Championship Sunday: 5 Takeaways
This past Sunday saw the NFC and AFC Championships decided to set up Superbowl LV in Tampa. In the NFC, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tom Brady went to Lambeau and took out the Packers to become the fist ever team to play in a home Superbowl and in the AFC the current Champions, the Kansas City Chiefs overcame the in-form Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills to take one step closer to running it back.
Tom Brady owes Todd Bowles a drink:
The Buc’s made it past the Packers at Lambeau with a very strong defensive performance combined with aggressive play calling on offence. The use of the Buc’s LB group was immense, getting 5 sacks on the day and causing Aaron Rodgers all sorts of problems when he left the pocket. The group got pressure on Rodgers at one point to cause a lofted throw that was then picked off by CB Murphy-Bunting. The point I’m making is Brady struggled and on 3 consecutive drives, threw 3 interceptions and whether it’s conservative play calling from the Packers or not, Green Bay picked up 0 points following each of those interceptions, showing the magnitude of this Tampa Bay defence.
Bruce Arians isn’t calling plays:
There are 3 real reasons the Buc’s won this game, I’ve highlighted 1 and this is the second, Arian’s was barely calling plays throughout this game, Brady was, as Arians has said before, he let Tom coach and it paid off. Despite Brady’s dodgy on field performance in terms of his throwing, he made calls to go for it when it mattered. The biggest example of this was with 6 seconds left on the clock, outside of field goal range, 4 points up, Brady goes deep and hits Scotty Miller for the TD and whether or not it’s a blown coverage, very little coaches would call that, that’s a feeling call. Tampa used Brady’s playoff experience and played a blowout game on defence to get through this one and it was one smart move.
The Packers have a lot to learn:
The final reason the Buc’s are going to the big time, is the many mistakes Green Bay made and these mistakes go back to the draft. With Tampa playing the way they did on defence the game was calling for someone to pop out and make a play, forget Adam’s as he was being double teamed, what was needed was another first-round WR, but the Packers did not have one. I don’t know who made the decision to not give this years MVP a new weapon, but it will baffle me for a long time and it really showed in the Championship game. Despite this, arguable the biggest call, was choosing to kick a field goal when down 8 and give 10-time Superbowl appearance and 6-time Champion Tom Brady the ball back with less than 3 minutes left. In some ways you can understand the call, you’ve just picked Brady off 3 times, your defence is playing well, you believe you can get this far down the field, you believe you’ll get the ball back. But this the Championship game, to not go for it is relatively criminal, in truth, being down 8 gives you no right to believe a man who has been at this stage over 10 times is going to make a mistake again and in the end it cost them and could cost them in the future.
Don’t annoy Patrick Mahomes:
In the AFC, the Chiefs took one step closer to running it back, dismantling the Buffalo Bills relatively easily. It didn’t start off that way as Kansas City were 9-0 down to start this game and then they scored 21 unanswered points. This is the first time either, the Chiefs were down in 2 playoff games last year, they were behind in the Superbowl and they won them all. It might be stating the obvious but Mahomes as a leader is incredible he has a way of bringing up a team from nothing, granted this team has stars, but when your down your down, not if you have Mahomes. After going down 9-0 the Chiefs went on to play a near perfect game and booked their place in their second Superbowl in a row.
The Bills can be back:
The Buffalo Bills fell way short against Kansas City for many reasons, to start with it felt as though they were happy just to be there at times. This was HC Sean McDermott’s first time this deep in the playoffs and it showed. The Chiefs played excellent defence in the secondary and covered most of the Bills receiver’s, including Stefon Diggs, incredibly well. This made redzone shots incredibly limited, which would make you think you have to go for it, but the Bills took 3 points on far, far too many occasions. Josh Allen, who has had an incredible year, showed his issues in this game, was far too conservative, inaccurate, and just looked off but, he’s young and will learn. Allen and McDermott both admitted these mistakes post-game, which is a good look for the Bills. Buffalo was off in that game and were calling out for a defensive star, get that, learn with some playoff experience and maybe this team can match those Chiefs and one day go one step closer. Either way, make the right moves and there’s no reason this young Bills team can’t be back and even better.
