The divisional round of the 2020 NFL playoffs was dramatic. The past two regular-season MVPs were both forced out of their respective games with concussions. One of the greatest quarterbacks in league history threw what was likely his final pass as a pro, sealing his team's fate with an interception in the process. Another coach seemed to indicate that his highly paid quarterback wasn't guaranteed a starting job in 2021. You don't even need to look past the most important position in sports to see how stressful this weekend was for the eight playoff teams.
The playoffs are down to four teams now, and each of the teams that finished its season with losses this weekend will be spending the next few days thinking about its mistakes. No team is perfect, but those teams each had a problem spot or structural issue the opposition was able to exploit.
Let's detail what went wrong for those four teams and how they'll try to address those concerns. We'll start with Sunday night's game and work our way backward:
Jump to a losing team:
BAL | CLE | LAR | NO
New Orleans Saints
Flaw: Inability to make plays downfield
The Buccaneers came into Sunday's game against the Saints with a goal and a game plan. The goal was to flip the turnover margin after posting a minus-4 mark across two regular-season losses to New Orleans. One of the ways they were hoping to get there was by daring Drew Brees and his receivers to get past them for big plays.
As you know, the Bucs achieved their goal. Tom Brady & Co. didn't turn the ball over and forced four giveaways, including three Brees interceptions vs. Brees. Tampa turned its first three takeaways into touchdowns and used the fourth to run out the clock. Teams that lose the turnover battle by at least four in the playoffs are now 1-59, including a Saints team that turned it over just 10 times in the 2020 regular season.
Todd Bowles' defensive game plan clearly worked. A Bucs team that played man coverage just 23.1% of the time against Washington in the wild-card round loaded up and played man on 65.7% of the defensive snaps Sunday, its highest man coverage rate of the season. In the past, the Saints would have used Michael Thomas' size and strength to create easy targets for Brees and relied on the veteran to hit guys like Ted Ginn Jr. or Tre'Quan Smith for big plays downfield. Brees wasn't a frequent deep passer late in his career, but coach Sean Payton trusted him to scare teams by hitting the occasional deep pass when it was there.
On Sunday, though, the Saints just didn't have anyone who could beat man coverage and win downfield. Thomas was locked up by Carlton Davis and other corners and produced the first catchless game of his NFL career. Emmanuel Sanders and Jared Cook aren't speed threats anymore. Deonte Harris went down with a neck injury after two early punt returns and never returned. Smith actually had a huge game; his four targets produced a 13-yard completion, a 16-yard touchdown on a fade over backup corner Ross Cockrell, a 20-yard pass interference penalty and a 56-yard touchdown on a trick play Payton stole from the Bears after they ran it for a near-touchdown against the Saints last week. That last pass came from Jameis Winston, his only pass attempt of the game.
The Saints were reliant on Payton to try to create man-coverage beaters with pick plays and route combinations. He wasn't able to do it frequently enough to keep the offense going. Alvin Kamara ran the ball well, but the Bucs did a great job of stopping screens and limited the star back to three catches on six targets for 20 yards. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, just 26.5% of Brees' passes Sunday went to open receivers, the lowest rate for any quarterback in the divisional round and the second-lowest mark we've seen in any of his starts over the past five seasons.
So much of this, though, comes down to the fact that Brees just wasn't able to make the Bucs pay with big plays downfield. During the regular season, just 4.6% of his pass attempts traveled 20 or more yards in the air, down from 10.2% in 2018 and 7.4% in 2019. This was the lowest 20-plus air yard rate we've seen for any starting quarterback in football over the past decade, if not longer.
In the postseason, his 20-plus air yard rate fell to 1.4%, with a lone 38-yard completion to Thomas against the Bears as his only foray downfield. Payton even brought in Taysom Hill for a deep attempt against Chicago last week, only for the hybrid quarterback to lose the ball under pressure. When I wrote about Brees' struggles throwing early in the season, I mentioned that the air yards weren't a big deal as long as he remained ruthlessly efficient working underneath. He played like nobody else in football, but he made it work by completing passes and avoiding turnovers at a historic rate.
