We have yet to see a game come down to the wire in this NFL post-season. I don't recall the last time we found ourselves 6 games into the playoffs without a game that could have gone either way in the final 5 minutes. I had hoped the Seahawks-Falcons game would give us such excitement, but after reviewing and analyzing statistics on the Seahawks road record of the second half of the season, it became clear that a win probably wasn't in the cards. I was certainly correct that Seattle would only score 20 points and that New England would put up 34 points on the Texans, but my disappointment with both of yesterday's games seemed to encapsulate an overall disappointing NFL season for fans.
Today's matchups of the Packers at the Cowboys and the Steelers at the Chiefs offer a little more optimism. If I had to take a guess, I'd say fans nationwide are evenly split on who will win between the Steelers and Chiefs, and the same probably goes for the Packers and Cowboys. You have, on the one hand, the Packers and Steelers who have been red-hot as of late and are both coming off of dominant wildcard round wins. On the other hand you have the Cowboys and Chiefs well rested coming off of bye weeks and enjoying homefield advantage. Neither of these teams appears to be heavily favored by Las Vegas oddsmakers, but if you've been reading Purple Nightmare for years you know quite well that Las Vegas is often way off. An in-depth look at the correct set of relevant statistics almost always gives a great deal of clarity regarding the outcome of a particular matchup.
PACKERS AT COWBOYS
The Green Bay Packers haven't lost a game now in nearly two months. Aaron Rodgers had, for a stretch of the regular season, appeared to have lost his edge, and the Packers looked as though they were in danger of missing the playoffs. They silenced all doubters with a 6-game win streak to finish the regular season and solidify themselves as the NFC North champions. Fresh in the minds of many fans is the performance Rodgers put up last week against one of the best defenses in football. That performance appears to have overshadowed just how phenomenal the Cowboys have been for nearly the entire regular season.
Dak Prescott isn't the best quarterback in the league, but he's exactly what the Cowboys need at this time. He has an amazing rushing attack and a historically elite offensive line to help keep pressure away as he goes through his progressions. The Cowboys have a single loss at home on the season and it was to a divisional rival. The Packers lost resoundingly 30-16 to the Cowboys in Green Bay in the middle of the regular season. The question that remains is whether or not the Packers have truly improved since the last time those teams met. For the answer, we must look to stats and facts about available player personnel.
One of the major factors that helped to lift the Packers well beyond their performance last season was the presence of Jordy Nelson in the regular season. Nelson put up monster stats with 1257 receiving yards, 14 touchdowns and 97 catches on the season. Not having Nelson last year led to a fairly sizeable drop off in offensive production for the Packers. Now Nelson has been ruled out for today's game against the Cowboys, and the remaining receivers aren't nearly as impactful. That isn't to say that the Packers don't have other capable targets, but the next best receivers behind Jordy Nelson are Devante Adams (who is already on the field WITH Nelson on the opposite side) and Randal Cobb who has had a disappointing 610 receiving yards and 4 touchdowns on the season.
Without the Packers' #1 receiver on the field, the Cowboys will have one less big factor with which to contend this Sunday. Having Devante Adams, Randal Cobb and a backup receiver with less than 400 receiver yards on the year will be much easier to defend against than Nelson, Adams, and Cobb. Anytime you face a team without its true #1 receiver, the opponent becomes tremendously easier to defend. Facing the Steelers without Antonio Brown, the Bengals without A.J. Green, or the Giants without Odell Beckham Jr. means you're facing a profoundly different team.
Winning 7 games in a row is never easy and it's always a major accomplishment in the NFL. The question is whether that winning streak is indicative of major improvements to the Packers that would suggest they're a better team than the one that lost badly to the Cowboys in Green Bay earlier this season. Let's first take a look at the teams the Packers beat during this streak.
The Packers began their current streak with a decisive win over an Eagles team in an utter tailspin with many key injuries and a talented but struggling rookie quarterback. Did that mean that Green Bay had suddenly become better? Probably not, but things started to look up when they had a solid victory the following week against the Texans. The Texans weren't a bad team this season, but beating the Texans in Lambeau does absolutely nothing to drum up confidence about the Packers chances of beating a Cowboys team that drubbed them in the previous meeting. Next the Packers beat a strong Seahawks team in Green Bay, but as the second half of the season and last night's game against the Falcons proved, the Seahawks simply couldn't produce serious enough offense on the road in order to be a competitive team down the stretch. Next came an extremely telling matchup with the Bears in Chicago in which the Packers narrowly escaped defeat 30-27. The fact that the Packers defense on the road allowed one of the worst teams in the league to score 27 points does not suggest this is a Packers team that can go on the road and unseat the Cowboys as the best team in the NFC.
The Packers then beat the Vikings at home, but as Aaron Rodgers and company are not playing at home today, that game offers little in the way of insight to today's matchup. The final game of the regular season was a tough fought 31-24 win in Detroit over a solid Lions team that ultimately made it to the playoffs. That tells us that the Packers can beat a playoff team on the road, but the Lions weren't nearly as dominant as the Cowboys over the course of this season.
