By Willard S. Squire
I don’t know what the fuck happened. The Colts couldn’t block, the Chargers couldn’t defend, and God is dead thanks to Philly.
-The Colts’ line of supermen gave up three sacks (reminder, the team only gave up 18 sacks this entire season) and only 87 rushing yards (17 of which came from two Luck scrambles), and were unable to withstand the constant pressure the Chiefs D-line brought all game long. It didn’t help that Luck was fucking awful. The future comeback player of the year looked as if that surgically repaired shoulder had finally given up on him. I don’t think he could really throw 20 yards down the field, and his 19.7 QBR is a good indicator of just how detrimental his play was to his team.
-I thought the Colt’s D had a fighters chance to slow down the Chiefs. You can stop laughing now. Mahomes didn’t particularly light up the box score. 278 yards, no passing TD, and a QBR of 68.8 are not what we are used to getting from Patty, but like he has all season, he really fucking impressed me. This guy is basically a rookie, but he acts like this is his third or fourth time through. I want him to keep winning just to see if he keeps this level of poise up, because how he responds to (or how he just doesn’t) to pressure might be the most impressive talent he has. But the young stud wasn’t the most impressive thing the Chiefs fielded on Saturday. The pass rush, which has been stellar all season and the lone bright spot on a bad (but improving) defense, terrorized the Colts from start to finish. I’ll get into this later, but they generate almost all of their pressure without blitzing, just rushing four linemen and wrecking opposing lines straight up. This might be the key to winning it all. Not the not the explosive offense or the arm of Patty Mahomes, but the four guys going head to head with the other teams five. This is what I’m keeping my eye on this week.
-The Saints, who should’ve dominated this game, spoiled one of the greatest stories in football history. If Nick Foles had gone into the Superdome and beaten the top seed Saints, it would’ve set the NFL on fire. This wasn’t last year, where the Eagles were loaded on all sides of the ball, boasting a D-line that could go six or seven deep, and was a little ridiculous that they found themselves as underdogs throughout the postseason. This is not that team, as injuries and offseason losses depleted depth and destroyed certain position groups (the secondary). So when the Eagles jumped out to a 14 point lead almost immediately, I think we all lost our goddamn minds. Could this really happen? Could Big Dick Nick really pull off another miracle? Aaaaaand there we go, the Saints tied everything up. And the Eagles never scored another point. Briefly we got an injection of drama, the sense that the Eagles could pull this one out with a late drive. But like the pass that ended the game, our hopes of divine intervention slipped through the fingers of Alshon Jeffery. In hindsight, It’s kind of ironic that the Saints killed God.
-Just as the Colts inability to block was a huge shock, the Chargers inability to get to the quarterback was just as shocking. How do you have Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram and never sack Brady once. I get that Brady is the master at getting the ball out as quickly (well almost as quickly as Peyton) as humanly possible, but you have to put Brady on the ground to beat him. They didn’t do that. You also can’t beat yourself before the game even starts, and the Chargers did that too. Staying in that Nickel/Dime formation all game was fucking stupid. Everyone who watches football knows that to beat Brady and Belichick, you have to constantly change your coverage and disguise what you’re doing. If you telegraph anything, they’re going to kill you. And they fucking killed the Chargers. God, I hate them.
-The final score doesn’t indicate just how much the Rams dominated the Cowboys in the Coliseum. The Cowboys were made to stop the run..and the Ram’s gashed them for 273 yards on the ground and 3 touchdowns. C.J. “Dat Ass” Anderson just plotted and consistently hit the Cowboys with 5 yards almost every time he touched the ball. It was nothing flashy (his longest run of the game was 15 yards), but it was the death by 1000 thicc runs that broke the camel's back. His play then opened up the game for the more dynamic Gurley, so the entire game the Cowboys had to deal with a threat in the backfield. And they couldn’t. It was a pretty big statement by McVay, attacking Dallas at their supposed strength. I’m curious to see how run heavy the Ram’s go on in the next round.
