With five of the six NFL wild-card games in the books, let's break down one big question from the losing teams that popped up during or after their defeats, and what each team might do to solve those concerns moving forward.
Most of these games didn't come down to one play or one sequence, which means that correcting a single thing wouldn't have swung a winner into a loser and vice versa. The big questions for these teams, however, all revolve around something that could help them make a deeper playoff run in 2025.
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I'll go chronologically from the games, which means this trip around the postseason starts in Houston. While the collapse of the Chargers wasn't as disastrous or obvious as it was two years ago, Saturday's loss felt a lot more like the old Chargers than the team that seemed to grow in mental toughness during Jim Harbaugh's first season at the helm. And that loss focused the attention on a player who hasn't quite lived up to the loftiest of expectation so far:
Jump to a team:
Broncos | Buccaneers
Chargers | Packers | Steelers
Chargers: Is this Justin Herbert's ceiling?
Wild-card weekend result: Lost 32-12 to the Texans
What seemed like a wildly successful season for the Chargers before Saturday quickly turned into the sort of existential crisis the franchise has been dealing with for years. Herbert became the first player in league history with 150 regular-season pass attempts to throw more interceptions in a playoff game than he did during the season, as the 26-year-old followed a three-interception regular season with a four-interception game against Houston.
Making this even more painful for the Chargers is that this game was there for the taking. They marched downfield with ease on the opening drive before getting stuffed on third-and-1 and kicking a field goal. The Texans turned the ball over on their first snap, but tight end Will Dissly dropped a potential second-and-19 conversion, and the Chargers settled for three more. They dropped a would-be interception from Houston QB C.J. Stroud on the next drive for what could have been another short field. And after managing to pick off Stroud in the second quarter for another possession in plus territory, Herbert threw the ball right back to Houston on the next snap. Stroud recovered a bouncing snap and hit Xavier Hutchinson on a third-and-16 for 34 yards to lead the Texans to their first points. While the Chargers had their chances in the second half, the spell they had on the Texans' offense mostly disappeared.
The Chargers should have been able to put the game away before Stroud saved the Texans. Los Angeles had seven possessions in the first half, two of which started in Houston territory. After the solid opening drive, the Chargers gained just 66 yards on the six subsequent possessions in the first half, scoring three points. Make the Texans one-dimensional with an early deficit and they collapse, as we saw in their losses to Vikings and Ravens.
Give a lot of credit to the Houston defense, which was fantastic after the opening drive outside of one 86-yard touchdown pass to Ladd McConkey. It did an excellent job against the run and smartly attacked the interior of the L.A. offensive line, both with Denico Autry and via twists from Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. The two star edge rushers combined for nine quick QB pressures, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, which is an otherworldly total given that the Chargers dropped back 36 times.
And yet, so much of this has to fall on Herbert. Throwing four interceptions against any defense is bad, and though one of those interceptions was on a drop by Dissly, his other picks were his own doing. The first was simply an unacceptable decision, an attempt to throw from the numbers on the right side of the field to the left sideline on a jump ball for Quentin Johnston. It was reminiscent of Josh Allen, then a second-year QB, attempting to throw a go-ball to his fullback on this same field in the wild-card round five years ago. A receiver having a step on his defender doesn't mean much when it's going to take two full seconds for the ball to arrive.
The second was even worse, a pick-six on a play in which Herbert double-clutched on a hitch route and then, in a crowded pocket, simply threw too high to an open McConkey. Safety Eric Murray accepted the gift and returned it for an easy touchdown. Herbert started the game 1-of-11 for 17 yards with two interceptions against pressure before eventually hitting McConkey on a desperate 50-50 ball for the Chargers' lone offensive touchdown. Again, 1-of-11 with two picks against pressure is bad against any caliber of defense.
There were other issues. Herbert was late at times, notably on an out to McConkey that gave Derek Stingley Jr. time to break up the pass. Herbert didn't do a great job of managing pressure and took a brutal hit on a first-down sack by Anderson. The scrambling we saw from Herbert during the season never appeared on Saturday, as he failed to record a single carry. (Contrast that to Stroud, who ran for 44 yards.) Late in the game, the Chargers attempted to hit DJ Chark on a double-move past Stingley, but Herbert didn't get enough on his throw, and the star cornerback made the last in a series of big plays to grab Houston's fourth pick.
