterbacks in the league, period. It’s not just his actual game, which is by all accounts and metrics quite good. I realized that I found myself thinking when the Commanders got the ball at the end of the fourth quarter that it was likely over for the Buccanneers. These kinds of moments—high-stakes drives in high-stakes games—are the kinds of things rookies are notoriously bad at. Daniels, however, has the presence of an elite veteran already, the kind of player that if you are rooting against you watch in knowing horror that they will find a way to win.

This could be the end of the road for Washington’s playoff run, they play the Lions coming off of a bye in Detroit next week. Still, when the media spends all offseason talking about the trajectory of these rookies in their sophomore year, instead of the usual question of “will this guy end up being any good?” Commanders fans will get to ask “How much better could he possibly be?”

#2 Buffalo Bills Defeat #7 Denver Broncos, 31-7: Tiny

Pressing Discourse: Should this be Josh Allen’s MVP year?

This game was probably the least dramatic of any played this weekend—a #2 seed in the Bills coming off of a dominant stretch shellacking a #7 Broncos team for whom making the playoffs at all constituted a successful season. This game felt in question for about five minutes, when Denver’s first drive resulted in a touchdown thanks to a 43-yard touchdown throw from Bo Nix to Troy Franklin that, if only for a moment, quieted the fans at Highmark Stadium. Denver wouldn’t score another point for the rest of the game.

The reason that this didn’t get the lowest slot, though, is that this game will inevitably be used as a talking point in one of the most significant narratives of the season: the Josh Allen versus Lamar Jackson MVP debate. Allen made the kinds of plays he’s making all season to put himself in this conversation, like this instant classic fourth-down pass to Ty Johnson for a touchdown. Statistics aside, there’s no question that Josh Allen has done more with less than any other quarterback playing this season. For some, that would be the primary criteria for his MVP case.

At present, it doesn’t look like he’ll get the award. The Associated Press released its All-Pro Team last week, which is basically like the Oscars for football. Being named All-Pro is purely symbolic, voted on by NFL media members at the end of the regular season (this isn’t the same thing as the Pro Bowl which is determined by a mix of votes between fans, players, and coaches, and is divided by conference.) Lamar Jackson was named the First-Team All-Pro quarterback, and there is significant overlap between the voting bodies that decide the All-Pro team and the MVP. Voting ends at the end of the regular season and MVP is announced the week before the Super Bowl, so unless some plurality of voters split their All-Pro and MVP ballot (possible, but unlikely), it looks like Lamar is getting his third.

I don’t really have skin in the game on this one, I like both of these players a lot and see the argument either way. Thankfully, we’ll get to see a side-by-side of these two next week, when the Ravens play the Bills in the Divisional Round, a game I’m sure everyone will be totally normal about regardless of the outcome. Either way, we’ve been blessed to watch both of these guys play this year, and whichever one inevitably ends up playing the Chiefs in the AFC Championship will have my full, unbridled support.

#2 Eagles Defeat #7 Green Bay Packers, 22-10: Careful

Pressing Discourse: Will the Tao of Brown be enough?

I oscillated on what about this strange, lopsided game I wanted to focus on here. Yes, the Packers lost, and lots of that felt like the result of a tough outing for quarterback Jordan Love.

Yes, Love threw three interceptions, and the game started with Green Bay fumbling their kick return. But the Packers season has been full of stuff like this: stupid, accumulating mistakes that put them in holes even great teams couldn’t dig themselves out of. It didn’t help that the Packers offense was shredded (get it? cheeseheads?), entering the game without receiver Christian Watson and losing their other top two receivers along the way. It was a disappointing showing, and one that will lead to plenty of takes about Jordan Love’s ability to elevate a team, but not a shocking one.

What I personally think is the more interesting aspect of this game was the Eagles, who despite never really being pushed in this game, didn’t have an offensive performance you’d expect from a team that sees itself as a Super Bowl contender. Philadelphia scored 10 total points in the first half, their first touchdown coming off of the heels of the botched kickoff that put them on the Packer’s 28-yard line. They kicked one more field goal but were unable to capitalize on the two interceptions Jordan Love threw in the first half. By the second half, the Packers were down half their receiving corps, and the Eagles didn’t need to do much to hang onto their lead.

