Tag: Wild Card Weekend 2024

Jason Kelce choked up on the Eagles’ sideline during what might have been his last NFL game

A Jason Kelce retirement seems imminent.

Jason Kelce will be remembered as one of the greatest centers in NFL history. He will be lionized as a larger-than-life personality who was embraced wholeheartedly by a football city. One day, he will be a First-Ballot Hall of Famer in Canton, Ohio.

Based on Kelce’s sideline emotions during the Philadelphia Eagles’ Wild Card loss on Monday night, it appears that day might be coming sooner rather than later.

As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers put the finishing touches on a blowout win over the Eagles, cameras panned to Kelce choking up on the side. For an older player who has already accomplished everything, these kinds of emotions would seemingly indicate that he has played his last NFL game and is ready to retire.

In many ways, Kelce was the Eagle of this generation. He was the stalwart offensive lineman who set the table for the finest professional football team Philadelphia fielded in decades. If this is indeed the end of Kelce’s playing career, he deserves all of his flowers and then some.

After everything he’s accomplished, it should be no surprise Kelce was so emotional on Monday night.

The Eagles were down so bad that even their Tush Push play failed miserably against the Buccaneers

The Eagles’ Tush Push doesn’t work if the other team has a monster like Vita Vea.

Controversy has surrounded the Philadelphia Eagles’ insistence on using their Tush Push play all season. Virtually any third or fourth-and-short play feels automatic because the Eagles can literally push Jalen Hurts over the line.

But with the Eagles’ season spiraling, it seems even their bread and butter doesn’t work.

As the Eagles tried to rally in Monday night’s Wild Card Game battle with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they elected to use the Tush Push on a two-point conversion. It was ruthlessly stuffed, making it seem like the team forgot that the Buccaneers employ 346-pound defensive tackle Vita Vea. The cute little quarterback sneak variation won’t work if he’s the defender in the middle, you guys!

This whole sequence is just a sign of the times. The Eagles are so out of sorts that they can’t even execute the Tush Push in a sudden-death playoff game. Go figure.

Mike Tomlin dragging the mediocre Steelers to the playoffs shows he’s still underappreciated

If this is the end for Mike Tomlin, he’s cemented himself as one of the Steelers’ greatest legends.

Mike Tomlin is not at the end of his rope. Yes, he’s been coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers for nearly two decades. But because Tomlin started in his 30s, the icon is only 51 years old. Theoretically, he could coach the Steelers for another 17 seasons and cruise into a well-deserved retirement that will eventually feature a bronze bust in Canton, Ohio. He is a made man. He is flat-out untouchable as the kind of legendary coach most other NFL franchises could only dream of having roam their sidelines.

But after Monday afternoon’s 31-17 Wild Card defeat at the hands of the Buffalo Bills, Tomlin’s professional coaching future feels murkier than ever. And because of his coaching status, it might be entirely of his accord alone.

We knew Tomlin would mull over his NFL life whenever the Steelers’ season ended. Despite his relative youth for a head coach, we understood the personal sacrifices Tomlin has made for his organization, his assistant coaches, and his players year after year after year after year. While nothing is set in stone, a scenario where Tomlin steps down for a season (or longer), and the Steelers begin launching a replacement plan suddenly feels more feasible than ever.

All of this is expressly because Tomlin has nothing left to accomplish. At this point, dragging mediocre Steelers teams to the playoffs with atrocious quarterback play from the likes of Mason Rudolph, Mitchell Trubisky, and any other player who doesn’t belong at this level of football is Tomlin’s magnum opus. He has mastered coaching this sport if he can guide the Steelers to 10-win postseason campaigns without the forward pass. There is no other mountain left for this legend to scale. There is no deep and wide river to cross. Tomlin has found the final frontier. He has MacGyver’d an undeserving NFL team into yet another postseason berth. How could anyone possibly topple such an unfathomable feat?

No wonder young tackle Broderick Jones feels so strongly about his head coach:

Considering the current state of the AFC, with seemingly countless elite quarterbacks laden all over the conference, Tomlin may also see the forest for the trees. Barring a blockbuster trade or free agent addition (Dak Prescott? Russell Wilson … I guess?), the Steelers will not be competing for a championship any time soon. Regardless of Tomlin’s golden coaching touch, the Steelers simply don’t possess the firepower necessary to compete with some of pro football’s true heavyweights. They have a definitive ceiling on what they can achieve even with Tomlin’s steady influence. Ever a forward thinker, I’d be surprised if Tomlin didn’t share this perspective.