Herbert's disappointing day should call attention to his performance this season, which was more solid than great. He ranked 18th in first-down rate and 24th in success rate as a passer. Yes, he had a spectacular interception rate, but that was partially offset by a spike in his sack rate, which jumped to a career-high 8%. Some of that is the interior of the offensive line struggling, but he has two excellent tackles and ran his way into some sacks, including the one that led to his early-season ankle injury.
Interception totals are subject to more variance from year to year than just about any other quarterback metric, and throwing three picks in a full campaign is always going to have a significant dollop of luck involved. Facing the league's easiest schedule, Herbert finished 11th in QBR, which is fine, but that's two spots below Arizona's Kyler Murray.
It takes about 10 seconds of watching Herbert to know he's capable of being a transcendent player. Getting him to be that player every week is tougher. Under Harbaugh and new offensive coordinator Greg Roman, the plan was unsurprisingly to lean more heavily into the run, suggesting that a functional run game would help unlock Herbert.
Well, we're still waiting to find out, because the Chargers weren't good running the football. They ranked 23rd in yards per carry (4.1) and 24th in success rate on carries by their running backs. After J.K. Dobbins topped 130 yards in both Weeks 1 and 2, no L.A. back topped 100 yards in a single game the rest of the way. The Chargers went relatively cheap at the position, but they weren't creating big opportunities, either. The scheme generated 3.9 expected yards per carry on their rush attempts by backs, which also ranked 24th. If Roman is running an offense and the team can't run the ball, the wrong guy might be in charge. Roman's passing attack has never been the most spectacular or diverse, and it's telling that Lamar Jackson has grown significantly as a passer in Baltimore since Roman was replaced by Todd Monken in 2023.
Throughout this game, the Chargers didn't have great answers for what the Texans were doing. They weren't able to handle the defensive line games up front. Their execution wasn't good enough across the board, and they funneled too many targets toward Stingley. The ultimate example was the fourth-and-2 play they ran in the third quarter, when McConkey was doubled and Herbert had to go to Johnston, who was one-on-one against Stingley. Johnston somehow ran his route short of the sticks, and after he was tackled by Stingley for a 1-yard gain, his catch attempt was ruled incomplete on review.
This team has to come back with more around Herbert in 2025. With nearly $77 million in cap space, the Chargers have room to work with, and McConkey established himself as a star to build around. This offense was forced to throw too many targets to Johnston and Dissly, who struggled to catch the ball. There's nothing wrong with using bigger personnel or relying on running the rock, but offenses have to be effective using those concepts. Again, too much of the burden fell on Herbert in a key game. And as was the case in the loss to the Jaguars two years ago, Herbert was found wanting. We know what he's capable of, but five years into his career, we're still waiting for the circumstances to be right around him to truly unlock his potential.
Steelers: Should this be it for Mike Tomlin?
Wild-card weekend result: Lost 28-14 to the Ravens
A lot can change in five weeks, huh? After beating the Bengals and Browns in early December, the Steelers were 10-3. ESPN's Football Power Index gave them just under an 80% chance of winning the AFC North, which would have given them a home playoff game in front of fans for the first time since the 2017 postseason (their most recent home playoff game, period, happened during the pandemic in the 2020 season). At 10-3, Tomlin was a realistic candidate for Coach of the Year.
Instead, five weeks later, there are realistic conversations about whether Tomlin can take this version of the Steelers any further. They lost their final five games, including Saturday's 28-14 manhandling. The loss marked Tomlin's sixth consecutive playoff defeat, with those losses coming by an average of nearly 14 points per game. Eighteen teams have won a playoff game over the past eight seasons. Until now, Pittsburgh hadn't gone eight consecutive seasons without winning at least one playoff game since 1971.
And so, seemingly, the Steelers are stuck in football purgatory. Tomlin is good enough to keep them competitive and post a .500 or better record every season, but over nearly a decade of football, he has been unable to take them any further. Depending on how you want to look at it, he overachieved with a roster that might not be playoff-caliber or underachieved with a perennial playoff contender. Steelers fans seem to spend most of the season believing the former and come away from the playoffs feeling the latter.
So, is Tomlin overachieving or underachieving? I'd argue the former. He is making this roster better. We've seen star front-seven defenders such as T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward be coached by him, but consider how players who have been brought in by the Steelers have performed relative to their performances elsewhere. Minkah Fitzpatrick had been benched by the Dolphins as a slot corner, and Tomlin & Co. moved him to free safety, where he has been a perennial Pro Bowler. Quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Justin Fields were both better in Pittsburgh in 2024 than they were for other teams in 2023. Players such as wideout Mike Williams and cornerback Donte Jackson, unwanted by their former clubs, played meaningful roles for Pittsburgh this season.
