Although it’s the conference championship round edition of the Four Verts column, we’re going to slightly break with tradition and react in real time to a day-of news conference that demands further analysis. But first, this weekend’s AFC championship game.
Broncos can still advance to the Super Bowl with their defense
After a thrilling win over the Bills to advance to the AFC title game, the Broncos received incredibly unfortunate news when it was revealed that starting quarterback Bo Nix broke a bone in his ankle in the waning moments, requiring season-ending surgery. Nix had a roller-coaster performance, struggling until crunch time, but his presence will be sorely missed as the Broncos turn to backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham to lead the team to the Super Bowl. That’s going to be a tall task considering this is Stidham’s first non-preseason action since the 2023 season, but Denver still has a weapon on its side that can help the Broncos punch their ticket to Super Bowl LX: the defense.
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This Broncos defense hasn’t been quite as dominant as the group was during last season, but Denver still has so much high-end talent at key spots that it can force the action and be the reason why it wins the AFC title game. Drake Maye will be a tough test as he rapidly ascends to being one of the best quarterbacks in the league, but the Texans gave that offense some extreme fits in the divisional round and the opportunity is there to muddy up what the Patriots are trying to do.
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Even though the Patriots are in the AFC championship game, their win over the Texans showed that they still have a ways to go in terms of talent acquisition as they continue to build around Maye. Of the Patriots’ 15 drives in that game, nine of them failed to gain a first down. Over those nine drives, they ran 26 plays for 5 yards — 0.2 yards per play. Not a typo.
The wet snow played a factor, but the Patriots also didn’t have players who could consistently stay in front of the Texans’ raucous pass rushing duo of Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter, and on most drives they weren’t very threatening to the Texans’ defensive backs.
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Denver might not have the pure duo of destruction that Houston has, but it led the league in sacks with 68 with a strong group of pass rushers lead by Pro Bowler Nik Bonitto. The Broncos had eight players with at least four sacks this season and there’s no reason to expect that they won’t be turning the heat on Sunday with a shaky Patriots offensive line. Maye has shown this season that he’s prone to strip sacks in a severe way and if pass rushers can get their hands on the ball once or twice, they’ll have a better chance of giving their offense supreme field position to try and score with a backup quarterback.
The Broncos have shown that sometimes the high-end rushing units over the past two seasons can cause damage to their defense, but New England isn’t as threatening as Buffalo is on the ground, and the Broncos did much better against Buffalo’s run game this season than compared to last season. According to TruMedia, the Bills had only four games this season where they generated negative expected points added with their designed runs (which is absurd). New England has only four games all season where it generated positive expected points from designed runs. These are not the same beasts whatsoever.
It won’t be easy because it’s hard to throw a backup quarterback in the AFC title game, but Denver is equipped to give it a real shot because its defense matches up well against New England — as long as it can survive the drives where Maye shows why he’s being considered for the MVP award this season.
Terry Pegula … why?
It’s rare that a day-of news conference gets included in this column, but Bills owner Terry Pegula gave us a moment too purely chaotic to ignore. As is custom after firing a head coach, especially one of Sean McDermott’s stature, Pegula had a news conference Wednesday morning to answer questions from reporters about the move and what’s next for the Bills.
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The end of Buffalo’s season was chaotic, but this is a routine occurrence. Instead of a normal question-and-answer session, Pegula flew in on a dragon and spewed hot fire all over the media in attendance, making waves across the internet immediately. He spoke his version of the truth, which is really all that matters since he owns the team, but what he actually said ranged from nonsensical to outright nasty throughout the course of this media conference that will go down as a core moment for this era of Bills football.
Pegula said that he fired McDermott, who went 98-50 over his nine seasons as Bills head coach, because they lost to Denver. Anyone who watched the game, or even the highlights, can tell you that explanation is odd considering Josh Allen had several turnovers that no coach in the world would tell him were sound football plays. Considering the Bills turned the ball over five times, and the following Broncos’ drives had an average starting point of their own 48-yard line, giving up only 33 points is not that bad of a day at the office. In fact, the Bills gave up only one touchdown drive coming off of those five turnovers and forced the Broncos to settle for field goals after securing prime field position. It seemed like McDermott’s defense was doing its job, but Allen couldn’t get a grip and kept turning the ball over. For some reason, that was the justification Pegula needed to let go of McDermott, even though on face value it immediately smells bogus.
