The two teams facing off in Super Bowl 58 are now set, but before we move on to discussing that matchup, I felt that it was necessary to break down why the Lions couldn’t advance past the 49ers.
It’s certainly not simply based on a couple of aggressive fourth-down decisions by their head coach, which was actually a big factor in them even making it to the championship game, but rather a 15-minute stretch where everything went wrong for them!
Yet another Bills season just came to an end in gut-punching fashion. In four years straight now, they were eliminated after winning the AFC East and at least one playoff game – three times by these very Kansas City Chiefs.
We’ve seen slightly different versions of the team, but this year felt quite unique, because unlike prior iterations that would largely coast through the regular season, until they got their week 13 bye, it didn’t seem like this crew would even be part of the conversation down the stretch. They were coming off a heartbreaking loss to the Eagles, which dropped them to 6-and-6, in a year where we had as many teams battling for the final couple of AFC Wildcard spots as I can remember. Yet, despite off-field distractions and questions around their coaching staff, they went on win their final five regular season matchups and the division after all again, which after taking care of the Steelers in the Wildcard Round, set them up to finally host Patrick Mahomes and company in January for the first time in this rivalry. Yet, once again they couldn’t quite overcome their while whale.
I want to discuss the organization’s journey leading into 2023, the different stages of the season we just witnessed, how the fairytale ultimately came crashing down and then give a future outlook, as we consider where they may go from here.
The early Sunday slate of week seven was highlighted by a highly-anticipated inter-conference matchup between the Lions and Ravens. However, Baltimore took control right now and turned this into a 38-6 beatdown.
I’m breaking down what exactly they did on both sides of the ball!
With Halloween coming up and the seventh week of games in the books, the theme of “the seven (deadly) sins” came to mind for me and I decided to take a closer look at the most recent slate of games through that lense. That way I would seven terms to describe how certain teams hurt themselves by committing those errors.
The Bills went up to New England in week 16 with a chance to re-claim the AFC East lead. When his team needed him most, Josh Allen put on the cape and got them back into the driver’s seat with some incredible individual plays!
After not allowing the #1 offense in the league to score a point in week 15, the Saints D had to be my next topic, but I didn’t feel like a couple of plays could really capture how Dennis Allen had his troops prepared & some of the little tweaks he put in the gameplan – so here’s an extended look at what they did!
We are entering the final five weeks of the 2018 NFL season and we have seen some teams really set themselves apart from the rest. You look at the Saints, Rams and Chiefs, who are all putting up North of 35 points per game as the league’s three highest-scoring teams and have lost a combined four games. Then there’s teams like the Texans, Bears and Seahawks who are stringing together winning streaks right now and on Sunday night we will see a matchup of two other highly talented teams in the Chargers and Steelers, who only have three losses on their resume. I don’t want to undermine what some other teams have done and obviously this is the time of the year a sleeping dragon like the Patriots starts waking up, but I just want to say there are a lot of actual contenders right now. However, I think there is one team that not only looks very dangerous right now, but I believe is on its way of becoming a perennial threat to compete for the Super Bowl – and that’s the Indianapolis Colts. To explain why I believe they are set up for a bright future, I will talk about different key factors for them going forward. Here they are:
There’s a saying in football and I think it’s true – there are more games being lost than won, meaning it’s more likely a team loses a game by some bad decisions, situational football or such as rather than one factor earning them a victory. Some prime examples would be several teams taking their foot off the gas pedal and getting scared against the Patriots after holding a lead, the Packers’ epic collapse at Seattle in the 2015 NFC Championship game when everything seemed to go wrong at the end of the game and these three games from Sunday, I want to present to you. With this article I don’t want to take anything away from their opponents, because they did what they needed to in order to walk home victorious, but rather I want to show how the losing teams could have easily turned fortunes in their favor. To do so, I will illustrate three different types of game developments and complexities – one team that gave away a big lead, one that put themselves in a hole early they couldn’t climb out of anymore and one that put up the better performance and had plenty of chances to win, but couldn’t get the job done.
This was a unique matchup. While New England went into the AFC playoffs as the number one seed and favorite to win it all, Philadelphia took on the underdog role throughout the NFC race, with the opposing team favored in both games at Lincoln Financial field. Despite earning the top seed in their respective conference as well, not many people believed that backup Nick Foles would be able to match MVP and five-time champion Tom Brady in the big game. All the analysts talked about how Philly’s defensive line would have to harass Brady throughout the game, to keep the score low and give them a chance to win the game. Yet, 74 points and, an all-time NFL record for any game, 1151 total offensive yards later, it was the Eagles hoisting the Lombardi trophy with Foles being named Super Bowl MVP. How was this possible?
While everybody talked about the peaceful protests shown by teams around the NFL, the theme that kind of went under the radar on Sunday was how many prohibitive favorites went down to underdogs in the early games. I want to take a look at how those five teams overcame the odds and came up with the Ws. Here we go:
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