And on the flip side, how many players have left the Steelers over the past five years and thrived elsewhere? The biggest free agent departures have been edge rusher Bud Dupree, offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster and cornerback Cameron Sutton. None of those players has made the impact elsewhere that he made in Pittsburgh. The same was true for running back Le'Veon Bell and offensive lineman Chris Hubbard. Diontae Johnson and Antonio Brown, two mercurial wide receivers traded away by Pittsburgh, barely registered after leaving the franchise. With running back James Conner as a notable exception, Tomlin seems to get more out of his players than their new teams.
Could Tomlin be overworking a veteran team, leading to late-season struggles? Maybe. Since this playoff win drought started in 2017, the Steelers are 56-29-2 (.655) in September, October and November, but that drops to 24-21 (.533) in December and January. Throw in the playoff losses and they are a sub-.500 team once the calendar hits Dec. 1. I thought that might be a product of a more difficult schedule, but they have actually played playoff qualifiers slightly more often over the first three months of the season (40.9%) than the final two (37.8%)
There's not one factor driving those declines. In 2018, the Steelers played three 12-plus win teams down the stretch and lost two of the three, although they did beat the eventual Super Bowl champion Patriots. In 2019, an offense without injured quarterback Ben Roethlisberger turned the ball over nine times during the final three games of the season, all losses. The 2020 team started 11-0 before losing four of its final five, with a defense that had forced 21 turnovers through that 11-game win streak generating four over its final six games, including the playoff loss to the Browns.
The late-season schneid hasn't always been a thing, either. The 2021 team was 5-5-1 before winning four of its final six games to make it to the playoffs. The 2022 team started 2-6 without Watt, then went 7-2 after he returned from injury. The 2023 team lost three straight in December, then won its final three games to ensure a playoff spot.
The five-game losing streak facing these Steelers seems like a greatest hits collection. The defense stopped forcing takeaways; it forced 28 through its first 13 games but then added just five over those five losses. And, perhaps more importantly, the competition got much stiffer. The teams the Steelers played over the final month won an average of 12.4 games this season. The ones they played during the 10-3 start won an average of 7.3 games. Pittsburgh beat the Broncos, Chargers and Ravens earlier this season, so it had some success against playoff teams, but the schedule got much tougher late.
The Steelers have spectacularly outplayed their point differential at times over the past few seasons and won a staggeringly high rate of their close games, although they went 4-4 in games decided by seven or fewer points in 2024. There have been truly elite quarterbacks who have put together long stretches of winning a high percentage of their one-score games, but it's safe to say Pittsburgh is not benefiting from elite quarterback play. (It wasn't that team when Roethlisberger was at his peak, either.)
Over the past five years, 70 teams have made it to the postseason. Among those qualifiers, Tomlin's Steelers teams have ranked 58th, 64th, 67th and 68th in QBR. Take the bottom 15 teams from that list, and there aren't many victories: Just three of those 15 have won even one playoff game, including the Texans on Saturday. The Steelers have gone down by significant margins in each of those playoff losses, which isn't making Tomlin's case stronger, but I'm not sure they should have expected much from these appearances.
Tomlin bears ultimate responsibility for that quarterback play, and while it has been convenient to blame offensive coordinators for the problems, Tomlin is hiring those guys, too. It might seem as if Arthur Smith has done better than Matt Canada and many of his predecessors, but this Pittsburgh offense ranked 25th in the league in EPA per play during the regular season, exactly where it ranked a year ago and down from 18th in 2022. In 2021, Roethlisberger's final season with the team, the Steelers were ... 25th by the same metric.
The consistent complaint about the Steelers going back to the end of the Bruce Arians era in 2011 is that they don't run the ball enough, which is a product both of the team's glory days under Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher (when teams across the league ran the ball at a much higher rate), the weather in Pittsburgh (run friendly, of course), and the legendary consistency of their defense (getting them out to leads in so many games over the years that they spent much of the second halves chewing up clock on the ground).
