Are you ready for some Super Bowl football?
In many ways, this Conference Championship Round did its best to live up to the hype from the Divisional Round. While it may have been impossible to provide a better football experience (especially compared to that Bills/Chiefs game we’re all still swooning over), having two games chock full of storylines, underdogs and ebbs and flows decided by a combined six points was fantastic.
It’s more proof that the NFL is on top from a parity standpoint as well as an entertainment value standpoint, and although we’re about to talk “winners and losers” from the weekend, we can all agree that the league and its media partners woke up this morning feeling like the real winners after such a fantastic playoffs.
Cincinnati Bengals 27 @ Kansas City Chiefs 24
I’d absolutely hate to be the dude screaming that the reason the Bengals won this game was “because they wanted it more.” That’s a pretty lazy level of analysis and it’s the sort of stuff that gets repeated a thousand times on the worst of sports radio/sports TV, so I’m guessing you don’t come to Pickwatch to hear that sort of stuff.
Still, you know, the Bengals wanted it more…
For years, the Chiefs have carefully crafted a “plucky underdog” persona. To hear them tell it, Andy Reid is the coach who was “washed up” other places. Patrick Mahomes was the quarterback “no one wanted” in the draft. Safety Tyann Mathieu was “too small” for the NFL. The team was filled with castoffs, hasbeens and never weres who came together and succeeded because they just believed harder.
Whether that general point was true a few years ago is up for debate, but now? They’re the most talented team in the NFL, Mahomes is the best quarterback (assuming Brady is truly retired, more on that in a bit) and Reid is considered one of the best coaches if not the singular best coach. They’re consistently in danger of being poached both on the coaching staff and in the front office. They are, without question, the paragon of successful NFL teams.
They’re Goliath, and they just got rocked by a cigar-smoking, bling-wearing David of Biblical proportions.
Schematically, Reid was just outcoached by Zac Taylor in a big way. While CBS’s Tony Romo spent the entire game complaining about the Bengals’ commitment to the run (more on Romo later too), it turned out that the Bengals’ biding time and wearing down the Chiefs defensively was the right move. Even late in the game, the play-action was still working to perfection and the final drives featured an inspired Bengals offensive line against a Chiefs defensive front that had clearly had enough.
Play this game 100 times and the Chiefs win 85 of them—some of them in a rout. This game, though? This game was won by a team that absolutely showed up not quite ready for the big stage they suddenly found themselves on, but that stayed the course, did not panic and were able to find control of a game in which their young stud of a quarterback looked every bit as elusive and dangerous as Mahomes ever has.
San Francisco 49ers 17 @ Los Angeles Rams 20
Now, play this game 100 times and…well, the Rams probably win most of those too. Still, it’s hard to tell just who the better overall team was in this one. The 49ers don’t do a lot of flashy things (other than get to the quarterback) and that showed here. They tried to keep the ball in front of them defensively, get to Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford early and often without needing to blitz and keep the game from needing to be won by their own quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo.
You were so close…
The 49ers lost this game because the Rams were able to put them in the position of needing to do two things they just aren’t built to do. The first was to create a turnover. The dropped interception by safety Jaquiski Tartt will burn in the retinas of plenty of Niners fans for some time, but it’s more than that. Rams QB Matthew Stafford was playing (by his standards, especially his recent playoff standards) very poorly. In games like that this season, Stafford was known to throw a couple of YOLO balls and get them intercepted.
The other thing the Niners weren’t built to do was to put the game on the back of Garoppolo and have him lead them down the field and pick up a game winning drive. There’s lots to say about whether or not Garoppolo is built that way (he’s not) but more importantly, the 49ers are not built that way.
Listen, the 49ers and their fans (and former quarterbacks) were obnoxious leading up to this game—trying to convince us (convince themselves?) that they had the utmost faith in Garoppolo and anything less than calling him the second coming of Joe Montana was a slight against God and against nature that they simply would not allow.
Only, the 49ers have never acted like that. They call each and every game to keep the game close and in the hands of their rushing attack and quick passing game. They feature WR/RB/Marvel Superhero Deebo Samuel in a million different ways than simply letting Garoppolo drop back and sling it. In April, they traded up with an insane amount of draft capital to take quarterback Trey Lance rather than someone who would help the team this year get to the Super Bowl.
Can you imagine this 49ers team with Ja’Marr Chase? My goodness gracious…
Garoppolo did not play terribly. There’s even an argument to be made that (for much of the game) he played both very well and better than Stafford. Yet, when the chips were down, the Rams offense is built to do what it did and put a game like that on lockdown. The Niners offense is not built like that—not for Garoppolo, not for Lance, not for anyone.
The Rams built themselves for moments like this. The Niners showed up and were sorely lacking.
The Schottey Six: Head Coaching Candidates Still on the Market
With roughly five head coaching jobs left open (depending on the relative drying of ink and private flights currently criss-crossing the country) let’s take a look at the top candidates for those jobs.