In between drives, the camera panned to Philadelphia star receiver AJ Brown reading a book on the bench. Brown, who had a very quiet game with only one catch for 10 yards, is the kind of player you’d expect to be more involved in a playoff push, and one who tends to make it known when he is not as involved as he should be. Reporters quickly investigated and discovered that he was reading a self-help book entitled Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life.

(Photo courtesy of The Sporting News)

This immediately spread like wildfire, because reading a self-help book on the sideline during a playoff game is quite possibly the most wide receiver thing in the entire world (the book jumped to the #1 Bestseller on Amazon). Brown went on Twitter to share that he actually reads this book on the sideline during every game, and shared a highlighted passage:

We’re so hard on ourselves, amplifying all our failures and regrets, that we neglect to see what’s still possible — a life of freedom, filled with deep contentment, joy and confidence, independent of circumstances. We’re all human, with the same deep desires and concerns.

While this has the same depth of wisdom as a fortune cookie to me, I’m glad that Brown is able to find some meaning here. He, and the rest of the Philadelphia offense, will need it if they hope to find their way to the Super Bowl. They’ll be playing the Rams next week, a team that has shown they are capable of high-scoring outings. If Philadelphia wants to compete with them, it’ll need to make adjustments quickly (and move toward of life of freedom, filled with deep contentment, joy and confidence. Independent of circumstances).

#3 Baltimore Ravens Defeat #6 Pittsburgh Steelers, 28-14: Adventure

Pressing Discourse: Can the Steelers ever escape purgatory?

Despite a storied history of close games between these two franchises, it shouldn’t come as a total shock that the Ravens won this game soundly. As I wrote last week, these are two teams on opposite trajectories, with Baltimore looking as electric as ever in the waning weeks of the season, and Pittsburgh flaming out in a four, now five, game losing streak.

We’ll have time to talk more about the Ravens, and how their two-headed freak-show of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry have me, against my better judgement, thinking that they may be headed toward a Super Bowl this year. The intrigue to come out of this game rests solely with the Steelers, and the future of their head coach Mike Tomlin.

Tomlin is, without question, an excellent football coach. At only 52 years old, he’s the NFL longest-tenured head coach, having helmed the Steelers since 2007. In his nearly two decades coaching the team, he’s been to the playoff 12 times, went to two Super Bowls and was the youngest coach to ever win one, and famously has never had a losing record. It’s a legendary career, but one that also needs context.

Tomlin’s first decade with the team he was paired with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, a future Hall of Famer player and also someone very credibly accused of sexual violence in multiple instances. A ten-year coach and quarterback combination is the kind of stability that an organization dreams of, and one not surprsing for a franchise that has had three total head coaches since the sexual revolution.

In 2017, legendary Steelers owner Art Rooney passed away, and two years after that Roethlisberger missed most of the season to injury and didn’t look like the player he once was until he retired in 2021. That same year, their longtime general manager Kevin Colbert also retired. In a situation like this, a lot of organizations would fall into a mismanagement collapse, but with Tomlin at the helm, things stayed together.

Having a coach with that level of organizational ability and confidence is an immense gift, but it also results in a level of stagnation. Part of what makes football a fun thing to follow is that it’s strategy and philosophies change over time, and when only one person is making most of the decisions, no matter how savvy and talented they are, it puts limits on what ideas are coming into the building. Tomlin’s strength has always been his leadership; his players want to play for him, give full effort, and execute at a high level. It’s why the Steelers have been notorious for getting good results out of challenging personalities, many of whom flame out as soon as they leave Pittsburgh.