According to reporters, Pegula claimed that Allen and a handful of players were in tears after the game, to the point that Allen didn’t even acknowledge Pegula after the defeat in Denver. That’s a fairly strange thing to admit in this setting, but OK. He followed that up by saying after he saw how much pain Allen was in, it was time to do better. Now that part is not up for debate, but this game was so blatantly careless on Allen’s part that pinning this firing on his emotional reaction after the game is baffling. Maybe he was upset over his own poor plays, having just one too many gaffes to get Buffalo the win.
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At the end of the day, Pegula doesn’t need to do all this to justify his firing of McDermott. The obvious truth is this: He fired McDermott because he wanted to. It’s that simple. The explanation of this particular game being the breaking point makes little sense that there aren’t many rational strings to pull on. It would’ve been better to just say he wanted to go in a different direction without the extra stuff. All of that was bad, but Pegula really laid bare the fact that he has a very strong relationship with Brandon Beane, who was promoted to president of football ops while also still being the team’s general manager, during a question about the wide receiver room.
Prior to the season starting, Beane had an infamous radio segment where he aired his complaints over people “bitching” about the wide receiver talent was “one of the dumbest arguments he’s heard.” He said the bigger priority was fixing the defense, and Buffalo scored enough points the season prior that it wasn’t a huge concern. Fast forward to now, and it’s clear that the Bills lack firepower at wide receiver. Even though Beane was the one who put his voice to the strident defense of the wide receiver room, Pegula actually squared their troubles on the coaching staff — specifically, its decision to draft Keon Coleman in 2024 at the top of the second round.
“The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon,” Pegula said. “I’m not saying Brandon wouldn’t have drafted him, but he wasn’t his next choice. That was Brandon being a team player and taking advice from his coaching staff who felt strongly about the player. He’s taken, for some reason, heat over it, and not saying a word about it. I’m here to tell you the true story.”
Well, there’s already documented proof that Beane did in, fact, say several words about it. It’s on YouTube. It’s on Reddit. It’s on every social media website after this weekend. There was absolutely no need to sideswipe the coaching staff and Coleman who is still on the team!
That’s a level of dysfunction and pre-built loyalty that can make even a job where Josh Allen is the quarterback seem a bit undesirable. Pegula clearly has close ties to Beane, which is tough for a potential outsider coming in. The tougher part is that this situation is about as pressure-cooked as Baltimore, even though Pegula claimed it’s not a “Super Bowl-or-bust” rule for the incoming coach. That seems a bit incompatible with the idea of firing a head coach who made it to the divisional round or better in six straight seasons. The only next step is the Super Bowl. Anything less will feel like a failure. It’s not realistic for Pegula to paint the picture of an emotionally charged, sobbing locker room as a space where it’s not Super Bowl-or-bust. Clearly, that’s the expectation the team has set on itself.
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This looks to be about as toxic as it gets for a team with a legitimate Hall of Fame quarterback in his prime. Allen having that game doesn’t strip that status away from him, but pinning his mistakes on McDermott doesn’t feel or sound right. Coming off of firing McDermott, the Bills’ owner had a chance to steer the franchise back in the right direction. Instead, he tore a hole in the spacetime continuum and it’s worth asking one simple question: Why?
The NFC title game will be decided by NFC West rivals when the Seahawks and Rams take the field Sunday, but these teams haven’t been playing the same quality of football since they last met.
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This isn’t meant to say the Rams are bad or anything because obviously they are one of the elite teams in the NFL, but now that there are only four clubs left in the playoffs, it’s nitpicking season and the Rams have just been a tick off over their recent run of games in a way that Seattle, especially on defense, hasn’t. The Rams are 2-0 in the postseason with road wins over the Panthers and Bears, but neither victory has felt like the team that shredded the NFL all season.
The Rams have had two recent problems that have plagued them, both of which they’re just going to have to power through. First, Stafford has been getting dinged up throughout the course of these games and it affects his accuracy as the game goes on. He’s still capable of making big-time throws, but the down-to-down consistency hasn’t been there like it was for the majority of the regular season. There’s enough around Stafford to keep the Rams afloat during these ruts until he can get back into form with a few throws, but that’s going to be a tough strategy to be forced into against Seattle, who has a much tougher defense than Carolina or Chicago.
