The NFL’s Wild Card playoffs weekend can be merciless.
After eight straight wins and as much momentum as any team in the league, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ incredible season is suddenly over all because they had the misfortune of running into Playoff Josh Allen.
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ season didn’t just end with a lopsided loss to the Houston Texans — so too did the Mike Tomlin Era and possibly the career of future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
In less than a year, the Philadelphia Eagles went from Super Bowl champs to their fan base wanting to run head coach Nick Sirianni out of town along with ousted offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo after a first-round loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
Wild was indeed an apt descriptor for the NFL’s first weekend of playoff action.
It started Saturday afternoon when the Carolina Panthers, the only team in the playoffs with a losing record, pushed the vaunted Los Angeles Rams to the brink. Leading MVP candidate Matthew Stafford lived up to that billing by leading the game-winning touchdown drive in the final 2-plus minutes for a 34-31 win.
Then that same evening, the Chicago Bears overcame an 18-point halftime deficit and 11-point fourth quarter deficit as quarterback Caleb Williams once again pulled his Clark Kent-to-Superman late-game transformation in a 31-27 rally over the rival Green Bay Packers.
Sunday started with the Bills outlasting the Jaguars, 27-24, and Allen scoring the game-winning touchdown with just over a minute remaining.
The Eagles’ season fittingly ended with Jalen Hurts throwing a hopeless pass into double-coverage on fourth down in that 23-19 loss to the 49ers.
The New England Patriots finally separated from the Los Angeles Chargers in the fourth quarter to win a 16-3 rock fight. And to cap it all off, the Texans scored 23 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to turn a defensive duel into a 30-6 decimation of the Steelers.
What a wild three days, indeed.
The playoffs pick up in the divisional round with two games Saturday (the Bills at the Denver Broncos and a rematch of the 49ers at the Seattle Seahawks) and two Sunday (Texans at Patriots and Rams at Bears).
We’ll break down the storylines and matchups Friday, but first a look back on the winners and losers from last week around the NFL.
NFL Wild Card Weekend Winners
Matthew Stafford’s MVP Season
The MVP votes were already cast before the start of the playoffs and the award won’t be announced until the week before the Super Bowl, but Stafford put an exclamation point on his MVP case nonetheless Saturday.
On Los Angeles’ 7-play, 71-yard game-winning touchdown drive to beat the Panthers, after taking possession with 2:39 remaining down 31-27, Stafford was 6-of-7 passing for all 71 yards, including the 19-yard TD to tight end Colby Parkinson.
It was a heck of a catch by the team’s No. 2 TE, but Stafford also put the ball where only his guy had a shot at it.
Stafford was 12 of 15 or 143 yards and 2 TDs across three possessions in the fourth quarter to help save the Rams’ season. For the game, he was 24 of 42 for 304 yards, 3 TDs and 1 INT.
Stafford and Patriots QB Drake Maye are the two overwhelming favorites for the MVP. While a case can be made for either, it would be deserved recognition for Stafford to win his first MVP at 37 years old after being one of the NFL’s best for 17 seasons.
Clutch Caleb Williams And A Bears Breakthrough
The Bears earned their first playoff win in 15 years while following a familiar script from this breakthrough season under first-year head coach Ben Johnson.
The 31-27 victory over the Packers was Chicago’s seventh win this season when trailing in the fourth quarter, but this one tops the list as the Bears’ biggest comeback yet.
Chicago’s 18-point deficit (21-3 at halftime) was not only their largest of this season but the fourth-largest in franchise history, the biggest postseason comeback ever for the team and the biggest playoff comeback by any team since 2022 (when the Jaguars overcame a 27-point deficit to stun the Chargers).
Williams, in just his second season, has instilled a confidence within the Bears — and their fans — that they’re never out of any game.
To really put it in perspective …
Per NFL.com, Williams’ seven fourth-quarter comebacks, including regular-season and playoffs, is tied for the third-most by any quarterback since 1950, behind only eight by Kirk Cousins in 2022 and Matthew Stafford in 2016.
The Bears’ 25 fourth quarter points were the third-most in NFL playoff history, while Williams threw for 184 yards and 2 TDs in the final quarter — the most in a postseason game since Tom Brady had 196 in the Patriots’ epic Super Bowl comeback over the Falcons nine years ago.
In this case, the Bears were still down 21-6 entering the fourth quarter, but Williams would lead his team to touchdown drives on its three final possessions.