It must have been painful, then, to see the Ravens across the field running with glee. Derrick Henry couldn't help but giggle as he ran untouched for a 44-yard touchdown in the third quarter. Baltimore finished 1 yard short of a 300-yard day on the ground, marking the most rushing yards the Steelers' defense had allowed in a single game in more than 49 years. To put that into context, the lead back on the other side of the field that day was O.J. Simpson.
There's one big difference between the Ravens and the Steelers: One team added its quarterback of the future before it needed to do so. Baltimore still had Joe Flacco under contract when it traded up for the final pick of the first round in 2018 and drafted Jackson. The rookie saved the Ravens' 2018 season after a 4-5 start when Flacco was injured and there were grumblings about coach John Harbaugh's job, and he has been spectacular when healthy from that point forward. The Ravens got their guy before they needed their guy.
The Steelers weren't proactive in replacing Roethlisberger. They used a fourth-round pick on Joshua Dobbs (2017) and a third-rounder on Mason Rudolph (2018), but quarterbacks taken in those ranges rarely turn into starters. When a 37-year-old Roethlisberger went down with an elbow injury in 2019, Pittsburgh traded its first-round pick to the Dolphins for Fitzpatrick, a move that helped make the team better but also cut off its most obvious path toward adding a new quarterback.
Since then, the Steelers have failed to find a solution. Roethlisberger threw change-ups for two years before retiring. They then used a 2022 first-round selection on Kenny Pickett, whose status as a local product made him a better story than prospect. The team gave up on Pickett after 24 starts, trading him to the Eagles last offseason. Recent moves for Mitchell Trubisky, Fields and Wilson haven't delivered the same sort of impact Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold have provided their new clubs this season.
Nothing is going to change for the Steelers until they get the quarterback spot right, and waiting for Roethlisberger to retire before seriously addressing the issue has left them in this purgatory. Tomlin obviously has input into that process, but they are supposed to be the league's model franchise when it comes to drafting players, a run that stretches long before Tomlin's arrival.
And while the Steelers have hit on cornerback Joey Porter Jr. and center Zach Frazier in recent years, their first-round picks have been a mess. After landing Watt in 2017, they went five years without drafting a difference-maker in Round 1, a run that stretches across the end of Kevin Tolbert's run as general manager through the beginning of the Omar Khan era. Right tackle Broderick Jones, the Steelers' first-rounder in 2023, hasn't been great, and 2024 first-round lineman Troy Fautanu missed most of his rookie season because of a dislocated kneecap.
Steelers first-rounders, 2018-22:
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) March 15, 2024
2018: Terrell Edmunds (fifth year option declined)
2019: Devin Bush (fifth year option declined)
2020: traded for Minkah Fitzpatrick
2021: Najee Harris (likely fifth year option decline coming)
2022: Kenny Pickett (traded after two years) https://t.co/6K5z6SkZeS
Once a franchise that almost never dipped into free agency, the Steelers have been far more aggressive on the open market, in part because they haven't drafted well. When they beat the Chiefs for their most recent postseason win in 2016, 20 of their 22 starters were drafted by or began their career in Pittsburgh. That number was down to 13 Saturday. Those aren't filler players, either; in addition to Wilson being the quarterback, six of the Steelers' 10 largest cap figures currently belong to players who were acquired via trades or free agency.
The Steelers have a philosophical question to ask themselves. What sort of team do they want to be, and can this roster-building model get them there? They might believe they're a quarterback away from being capable of making a deep playoff run, and I wouldn't argue. But the time to get that quarterback was five years ago, and the last-second moves they have done have been the football equivalent of getting socks for Christmas.
Something has to change, but should that be a big change or a small one? Squeezing something more out of this team might be winning on the margins. Maybe the Steelers actually commit to a more modern and consistent approach toward fourth-down decision-making. They ranked 28th in the rate at which they went for it on fourth down this season, per the FTN Football Almanac, and punted twice on fourth-and-short as huge underdogs Saturday. Maybe they could lean into the quarterback run game if they land the right option this offseason. One extra win might be the difference between hosting a playoff game and playing one on the road against a division winner, and that could break the streak.
In terms of big-picture changes, though, the Steelers might not have many levers to pull. Khan was just installed as general manager in 2022, and this isn't the sort of franchise to make sudden firings in key roles. Pittsburgh isn't committed to a quarterback. It's not about to trade Watt or Fitzpatrick, and Heyward is 36 years old. Even if it wanted to recalibrate and lean more heavily into the draft, that process would take years to play out.