On Sunday, he did neither. Brees completed just 55.8% of his passes, with his completion percentage coming in 10.8% below the NFL Next Gen Stats expectation, the lowest mark of the weekend. His first interception was the sort of decision he might have made back in 2003, when he was once benched for a 41-year-old Doug Flutie: a panicked toss under pressure to a covered Kamara. Brees was then on the wrong page with Kamara on what could have been a long touchdown on the second interception, with Kamara continuing his seam route upfield when Brees expected (and possibly needed) his running back to stop. Cook, who fumbled away a completion while the Saints were trying to go up two scores, later had a pass bounce off his hands for a third interception on what was likely his quarterback's final pass attempt in the NFL.
The legendary quarterback finished the day averaging just 0.6 adjusted yards per attempt, making this his worst start since that 2003 game in which he threw an interception to Bears rookie cornerback Charles Tillman before being benched for Flutie. So much has happened over the ensuing 17 years, but the 42-year-old Brees' time has come. He was a liability for the Saints in this game, and you have to wonder whether Payton would have benched his starter in the fourth quarter for Winston (or for Hill if the injured quarterback had been able to play) if this hadn't been Brees' final game.
What happens next for the Saints depends on all kinds of factors. Even if Brees retires, they will head into the offseason more than $80 million over the projected salary cap, which will lead them to make a number of roster moves. Hill is expected to take over as the starter, giving them a quarterback with the arm to throw downfield. Thomas, arguably the best receiver in football heading into 2020, should be healthy after resting his ankle during the offseason. Smith will be playing for a contract. New Orleans should solve this problem, but the retirement of its legendary quarterback could open up even bigger issues.
Cleveland Browns
Flaw: The middle of the field on defense
On every level, this season was a huge victory for the Browns. As heartbreaking as Sunday's 22-17 loss to the Chiefs might have been, if you had told Cleveland fans before the year that their season would come down to a fourth down in the divisional round of the playoffs against the Chiefs, they would have been delighted. Quarterback Baker Mayfield is back on track. The Browns appear to have found their coach in Kevin Stefanski. There's a lot to like about them moving forward.
What they'll need to do this offseason, though, is work on the middle of their defense. Their biggest weakness came at the second and third levels, and while injuries are partly to blame, these are positions Cleveland didn't invest in all that much heading into the year. In so many of Sunday's key plays, the Chiefs were able to exploit the weakest spots of Cleveland's defense.
Start with linebacker. The only guy who played more than 50% of the defensive snaps there Sunday for the Browns was B.J. Goodson, who spent 2019 as a backup in Green Bay. He is a tough player and was recovering from both COVID-19 and a sprained AC joint in his shoulder, but even a healthy Goodson isn't an explosive athlete, and it was clear that the Chiefs wanted to attack his lateral mobility and ability to get around trash on key downs Sunday afternoon.
The first touchdown came on a speed option with Patrick Mahomes, who would have been reading Goodson before deciding whether to pitch. As it was, Goodson was unable to get through blocks and ever threaten Mahomes, allowing him to walk into the end zone for the opening touchdown.
Darrel Williams' two biggest first-down conversions also attacked Goodson laterally. On fourth-and-inches, the Chiefs pitched the ball to Williams, who ran past Adrian Clayborn. Goodson would have been the only other defender with a chance at getting into the backfield to tackle Williams, but he was sealed off by a second block from Eric Fisher, with Williams turning upfield for 12 yards.
Later, on third-and-4 with 3:21 to go, the Chiefs isolated Goodson in coverage against Williams by lining up Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce to the right side of the field, away from their primary back. Goodson stopped his feet briefly, and Williams was able to beat the linebacker to the edge on a swing pass for a critical first down. He also had a 16-yard run earlier in the game in which Goodson was easily blocked out of the play.
