Four Bangers and a Dud: a Wild Card Walkthrough

In this wild-at-heart, 83.3333% complete Wild Card edition of Walkthrough:

• The Patriots defeat one of their toughest foes of the year. Blessed are they who can count the Chargers among their toughest foes of the year.
• Kyle Shanahan versus Nick Sirianni: one coach playing chess, the other trying to crawl into the box the chess set came in like a confused kitty cat.
• Josh Allen carries his teammates kicking and screaming past the Jaguars.
• An optimist would call it another epic Bears comeback victory. A pessimist would call it another heartbreaking Packers collapse.
• The Rams overcome both random Panthers mojo and their own knack for road-game self-destruction.

What a weekend full of suspense, comebacks and surprises! Let’s break it all down.

New England Schedule Merchants 16, Los Angeles Social Media Content Models 3

What happened

An exceptional weekend of playoff football ended with a damp, overhyped fizzle.

Drake Maye threw a first-quarter interception from his own goal line, but Justin Herbert and the Chargers offense got stopped on fourth down at the two-yard line. Maye led a YAC-heavy 93-yard drive, but the Patriots were forced to settle for a field goal. Herbert manufactured a drive that ended with a 21-yarder by Cameron Dicker. A 37-yard Maye scramble through wide open spaces led to another chip shot for Andy Borregales just before halftime. The Patriots led 6-3 at halftime.

Both the Patriots and Chargers were 1-of-5 on third down conversions at the half. Why, it was as if neither team was quite as good as its reputation! Imagine that!

A promising Patriots third-quarter drive ended with a Maye strip-sack. But Herbert, under siege behind his three-man/two-rain barrel offensive line, could do little more than chuck the football up the sideline in search of pass interference. Maye overcame a sack deep in Patriots territory to deliver strikes to Hunter Henry and Kayshon Boutte, but he overthrew a wide-open Austin Hooper in the end zone. The Patriots settled for their third field goal.

Herbert fumbled on the first play of the next Chargers series, but Kimani Vidal scooped it up for a 17-yard gain. That turned out to be the second-longest Chargers play from scrimmage of the night. Herbert scrambled for another first down, but the Chargers series stalled when a fastball skittered off Keenan Allen’s hands on third down.

Maye got the ball back and finally put together a complete, MVP-caliber drive, featuring a Josh Allen-like tackle-breaking scramble and a teardrop touchdown to Hunter Henry on a corner route. The Patriots led 16-3 with 9:39 to play.

Herbert scrambled twice for 27 yards to start the next series. K’Lavon Chaisson corralled him and stripped him two plays later, however, and Christian Elliss fell upon the loose football.

The Patriots gave the ball back after a sloppy three-and-out. Herbert’s offensive line was shell-shocked and done for the year, but he embarked on one final pokey, bone-rattling 14-play play series that ended, appropriately enough, with a sack.

Looking ahead for the Patriots

Of course the Patriots drew the easiest playoff opponent east of Charlotte, a team with 60% of an NFL-caliber offensive line and a defense full of no-names who played over their heads for much of the year.

Maye made some marvelous throws but got away with some major mistakes; teammate Jared Wilson recovered a fourth-quarter fumble to keep him from ending the game with three turnovers. The Patriots defense completely overwhelmed the Chargers’ rickety offensive line in the second half, but this game might have turned out differently if the Chargers came away from two early trips inside the Patriots’ three-yard line with 10 or 14 points instead of three.

The Patriots will host the winner of Steelers/Texans next Sunday night. The Steelers beat them in Week 3, but that might as well have been 1974. The Patriots can easily beat the Steelers. If they get their chance, the Texans will do to Maye what the Patriots did to Herbert on Sunday night, and then some.

Last look at the Chargers

It’s Year Six of the Herbert era, and the Chargers keep getting further and further away from winning a playoff game.

Yes, the losses of Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt were huge, though other teams/quarterbacks rarely get to cite training camp injuries as the justification for a near-shutout in the playoffs. Yes, Herbert could use a better coordinator than Greg Roman, though the next one will be Herbert’s fifth, and none of them ever seem to measure up.

The Chargers netted 124 passing yards and three points on Sunday. If Sam Darnold, Brock Purdy or Jordan Love had a game like that, national tastemakers wouldn’t care if a meteor took out the rest of their locker rooms. But Herbert gets another mulligan. It’s fine. He still has the tools and potential to be a great quarterback. Someday, he’ll get there.

The Chargers have $103 million in cap space. Maybe signing George Pickens and Rico Dowdle – and getting Alt and Slater back, and drafting an edge rusher, and hiring Kevin Stefanski and Mike McDaniel as co-coordinators – will be enough to finally get this team past the first round of the playoffs.

San Francisco 49ers 23, Philadelphia Eagles 19

What Happened

The movable force defeated the stoppable object. Or was it the other way around? Whatever: on a gusty evening in Philly, the frisky 49ers offense and temp-agency defense outperformed the rugged Eagles defense and narcoleptic offense, thanks to a combination of better execution and smarter coaching.

