Tactical Advantage: Finding Winning Keys to Watch for in Every Wild-Card Game
The NFL playoffs are finally here, and Wild Card Weekend has some truly wild matchups. All four contests feature head-to-head matchups of teams with similar strengths and weaknesses, and plenty of the game's best players and coaches will test their mettle against each other.
If you're reading this, you likely know who these players and coaches are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. But in order to find out what's really going to happen—and what each team's key to victory is—we need to go to the videotape.
Thanks to the availability of All-22 coaching film, we can break down everything happened when these teams met earlier in the season. Moreover, we can figure out what to watch for this weekend while the teams square off again with their seasons on the line.
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Kansas City Chiefs (5) at Indianapolis Colts (4)
The first Wild Card Game of the weekend pits the Chiefs against the Colts, just 13 days after their Week 16 matchup.
The Colts are the higher seed and beat the Chiefs 23-7, and this time, the game will be at their place. So how come, per Bovada.lv's pick'em spread at the time of this writing, Vegas favors neither team?
As I suggested in my playoff guide, the Colts try to be a power-run team—but the Chiefs are a power-run team. In the first quarter of their last game, the Chiefs dominated the line of scrimmage. Tailback Jamaal Charles was running almost at will. On the other side, Colts running back Trent Richardson couldn't get anything going.
If it weren't for a controversial third-down horse-collar call, the Colts wouldn't even have mustered their lone first-quarter field-goal try; kicker Adam Vinatieri missed it anyway.
Alex Smith wasn't throwing the ball well for the Chiefs—but at first, he didn't need to. After a Charles breakaway touchdown run, Kansas City seemed to be settling in for a long afternoon of controlling the ball, the clock and the game.
Then, Chiefs rookie Knile Davis coughed up a fumble. Two plays later, the Kansas City secondary let Colts tailback Donald Brown take a little swing pass to the house.
This was the story of the rest of the game: Kansas City turning it over on offense and playing terrible coverage on defense. Let's take a look at the Colts' next possession after the Brown TD, when the score was still just 10-7 and the game was well within reach:
Offensively, the Chiefs are in a three-receiver set, with slot receiver T.Y. Hilton (No. 13) lined up between split end Griff Whalen and tight end Coby Fleener on the strong side. Hilton will run a deep corner route, with Fleener running a deep post and a Whalen seven-yard curl underneath Hilton.
Defensively, the Chiefs are in a 2-3-6 dime look. Linebacker Frank Zombo is lined up on the line between the two defensive tackles, and he rushes along with middle linebacker Derrick Johnson and slot cornerback Dunta Robinson.
The remaining corners play man or off-man, highlighted in blue dashed lines. Free safety Eric Berry drops into single-high zone coverage underneath. The trouble starts here, when Whalen sits down in his curl:
Dime corner Quintin Demps (highlighted in red) ignores the breaking Fleener to try and make a play on Whalen. It looks like he's peeking into the backfield to read the quarterback's eyes, rather than focus on his responsibilities. This immediately forces Berry to cover Fleener rather than support the two corners.
Outside cornerback Sean Smith (highlighted in blue) was expecting Whalen, who was lined up inside the numbers, to run a deeper, outside-breaking route. That's why Smith was backpedaling in off-man coverage until Whalen sat down on the curl—and why Smith's scrambling to recover.
Andrew Luck sees that Hilton's man, safety Kendrick Lewis, is about to pass Hilton off to Berry—who's on the other side of the field, covering Fleener. Luck makes a great decision quickly, lets fly and hilarity ensues:
Yes, there are three Colts defenders flying to cover Whalen, and nobody on Hilton—to whom the ball's already been thrown. If Luck doesn't throw low and behind, forcing Hilton to go to the ground to catch it, this is an easy touchdown.
There are two failures in the Chiefs defense here, which were repeated throughout this game: One, you can't put six defensive backs on the field against the Colts and leave T.Y. Hilton uncovered. Those kind of breakdowns are unacceptable, especially this late in the season. Two, there's no pressure on, allowing Luck to find the open man and unleash the deep ball.