Second is the fact that their defense seems to have hit the limit on what is possible given their current personnel. Chris Shula has done a great job coordinating this unit, but the Rams haven’t been as great as they were over the first half of the season. Since Week 10, including the playoffs, the Rams’ defense ranks 19th in both yards per drive (33.1) and points per drive allowed (2.1) after ranking ninth (29.6) and second (1.5) in those respective stats over the first nine weeks of the season. Chicago averaged nearly 40 yards per drive in the divisional round, but hurt themselves too many times to capitalize. It’s a defense that’s meticulously coordinated and reliant on splash plays from the defensive line to hide some of its warts.
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Building a defensive backfield out of non-priority draft picks and mid-tier free agents has slowly become an issue for the Rams. This is where the years of trading away first-round draft picks, which was objectively worth it considering they won the Super Bowl, is hurting them. Luckily, for those linebackers and defensive backs, the Rams are able to get an immense amount of pressure on the quarterback ranking second in pressure rate (42.9%) since Week 10, despite their low sack rate (5.4%, 25th). The Rams’ run defense is sound, but has also become susceptible to big plays, ranking fifth in designed rushing success rate (35.7%), 17th in expected points added per designed rush (-0.04) and 23rd in yards after contact per rush (3.2). Seattle’s rushing game took a big hit with the loss of running back Zach Charbonnet last weekend, but the big play ability of Kenneth Walker III is always lurking.
Seattle’s defense has gotten stronger recently, allowing just 19 points over its previous three games, two of which came against a red-hot 49ers offense. The Seahawks rank No. 1 or No. 2 in so many defensive efficiency categories it’d be too time-consuming to list them all, but that’s not even necessary. Just turn on the tape from last weekend and witness the monstrosity (complimentary) that Mike Macdonald has built in Seattle.
The Rams better tap back into their A-game or else Seattle might wind up shoving them in a locker repeatedly.
C.J. Stroud is at an inflection point
Yo. What in the world was that? C.J. Stroud had one of the worst playoff games in recorded history last weekend. He looked completely discombobulated and made some bizarre decisions with the football, leading to the Texans’ season-ending loss. Houston’s defense certainly did its job by forcing a three-and-out or better on nine of the 15 New England drives, but Stroud was so destructive that it didn’t matter. Houston appears to have no desire to move on from Stroud, which is reasonable, but it’s hard not to feel like Stroud is at an early inflection point with how he played over the Texans’ two postseason games.
Compared to his last two postseason appearances, this was a completely different story. In his previous four playoff games, Stroud completed 66% of his passes, averaged 8.5 yards per attempt and threw just one interception over the span of those four games. He threw five interceptions in this postseason alone, with four of them coming during his disaster of a performance against the Patriots. He was making absurdly poor throws, chaotic decisions as a ball-handler and generally could not seem to get into a groove at any point in the game. It was such a sharp drop-off from his regular season, where he posted a career high 61.1 mark in ESPN’s Quarterback Rating metric and ranked 11th in the league in QBR.
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Stroud hasn’t had a season that’s looked as clean as his rookie year in the two years since then, but he actually was playing some good football for the most part in tough situations. Factoring in his entire career, this playoff run, and more specifically the Patriots game, is way out of line from how he usually plays. However, it’s hard to erase the images of him flailing out of control to knock the Texans out of the playoffs after their defense played such a strong game. In the four drives immediately following a Texans turnover, their defense held New England to 17 yards on 11 plays, including a fumble to get the ball back, which was rewarded with only a field goal.
The Texans did give up three touchdown drives, but they certainly stopped the Patriots enough times to be rewarded on the back end. Stroud just wasn’t any good. The glass-half-full view is that, when compared to the totality of his résumé, this is an extreme outlier. However, it’s hard to rinse how awful those turnovers were and how rapidly they seemed to escalate. Stroud definitely needs a reset after that performance, but he’s still young and there’s plenty of time and ability to bounce back in a big way.
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For now, he’s going to have to be the subject of debate shows for an offseason. That comes with the territory of being a player who has expectations due to previous success. In a way, the (sometimes outlandish) criticism is a nod to the idea that he’s better than this, but Stroud still needs to get over whatever panicked feelings he was having during the playoff games. He’s just better than that. An offseason reset seems like it would do him a world of good.