Cleveland's other linebackers didn't do much better. The Chiefs repeatedly exploited the middle of the field with route combinations designed to give Mahomes (and later Chad Henne) easy completions between or against overmatched linebackers. The Browns came into the game as one of the worst teams in the league in terms of allowing passes to tight ends, so it was no surprise that Kelce had a huge game. His early touchdown came isolated against corner Denzel Ward in coverage, but he was able to shake linebackers Sione Takitaki and Malcolm Smith for big gains as the day went along. Kelce finished the day with eight catches for 109 yards and would have had more if Mahomes hadn't left with a concussion.
The safeties didn't do much better. Andrew Sendejo has been a cause célèbre for Browns fans all season, and Williams was able to manipulate him or break through his tackle attempts for extra yardage on two long runs. Karl Joseph wasn't able to tackle Kelce inside the 5 on his touchdown catch. Ronnie Harrison wasn't able to elude a Kelce block on the long Mecole Hardman tap pass, adding 10 extra yards onto a 42-yard play.
The biggest offseason project for the Browns will be fixing their holes up the middle. Goodson, Joseph, Sendejo and Smith were on one-year deals and might not return. At safety, Cleveland will bring back Harrison, who earned more playing time after being acquired from the Jaguars for a fifth-round pick, and should get to see the first pro snaps from second-round pick Grant Delpit, who missed his entire rookie season with a torn Achilles. Draftees Takitaki and Jacob Phillips, both former third-round picks, will have to emerge as regular contributors. The Browns might also address the positions with more significant investments in free agency. Given how close this game ended up being, they could very well have been headed to the AFC Championship Game if they had been slightly better up the middle Sunday.
Baltimore Ravens
Flaw: No top-tier, No. 1 receiver
If you watched Saturday's 17-3 loss to the Bills, you saw a lot of Lamar Jackson bouncing around in the pocket waiting for a receiver to get open. Too often, it didn't happen within the first three or four seconds. In passing situations, with the Bills playing heavy zone coverage, Jackson typically had to scramble and wait for the defense to break down before making a play out of structure. The Bills have a solid defense, but they finished the season 12th in pass defense DVOA and were one week removed from allowing Philip Rivers to post a 92.1 QBR in the wild-card round.
Jackson is about as far from Rivers as possible in terms of style, and he's never going to be the most accurate passer, but the idea that he's a gimmick quarterback or can't operate in an NFL-caliber passing scheme is false. He ran a pro-style offense under Bobby Petrino at Louisville and is comfortable working out of the pocket. He's probably never going to be a guy who stands under center and works five- and seven-step drops, but what he offers as a runner and playmaker more than makes up for those concerns. The Ravens are going to sign Jackson to a massive extension in the coming months. He's not going anywhere.
Offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who built the running game that helped propel Jackson to league MVP last season, has also come in for criticism. It's fair to suggest that his passing attack isn't particularly complex or doesn't hold all the answers it should. Jackson's ability as a runner often dictates that teams bring an eighth defender into the box, and it forces them to play either Cover 0 (man across the board with no safety help) or with a single-high safety (either Cover 1 or Cover 3). Many of Roman's core passing concepts are designed to beat single-high safety looks, but when teams can play Cover 2 or Cover 4 in obvious passing situations, the Ravens aren't always able to find solutions.
John Harbaugh could get rid of Roman, but the Ravens have built this entire offense around his rushing attack. After running mostly duo, power and gap-heavy concepts a year ago, Roman helped them stay ahead of the curve this year by integrating more counter, bash and wind-back run concepts into the attack. At the end of the day, the run is what they're going to continue to do best. Adding a passing game coordinator could help Roman find more creative solutions, but as Geoff Schwartz noted on Twitter, the problem is simply having enough time to install a run-heavy offense with complex passing concepts. Baltimore is hoping to have more practice time this coming year, but it still won't have enough time to do everything it wants to on offense.