The Chiefs defense is built around a dominant pass rush, yet it only sacked Luck once all day. The Chiefs have to get more pressure on Luck to help out their secondary; if the Chiefs make him sweat in the pocket early, they'll be in good shape. If Luck's routinely finding wide-open receivers 30 yards downfield, Kansas City will be in big trouble.
Finally, Alex Smith just had a bad day at the office last time. Smith's game is completing easy passes and not turning the ball over—yet he missed some open receivers, lost two fumbles and threw a pick against the Colts.
He's got to play better on Saturday, and I think he will.
New Orleans Saints (6) at Philadelphia Eagles (3)
This will be billed as the battle of two offenses—and rightfully so. Chip Kelly's Philadelphia Eagles took the world by storm this year, racking up the fourth-ranked offense (27.6 points per game), per Pro Football Reference.
Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints did their usual high-flying offense routine, scoring 25.9 points per game mostly through the air. Brees' 5,162 passing yards and 39 touchdowns trailed only Peyton Manning's record-setting marks in those categories.
Can Brees and the Saints outscore the Eagles and quarterback Nick Foles? Can Foles and the Eagles outscore Brees and the Saints?
All of this talk ignores one very big factor: the Saints' defense, which is the fourth-best unit in the NFL, per Pro Football Reference. Only the Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers have allowed fewer points than defensive coordinator Rob Ryan's Saints; scoring on them will not be easy.
The Eagles haven't faced the Saints this season (it's the only wild-card matchup that isn't a rematch), but they have faced a tough, pass-rush heavy 3-4 defense: the Kansas City Chiefs. That didn't go well for the Eagles; they lost 26-16.
Quarterback Michael Vick threw two picks and lost a fumble, center Jason Kelce botched a shotgun snap (which the Chiefs recovered), and young returner Damaris Johnson muffed a punt for the fifth Eagles turnover.
The Chiefs sacked Vick six times on 36 dropbacks for a sack rate of 16.7 percent. That's far above the Chiefs' season average of 7.4 percent. The Saints' pass rush is even more potent, as their 8.8 percent sack rate is fourth best in the NFL, per Pro Football Reference. Will New Orleans sack the less-mobile Foles even more often?
Arguably the best job any team did of handling the Saints' pass defense was the Seattle Seahawks in Week 13. Quarterback Russell Wilson was only sacked once, and the Seahawks racked up 310 passing yards on just 30 attempts. How'd they do it?
It won't surprise you to learn that Wilson's athletic ability got him out of a jam a couple of times. But the Seahawks used a few tricks to deal with the Saints' beastly pass-rusher, Cameron Jordan, that the Eagles know well.
Early on, the Seahawks used a few zone-read runs directed at Jordan, using his aggressive pursuit of Wilson to spring tailback Marshawn Lynch. Building off of that, they used play action to draw in the aggressive Saints' back seven and fire over the top.
Here's a massive 3rd-and-1 play that uses several of the same tricks Kelly makes use of:
The Seahawks only need one yard, and they're strongly telegraphing a run. The Seahawks have three tight ends on the field, and the lone receiver is beefy reserve wideout Bryan Walters. The Saints are in a stout 3-5-3 look, with one corner tight on Walters and lone safety Malcom Jenkins alone up top.
The Seahawks motion tight end Luke Willson down the line and back to where he started, and quickly snap while he's in motion. Jenkins' moving with Willson indicates either man-to-man coverage or an overeager safety guessing which direction the run will go.
At the snap, the offensive line moves to stretch-block left, looking for all the world like the Seahawks will zone run to the left. Do the Saints bite? You bet they do:
Here's the brilliant bit. Rather than fake the run to the left and have Wilson execute a bootleg off of that run, Lynch moves to run to the right and Wilson turns to fake it. Do the Saints in the area bite? You bet they do:
All four Saints near Lynch break on the play fake, even left inside linebacker David Hawthorne (highlighted in red), who has responsibility for tight end Zach Miller. Miller ducked inside of rusher Junior Galette, then moved outside of Hawthorne—who was so sold by the play fake he actually pushed Miller downfield, trying to get get past Miller to get to Lynch.
The only problem, of course, was that Miller was his man—and the only safety was on the other side of the field, following Willson's motion. The third tight end, Kellen Davis, is also let go by his man, right inside Hawthorne.