As a defensive coach, getting effort and execution out of your players used to be the name of the game, more or less. But as offenses have become increasingly complicated, with nerdy vape-pen hitting white guys in athlesuire coming up with crazy ideas on the white board, defenses have needed to evolve, too. You can look at the Vikings defense as an example of this, and how defensive coordinator Brian Flores has utliized disguises and motion to muddle what players are rushing the quarterback and not. Tomlin’s game, ultimately, hasn’t evolved in this way, and the results are there to prove it. Despite five playoff appearances since 2017, the Steelers haven’t won a single postseason game in that time.

How much of this is to blame on Tomlin is a lingering question. On the one hand, they’ve managed to stay competitive and have winning seasons despite failing to get high-level quarterback talent, a true feat in it’s own right. However, one of the problems with consistently winning is that you aren’t ever in a position to pick at the top of the draft to get a star quarterback or franchise-changing player. You’ll hear Steelers fans, spoiled as they are, sometimes say that they want to tank for a season for a shot at a great player.

After their uncompetitive loss to the Ravens, questions about Tomlin’s future with the organization have been looming everywhere. There’s no doubt that he’s a great coach—he’d be hired immediately by any team looking to fill their head coaching role—but it’s possible that there’s no more room for growth in his relationship with the Steelers. It seems unlikely that they’ll actually fire Tomlin, as mentioned above, Pittsburgh isn’t particularly trigger-happy when it comes to changing things up. Still, it’s clear that it’s time for a refresh for the Steelers, whether that be in finding a new staff around Tomlin or making a big move to acquire a quarterback (Russell Wilson’s future with the team is not clear at the moment, nor should it be). If they don’t make a change now, they may as well spend the next few years trapped in Pitts-atory.

#4 Los Angeles Rams Defeat #5 Minnesota Vikings, 27-9: Adventure

Pressing discourse: Can a quarterback ever really change?

I probably should’ve known as soon as I turned on this game Monday, partway through a live performance of “Fight Song” as a slideshow of firefighters battling the wildfires in LA flashed on the screen, that this was not perhaps Minnesota’s night. It felt all too written in the stars: a team going in as underdogs, playing a state away as their home city experiences an unprecedented natural disaster, going against a Vikings franchise perhaps most well-known for blowing it in the postseason, helmed by a quarterback coming off of his worst performance under the brightest lights.

The Rams got up early, scoring a quick touchdown on their opening possession, and never let up. The Vikings' defense seemed unable to stop quarterback Matt Stafford, who didn’t blink in the face of pressure. The Rams offense did whatever they pleased, completing long passes down the field to receivers so open that defenders often weren't seen when the screen panned to them. The performance reminded viewers of the particular abilities of offensive gurus like head coach Sean McVay, who had two weeks to create a bespoke gameplan, and you could tell.

For as impressive of an offensive performance as this was for the Rams, I don’t think anyone will be talking about that in the coming weeks. At the end of the day, this was a game about the total, disastrous collapse of quarterback Sam Darnold. In sixty minutes, Darnold completely rewrote the narrative that had been building around him for the past three months—the redemption arc of a former cast-off—and also lost quite possibly tens of millions of dollars that could’ve come with a lucrative contract for a quarterback-hungry team. Four quarters that will inevitably impact the wealth of his grandchildren, the football equivalent of the North Korean practice of intergenerational imprisonment. Kidding! Well, ask a Vikings fan.

Of course, I’m being a bit hyperbolic here. This collapse didn’t solely rest on Darnold, as the Rams' defense showed up in big and frankly unexpected ways. Darnold was sacked nine times, tying an NFL playoff record. A lot of that is on him—he held onto the ball for far too long far too often—but the offensive line shoulders some blame, too. As time goes on, and people smarter than me watch the tape, we’ll have a clearer idea of how much of this rests squarely on Darnold. For no, though, it’s clear he missed wide-open players, took unnecessary sacks in key situations, and failed to recognize and adjust to pressure.

Once the sting of another promising Vikings season lost to postseason disaster wears off, in retrospect, this horrific game does provide the organization some clarity. Had Darnold played as well as he had for the bulk of this season through the playoffs, Minnesota would be facing tough questions about whether to even keep their first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy on the roster. With this game, though, it became abundantly clear that Darnold is not the future of the franchise. That’s a big reason why this game wasn’t ranked higher on the heat scale—instead of creating questions, it answered them.

