Weekend Slate: Snow Game Sunday and a conditioned Saturday night upset

The Bills and Eagles hold off late challenges to make it to the conference champion, while the Commanders stun the Lions at home

The Texans-Chiefs game was written about here.

As I have no idea what the next 48 hours in Houston will look like — the forecast is five inches of snow and our most recent extreme weather event involved a barely category 2 hurricane knocking us out of power for nearly two weeks — I am currently not planning to have any content up tomorrow. We should regroup for a piece on Thursday.

Ravens 25 at Bills 27

It delivered on the promise of two star quarterbacks in their primes throwing haymakers at each other, and had a close ending, but the story of this game is more that the Ravens’ haymakers were directed at themselves sometimes. And, in a way, that is this Ravens season.

Baltimore thoroughly outplayed the Bills on a yards per play basis, notching 7.3 to Buffalo’s 4.6. The Ravens went 7-of-10 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth down. But in a game with three turnovers, they had all three of them and by far the most massive play of the game when a Lamar Jackson fumble at the Buffalo 28 was returned by Von Miller all the way to Baltimore’s 24:

That was roughly a 10-point swing. Buffalo was able to cash it in for a touchdown and ride out the second half with just six points to survive. And they were able to do so because the Ravens kept the haymakers coming. Unfortunately, again, at both sides. A missed two-point conversion was tipped, Mark Andrews fumbled at the end of the catch with 8:50 left in the game in Buffalo territory, and then, after Lamar Jackson’s heroics showed up late to take the game to the brink of overtime,

Andrews denied us all on Baltimore’s second two-point conversion try:

The Ravens bookended their season-opening loss to the Chiefs because a tight end didn’t get their second foot inbounds with a season-ending loss to the Bills because a tight end couldn’t catch the football. To quote tackle Ronnie Stanley: “This is probably the toughest loss of my career so far. I know we’ve been in situations before, similar situations. This one kind of feels worse.”

I don’t want to make it out like Buffalo could get nothing going — they were elite on the ground and Baltimore was pushed around in a way we haven’t seen in any game this season that didn’t involve Saquon Barkley. James Cook in particular felt like he was gliding through this defense. (Kyle Hamilton quote: “I think they ran the same duo play like 10-plus times tonight, and that honestly is just not a good showing of what we can do as a defense. I feel like that’s somewhat disrespectful, and for us to allow them to do that, that’s just out of character for us.") But the Ravens were able to bottle up Buffalo’s passing attack, holding them to a single 34-yard gain, and making everything else short. Josh Allen was held to just 5.8 yards per pass — this guy with a cannon arm played like he was Alex Smith.

A thing I hold in my brain as both comforting and discomforting is that someone as good as Lamar Jackson has not only never won a Super Bowl, but he hasn’t even played in one yet. The Texans didn’t win yesterday, but they also haven’t had to shoulder the pain of being unable to make a team with a guy who probably should win MVP in back-to-back years reach the final two. The standard of being an NFL champion is utterly ridiculous. The narratives off Jackson losing this game were probably saved from further ridiculousness by the fact that at least Andrews has to wear this one. Buffalo did successfully blitz Jackson a lot more than any team had done this year, then weirdly backed off on Baltimore’s final drive. I want to like the leaf that McDermott has turned this year on aggression, but this game had some whiffs of Old McDermott.

I don’t say this with contempt in my heart, but if my team ran for 5.9 yards per carry and set NFL records for rushing prowess, I would probably trust them to run the ball on a two-point conversion at some point. The coaching thing can be very complex and I understand that the Ravens were stuffed a few times on the ground early. But especially after gashing them on that 80-yard touchdown drive that involved just one pass in the third quarter … let’s let Derrick Henry do what Derrick Henry does.

The Bills should be favored to win the AFC Championship Game on paper. I can’t wait to see what kind of devil magic the Chiefs are waiting to unfurl for that one.

Rams 22 at Eagles 26

Weird little game where the combination of shifting weather, an early Eagles lead, and a big Rams turnover every time they started to get a little feisty made it feels like the Rams were dead in the water up until the very instant you realized they were about to get the ball back with a chance to win.

The Eagles got out to a 13-7 lead and looked like they’d at least have another field-goal attempt to go up six at halftime, but Jalen Hurts managed to have a Texans-esque eight yard sack from the Philadelphia 32 that was fumbled backwards an extra seven yards.

Hurts was then sacked on the play after that to end the half. He was sacked seven times, and unlike C.J. Stroud on Saturday, he didn’t particularly play well when he got time in the pocket. The Rams even got him for a safety in the third quarter after one of the sacks left him (as Stroud was Saturday) limping off and heading to the medical tent. Jared Verse, in particular, feasted. A.J. Brown said you had to “give this game a pass” because the swirling gusts that hit the second half made it hard to see the ball.

The Eagles, though, also employ Saquon Barkley. And while Barkley was not notably efficient on Sunday, what he did do was hit two homers: 62 and 78-yard scampers for touchdowns. The second one had knockout punch potential, putting the Rams down 13 with just 4:36 left after Jake Elliott missed his second extra point. (The Texans parallels run deep.)

I don’t know what in particular makes the Rams so likely to give up huge runs to Barkley when they stack the box — playing too aggressive or if it’s just not even coached to be that aggressive and we’ve got some bad tape — but it was killer. The edge that Verse sets in particular is pretty galling.