No gimmicks, lets just talk about this week’s games
Rams at Saints
Going off of the Rams focus on the run last week, the biggest story of this game is how badly the loss of Sheldon Rankins affects the Saints’ run defense. Rankins is crucial to generating pressure from the middle of the line, clogging up the running lanes, allowing the rest of the league’s second best rush defense to do the rest of the work. If the Rams can establish the run, this game is in their grasp, but if this game is turned one dimensional by the Saint’s D, and Goff is forced to win this game with his arm...I’m just not as confident that he can as I was earlier this season.
The Saints game plan is a little more simple: get the ball in Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara’s hands and let them do work. The Saints will not win this game with the deep ball (Bree’s literally can’t throw that far), they will win by attacking Marcus Peters and the rest of the Rams secondary, specifically in the middle of the field. I called the Rams’ defense “Houston 2.0” last week, and I still stand behind that comment. I still don’t trust them to stop a competent offense, especially one with a strong passing game like New Orleans. This unit boasts star talent and household names, but I feel like at the end of the day, you only have to gameplan for one man: Aaron Donald.
Aaron Donald is a fucking monster. As an interior lineman, he had 20.5 sacks. 20.5. The record for sacks is 22.5. Donald missed that mark by two sacks, and he was getting double teamed on almost every single fucking down. That’s lunacy. Put me in the madhouse with a stat like that. The good thing for Sean Peyton and his Saints offense, is that they live in the short pass game, and Drew Brees gets the ball out as fast as anyone. They have the weapons to beat this Rams defense, and I think they’ll play this strength to eek out a close victory.
I think the score will end up with the winning team scoring in the low 20’s, so 23-13 in the favor of the Saints.
Pats at the Chiefs
This is the AFC championship we all wanted after the these two teams played in week six, but it was also the game we all feared would happen. Somehow, someway, no matter how shitty the Patriots looked during those first few weeks, the Pats would slither their way into the AFC championship with a chance to make it back to the Super Bowl. That pit of dread that sat in our collective stomachs grew to the size of a bowling ball once the Patriots lucked their way into a first round bye. We tried to convince ourselves that it didn’t matter. “Brady isn’t the same”
“The defense is still old and slow”
“The Philip Rivers will beat Tom Brady.”
We ignored the dark laughter emanating from beneath our feet, drowning out the sound of teeth gnashing and bones snapping with gametape of the Chargers putting 11 fucking cornerbacks on the field against a rookie quarterback who slaters KY Jelly on his hands before every snap. We turned a blind eye to the dead birds filling our streets, the smell of weeks old clam chowder, and obviously racist fanbases, instead we focused on how every team passed on Derwin James about three times before he was gifted to the Chargers on silver platter. The Dark Hoard, draped in silver and navy, had descended upon us and we let it happen with our ignorance. Of course they were going to lay waste to one of the most talented defenses the league had to offer. Talent? The Patriots haven’t drafted a “talented” player since Belichick traded down twenty six times to grab some practice squad player off the street, who then becomes the X factor in a make or break game, because fuck us all to death that's why.
The Chiefs should have enough offensive firepower to blow the doors off of the Pats, even more so at Arrowhead, but because Tom Brady causes opposing teams to do the exact opposite of what they do well, they’ll probably average 3.4 yards a play and won’t get a first down in the first half. I tried to play it cool all year, revel in the fall of the Pats and their golden god Brady, but like the entropy of the universe, here we are and I’m scared. I don’t think the Pats should win this game. They’re on the road. They’re facing QB who can beat them with his arm and his legs. They literally are employing an offense that revolves around throwing to James Goddamn Fucking White 30 times a game (JUST FUCKING COVER HIM). The only hope I have in the Chiefs is that they generate a pass rush with their four man front and not with the Blitz, and that sometimes causes Brady to struggle. Like 3% of the time. The Pats should not win this game, but the only goddamn thing keeping Brady and Belichick from reaching another Superbowl is Andy Fucking Ried.
Fuck.
Patriots 45-0.