The Bears trailed 27-16 with 6:36 left when Williams led a 10-play, 76-yard touchdown drive — including a 27-yard connection to Rome Odunze on fourth-and-8 — capped by an 8-yard TD pass to Olamide Zaccheaus and 2-point conversion to tight end Colston Loveland. After Green Bay missed a 44-yard field goal with under 3 minutes to play, Williams put the Bears in the lead with a 66-yard scoring drive and 25-yard TD strike to DJ Moore.
We’re going to say that No. 1 overall pick Chicago spent on Williams is paying off quite well.
Allen’s Aura
No team wants to face Josh Allen in the postseason — except maybe the Chiefs, who have eliminated Allen and the Bills four of the last five years but aren’t part of these playoffs.
Allen was 28 of 35 for 273 yards, 1 TD and 0 INTs plus 33 yards and 2 TDs rushing, but the numbers don’t capture the impact of his performance as the Bills prevailed 27-24 at Jacksonville after four fourth quarter lead changes.
That included Allen muscling his way for a pair of fourth-down conversions, including the back-breaking 10-yard surge on fourth-and-1 at the 11 that set up the Allen’s own subsequent 1-yard TD with about a minute to play.
While this version of the Bills with Allen and coach Sean McDermott has yet to even reach a Super Bowl, that surely isn’t the quarterback’s fault.
49ers’ Relentless Resilience
How many more star players can the 49ers lose and just keep chugging along? Goodness.
Kyle Shanahan won’t win NFL Coach of the Year, but he’s done one of his finest coaching jobs this season in getting San Franciso to 12 regular-season wins and now the divisional round with the 23-19 road playoff victory in Philadelphia.
San Francisco played nearly half the season without starting QB Brock Purdy (turf toe), has played the whole season without star WR Brandon Aiyuk (part continued rehab from a torn ACL/MCL sustained last year, part apparent standoff amid friction with the franchise), lost star edge rusher Nick Bosa to a torn ACL in Week 3, lost star LB Fred Warner to a fractured/dislocated ankle in mid-October (though he’s not ruling out a return to action later this postseason if the team advances), have had WR Ricky Pearsall limited on-and-off to nine game by injuries (and missed the first playoff game), only got 11 regular-season games out of TE George Kittle and then lost him to a torn Achilles during the win Sunday.
And they’re still rolling along.
Texans’ Team Effort
It would be hard to imagine many teams winning a playoff game with how poorly Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud played for most of the night Monday (2 lost fumbles, 3 more that he recovered and an interception).
And yet by the end of the night, the scoreboard showed Texans 30, Steelers 6.
That’s because just about everybody but Stroud delivered in a big way for Houston as it won its ninth straight game.
Rookie RB Woody Marks had the first 100-yard game of his career (19 carries for 112 yards and a TD).
WR Christian Kirk more than doubled his best performance of the season with 8 catches for 144 yards and a TD to step up with star wideout Nico Collins forced out by a concussion.
And, of course, that Texans defense does what it does, hassling Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers all night until it delivered the knockout blows — a 33-yard Sheldon Rankins fumble return TD after Rodgers got absolutely mauled from all sides on a brutal sack and later a 50-yard Calen Bullock pick-6 to punctuate the win.
It was a 7-6 Houston lead entering the fourth quarter before the Texans’ NFL-best defense broke the Steelers.
Giants Finally Get It Right
The first big hire of this coaching cycle looks to go to the New York Giants, who are reportedly nearing a deal with recently fired longtime Ravens coach John Harbaugh.
With buzz that Mike Tomlin will look to take a year off after stepping down in Pittsburgh following 19 seasons at the helm, Harbaugh was unquestionably the top target on the coaching market.
After four failed coaching hires in a row in trying to reset the franchise after Tom Coughlin’s two Super Bowl wins, the Giants finally got it right.
Brian Daboll, who was fired during this season, wasn’t a bad hire at the time — he just didn’t work out. But Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur and Joe Judge were all questionable moves before they even started piling up losses for the Giants.
The Giants need stability and a proven winner, and they just got both in Harbaugh after he won 180 games and a Super Bowl in 18 seasons in Baltimore.
Colston Loveland Coming On Strong
Back to the Bears one more time.
Chicago used the No. 10 overall pick in the last draft on Michigan tight end Colston Loveland, and the payoff wasn’t quite immediate as Loveland didn’t top 3 catches or 38 yards in any game through the season’s first two months.