Put another way: the Steelers aren’t good enough to compete for a Super Bowl as it stands. But Tomlin won’t let them fade away, and he might not be too keen on signing up for another full calendar year of this muddled-up Pittsburgh mess.

If this is the end for Tomlin in Pittsburgh, he should be lionized in Western Pennsylvania. He is every bit the beloved figure that Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were and then some. A resume that features 11 playoff berths, seven division titles, two AFC championships, one Super Bowl win, and no losing seasons isn’t even the standard for a blueblood like the Steelers. That sort of coaching ledger is not typical, and no one should reasonably expect these results, regardless of organizational history. Tomlin could probably do this forever, punching in and out every day as an iconic coach, adding a new notable bullet point to that distinguished resume every year.

If this is the end for Tomlin, he’s earned the right to hang up his headset whenever and however he wants. No one should question the decision-making of a person who could coach a Mason Rudolph-led team to the playoffs. Everyone should appreciate a bona fide legend potentially taking the long view, who understands there are bigger things in life than football.

Josh Allen faked a slide before a long TD run and the Steelers should really know better

The silly Steelers somehow thought JOSH ALLEN would actually slide.

Josh Allen has a (mostly warranted) reputation for being reckless.

This trait serves him well as a bona superstar quarterback taking the Buffalo Bills on deep playoff runs every winter, but it’s still a part of his make-up. It’s what makes Allen special. He is going to launch bombs to his playmakers in triple coverage if he thinks he can make the play. On runs, he will get the extra yards by barreling through defenders. He is the last quarterback any defense should expect to surrender and slide in the open field.

Someone did not pass along this memo to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday afternoon.

On a third-and-long late in the first half of this Wild Card matchup, Allen found a lot of running room. When he crossed the first-down marker, Allen slowed down and feinted that he would slide. This got all the Steelers defenders in front of him to stop and relax.

Big mistake. This Terminator of a quarterback was never, ever going to slide, and 52 yards later, he had himself a ridiculous touchdown run.

I feel like this probably should’ve been in the Steelers’ defensive scouting report. Allen will do whatever it takes to help his team win. He will never give up on a play, and he will sacrifice his body without hesitation if it means more yards for his team.

Oh, well. It’s not like this happened in a sudden-death playoff game. Oh … right.

Diontae Johnson brashly trash-talked the Bills’ Kair Elam right before he stole a TD from him

Diontae Johnson’s cockiness blew up in his face at the worst time for the Steelers.

While they weren’t quite out of it just yet, the underdog Pittsburgh Steelers needed to show some sort of pulse on Monday afternoon.

With the Buffalo Bills already holding a two-score lead, a crucial early second-quarter Pittsburgh possession felt like it might decide the game. The Bills as a team are simply too potent without an apt response. And for a moment, with a Kair Elam penalty on Diontae Johnson serving as the catalyst, it looked like the Steelers would finally land a punch on the Bills.

Johnson ensured that Elam understood this fact when he started trash-talking the young Buffalo cornerback. Note: Johnson had zero catches for zero yards and zero touchdowns at the time of this sequence.

Naturally, Elam made Johnson eat his words almost immediately when he picked off Mason “Geno Smith?” Rudolph two plays later. Even better, Elam appeared to steal away a touchdown from the Pittsburgh playmaker:

Let that be a lesson to players like Johnson. You should probably wait until your team actually scores a touchdown before a Super Bowl contender like the Bills gets a chance to respond.

The Lions exorcising their playoff demons by beating Matthew Stafford is the stuff of legend

The Lions beating Matthew Stafford was the best way they could end their playoff curse.

Matthew Stafford was supposed to be the Detroit Lions’ savior.

The former No. 1 overall pick was the franchise quarterback destined to take the once bottom-feeding Lions back to the promised land. A beloved team legend, Stafford was good, perhaps great, but he couldn’t perform miracles. The Lions acknowledged this unfortunate reality when they traded him to the Los Angeles Rams in 2021. They were vindicated when he won a Super Bowl championship with a supporting cast befitting his unique abilities.