I try not to enter into analysis with my mind made up about who is going to win in playoff matchup, but this is one case where it's hard to ignore major facts that have been swirling around in my head all week. When I look at the Packers and what exactly they have to work with as they head into this matchup it's tough not to be underwhelmed by their weaponry. The Packers have the 22nd ranked defense in the NFL, and their pass defense is ranked 31st in the league. Green Bay ranks 8th in the league against the run, but that won't mean much against a rested Cowboys offensive line that showed it could run the ball with a banged up offensive line against the BEST run defense in the league earlier this season. If the Packers commit everything they have to stopping the Cowboys rushing attack, they probably won't be successful, and more importantly, they'll leave themselves open to being absolutely TORCHED by the likes of Cole Beasley, Dez Bryant, and Jason Witten.
The Cowboys defense, meanwhile, ranks 5th in points allowed per game, 1st in run defense, and 26th in passing yards allowed. A big part of the reason the Cowboys have allowed the level of passing yards as they have this season is injuries to their secondary. Now the only member of the Cowboys secondary on the injury report is Morris Claiborne and even he was a full participant in practice this week. The Packers are absolutely one-dimensional with no serious ground attack to speak of and they'll be going up against a thunderous Dallas run defense. One might think the Cowboys could be attacked through the air, but that will be particularly difficult since the Packers will be without their biggest receiving weapon and the source of nearly 40% of Aaron Rodgers touchdown passes this season.
None of this is to say that the Cowboys can't be beaten, but the Packers in this particular state of heath (or lack thereof) don't appear to be the team to do it. The Cowboys showed earlier this season that they're capable of routing the Packers in Green Bay, so facing the Packers in Arlington doesn't seem like a tremendous challenge, especially without Jordy Nelson. The only team to actually beat the Cowboys when they played their starters this season (the Eagles game doesn't count) was the Giants, and the Giants had two things that the Packers lacked. The first thing was divisional familiarity. The Giants know exactly what they're in store for schematically when they go up against the Cowboys. The other thing was an elite defense. Sure that elite defense ultimately buckled in the loss in Green Bay last weekend, but that had more to do with the fact that the Giants offense simply couldn't sustain production on the road this season.
PREDICTION:
The Packers aren't haven't proven strong enough on the road this season to beat a team at the level of a rested Dallas Cowboys squad. The Cowboys aren't perfect, but their offensive line allows them to control the clock, and their offensive line rested for two weeks will be more than Green Bay will likely be able to handle. The Cowboys proved earlier this season that they can matchup incredibly well with the Packers and that was long before Jordy Nelson was injured. This may not be a blowout, but it also doesn't have to be a blowout. The Cowboys find a way to control the clock late in games and take away late opportunities over other teams to catch up. Nothing statistically suggests that that Aaron Rodgers can win this game on the road, especially without his #1 wideout.
COWBOYS 31-21
STEELERS AT CHIEFS
This is yet another example of a matchup between two quality teams that met up earlier this season. It's true that the Steelers haven't been nearly as impressive as they have been at home. The Steelers, for example, were destroyed by the Eagles on the road, beaten soundly by the Ravens, and embarrassed by the Dolphins. Pittsburgh does have a strong road record at 5-3, but that has had more to do with the opponents they faced including the horrible Browns, the Colts without Andrew Luck, the loser Bengals in an extremely tight game, and the Bills in the snow. What the Steelers HAVEN'T done is beaten a serious team on the road all season.
All week I've heard and read people stating they feel the Chiefs would go to the Super Bowl. The Chiefs, after all, DID win the most competitive division in football this season, and they swept the Raiders before Derek Carr broke his leg. The problem is that the Chiefs also lost to the Steelers...and they lost to them BADLY. The Chiefs lost to the Steelers 43-14 in Pittsburgh, and it's difficult to assume that a 29 point deficit would have been magically erased had the game been played in Arrowhead stadium. The Chiefs defense simply doesn't match up well with what the Steelers have to offer offensively, and the Steelers defense is actually vastly improved over what Kansas City faced when these two teams last met.
The health of deep threat Sammie Coates and the emergence of Eli Rogers as a quality receiver has meant problems for opposing teams for weeks now. The Steelers, as a matter of fact, haven't in 8 weeks and that's not something the Chiefs can say about themselves. The presence of Stephon Tuitt and Ryan Shazier means the Chiefs won't have an easy day running the football. The aforementioned health of Coates and Rodgers as well as the ever-looming presence of Le'veon Bell means teams can't focus all their attention defensively on the explosive Antonio Brown.
As a Ravens fan, I would love nothing more to be proven totally wrong with a Steelers loss today, but I dare the Chiefs to rise to the occasion and make this the best game of this post-season. I haven't seen a dominant Chiefs team at home or on the road. Instead I've seen one that is solid, but not elite. The one major factor that could throw all of my reasoning off is the fact that Justin Houston didn't play last time these two teams faced off, but the Steelers offensive line is strong enough this year that Houston along with the setting of this game won't be enough to make up for the 29 point deficit the Steelers created against Kansas City earlier this season. The Steelers are an outdoor team used to inclement weather. This kind of atmosphere and climate simply won't phase them.
PREDICTION:
There have been times over the past 5 years of writing this blog where I've spent too little time with deep analysis of statistics, and my prediction has thusly been proven incorrect and poorly thought out soon thereafter. Without a tremendous amount of number crunching, I'm predicting a sound win for the Steelers and if I'm proven wrong--well I can't be too unhappy about that with purple running through my veins...
STEELERS 30-23
ENJOY WHAT HOPEFULLY SHOULD BE BETTER PLAYOFF FOOTBALL TONIGHT!!
NOW AND FOREVER
GO RAVENS!!! (Go figure out how to fix the team)
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