But over the final 10 games of the regular season, he averaged 4.7 catches and 59.7 yards with 6 TDs.
In the last three games, including the playoff win Saturday, Loveland is averaging 8 catches for 107.3 yards per game with 2 TDs. That includes his 8 catches for a season-high 137 yards and that key two-point conversion Saturday — making him the first rookie TE ever with that many catches and yards in a playoff game.
Now, that’s first-round production.
Not His Fault
No alliteration for the speed round this week, but a few quick-hitters nonetheless to spotlight some excellent performances on losing teams.
Yes, the Packers offense stalled in the second half of that collapse to the Bears and the quarterback shares in that blame, but Jordan Love nonetheless threw for 323 yards, 4 TDs and 0 INTs, including a 23-yard TD to Matthew Golden to push the lead to 27-16 midway through the fourth quarter.
With any defense down the stretch, this would be celebrated as Love’s best postseason performance of his young career.
…
The Panthers’ Jalen Coker, a second-year undrafted wide receiver out of FCS-level Holy Cross, had a career-best performance Saturday with 9 catches for 134 yards with a 52-yard reception and a 7-yard TD that put Carolina in the lead in the final minutes before the Rams’ rally.
Coker’s playoff performance didn’t come out of nowhere, though. He had at least 47 receiving yards in five of his final seven regular-season games with 3 TDs in that span.
…
Similarly, Jaguars WR Parker Washington, a sixth-round pick in the 2023 draft, closed the season on a tear while asserting himself as a reliable playmaker.
Washington had 7 catches for 107 yards and a TD in the loss to the Bills and averaged 6.5 receptions for 113.5 yards over the final four games with 3 TDs in that span.
NFL Wildcard Weekend Losers
Mike Tomlin’s Last Stand
It was a tough way for the Mike Tomlin Era in Pittsburgh to end, with that 30-6 loss to the Texans for Tomlin’s seventh straight playoff loss — tying Marvin Lewis for the dubious NFL record.
Tomlin’s last playoff win came after the 2016 seasons, and his nine straight seasons without a playoff victory are the third-most behind Lewis’ 16 and Jim Mora’s 11.
That’s an unfortunate punctuation mark on what will also likely be unparalleled run for better reasons — Tomlin’s 19 straight seasons without a losing record with 193 wins in that time, a Super Bowl championship and a second Super Bowl appearance.
We went much deeper on Tomlin’s legacy and his decision to step down here.
Will Rough Ending Send Rodgers Into Retirement?
Aaron Rodgers didn’t make any announcement about his future after the Steelers’ playoff loss, but the prevailing expectation is that the future Hall of Fame quarterback has played his last game.
If this is the end, though, it was an unceremonious final image seeing Rodgers shoved out of bounds by Bullock after throwing a pick-6 to the Texans safety on his final pass (if he does indeed retire).
Brown’s Bizarre Season
Eagles WR A.J. Brown spent much of this season griping about not getting enough opportunities in Philadelphia’s frustrating offense, and he certainly had a valid point at times, but he had largely himself to blame for how his season ended Sunday.
Brown caught just 3 of 7 targets for 25 yards with a couple drops, including on a well-thrown third-down pass as the Eagles tried to rally late in the fourth quarter. (They would convert nonetheless on fourth-and-5, and that’s not how the game ended, but all the same).
Earlier, after a failed downfield shot to Brown in the second quarter, head coach Nick Sirianni got into it with his star wideout on the sideline.
Philadelphia sports talk radio and others have suggested it’s time for the Eagles to move on from Brown, but general manager Howie Roseman seemed to shut down the thought of the team moving on from a player who has put up four straight 1,000-yard seasons in his time there.
Either way, it was an ugly finish to an uneven season for Brown.
It’s not just Brown facing the heat this week, though. QB Jalen Hurts is under fire by the fan base after a lackluster season overall. Sirianni is already past whatever grace period the Super Bowl title last year bought him. And there are questions abound for the team after its first-round flameout.
And the first big one was answered with the dismissal of failed offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.
Chargers OL No Help For Herbert
It’s honestly amazing the Chargers won 11 games and reached the playoffs with their beleaguered and besieged offensive line hanging quarterback Justin Herbert out to dry week after week.
Herbert, who took the third-most sacks in the regular season with 54, was sacked 6 more times and lost a fumble in the Chargers’ 16-3 playoff loss to the Patriots. He completed just 19 of 31 passes for 159 yards and 0 TDs, though he did rush for 57 yards.