The Eagles chugged and slugged out two first-half touchdown drives against the 49ers, though Jake Elliott missed the extra point after the first one due to a bad snap-and-hold operation. That miss turned out to be crucial.

Brock Purdy surprised the Eagles defense with pinpoint deep shots over the middle to Demarcus Robinson and Jauan Jennings early in the game, leading to an opening-drive touchdown (to Robinson) and a second-quarter Eddy Pineiro field goal. The 49ers missed an opportunity to tie the game before halftime when Purdy fumbled out of bounds while scrambling to get into field goal range as the clock ticked to zero.

So the Eagles led 13-10 at halftime. But George Kittle was knocked out of the game with an Achilles injury, while A.J. Brown approached DIVACON 1 after failing to haul in a sideline bomb and getting an earful from Nick Sirianni.

The second half started the way the second halves of Eagles games usually start: the Eagles offense lapsed into catatonia, while their defense tried to preserve a three-point lead by being absolutely perfect for 30 minutes.

A Quinyon Mitchell interception ended a promising 49ers drive. The Eagles extended their lead to 16-10 on a grody 23-yard drive after a shanked 49ers punt into the wind.

Purdy found Kyle Juszczyk underneath for 27 yards to start the next series and get the 49ers into Eagles territory. As soon as the fourth quarter started (and the wind was at the 49ers’ back), Kyle Shanahan unveiled this work of abstract art:

The next Eagles series: positive play negated by holding, incomplete pass, second-and-20 handoff, third-and-13 rollout and throwaway. I could have cut-’n’-pasted that sequence from the 25 or so other times it happened this year!

Mitchell intercepted his second pass of the game to end the next 49ers possession. Another excruciating bone-on-stone Eagles offense series; a roughness foul for a helmet shot on a sliding Hurts was the biggest play, and Barkley got hurt on his 26th slam directly into the line of the game. Elliott kicked a field goal to give the Eagles a 19-17 lead.

Purdy picked the Eagles defense apart on what turned out to be the game-winning series. He got an unsurprising major assist from Christian McCaffrey, who racked up 25 yards on three touches before getting open in the middle of the end zone for a third-and-goal pass to give the 49ers the lead (Pineiro missed the extra point) with 2:56 to play.

The Eagles offense promptly went to its version of work on the next series: two completions for five yards, a dropped catchable ball (it was a little high and outside) over the middle by Brown, an unexpected fourth-down conversion by Dallas Goedert. The Eagles reached 49ers territory at the two minute warning.

Completion to Brown. Completion to DaVonta Smith. But then: a scramble for a short loss. Another signature Hurts scramble to the right and throwaway. An overthrow to Smith in the middle of the field, though he got both hands on it. Fourth-and-11 at the 21-yard line. What do the Eagles draw up after a timeout?

A Hurts fastball to Goedert into heavy traffic in the middle of the field. Eric Kendricks – who was probably enjoying early-bird specials with Philip Rivers before the Niners pressed him into service in December – swatted the ball away to ice the 49ers win.

Looking ahead for the 49ers

The Niners visit the Seahawks next week. The teams split their season series. The not-yet-injury-ravaged 49ers beat the not-yet-fully-baked Seahawks in Week 1. The Seahawks clinched homefield advantage in the playoffs with a not-as-close-as-the-score 13-3 win in Week 18.

The Kittle injury is devastating. Ricky Pearsall may return next week. But the 49ers will once again be facing the NFL’s best team at something close to 60% of peak capacity.

Shanahan called a phenomenal game, surprising the Eagles defense with deep shots early, picking the perfect moment for a gadget play and manufacturing opportunities for McCaffrey on the final touchdown drive. Purdy threw two interceptions but also made pinpoint deep throws and deftly managed the two fourth-quarter touchdown drives. Robert Saleh’s all-randos defense took advantage of every opportunity the Eagles offense gave them. And the 49ers committed just one penalty all evening. It was an exemplary display of complementary football, coaching and execution.

The 49ers just don’t have enough raw manpower to keep doing it.

Last look at the Eagles

You know what? It’s gonna feel great not watching that damn offense for a few months. I won’t have to see Hurts roll right from a clean pocket and just fling the ball out of bounds again until next September. It’s a downright liberating feeling, like escaping a codependent relationship.

Kevin Patullo can go get a job as a junior high hall monitor somewhere, though I worry that he would send 13-year olds toppling down stairwells.

Nick Sirianni can have his come-to-faith meeting with Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman, who will hold up a picture of Kliff Kingsbury and demand, “find a play-caller at least this sexy, or else pack your bags.” Adoree Jackson can return to the Giants or Titans where he belongs. Brown can explore a blockbuster trade, or transcendental meditation, or the deepest recesses of his own navel. Lane Johnson, who practiced during the week but was inactive, might want to join him.