The only move the Steelers really have to shake things up could be a coaching change. There would likely be a meaningful trade market for Tomlin if they wanted to make a change. Rumors of a potential coach trade are usually a product of agents getting involved and trying to get their coach more leverage or power, but unless that would mean personnel power in Pittsburgh, it's unclear what Tomlin would try to gain, having just signed a new deal in June.
I suspect the Steelers will run things back for another year without major changes, in part because doing anything else would force the organization to face difficult truths about where it stands and how it's operating. There's nothing wrong with being a perennial 10-win team and making it to the postseason, but Steelers fans have five decades' worth of reasons to expect more. If whatever percentage of the fan base gets its wish and Tomlin goes, I believe it would be a decision they regret.
Broncos: What can they do to take the next step forward and compete with the Chiefs?
Wild-card weekend result: Lost 31-7 to the Bills
Although the Broncos were overmatched Sunday, their season has to be considered a success. They entered with modest expectations after moving on from Russell Wilson and starting over at quarterback with Bo Nix, but a dominant defense and solid work from their rookie passer was enough to get them to 10 wins and a playoff berth. After eight years out of the postseason, any Denver fan would have signed up for that sort of campaign.
The Broncos still finished five games back of the Chiefs, and even that was partly a product of blowing out Kansas City's backups in a 38-0 romp in Week 18. They came within a blocked field goal of beating the Chiefs in November, but Kansas City was a more consistent team throughout the season.
Patrick Mahomes & Co. have dominated the AFC West since the future Hall of Famer took over. The Chargers tied them and lost the division on tiebreakers since 2018, but since then, the closest any team has come to challenging for a division title was in 2021, when the Raiders finished 10-7, two games behind the 12-5 Chiefs. Like the Chargers, the Broncos want to close the gap. What do they need to do to get there? And how did those issues pop up in Sunday's loss to the Bills? Here are two things:
1. A more effective running game. While coach Sean Payton's teams are always going to throw the ball around when they have a quarterback he trusts, the best versions of his Saints teams were able to run efficiently. Reggie Bush and Alvin Kamara had several highlight-worthy plays, of course, but Pierre Thomas and Chris Ivory averaged more than 4.5 yards per carry during their time in New Orleans as a product of light boxes, well-timed playcalling and solid offensive line play.
The Broncos have invested heavily in their offensive line, and it showed this season. Despite cycling through a handful of different backs, however, the run game never coalesced. Collectively, Denver's running backs ranked 25th in yards per carry over expectation (YACOE). Nix was effective as a scrambler -- and some of the screens and swing passes he threw were RPOs, tacked onto run plays or extensions of the rushing attack -- but the Broncos weren't a great running team when he wasn't involved. On first-and-10, their backs ranked 30th in YACOE and had just one run of 10 or more yards in 205 tries.
Payton, who wrote "RUN IT!!!" on his play sheet last month as a reminder to himself, didn't get to run often in Buffalo. The Bills have a good run defense and ranked fifth in success rate on the ground during the regular season. Denver's three backs carried the ball 11 times for 28 yards. The Broncos weren't going to run once the game script got away from them in the fourth quarter, but when a team gets zero first downs from its running backs, it's not going to win many games.
The inability to run the ball reliably reared its head in key situations Sunday. The Broncos went 3-for-12 on third and fourth down, and they didn't feel comfortable handing the ball to a back once on those plays. Some of those were third-and-long, but Nix snuck through a fourth-and-1. On a key fourth-and-2, Payton went with play-action and dialed up a pass into the flat to Jaleel McLaughlin, which was stuffed by Cam Lewis for no gain. Denver didn't seem to have any faith it could run in key situations, perhaps with good reason.
With Javonte Williams entering free agency and losing his grip on the starting role as the season went along, the Broncos aren't attached to any running backs. McLaughlin seemed to gain Payton's trust, but he went over 10 carries only twice, including in that game against the Chiefs' JV squad. Audric Estime was inactive for the loss to the Bills. While Denver found success using Marvin Mims in the backfield, the receiver is more of a gadget player than someone who would expect to get regular carries between the tackles.
Before the season, I wondered whether Payton might look toward his former employers for help. Kamara was rumored to be a trade candidate and was approaching the end of his contract in New Orleans, while Taysom Hill was a potential cap casualty for the perpetually challenged Saints. Neither makes a ton of sense now; Kamara signed an extension in October, and Hill tore an ACL in December and might not be ready to open the 2025 season. The Broncos and Chargers would likely both be interested if top running back prospect Ashton Jeanty (Boise State) falls to the bottom of Round 1 in April's draft. I would suspect that Denver's leading rusher in 2025 isn't on its current roster.