I think it’s possible that Darnold stays on the team on a smaller deal and acts as a bridge until McCarthy is ready to start, as was the intention going into this year, before McCarthy got injured. For as tough as his last two games were, he still led this team to 14 wins in a challenging division, which doesn’t happen by accident. Despite this, playoff performances haunt an offseason, especially when you see a player give up the ghost.

#4 Houston Texans Defeat #5 Los Angeles Chargers, 32-12: Fire

Pressing Discourse: Is Justin Herbert a Social Media Quarterback?

In some ways, what happened in this upset (Texans were a higher seed, but the Chargers were favored) win early on Saturday was pretty straightforward. The Texans defense dominated Los Angeles for four quarters. Their defensive lineman smashed through the Chargers tackles like they were glass on a movie set; the defensive backs played like they were handcuffed to the receivers. It’s not all that surprising that head coach DeMeco Ryans, who led championship-level defenses during his time in San Francisco, created a dominant gameplan. Still, even those most optimistic about the Texans’ chances here likely wouldn’t have expected it all to go so well.

This brings us to what happened to the Chargers on offense, and particularly to quarterback Justin Herbert, who had his worst performance as a pro on Saturday. He completed less than 44% of his passes and threw four interceptions, one of which was returned for a score by the Texans' defense. It was an uncharacteristic performance for a player who is generally good at avoiding crucial mistakes. Before Saturday, he had thrown on three interceptions the entire season.

Despite Herbert being quite possibly the most mild-mannered, low-key player in the entire league, he’s been somewhat of a lightning rod for discourse for a few years. A few years ago, NFL Twitter got into a hefty debate about Herbert’s abilities after analyst Emmanuel Acho dubbed him a “social media quarterback” following a game versus Chiefs where Herbert threw a late-game interception to seal the win for Kansas City. In saying this, Acho was suggesting that Herbert (who, ironically, has stated publicly that he doesn’t even run his own social accounts) was overrated by online NFL analysts, who marvel at his tape and athleticism despite failing to win any big games. Many pointed out that Herbert’s situation has never been great—the Chargers never surrounded him with talent early in his career, not to mention that they are are a historically haunted franchise—and that, as the saying goes, wins aren’t a quarterback stat.

However well Herbert played this year, though, playoff record matters, particularly because when you lose in the playoffs, it’s the last memory anyone has of you until next season rolls around. Lamar Jackson has dealt with a bit of this after multiple early exits from the postseason; sure, he’s great, but can he get it done in the big moments?

For as good as Herbert’s season has been, and for how unexpectedly well the Chargers season went as a whole, this performance is likely going to be the talk of the offseason. As of now, Herbert has played in two playoff games and lost both of them. The first, during the 2022 playoffs, was a catastrophic collapse from the Chargers—losing the game after going up a staggering 27 points in the first half. It would be hard to pin that loss on him, exactly, given that it was more of a defensive meltdown than anything, but he was a central part of a memorable franchise loss.

Herbert has more of the blame in this game than he did when he played the Jaguars. Of his four interceptions, three felt definitively on him–bad decisions or bad throws. Many will correctly point out that Herbert has one of the least inspiring receiving corps in the league, and that the Chargers in general have far outperformed their very much in-construction roster. Herbert was under constant pressure from the Texans line the entire game, something that even the rarest quarterbacks would struggle to overcome. At the end of the day, though, when you are being paid $262 million to play quarterback in the NFL and have your worst performance under the highest stakes, context is a luxury you don’t get.

Plenty of great quarterbacks have had playoff stinkers, and when the Chargers are back in the postseason with a stronger roster, we’ll see if Herbert has learned from his mistakes. Until that time comes, this game will hang over his resume and reputation, a social media quarterback who has yet to put it together IRL.

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Thanks for reading, go be a bad sport this week :)