Herbert is getting a lot of criticism for still being winless in the postseason for his career (0-3), but at least in this case, it’s hard to pile all the blame on his back.
Curious Coaching Considerations
Concurrent with the playoffs unfolding, it’s hiring season in the NFL with initially nine teams looking for new head coaches and interviews with candidates providing compelling off-the-field fodder.
The obvious names are involved with most of the open jobs, and as noted up above, the first big move came Wednesday with the Giants landing Harbaugh in a home run hire.
But then there are the “Wait, what? Why?!” candidates.
Second only to the NFL’s general inability to evaluate and project college quarterbacks to the next level is the league’s peculiar penchant for uninspiring retread coaching hires.
There have been some truly absurd ones over the years. Remember Adam Gase?! Gase managed to parlay two seasons as Peyton Manning’s offensive coordinator in Denver — wonder who deserved the credit there … — and a middling season as Chicago’s OC into not one but two failed head coaching jobs.
After watching him go 23-25 in three years with the Dolphins, the Jets couldn’t resist the temptation and immediately gave Gase another head coaching opportunity in 2019. Simply incredible. After two seasons, a wacky introductory press conference and a 9-23 record, Gase was gone and has been out of the league since.
But that hasn’t stopped teams from assuming that Andy Reid’s rotating cast of offensive coordinators must be the reason for his decades of sustained success, or Mike Macdonald’s first-time defensive coordinator Aden Durde (running Macdonald’s defense with Macdonald calling the defensive plays) in Seattle getting multiple HC interviews this month, or the other illogical conclusions that drive some of these interview lists for open jobs.
Here are some of our favorite “candidates” who have landed interviews for head coaching positions this month.
– Matt Nagy: There is buzz that Nagy might actually be the favorite to land the Tennessee Titans HC job. He’s already interviewed with the team and has a connection with Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi from their time together with the Kansas City Chiefs. This is absurdly preposterous.
Nagy was the Chiefs’ OC in 2016-17 after previously serving as QBs coach, and somehow that’s all it took to suddenly be viewed as an offensive magician simply because he worked under Andy Reid (one of the most accomplished offensive coaches of this era)? He even gets handed credit by some for “developing” a transcendent talent at QB in Patrick Mahomes, despite overlapping for just one season that Mahomes spent as a rookie backup to Alex Smith.
The Bears saw enough to believe Nagy was the answer, only to get a 34-31 record, one winning season in four years and diminishing results before firing him. Nagy went back to the Chiefs, serving as OC again the last three years, during which time the team put up by far the three worst offensive seasons of the Mahomes Era — 21.8, 22.6 and 21.3 points per game (albeit with Mahomes missing the end of this past season) after averaging no less than 28.2 PPG in any other season with Mahomes.
Maybe Nagy is a magician after all — he made the Chiefs’ prolonged elite offensive success suddenly disappear the minute he returned to the headset.
The Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens and Las Vegas Raiders also are so compelled by that they have interviewed Nagy for their HC job as well. Goodness gracious.
– Jonathan Gannon: The Titans strike again! The recently fired Arizona Cardinals coach is reportedly set to interview for the Titans HC job Sunday, as well as interviews with the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders for defensive coordinator positions.
Gannon was a questionable hire when he got the Cardinals job, having spent all of two seasons as the Eagles’ DC and just three seasons as a full-fledged position coach before that. But fine, the Eagles had a great defense in 2022 and reached the Super Bowl (losing to the Kansas City Chiefs). To consider him for another head coaching job now, though?!
He went 15-36 in three seasons with Arizona, including going 2-5 down the stretch in 2024 to fall out of the playoff hunt and then losing his final nine games (and 14 of his final 15) this season with a defense that ranked bottom-6 in the NFL in both points and yards allowed.
– Raheem Morris: The recently fired Falcons coach is already getting interviews for what would be his third HC opportunity after failed tenures in Tampa Bay (17-31 in three seasons, from 2009-11) and Atlanta (20-25 in three straight losing seasons), despite the Falcons’ being one of the most underachieving teams in the league during his tenure.
Morris might well be a great defensive coordinator — he won a Super Bowl with the Rams in that capacity — but he really needs an immediate third shot as a head coach? What could possibly be the intrigue?
It shouldn’t be any surprise that that the Titans were one of the teams to hone in on Morris as a potential candidate for their opening.
If you say so …
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