So if the Ravens aren't going to change their quarterback, and they aren't likely to change their coaching staff or scheme dramatically, we're left with looking at the receivers. Consider what Jackson has to work with in his passing game versus the league's other top quarterbacks:
There are three players I didn't include in that list. Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger doesn't have a No. 1 star, but in Diontae Johnson, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Chase Claypool, he has three impressive young receivers. Houston's Deshaun Watson lost DeAndre Hopkins this year, and while he developed a better connection with Will Fuller, he now may be on his way out. Philadelphia's Carson Wentz, who didn't play like one of the top quarterbacks in football this season but would have been on most lists like this a year ago, is also unhappy and plans to seek a trade.
Jackson has Marquise Brown and Mark Andrews. Brown, a first-round pick in 2019, might be Baltimore's version of Tyreek Hill in a perfect world, but he hasn't improved beyond the first stage of Hill to evolve into a more complete receiver, though his numbers notably improved in December and January. Andrews' role in the offense grew this season, but his numbers fell off and drops have been an issue. Baltimore's pass-catchers dropped 4.8% of Jackson's passes this season, the third-highest rate for any quarterback.
The Ravens could have looked at the other side of the field Saturday to see what adding a No. 1 receiver does to a passing game. Josh Allen made huge strides independent of the players around him, but it's also clear Stefon Diggs has helped him grow. Diggs has given Allen a receiver he can trust to win 50-50 balls, and in those few times when Allen has struggled, Diggs has been the guy he has turned to to get the offense going. The Ravens might wish they had been the ones who gave up a first-round pick to acquire Diggs this past offseason.
The Ravens should have plenty of options to add a difference-maker. This could be one of the most significant crops of wide receivers available in free agency in recent memory. While some of these players will end up getting re-signed or retained via the franchise tag, the wideouts set to hit the market include Allen Robinson, Kenny Golladay, Chris Godwin, Smith-Schuster and Fuller. That's without considering an entire second tier of veterans such as A.J. Green, Antonio Brown, Sammy Watkins and T.Y. Hilton, or 2020 breakout players Corey Davis and Nelson Agholor. The Ravens should have the ability to upgrade on Willie Snead in their starting lineup this offseason.
The only problem is that the other parts of that passing game are about to get much more expensive. Jackson will be eligible for a massive extension this offseason, and the 24-year-old is expected to follow in the footsteps of Wentz, Watson and Jared Goff in signing an extension after his third season. Jackson made $1.3 million last season; he's likely to make much more than the $1.7 million base salary he's ticketed for in 2021. Likewise, Andrews is due for an extension and a big raise as the third-rounder enters the final year of his rookie deal.
The Ravens are projected to have $23.6 million in cap space, but much of that is likely to go to raises for Jackson and Andrews. Their passing attack is already about to get much more expensive, but they might need to go out of their way and spend even more to bring in the sort of receiver who can be a difference-maker for Jackson.
Los Angeles Rams
Flaw: Top-heavy construction
Several teams choose to build their roster around what might bluntly be called a stars-and-scrubs approach, but the Rams could be the most top-heavy team in football. Twenty-four players in the league have cap hits of $20 million or more. The Rams are responsible for three of them. Quarterback Jared Goff's $28.8 million is the third-largest figure in all of football, while defensive tackle Aaron Donald's $25 million figure is the third largest for any defender in the league. The other $20 million man is wide receiver Brandin Cooks, who left $21.8 million in dead money on L.A.'s cap when the Rams traded him this offseason. The team also cut Todd Gurley, a move that saved it money but left it with $9.3 million in dead money on its cap this season and $8.4 million more in 2021.
More than the money, though, is how much the Rams have used their draft picks to acquire those stars. General manager Les Snead sent two first-, second- and third-round picks to the Titans to move up and draft Goff. Another first-rounder went to the Patriots for Cooks. They sent second- and fourth-round picks to the Chiefs for star corner Marcus Peters (and a sixth-rounder), but after Peters failed to impress, they then dumped him off to the Ravens and sent two first-rounders to the Jaguars for Jalen Ramsey.