(Quick aside: Did you remember/know that the Texans were the runners up in the Saquon Barkley derby? It’s true. Think about how good Barkley’s season was behind this line and with Hurts. Now imagine what would have happened running behind Kenyon Green, with Stroud at quarterback. Think about how differently the discourse could have gone.)

After their safety, the Rams fumbled the ball in back-to-back series to give the Eagles a chance to take a 16-15 lead up to 22-15 with two awful drives that yielded field goals. Los Angeles’ offense had troubles running in short yardage, troubles protecting Matthew Stafford (five sacks, two scrambles), and found themselves where they were mostly on behalf of hellaciously difficult catch-and-throw plays in the snow. Demarcus Robinson’s 48-yarder he snatched out of Isaiah Rodgers’ hands will show the trick:

I can’t hide the progression of that snow, can I?

And then all the sudden from the LA 42 with 1:33 and no timeouts left, Stafford unleashed a rocket to Puka Nacua on the sideline for 37 yards and all the sudden the Eagles were tasked with holding on for those last 20 yards. Let’s give this game a pass? Stafford didn’t need one. He was feeding his receivers well all day.

Jalen Carter saved the day with a sack and a pressure on back-to-back plays on third and fourth down, going past Beaux Limmer twice with the game on the line.

The Eagles survive, but I’m starting to get concerned about their passing offense. The notoriously strong offensive line has started to spring some leaks of late and Hurts’ left knee injury puts another potential obstacle in the way. It’s not good when I can lob this many credible Texans comparisons your way. It’s not good when A.J. Brown is more notable for his books read during the playoffs than his stat line. The only thing I can say is good is: At least they get to play at home next week, because…

Commanders 45 at Lions 31

Dan Campbell was born in the fourth-down go, but Dan Quinn learned from it, adopted it, and used it to beat down the NFL’s current master. The Commanders punted once and converted three-of-four fourth-down attempts (a figure that does not include a gifted fourth-down conversion on a 12-man penalty) en route to 38 offensive points. And the more annoying part is the Lions actually outgained them. The Lions averaged 7.7 yards per play! They lost. (All three teams that outgained their opponent by yards per play lost this weekend!) Sam LaPorta made this catch only for it to be a goddamn afterthought:

The Lions had a 14-10 lead at this point. Confetti was thrown! This is the same game that wound up being the most depressing scene in the NFL soon after, with Roary in stunned silence.

And unlike the Texans earlier on Saturday, the Lions lost for some very obvious reasons. They turned the ball over five times, one of them was a pick-six:

The hit that Goff takes at the end of this play gave us, yes, Teddy Bridgewater snaps. He led a touchdown drive, even! Please do not ask about any of his throws on that drive.

Down 10 in the fourth quarter, Jameson Williams’ trick play pick all but ended Detroit’s chances of keeping pace with the Commanders offense:

It doesn’t irk me that the Lions tried this play — the yin and yang of Ben Johnson requires some sacrifice — but I’ve got to imagine that if you are Jameson Williams with that many blockers ahead of you and that amount of speed, you could simply run, right?

The Lions didn’t play poorly at all, but all the defensive injury attrition finally caught up with them. (And who knew that Amik Robertson would be the straw that broke Aaron Glenn’s defense?) They could not stop Dyami Brown, they blew tackles on Terry McLaurin’s 58-yard screen pass touchdown. Someone named “Morice Norris” was playing safety by the end of the day. Disappointingly, Moran Norris does not appear to be related to him in any way I can understand.

Detroit’s defense was simply put in a blender. They were punished when they blitzed (Jayden Daniels was 12-of-16 for 191 yards and a touchdown per NFL Pro), and when they didn’t blitz they generated per Mina Kimes … zero pressures. The Commanders ran 42 times for 182 yards, and when the Lions left six in the box to try to protect the passing game they couldn’t stuff the Commanders. The Lions allowed 7.75 yards per rush on 16 plays with six in the box.

All but one NFL story ends without a happy conclusion. I understand Lions fans being somber and disappointed. The storyline of the year was always built for the injuries to catch up to the defense, but you never know when the last chance you’ll have with a group will be even though this team seems poised to bring everyone important back in 2025 other than their coordinators. The only major free agents will be Kevin Zeitler and Carlton Davis. As often as they describe the NFL as a game of attrition, everybody wants to attach a deep richness to the importance of capitalizing on a 15-2 season. I know that the Lions are nowhere near dead and none of their deeply important players appears to be aging in a real way. It’s not ideal to lose in the Divisional Round at home, but it’s an ideal long-term team to have in place. “It’ll probably bother me forever, honestly,” Taylor Decker said.

For the Commanders … what can I say? The defense is opportunistic, Jayden Daniels is phenomenal and makes their entire fourth-down go strategy wildly hard to stop. Now they get a wounded Eagles team in the birthplace of Doug Pederson’s two-point aggression for a chance to complete that circle. I gave Adam Peters the go-ahead for NFL Executive of the Year on my PFWA ballot and the fact that they’re doing this without much of a known supporting cast on offense beyond McLaurin shows underachieving offenses that they probably shouldn’t be given much of an excuse.