NFL Wild Card Sunday: Players, coach with something to prove against former teams
Those football gods that like to use snow to level the playing field apparently went a little too far.
With blizzard-like conditions and high winds forecast for western New York and the greater Buffalo Area this weekend, the NFL Saturday postponed Sunday’s Pittsburgh-Buffalo game until Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.
The prospects of playing a win-or-go-home game in awful conditions seemed to favor the Steelers, underdogs even if healthy but really up against it without star end T.J. Watt, who will miss Monday’s game with a knee injury.
Whether the weather still offers Pittsburgh a refuge Monday remains to be seen — in any case there is one less NFL playoff game on Sunday’s docket.
But of the two remaining games — Green Bay at Dallas, the Lions hosting the Rams — storylines still abound. Buried in the avalanche of news surrounding coaching departures and Jim Harbaugh’s possibly fictitious flirtation with injured NFL quarterbacks is the return of Matthew Stafford to Detroit to take on ex-Rams quarterback Jared Goff.
In Dallas, longtime Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy takes on his old team, the Green Bay Packers. The game is in Dallas, and though ex-Patriots Bill Belichick will not be there in person, his presence will be immediately felt after the game should McCarthy’s heavily favored Cowboys fall at home.
We will save our breakdown of the Bills-Steelers game for our preview of Monday’s Wild Card Round action. In the meantime, let us focus on the remaining Sunday doubleheader matchups.
Green Bay (No. 6) at Dallas (No. 2), 4:30 p.m. Pacific, FOX
Two franchises not strangers to memorable playoff battles against each other. Of course, there was the epic Ice Bowl NFL championship game in January 1968, but even more recently, the two teams engaged in a couple of minor classics: the Packers winning 26-21 in January 2015 on a controversial over-ruling of Dez Bryant touchdown catch. Then there was Green Bay's 34-31 win at Dallas after the 2016 season, with Aaron Rodgers out-dueling then-rookie QB Dak Prescott.
The head coach for Green Bay in those two wins, Mike McCarthy, is now Dallas’ head man. That rookie, Prescott, still occupies maybe the NFL’s single most-celebrated position and has matured into an MVP-caliber signal-caller. The Packers roll with Jordan Love, who, with 18 TDs and just one interception since Week 11, seemingly transformed from a potential bust at midseason into one of the more electrifying young QBs in the league.
Love throws to a dynamic young receiving corps, led by rookie Jayden Reed (64 catches) and Romeo Dobbs (eight TD receptions). Christian Watson, perhaps the Packers’ most gifted receiver, may finally return Sunday from a hamstring injury that has kept him out for more than a month. He’s listed as a game-time decision.
Veteran cornerback Stephon Gilmore injured his shoulder in the Cowboys’ season finale against Washington, but is likely to play against Green Bay. He and corner DaRon Bland are a difficult pair to challenge downfield. But for Love and his receivers to successfully attack the back end of the Dallas defense, the front end must be blocked.
That means accounting for Dallas’ LB Micah Parsons, who racked up 14 sacks and a remarkable 103 total QB pressures (according to Pro Football Focus) on the season. Part of burden of containing him falls on Packers tackles Rasheed Walker and Zach Tom, but Dallas likes to move Parsons around, looking for mismatches. Also patrolling the edge with Parsons is Demarcus Lawrence and Dante Fowler Jr., making the Dallas D fast and aggressive, capable of blowing up plays and, with Bland on the back end, creating turnovers.
Offenses can, however, run the ball directly at the Cowboys. Dallas allow 112 yards rushing per game, and RB Aaron Jones — finally recovered from the injuries that dogged him the first half of the season — was a force for the Packers down the stretch. Jones finished 2023 with three consecutive 100-yard games, all Green Bay wins, averaging more than 5.5 yards per carry. That kind of production Sunday would be a boon for the Pack's chances of returning to the frozen tundra with a Texas-sized upset in tow.
If this game were held two weeks ago, Dallas' offense would held a whopping advantage over the Green Bay defense. Before Week 17, that defense was in shambles, having just given up nearly 400 yards to a usually punchless Carolina team. But in Green Bay’s final two games, the defense toughened up considerably.
But the question remains as to how well the Packers' pass defense matched up with Prescott and the Dallas passing game. The Cowboys led the NFL in scoring, thanks to the monster year laid down by WR CeeDee Lamb. One of the better individual matchups in this year’s playoffs will be Lamb against Green Bay's outstanding corner Jaire Alexander.
But while Lamb dominated all year, the Cowboys’ offense did not really take off until Prescott began trusting his other weapons, such as WR Brandin Cooks (eight TD catches) and blossoming tight end Jake Ferguson (71 catches, five TDs), who became a commendable downfield and red-zone threat.
That diversification and the speed of Dallas’ front seven gives the home team a significant advantage. We also think the more playoff-seasoned Cowboys have a big edge in experience. We take Dallas for a double-digit win. But if it’s close, we still like Brandon Aubrey to kick the Cowboys into the next round. Dallas 34, Green Bay 17.
Los Angeles Rams (No. 5) at Detroit Lions (No. 3), 8:00 p.m. Eastern, NBC
A fantasy matchup both for the league office and NBC showcases two top quarterbacks who were once traded for the other. Matthew Stafford returns to Detroit, the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2009 and for whom he starred for more than a decade. The Detroit offensive huddle is now led by Jarod Goff, formerly the Rams starting quarterback, who led Los Angeles to a Super Bowl appearance in 2018, two years after also being drafted No. 1 overall.
Both teams come into the Wild Card Round playing very good, complementary football, with both offenses exhibiting terrific balance. But the Rams have been anointed this postseason’s “team that no one wants to play” for this particular postseason. After back-to-back road beatdowns by Dallas and Green left them 3-6, the Rams won six of their final seven games to leapfrog several teams into the No. 5 slot.
As expected, the elite passing attack of Stafford and receivers Cooper Kupp and standout rookie Puka Nacua ignited the strong finish. But the explosive running of Kyren Williams took the Rams' offense to a new level. Improved play by the offensive line made that balance possible, especially after guards Kevin Dotson and rookie Steve Avila emerged to solidify the interior.
How well the line protects Stafford against Detroit’s Aidan Hutchinson will be a key on Sunday. The second-year defensive edn finished the regular season strong, with five sacks combined against Dallas and Minnesota.
While the LA offense received much of the pub during the team’s late-season surge, do not overlook the better-than-expected play of the Rams' defense. Detroit will look to impose its physicality on the Rams and try to run the ball with backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs. But defensive tackle Aaron Donald can still be a force and LB Ernest Jones has emerged into one; both need to have impactful games if the Rams are to make Detroit's offense one-dimensional.
Concerns for this game are on the back end, where the Rams secondary is vulnerable should Donald and the pass rush fail to pressure the quarterback. If the Lions feel they can work on the Rams DBs, head coach Dan Campbell will not hesitate to have Goff attack downfield (or to go for two points from the 35-yard line). The Lions boast of one of the league’s best WR-tight end tandems in Amon St. Brown and Sam LaPorta. The rookie standout LaPorta is questionable with a knee injury suffered in the season finale against Minnesota, but he practiced Friday and is expected to line up against LA.
Los Angeles will call on its experience from winning the Super Bowl just two years ago to help them survive a hostile road environment. Sean McVay’s game-plans and in-game adjustments are elite, and we give the Rams the coaching edge over Campbell and his talented but playoffs-inexperienced staff. Los Angeles 27, Detroit 23.