A question remained: when was the Lions’ turn at glory? And when would they see Stafford again? Sunday night’s raucous Lions’ Wild Card victory had a poetic way of answering both burning queries in one fell swoop.

Sunday presented the Lions with only their second playoff victory since the fall of the Soviet Union. The last time they featured on the second weekend of the NFL postseason, Arnold Schwarzenegger had not yet saved Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong from Robert Patrick’s menacing T-1000 Terminator. With the unsurprising demise of the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit is now guaranteed a second game at home this postseason. It could very well make a legitimate run to this year’s NFC title game. Once unthinkable to any average NFL observer (heck, especially Detroit fans), the Lions have become a powerhouse.

But until Sunday evening, they didn’t have a signature moment.

Enter Stafford in his return to Ford Field. Enter the man who got “it” done … but for another NFL team. Enter perhaps the most mythical figure in Lions’ franchise history, the one the organization itself let down at almost every turn. The one who got away. If Dan Campbell’s revitalized Lions couldn’t beat Stafford in his return to the Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie strait, this franchise would never get the playoff win monkey off its back. The Lions would forever be a joke, a sad-sack organization forced to relive its January horrors through an endless circle of torment on a loop.

Don’t you love it when everything comes full circle?

The Lions did not fall victim to Stafford’s trademark brilliance. They did not let him enter Detroit and spoil the biggest pro football party the great state of Michigan has thrown in over three decades. No, no, no. They beat Stafford even after watching him get bruised and battered and launch dime after dime in an ultimately fruitless effort that wasn’t enough to lift his new team to a win. Sound familiar? In a way, it had to be comforting for Lions fans to finally be on the winning end of a futile superhero performance from Stafford in their home stadium.

This sort of breakthrough moment over Stafford would always be the clearest sign the Lions had arrived. It was always going to taste the sweetest, too. While the comparisons aren’t apples to apples, the Lions reaching long-awaited prominence by overcoming Stafford is the equivalent of the Oklahoma City Thunder toppling Kevin Durant in a playoff series. It’d be like the Toronto Maple Leafs sending Phil Kessel home in the postseason. Really, any professional sports icon who couldn’t quite finish the job for the team and city that embraced them wholeheartedly applies to this new Lions-Stafford dynamic.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone penned this script for the Lions in Hollywood. The Lions putting themselves on the doorstep of an NFC Championship Game appearance by conquering the finest quarterback in team history sounds sillier every time it crosses my mind. But that’s what happened. The Lions changed a decades-long narrative of misery by surviving Matthew Stafford.

I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

So, when’s the Lions’ turn at glory? It’s probably now. Right now, as they prepare for a date in the NFL’s quarterfinals. They’ve cemented themselves as a force to be reckoned with by using Stafford, of all people, as a stepping stone.

Stafford was the Lions’ savior, but Sunday night was definitive proof they could finally stand on their own two legs. The football gods couldn’t have written a better epic if they tried.

Matt LaFleur’s comment about the Packers’ different vibes had everyone making Aaron Rodgers jokes

Aaron Rodgers was a rusty anchor on Matt LaFleur’s Packers.

For years, after winning Super Bowl 45, the Green Bay Packers struggled to reach the NFL’s mountaintop with Aaron Rodgers again. And in the Matt LaFleur era specifically, Green Bay consistently fell short in the postseason. It all culminated with a drama-filled breakup between Rodgers and the Packers last offseason.

After the Packers punched the Dallas Cowboys in the mouth in Sunday’s afternoon Wild Card Game, Matt LaFleur made it seem like all that Rodgers hoopla was firmly in the past.

In fact, based on LaFleur’s phrasing, it was almost as if he had nonsense with Rodgers in mind when praising the Packers’ “different energy” these days. Hmm.

It should be no secret that Rodgers often carries himself like a selfish egotist. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that his tiresome act wore on the Packers toward the end of his Green Bay career. For the organization to get a playoff win with Jordan Love in the first year without Rodgers is almost poetic.

It sure seems like the Packers and LaFleur are overjoyed about it, too.

Everyone blasted Sean McVay for a fourth-quarter Rams punt while in Lions territory

Sean McVay coached scared and it cost the Rams their season.

The Los Angeles Rams had a playoff win in their grasp. Despite red-zone miscues and a defense being besieged by the Detroit Lions (for a half, anyway), the Rams had the Lions on the ropes.