2. Better coverage at linebacker and safety. The Broncos had one of the league's best defenses this season, but when teams had success, it was usually via targeting their linebackers and safeties in coverage. Denver ranked 25th in QBR allowed on throws between the numbers. It was 15th in QBR allowed when opposing quarterbacks used play-action, which places more stress on the linebackers and safeties than the traditional dropback game. That isn't terrible, but this is a defense that ranked among the best in football by many metrics.
For most of Sunday's game, the Bills thrived by attacking in those places. Josh Allen was 7-of-12 for 93 yards targeting the middle of the field. Buffalo didn't use play-action very often, but when Allen hit big throws early in the game, it was usually against the guys who weren't Pat Surtain. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, P.J. Locke allowed five catches on six targets for 104 yards and a touchdown as the nearest defender in coverage. Locke then overpursued as the deep safety on a long completion to Curtis Samuel, with Samuel's cutback taking both the safety and Surtain out of the play and producing a 55-yard score.
It wasn't Surtain's best game, either, as the Defensive Player of the Year candidate appeared to be in coverage on Samuel's long catch, allowed a slant in Cover 0 to Mack Hollins for 19 yards and appeared to get away with a holding penalty in the end zone on Dalton Kincaid. He's great enough most weeks to keep any concerns about penalties away, however.
The Broncos are a team that prefers to play man coverage, and Allen went 10-of-14 for 202 yards with two scores against man-to-man defense Sunday. Great quarterbacks are going to find the weaknesses in coverage units when they play a ton of man coverage, and the AFC's best teams have quarterbacks with deep, dispersed target shares at receiver.
The Broncos signed safety Brandon Jones last offseason, but I wonder whether they'll try to upgrade on Locke in 2025. Starting linebackers Cody Barton, who played for the injured Alex Singleton, allowed a passer rating near 100.0 this season. Singleton has never had great coverage metrics, and he's entering the final year of his deal. Justin Strnad spent the past two seasons on special teams before returning to the defense for 676 snaps in 2024, but the team might want to make a more significant investment at linebacker. I'd be surprised if Denver shelled out what former Payton draftee Zack Baun is going to make on the open market, but improving the defense up the middle would be a logical place for this organization to hit in the offseason.
Packers: Do they need to make a shift on offense away from the run?
Wild-card weekend result: Lost 22-10 to the Eagles
As much as I was optimistic about the Packers in my playoff preview, Sunday just wasn't their day. They fumbled away the opening kickoff to hand the Eagles a short field. They lost star guard Elgton Jenkins in the first quarter to a shoulder injury, and his replacements combined to commit three holding penalties. Already down Christian Watson (torn ACL) before the game, they lost wideouts Romeo Doubs and Jayden Reed to in-game injuries, leaving them with Malik Heath, Bo Melton and Dontayvion Wicks at the position. Brandon McManus missed a 38-yard field goal that might have given them life. Their defense did its best to slow down Saquon Barkley for most of the day, but with the Eagles picking off Jordan Love three times, they were just the better team.
The Packers should still feel optimistic about their future. The league's youngest team in each of the past two seasons is coming off back-to-back playoff trips. They're stuck in a tough division, but their defense took a major step forward in Jeff Hafley's first season as coordinator, and Love ranked second in the league in QBR over the final two months of the campaign. Love wasn't great against Philadelphia, but one disappointing performance without multiple starters for some or all of the game against a great defense shouldn't wipe away the positives from 2024.
If the Packers want to take a step forward in 2025, should they lean more into Love and less into their running game? They were the league's most run-heavy team on early downs in neutral game scripts by a significant margin this season. They threw the ball just 42.7% of the time in those spots. The 31st-ranked Eagles were as close to the Giants in 22nd as they were to the Packers in last.
That meant a lot of Josh Jacobs, and that seemed like a good idea scanning his raw numbers. The former Raiders back racked up 1,329 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns during the regular season, earning a Pro Bowl nod. He was excellent at breaking tackles and put together an impressive highlight reel in his first season with Green Bay, leading him to be lauded alongside Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley as the stars of a wildly impactful class of free agent running backs.
