After perhaps the most unusual season in NFL history —a lack of fans in stadiums, too many positive COVID tests and an extra couple of teams added to the postseason —the playoffs kick off this weekend. The regular season answered many of our questions, such as, “Is Cam Newton the next Tom Brady?” (um, no) and “Is this the year Dwayne Haskins becomes one of the top young quarterbacks in the game?” (um, hell no).
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But we have a whole new set of queries as the final 14 teams who are still eligible to win the Super Bowl begin trying to pound and crawl their way there on Saturday. It’s everything from the Bills stampeding into the postseason to the Bears trickling in through the back door, so let’s take a look at this weekend’s action and try to make sense of some of the biggest questions that are in the forefront of our minds.
Here are the four pressing questions for the first round of the playoffs.
1) Do the Buccaneers actually have a chance vs. the Washington football team? I’m being sarcastic, of course. But then again the last two teams that had losing records but still made the postseason actually won their opening playoff games. You’ll remember that the 7-9 Seahawks from 2010 upset the Saints, thanks in part to Marshawn Lynch’s Beastquake moment, and the 7-8-1 Panthers, coached then by current Washington coach Ron Rivera, knocked off the Cardinals. So, we have precedent for these kinds of shenanigans. And in reality, Washington is such a great story with Rivera fending off cancer while coaching his first season for the organization and with Alex Smith surely sewing up the Comeback Player of the Year award by taking over the starting job from Haskins and leading the team to the NFC East title.
Would it be a shock to see the Redskins upset the Buccaneers? Not really. Tom Brady has had a solid year, but he might be missing his best receiver in Mike Evans, who’s day to day with a knee injury. But then again, Antonio Brown has gotten hot at the end of the year, and Tampa Bay still has Chris Godwin and Rob Gronkowski. For Washington to have a chance in this gamel, its defensive line, with rookie sensation Chase Young, will need to pressure Brady into delivering bad balls to his receivers, and the team’s top-five defense, will have to play its best. If Washington can keep this a low-scoring affair until the fourth quarter, perhaps Smith, one of the best game managers in recent memory (and that’s not an insult) can help pull out the win. But it’s doubtful, because, in reality, the Redskins aren’t a very good team coming out of a terrible division.
2) How will Kevin Stefanski’s absence impact the Browns? Now that the Browns head coach (and the man I would vote for as coach of the year) has tested positive for COVID-19, he’ll miss Cleveland’s playoff game at Pittsburgh. Special teams coach Mike Priefer will take over as acting head coach and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt will assume the offensive play-calling, and boy, what a letdown for the Browns. Before the diagnosis, I would have said that among the three teams that finished the regular season 12-4 (the Saints, Seahawks and Steelers), Pittsburgh had the best chance of getting upset during the wild card game by Cleveland. But now, I think the Browns are in real trouble. They’re also missing Pro Bowl guard Joel Bitonio because of a positive coronavirus diagnosis. It’s terrible timing for Cleveland, and it only makes the team’s job that much harder this weekend.
3) Will homefield advantage mean anything in the next few weeks? Before we begin crowing about how much homefield advantage means in the wild card round, you should remember that home teams are a combined 2-6 in the first round of the playoffs in the past two seasons and 4-8 in the past three. And yes, I do think there’s an advantage for the Chiefs as the No. 1 seed in the AFC and the Packers as the No. 1 seed in the NFC to be playing at home through the conference championship games, simply because Kansas City welcomes in thousands of fans to its games and because it gets awfully frigid in Green Bay this time of year. Otherwise, does anybody think Washington will have some kind of magical powers because it’s at home in front of a nonexistent crowd? Doubtful. After all, home teams during the regular season actually had a losing record this year (127-128-1).
4) Who’s going to start at quarterback for the Rams? If it’s not Jared Goff, still recovering from a broken thumb in Week 16 and the subsequent surgery last week, Los Angeles will have to turn to John Wolford, who actually performed better than expected in his first NFL start in Week 17. With a playoff berth on the line, the Alliance of American Football alum tossed an interception on his first throw. But after that, he threw for 236 yards and ran for 56 more and led the Rams to their victory against the Cardinals in that must-win game. Going into its wild card contest vs. the Seahawks, Los Angeles would certainly rather have Goff taking snaps (or maybe not, as I argued on the BSL Sports Tonight podcast). But at least Wolford proved he’s competent. And like the Rams against the Cardinals in Week 17, the defense was good enough to score points on its own and allowed Wolford to game-manage his way to the win. It’s not out of the realm of possibility the same thing could happen vs. Seattle.
NFL Analyst
Josh Katzowitz is a longtime sports writer who covers boxing for Forbes and who previously reported on the NFL for CBSSports.com. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He’s currently a writer and editor at the Daily Dot. His work has been noted twice in the Best American Sports Writing book series.