Miller couldn't be more open:
This kind of multiple-tight-end, play-action judo is exactly the stuff Kelly loves to do to a defense. If the Eagles are going to keep up with Brees and the Saints offense, they're going to have to get a few broken coverages like this—or hope Foles brought his deer antler spray.
San Diego Chargers (6) at Cincinnati Bengals (3)
This Sunday, the San Diego Chargers will play a playoff game. Considering that the Chargers held a losing record after playing eight of their 16 games—and as late as Week 14—that's kind of a miracle.
The Bengals, however, were always expected to be here. One of the most talented, balanced teams in the NFL, they have the sixth-best scoring offense and fifth-best scoring defense. The Chargers are talented and balanced, too, but Bengals completely outclass them on both sides of the ball.
So how did the Bengals only beat the Chargers 17-10 in Week 13?
Long story short: The Chargers were able to take away the downfield passing game. However, that was partly because the running game was working so well, the Bengals didn't bother to throw. Cincinnati tailbacks BenJarvus Green-Ellis and Giovani Bernard combined for 149 yards and a touchdown on 34 carries, making each successful Cincinnati drive a slow march between the 20-yard lines.
Between an ill-advised wobbling duck of an Andy Dalton deep ball that got picked off just before halftime and a fourth-quarter fumble by Green-Ellis, the Bengals had trouble capitalizing.
As I discussed in my guide to the playoffs, the Chargers have elevated bend-but-don't-break defense to an art form: They're ninth worst in yardage allowed, but 11th best in points allowed, per Pro Football Reference.
The Chargers' problem is that everything their defense did to the Bengals offense, the Bengals defense did to their offense: One extra turnover (a second lost fumble) proved to be the difference between two teams whose statistics looked remarkably similar that day. It seemed as though nearly every Chargers drive that didn't end in a turnover ended with an incomplete pass just past midfield.
The Chargers have to get the deep and intermediate passes working if they want to keep pace with the Bengals—who, it must be said, aren't likely to lay two offensive eggs against the same team, especially in Paul Brown Stadium. Head coach Mike McCoy is also going to have to be more aggressive; repeatedly punting on 4th-and-short in enemy territory is not a winning strategy for an underdog.
The key will be to use the Chargers' inside passing threats: tight ends Ladarius Green and Antonio Gates. The Bengals linebackers are no slouches in coverage, but the Chargers' outside receivers struggled to get open against the Bengals cornerbacks. Philip Rivers tried to force it outside along the sidelines, but too often the Bengals had it on lockdown. He missed some golden opportunities along the way.
Here's a 1st-and-10 near the beginning of the fourth quarter, on one of the many Chargers drives that should have ended in a score but ended in a punt...on the Bengals' 39-yard line:
Split by himself to the right is the eventually targeted receiver, Keenan Allen, one-on-one with Bengals cornerback Terence Newman. Green is lined up at the left end of the offensive line, next to two receivers who'll run a curl/seam combination.
The Bengals are in a simple 4-2-5 nickel:
The read here should be immediate: The Bengals are playing a nickel Cover 2, with man coverage on the outside, a two-deep shell and the nickel corner and both linebackers. What's the time-honored way of beating a Cover 2? With an athletic tight end up the seam.
Green runs this route, which I've highlighted. Rivers has already checked quickly to that side of the field, but it appears he's already made his decision and is simply looking off the weak-side safety. Rivers likes the Allen-Newman matchup, and he's going over the top:
Rivers takes a hitch step as Green breaks free between the second and third level of the defense. Rivers hit Green for a 30-yard touchdown on the same route earlier in the game, and if he zipped it here it would at least be a first down—and maybe six.
Instead, Rivers sees that Allen is thoroughly covered by Newman and throws it up anyway, hoping Allen can make a play. He can't, and the pass falls incomplete. Rivers would take two more shots here, both falling incomplete, and the Chargers would punt away one of their last opportunities to get level.
Again, these teams are basically mirror images of each other, except the Bengals are more talented all around. The Chargers made one more mistake—and one fewer play—and that was the difference in the last game.