Some advanced metrics don't exactly have them in the same tier. By cumulative rushing expected points added (EPA) from NFL Next Gen Stats, Henry ranked first. Barkley was third, behind Jahmyr Gibbs. Jacobs? He was ... 135th. Yes, that's not a typo. Henry and Barkley accrued lots of volume while producing efficiently. Jacobs accrued lots of volume, but EPA saw his work as a net negative on a play-by-play basis. By EPA per carry, looking at backs who carried the ball at least 150 times, Jacobs ranked 25th out of 31 rushers in 2024.
What didn't EPA like? Jacobs fumbled four times, and more than 60% of his carries produced negative EPA. That figure was at 57% for Barkley and 49% for Henry. And while Barkley had seven runs of 40 yards or more, Jacobs didn't have any. He had four runs of 30-39 yards, but Barkley had 10 of 30-plus yards. Henry had nine. It's OK to be a boom-or-bust back, but the ratio was weighted far more toward the booms for Barkley and Henry than for Jacobs.
And unlike those backs, Jacobs was less impressive than his backups. Emanuel Wilson, Chris Brooks and MarShawn Lloyd combined to generate plus-8.3 EPA on their 145 carries this season, most of which came from Wilson. Were there situational differences? Not really. Wilson & Co. generated 8.3 EPA on early downs to Jacobs' minus-24.8 EPA mark. They faced loaded boxes on 31.7% of their carries, while Jacobs faced them only 26.9% of the time. Green Bay gained more EPA per play with Jacobs off the field than it did with him on it. That's a relatively unheralded set of backs against a runner making $13 million per season.
Sunday's performance was an example of how Jacobs can both look impressive and hold the offense back. The biggest gain of the day was his 31-yard run at the end of the third quarter, a play in which he shrugged off a couple of tacklers and nearly ran through a defender to score. He came up just short of the end zone, then finished the job from 1 yard out, bringing the Packers within one score.
On the other hand, his prior 16 carries went for a total of 48 yards and, crucially, zero first downs. Jacobs broke tackles, but just six of those 16 runs were successful in terms of keeping the offense on schedule. Five of them went for 2 or fewer yards, including a loss of 6 yards on second-and-2 in which he spun backward after shedding the initial hit by Zack Baun. The big plays from Jacobs linger in the memory, but there are too many moments when he hits the line of scrimmage and doesn't do much to keep the Packers on schedule. He also fumbled inside the 10-yard line, although Green Bay was able to recover the ball. Even with his big run, EPA saw Jacobs generate minus-1.0 points for the Packers on Sunday.
With Jacobs struggling to make much happen, Love's average pass Sunday came with 9.3 yards to go, which would have ranked 29th in the league in terms of average distance to convert on pass attempts during the regular season. That's not going to work against a great Eagles defense, especially with the injuries the Packers endured throughout this game. Love wasn't good as a passer on first and second down in this game, but the struggles of the run game were one of the reasons they didn't score across their first six drives of the game.
Leaning into Love earlier in the game might also help make Jacobs more efficient. One advanced metric that favored Jacobs is rush yards over expectation (RYOE), where his 217 RYOE ranked fifth among all backs. In part, that's because his carries were expected to gain only 3.7 yards per rush, which is right about where Chuba Hubbard's touches were this season. More throws on early downs would keep Jacobs' legs fresher and likely would also increase his expected yards per carry. It wouldn't have saved the Packers against the Eagles, but it might improve their efficiency on offense in 2025.
Buccaneers: When will coaches stop messing up their timeout management?
Wild-card weekend result: Lost 23-20 to the Commanders
I really like Todd Bowles. He's an excellent, creative defensive coach. His players seem to like playing for him. And after winning a Super Bowl with the Bucs as Bruce Arians' defensive coordinator, he has won three straight division titles in the NFC South as Tampa Bay's coach. Any coach who wins three division titles in three years is succeeding.
I just wish Bowles would manage his timeouts better. He seems to have a lot of the difficult elements of coaching down. Timeout usage, which should be one of the easiest things to understand and integrate into game-day efforts, does not seem to be one of them. The Bucs mismanaged the clock in the final two minutes in both halves of Sunday's narrow loss to the Commanders.