But then Sean McVay decided to turtle at the game’s most critical moment. Now, the Rams are heading to the golf course.

After a controversial non-holding call on Puka Nacua, the Rams were still sitting in Detroit territory. Even on a long fourth-and-14, it was probably worth going for it with only roughly four minutes remaining because L.A. had just one timeout left (also thanks to McVay!). Instead, McVay had Ethan Evans punt the ball away, and the Rams never saw the ball again as their 2023 season officially came to a close.

Woof. A brutal decision that the math agrees with:

I already thought the punt was silly, given the game situation. Now I see it apparently ranks in the 99th percentile of ill-advised punts over the entire season? Oh, my goodness. If that weren’t enough, the Rams settled for not one, not two, but three chip-shot field goals in the loss instead of putting the pedal to the metal. McVay coached scared all around, and the Rams’ last punt was the final cherry on top.

I have a feeling McVay will replay this sequence — including his awful timeout management and general lack of aggressiveness — in his head for a while. He and the Rams will have plenty of time to do so.

The Lions’ Cameron Sutton seemingly got away with a blatant hold of Puka Nacua on a critical third down

The refs let the Lions get away with an obvious hold on Sunday night’s most important play.

The Detroit Lions deserve credit. They certainly earned their first playoff win in over three decades over the Los Angeles Rams. To do it over longtime franchise quarterback Matthew Stafford should mean the world to Dan Campbell’s bunch. But most playoff wins usually come with a tinge of luck.

Sunday’s Wild Card affair in Detroit was no different.

With the Rams driving late in the fourth quarter, Stafford had Puka Nacua open — who dominated the Lions’ secondary all night — on a key third and long. Nacua unfortunately couldn’t come down with the catch, and the Rams punted the ball away, never to see it again in their eventual 24-23 loss.

There was just one problem. It seemed pretty apparent that Lions’ defensive back Cameron Sutton got away with an obvious hold of Nacua as Stafford launched the ball in his direction. I’m talking full-on jersey hold and a grip on his hips. But it’s the playoffs, referees will probably keep their whistles to themselves more than usual, and the Lions had homefield advantage.

So … sorry, Rams.

That’s not how it should work — the rules shouldn’t change or be open to interpretation just because it’s a playoff setting — but that seems to be what happened here.

Who knows what would’ve happened if Sutton would’ve been called for a penalty? The Lions clearly had no answer for Nacua and a gunslinging Stafford. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Rams come away with a field goal, at minimum, forcing the Lions’ offense to pull out all the stops on their final possession.

But I suppose credit is due to Sutton. Nacua was sauteeing the Lions’ defense. With the game on the line, Sutton understood that if he wasn’t cheating against a locked-in elite receiver, he probably wasn’t trying.

Dak Prescott tied himself to Mike McCarthy’s Cowboys fate with an unwarranted endorsement

Dak Prescott wants to go down with Mike McCarthy’s sinking ship.

The Cowboys have won 36 regular-season games under Mike McCarthy. They’ve won just one playoff game. When factoring in Jerry Jones’ obvious disappointment with that fact, it seems apparent that McCarthy might not be the head coach in Dallas for much longer.

And that is something that doesn’t sit well with Dak Prescott.

Prescott discussed his head coach’s future as the Cowboys picked up the pieces from an embarrassing Wild Card loss to the Green Bay Packers. He went as far as to say that his job as Cowboys quarterback should also be on the hot seat if McCarthy’s is in danger.

Oh, buddy. I wouldn’t willingly tie myself to the Titanic if I were you:

What Prescott says about McCarthy’s individual coaching of his play is probably true. While Prescott’s always been a good quarterback, in 2023, he was great, at one point even dominating the MVP conversation. That likely never happens without McCarthy designing a tailor-made offense for his skill set.

But the playoff failures are impossible to ignore. If the Cowboys aren’t outright choking a win away, Sunday showed that they might not show up altogether, either. It doesn’t matter what McCarthy did for Prescott. Such a reality is unsustainable. Prescott has one year left on a monster contract and seems due for a massive extension from the Cowboys this off-season.

The veteran quarterback would do well to toe the company line and realize he can probably produce such gaudy numbers — with more success in January — with another head coach.