This time around, Rivers can't make any mistakes—and he can't leave plays like these on the field.
San Francisco 49ers (5) at Green Bay Packers (4)
The 49ers' 2012 playoff demolition of the Packers was one of the biggest shocks of last season. The Packers defense was rendered helpless by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his read-option run game; Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was humbled by the mighty 49ers defense.
In 2013, the Week 1 rematch was one of the most anticipated games of the year; the 49ers won at home, 34-28.
These two wins have been talked up by some as proof that the 49ers have the Packers' number, but the Packers led the Week 1 contest 28-24 with a little over six minutes left in the fourth quarter; a beatdown that was not.
Packers tailback Eddie Lacy, making his NFL debut, carried 14 times for 41 yards (2.93 yards per attempt) and a touchdown and also caught one pass for a 31 yards. Unfortunately, he also lost a fumble. Rodgers was also charged with an interception when an on-the-money pass hit the inconsistent hands of tight end Jermichael Finley, bounced out and landed in the arms of 49ers safety Eric Reid.
Those two second-quarter turnovers likely handed the game to the 49ers, for whom Kaepernick had a career day throwing the ball.
The Packers, who lost Rodgers for much of the season, would end up going 8-7-1 and barely winning the title race of a mediocre NFC North division. The 49ers' eventual 12-4 record would have won nearly any division that didn't also have the Seattle Seahawks in it.
Transporting these two preseason Super Bowl contenders from the idyllic 69-degree climes of Candlestick Park in September to the frozen January tundra of Lambeau Field, and you may have a different story.
According to NBC 26 meteorologist Cameron Moreland, via the Packers official site, the fourth-quarter temperature should approach the middle single digits, with a wind chill 10 to 15 degrees below zero. Green Bay's secondary aside, it's hard to see Kaepernick throwing for 412 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions in that.
Even considering the home-field advantage, the two fluke Green Bay turnovers and that 49ers tailback Frank Gore had an even harder time running than Lacy did (21 carries for 41 yards), if the Packers want to take this one, they're going to have to force Kaepernick to make a mistake.
The Packers' biggest problem in matching up against the 49ers is their safety play; Pro Football Focus graded starters Morgan Burnett and M.D. Jennings the 63rd- and 67th-ranked safeties out of 83 qualifiers this season (subscription required).
Kaepernick frequently beat Burnett and Jennings by attacking them downfield with tight end Vernon Davis (and going to receiver Anquan Boldin on the outside if they doubled Davis). Here's how the Packers must disrupt Kaepernick: with pressure.
This is a 2nd-and-12 late with just under three minutes left in the first half; the 49ers led 14-7 and the Packers defense had to hold on or risk being down by two scores going into the locker room. There was a whole lot of "window dressing" motion by the 49ers and on-the-fly adjustments by the Packers to get to this point, but at the snap, here's what we've got.
The 49ers are in the Pistol: a short shotgun set with Gore lined up directly behind Kaepernick. The 49ers have two tight ends, one on either side of the line, with a slot receiver and flanker to the left.
The idea here is to show run, double-down with a play fake, then send both receivers (both tight ends) and Gore out on routes, leaving just the offensive line to protect Kaepernick. Defensively, Green Bay is in a 3-3-5 nickel (despite left defensive end Mike Neal lining up in a two-point stance):
Outside linebacker Clay Matthews and nickel cornerback Micah Hyde both blitz, sending five against five blockers. Matthews wins his one-on-one and gets in cleanly:
The thing is, even at this instant Kaepernick has plenty of options. The two inside linebackers and four defensive backs are dropped deep into soft zones, keeping the play in front of them to avoid giving up a first down.
Look at how many wide-open targets Kaepernick has here:
Kaepernick would have needed a little time to hit the tight end down the seam, but Gore and both receivers had yards of wide-open space. Kaepernick has the arm strength to flick it away to any of those three and save the down. Instead, he broke down, tried to juke Clay Matthews within the confines of the pocket and took one of just two sacks on the day.
If the Packers can focus on this combination of soft zone coverage and overload blitz, they'll give up some yardage between the 20s—but they won't give up the home run and they'll get some desperately needed stops.
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