In making those trades, while the Rams are acquiring players they expect to be superstars entering or in the prime of their careers, they're incurring a significant opportunity cost. They are trading for the right to pay those players market value and giving up their best path to finding similarly talented players on rookie deals below their market value.
This extremely top-heavy model relies on the guys at the top of your roster to be healthy, productive game-changers. It hasn't done well in 2020. The Cowboys were torn apart by injuries to their stars, and the Texans didn't have enough around the guys they built around to win games. The Rams made it to the postseason, but their 32-18 loss to the Packers was an example of how difficult it can be to sustain this model through a Super Bowl run.
So many of the Rams' stars were either injured, limited or not relevant Saturday. Cooks and Gurley, obviously, are no longer on the roster. Receiver Cooper Kupp was out with a knee injury. Donald played through a painful rib injury, was on the field for only 56% of the defensive snaps and wasn't anything close to his usual self. Goff played well while battling a broken thumb, but 18 of his 27 passes were within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Left tackle Andrew Whitworth was in only his second week back after dealing with a torn MCL and PCL damage in his knee. Ramsey was active, but with the Rams going with a zone-heavy approach on defense, he didn't get many snaps against Packers wideout Davante Adams.
Rams fans might rightfully say that this philosophy has been relatively successful during the Sean McVay era. Los Angeles has followed a run of 13 years without a winning season with four consecutive winning campaigns. It has made three trips to the playoffs in McVay's four years at the helm and made it to a Super Bowl, where it narrowly lost to the Patriots. There's nothing wrong with losing to the Packers, and despite their injuries, the Rams were within one score in the fourth quarter.
At the same time, of course, they only made it to that Super Bowl after a spectacularly bad no-call against the Saints in the NFC Championship Game. They went 13-3 in 2018, but they've been 19-13 over the ensuing two years, which isn't quite as impressive. More importantly, they're feeling the impact of those missing draft picks, as players who might have emerged as valuable, low-cost contributors aren't on their roster.
Those first-round picks aren't guarantees, but as we can see with this philosophy, neither are the players they have built around. They ate dead money to get out of the Cooks and Gurley deals this offseason, gave up on Peters just before he reemerged as a star corner in Baltimore and didn't get a productive season out of the third-most-expensive player on their active roster, tight end Tyler Higbee. The Rams were unlucky to have Goff and Donald get hurt, but we saw the Eagles win a Super Bowl in the 2017 season without their star quarterback (Carson Wentz) and Hall of Fame left tackle (Jason Peters).
That was with a quarterback on a rookie deal, and the Rams don't have one of those anymore. Goff wasn't able to lead the Rams to a single touchdown in the loss to the Patriots, and while he signed a four-year, $134 million extension before the 2019 season, the first overall pick of 2016 ranks 25th out of 29 passers in QBR over the past two years. He has been flummoxed by pressure and looks to be a quarterback elevated by his scheme as opposed to a transcendent passer.
The organization has consistently backed Goff, but McVay didn't seem quite as enthralled with his quarterback by the end of 2020. Goff struggled in losses to the Jets and Seahawks even before suffering the thumb injury. He played about as well as could have been hoped in the Packers loss, but McVay's comments after the game were curious, as he declared that Goff is their quarterback "right now."
McVay followed up on Sunday by suggesting that every position on the roster is under evaluation. That could be coachspeak, but it could also be a sign that the Rams are seriously reevaluating whether their roster construction -- and their quarterback -- need to be reviewed.
My guess is that Goff will be the 2021 starter, but the Rams have some flexibility if they can find a trade partner. Los Angeles would save $12.4 million on its cap next year if it dealt Goff before June 1. It seems more likely that 2021 will be a make-or-break year for the team with its starting quarterback.
A few years ago, I wrote about the possibility that a team might consider cycling through quarterbacks on rookie deals and use the savings to keep the rest of the roster strong. The Rams have tried to have their cake and eat it by paying Goff and several stars around him. The resulting roster might not be good enough to win a Super Bowl.