1. Jim Harbaugh (HC Michigan) — Generally considered one of the best coaches in both college and the pros, Harbaugh may be genuinely interested in getting back to the NFL at age 58 (recruiting isn’t exactly an old man’s game) OR he may just be pressuring Michigan to open up the purse strings a little bit.
2. Bryon Leftwich (OC Buccaneers) — At 42, Leftwich would just barely crack the Top 10 when it comes to young NFL head coaches, but he’s just now starting to truly get looks after years as one of the top coordinators. He’s got reason to leave with the Buccaneers heading for a re-shuffle, but he also has cause to be patient and wait for the right job.
3. Raheem Morris (DC Rams) — I’ve written and tweeted at length about Morris in the past, because I believe he is a fantastic candidate who has done all of the right things to get back on top after a dismal first attempt at head coaching.
4. Doug Pederson — Pederson has won a Super Bowl as both a player and a coach and his coaching win was just four years ago. He was considered an up and coming offensive mastermind not too long ago and lost his job with the Eagles not (necessarily) because he was bad at coaching but because of a power struggle with Howie Roseman. Consider this: His .531 coaching percentage would’ve ranked in the top half of the NFL entering this season.
5. Brian Flores — Flores didn’t fail Miami. Miami failed Flores. Again, Flores (only 40 years old) lost a power struggle more than he lost football games. He pulled the team from the doldrums and posted back-to-back winning seasons.
6. Eric Bieniemy (OC Chiefs) — Now 52, Bieniemy has paid his dues a couple of times over. He’s been around the NFL as a coach and a player since 1991 and has been coaching at a high level since 2001. In 2010, 12 years ago(!), he was the Vikings assistant head coach for a season and has been an offensive coordinator for the better part of the past decade.
Cleaning Out the Notebook:
— So, apparently, Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady retired. Or he didn’t? Who knows. When ESPN released the report that Brady was hanging it up, the entire internet collapsed upon itself in (entirely deserved) genuflection. Then, Brady and his camp made it very clear that his mind was not made up yet. It was a weird moment in sports history made only weirder by the fact we still don’t know what’s gonna happen.
— If Brady retires, I would not be surprised to see the Buccaneers completely reshuffle the deck. Head Coach Bruce Arians has said he’s going to stick around and coach until he drops, but he’s also allowed his coaches to seek and take lateral moves elsewhere. Arians is a fantastic coach and the team still has top-notch talent, but there was no change they’d be able to keep the whole gang together for yet another year.
— Whether Brady retires now or in five seasons, he’ll walk away from the game as the best quarterback and player the NFL has ever seen, bar none, period, sorry to the much-funnier and more likable Peyton Manning. I got lit up on Twitter for suggesting it, but I think Brady finds a way to stick around the game and plenty of NFL owners are going to reach out to see if he wants to putter around their front office or coaching staff immediately upon his retirement. I completely understand why so many think that would be “beneath him” and I also get that he ostensibly wants to spend time with his family, but guys like Brady are addicted to the game and he’s been around the game since he was an infant. He doesn’t have an off switch.
— I am of entirely two different minds when it comes to the upcoming marriage between New England Patriots OC Josh McDaniels and the Las Vegas Raiders. Much like I said about Raheem Morris above, McDaniels has learned what he didn’t know the first time around and his failure as a young head coach was not entirely due to his mistakes.
— That said, the Raiders seem to be pushing all in on “Patriots 10.0” when every single other iteration of this cloning process has not gone as smoothly as the introductory press conferences would have you believe. McDaniels can be successful, but he and new General Manager Dave Ziegler will need to focus on building their version of the Raiders, not another version of the Patriots.
— If the Raiders are trying to be “Patriots West,” the Giants are apparently attempting to be “Bills East.” Again, I cannot stress this enough, if GM Joe Schoen and new head coach Brian Daboll try to copy what worked for the Bills, it will fail. They need to authentically create something new for the Giants. I like their chances, but time will tell.
— The Jaguars, meanwhile, seem to be the gang that can’t shoot straight…yet again. GM Trent Baalke is a problem for this organization and that has never been more evident that reports that the team wanted to interview Rams OC Kevin O’Connell but didn’t (wait for it) get the interview request in on time. If Baalke’s only real redeeming quality is that he’s been around forever and “knows how to run a team,” this was just strike four. Fire him.
— I promised I’d talk more about Tony Romo later, but I don’t really want to. I like Romo, but the analysts is taking it on the chin because his analysis during the last few games has been less than stellar. Once (easily) the most prepared color commentator in the game, Romo has clearly been reading his own press clippings and resting on his laurels a little bit. He’s trying to be funny more than intelligent, and I’m guessing it’s because a producer got in his ear and told him not to be so nerdy. Don’t listen to them, Tony, we want the original back.
— Overall, CBS had a baaaaaad championship weekend. The entire broadcast felt like a JV game compared to FOX’s later game and the ineptitude was punctuated by a halftime analysis completely drowned out by Walker Hayes’ halftime performance in stadium because some producer forgot to, you know, stage the event correctly. I felt so bad for the analysts who tried to power through to the best of their abilities.
Parting Schot:
"When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less." - Paul Brown
