In the NFL, playoff predictability has long been rendered uncool. Post-seasons rarely follow the script we’ve pre-written for them, nor do they hold to any easily discernible path of logic.
Mark Sanchez goes into Foxborough to beat Tom Brady and the 14-2 number one seed Patriots, and Eli Manning turns into Joe Montana for a month and runs the playoff slate – twice – only because these are the things that happen in January and February.
Right now, in the middle of December, there are three teams that have demonstrated themselves to be a cut above the rest of the league – Carolina, New England and Arizona.
This time last week Denver and Cincinnati would have been in this group, but Andy Dalton’s fractured thumb and Brock Osweiler’s fractured talent have compromised their position. Notwithstanding New England’s injury crisis and suspect form patch, they’re still the class of the AFC until proven otherwise. In the NFC, Carolina and Arizona have been dominating all season with a combined 24-2 record.
Logic dictates that two of these three teams will be playing off in the Super Bowl in San Francisco. But logic has a habit of drooping its shoulders and falling silent in the playoffs, forced to sit in the backseat while chaos and the pyrotechnics of momentum take the wheel.
While the past two years have been chalk-heavy with four number one seeds playing off in the Super Bowl, the more extended recent past suggests that a lower seed will have every chance to make a shock run to the Bay Area.
In the past few years, we’ve seen Baltimore, the Giants and Green Bay emerge as champions from the lower seeds, while the Cardinals in 2009 memorably made the title game despite being the least fancied team entering the post-season of the 12 that made it.
The recipe for a lower seed to make a run has been fairly consistent – they need to excel in one particular aspect of the game, enough to mitigate the weaknesses that caused them to be a lower seed.
The 2012 Giants compensated for a bare secondary and hopeless running game with a superb pass rush and pristine passing game. The following year Baltimore had a similarly troubled secondary and ground game but made up for it with the most physical defence in the league and a game-changing special teams unit.
In terms of potential lower rung playoff teams this year that could have a Giants or Ravens type run, a number of teams can be just about written off.
The Texans and Jets are too hopeless on offence and the Colts are too hopeless at football. There’s little to suggest that Teddy Bridgewater can lead the Vikings deep into the playoffs, and there’s even less to suggest that anyone in the NFC East is ready to lead their team out of the barren wasteland of football hell that houses them. Aaron Rodgers can’t be written off, but he’s cooking with a bare cupboard, and the Packers haven’t looked consistently good since the first month of the season.
That leaves us with three teams: the Chiefs, Seahawks and Steelers.
Kansas City have the best-sustained run of form in this group, having won seven games on the trot after a woeful 1-5 start. They’re not just winning games, though, they’re crushing teams. Five of the victories on their current streak were by double digits, and no team has come closer than the seven-point defeat the Chargers suffered at their feet on Sunday.
KC’s run has elevated them to the number two spot in weighted DVOA, behind another team in this group of three. The Chiefs might be the most well-rounded team in the league – they’re the NFL’s only team to rank top six in all three phases of the game.
KC is being led by their pass rush, third in the league in adjusted sack rate, with quarterback-devouring monsters Justin Houston and Tamba Hali pacing the team in sacks.
Kansas City might have a championship calibre defence, but the offence, despite its impressive numbers, doesn’t pass the eye test. If this team still had Jamaal Charles, a path to the Super Bowl would be foreseeable. But there are so few dynamic talents on offence that it’s tough envisioning a road without him.
Add those doubts to the questionable schedule the Chiefs have dominated – they haven’t beaten a good team on this run – the Landry Jones-led Steelers and the Broncos with Peyton Manning playing with football Alzheimer’s don’t count – and they’re a step below the next two teams in this group of three.
Would anybody be shocked if the Seattle-Pittsburgh game from a fortnight ago was the Super Bowl preview?
The Steelers have looked dead and buried multiple times this year, but every time it feels okay to start pouring dirt on them Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown hook up for a 50-yard pass play that makes angels throw their hands up and giggle.
If a team needs one elite phase of the game to make a run to the Super Bowl, the Steelers have that criterion satisfied. Along with Arizona, Pittsburgh have the most devastating passing attack in the league, and it might rise above the Cardinals’ given Roethlisberger’s track record compared to Carson Palmer’s.
The defence still isn’t imposing (although it’s improving) with its ranking of 13th in DVOA, but the team is healthy, the passing game is a New Year’s Eve fireworks show every Sunday, and the schedule is favourable (Brock Osweiler in Pittsburgh followed by the pitiful Ravens and Browns on the road). At this stage, would anybody confidently bet on Cincinnati, Denver, Houston or Indianapolis against the Steelers in the first round of the playoffs?
The only team to upend the Steelers in the past six weeks has been Seattle.
The Seahawks have been the best team in the league over the past month, leading the NFL in weighted DVOA and putting up 29-plus points five weeks in a row, the most recent four matches being victories by an average score of 35-14. The wins over Blaine Gabbert and Jimmy Clausen might not be so impressive, but the ones over the resurgent Steelers and 8-5 Vikings on the road certainly qualify.
The Seahawks have holes. The running back position is a MASH unit and the answer to whom is their second starting cornerback behind Richard Sherman is ‘nobody’. But the Seahawks are doing it anyway, because Russell Wilson has turned into the God he so fervently believes in.
Wilson just had the single greatest month a quarterback has had in NFL history. Sixteen touchdowns, no interceptions, a 75 per cent completion rate, 9.9 yards per attempt and a 4-0 record. Tom Brady sitting on a beach in the Caribbean in the off-season with Gisele Bundchen at his side couldn’t even dream of those numbers.
Wilson is playing the best he’s ever played, the defence is rediscovering itself, and the offensive line is no longer the shambles it was at the start of the season. In what is becoming a trend as consistent as rain falling in Seattle, the Seahawks are unleashing a thunderstorm upon the league in the second half once again.
Tell Cam Newton to get an umbrella. And a bomb shelter.
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