The first mistake didn't come back to bite them. After Baker Mayfield hit Mike Evans for a 20-yard completion to get the Bucs into the red zone, it seemed obvious they would use one of their two remaining timeouts. Instead, Mayfield hurried to the line and seemed ready to call another play, only for Bowles to call a timeout from the sideline. The indecisiveness ended up yielding the worst of both worlds, with the Bucs letting 10 seconds run off the clock and allowing the Commanders a chance to collect themselves and get a defensive call in.
Fortunately for the Bucs, Evans drew a pass interference call on the next snap and caught a touchdown pass one play later. This was a mistake born out of fear, that they were holding on to timeouts in case they needed them. By the time Bowles let 10 seconds run off the clock, they had already cost themselves at least one play on offense, if not two. Using a final timeout in that spot would make sense, since it's a moment in which a coach knows he'll need a timeout as opposed to potentially never having a better moment to use it. Not using a second timeout is an obvious mistake.
A similar mistake popped up on the defensive side of the ball later. After Austin Ekeler caught a lob over Yaya Diaby for 18 yards to set the Commanders up in field goal range, the play ended with 1:53 to go. Bowles let 12 more seconds run off the clock before using his first timeout. Again, there's no middle ground where this makes sense. He needs to use his timeouts to try to get the ball back with a stop, because his team's season is probably over if the Commanders run the clock down and kick. Preserving as much time as possible for that potential game-tying drive from Mayfield & Co. is critical. Letting 12 seconds run off the clock is inexcusable.
This only came close to mattering. On a third-and-2 with 55 seconds to go, Calijah Kancey nearly wrapped up Jayden Daniels in the backfield for a tackle that would have forced Washington to kick a field goal and hand the ball back to the Buccaneers. Those missing 12 extra seconds would have been critical. Instead, Kancey wasn't able to tackle Daniels, who ran for a first down. The Commanders kicked their field goal with three seconds left and won.
The Bucs are here in part because their divisional rivals weren't able to manage the clock against the Commanders. In Week 17, Falcons coach Raheem Morris decided against using his second timeout after a 25-yard completion to Darnell Mooney, with the clock ticking all the way down to 17 seconds before the Falcons fired off an incomplete pass to Mooney. The Falcons then used their second timeout in a dead ball situation, but even after they were bailed out by a defensive pass interference call, Riley Patterson missed a 56-yard field goal that would have won the game. They instead lost in overtime.
After the game, Morris didn't have a good explanation until the following day, when he said calling a timeout would have given Washington coach Dan Quinn an opportunity to dial up an exotic coverage or defensive look for rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr. And while I don't doubt he is correct about the difference in defensive calls, that possibility doesn't justify his choice. The Falcons missed out on running at least two plays by virtue of not using their timeouts, and those absent plays figure to produce more cumulative yardage than one play against a more vanilla coverage.
And for Bowles, unfortunately, this isn't new. Trailing by seven points in the final minute against the Chiefs earlier this season, he took a timeout after a 19-yard completion set the Bucs up with a first-and-goal opportunity and 33 seconds left. All that did was ensure his team had to throw the ball from that point forward, and although Mayfield hit Ryan Miller for a touchdown two plays later, the stopped clock gave Kansas City an opportunity to drive for a potential game winner at the end of regulation.
In 2022, with the Bucs up 17-10 and the Browns facing a fourth-and-9 from the 13-yard line with 1:12 to go, Bowles didn't use one of his timeouts to stop the clock. A timeout would have given the Bucs a chance to set their defense and a chance to try to launch a drive to take the lead with Tom Brady if the Browns scored on fourth down, which is exactly what happened. Instead, 30 seconds ran off the clock. The ensuing Bucs drive stalled at midfield because of a lack of time, and the Browns won the game in overtime.
Were the timeouts the primary reason the Bucs lost? No. Mayfield fumbled an exchange deep in his own territory, and the Commanders converted a fourth-down pass to Terry McLaurin for a score to take the lead. On the next drive, center Graham Barton appeared to snap the ball to Mayfield prematurely, turning a third-and-1 from the Tampa 12-yard line into a busted play. In position to both bleed clock and potentially win the game with a touchdown, Tampa Bay kicked a field goal to tie the game at 20. Its offense never got to touch the ball again.
Coaches can't suddenly manifest somebody out of thin air who can cover McLaurin, however. They can't dial up a blitz that works 100% of the time or tackle Daniels without fail. They can't ensure their quarterback succeeds on every exchange without fumbling. That stuff is out of anyone's control. Getting timeouts right? That should be easy.