Over the past three days, six NFL teams felt the pain of seeing their playoff dreams come to an end in the wild-card round. Making the postseason is always better than missing out, but no team wants to be one-and-done in January. There are no such things as “happy to be here” when organizations get this close to a Super Bowl.
For those teams, the offseason has already begun. Their primary goal is to win the Super Bowl, of course, but every one of them will strive to improve on where they fell short in 2021 and make a deeper postseason run. Let’s run through the six losing teams from the wild-card round and identify one takeaway from the loss (and the season as a whole) that should help guide their thinking this offseason.
I’ll start with the Raiders, who just fired their general manager, and end with the Cardinals, who had a disastrous performance Monday night:
Jump to a team:
ARI | DAL | LV
PHI | PIT | NE
The loss: 26-19 to the Bengals
Takeaway: The Raiders need to be realistic.
A month ago, it felt like the Raiders were killing time until relaunching in 2022. A 48-9 loss to the Chiefs had dropped Derek Carr & Co. to 6-7 and last place in the AFC West. Every team left on their schedule had a winning record. ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) gave them a 4.8% chance of advancing into the postseason. Things were falling apart.
Of course, you know what happened next. The Raiders won four straight to close out the regular season, beating four consecutive competitors for a wild-card spot in the process. Their season culminated in that dramatic, emotional win over the Chargers in prime time, which might be the most important victory the Raiders have enjoyed since winning the 2002 AFC Championship Game. Las Vegas came up one play short of pushing the Bengals to overtime, but it can be proud of how it turned around the season and pushed into the postseason.
Should that be enough, though, for the Raiders to stay the course and run it back in 2022? Decisions loom at the two most important positions for any organization. The players want Rich Bisaccia, appointed as the interim coach after Jon Gruden resigned, to take over as the full-time coach. Carr, who finally made his postseason debut after missing the team’s prior trip to the playoffs, is entering the final season of his five-year, $125 million extension. Did we see enough from the Raiders to think that they’re close to a more significant playoff push with their current core?
I’m skeptical. They outplayed the Chargers and deserved to win in Week 18, but we can poke a few holes in that four-game winning streak. The three previous wins look better on paper than they did in reality. The Raiders faced two backup quarterbacks in Nick Mullens (Browns) and Drew Lock (Broncos). In the third game, they took on the Colts and Carson Wentz, who spent the entire week before the game on the reserve/COVID-19 list. The unvaccinated Colts quarterback, who was cleared to play the morning of the game, then went 16-of-27 for 148 yards in an underwhelming performance.
The Raiders won those four games by a combined 12 points, with Daniel Carlson three times kicking game-winning field goals on the final snap. Those wins count just as much in the standings as blowouts, but in terms of predicting how a team will play in the future, it doesn’t say much about this team that it was struggling to beat teams with compromised quarterbacks.
While Las Vegas finished 10-7, it was outscored by 65 points for the season. Many of those points came in a pair of blowout losses to the Chiefs, but it’s not a great sign if you can’t be competitive with one of the perennial competitors in the AFC. By their point differential, we would have expected the Raiders to be a 6.9-win team across 17 games, a fate they were able to avoid by going 5-0 in overtime and 7-2 in games decided by seven points or fewer.
They will almost definitely not be able to keep that up. Year-to-year comparisons are a little wonky because of the move to 17 games, but if we look at the teams since 1989 that won five more one-score games than they lost in a given season, things usually got a lot worse the following season. Those teams went from 220-50 (.815) to 102-126 (.447) in one-score games the following season. They declined by an average of just over four wins per 17 games. The closest recent comparables for the Raiders are the 2019 Texans and 2020 Browns, who made it into the playoffs despite negative point differentials.
Other metrics aren’t impressed, either. Football Outsiders’ defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) statistic thinks the Raiders were about the same in 2020 as they were in 2021, with the team dropping from 19th in DVOA to 21st. ESPN’s FPI pegs them as the 23rd-best team in football, behind several teams who fired their coaches, including the Vikings and Dolphins.
The good news for the Raiders, I suppose, is that they’re one of the youngest teams in the league, if you adjust for the ages of the players who actually took snaps for them in 2021. A few of their young players have certainly taken steps forward. Maxx Crosby looked like a superstar edge rusher, at times. Josh Jacobs has finally taken the full-time load at running back, and Hunter Renfrow was one of the league’s most efficient wide receivers. With Carlson and AJ Cole, the Raiders have the NFL’s best combination of kicker and punter, and both are signed for years to come.
I’m not sure I’m much more optimistic about the Raiders and their young core than I was after Gruden left the organization, however. Veterans signed to short-term deals — Casey Hayward Jr., Yannick Ngakoue, Quinton Jefferson and Denzel Perryman — have helped prop up the defense after years of disappointing performances, but there’s not much after Crosby and rookie slot corner Nate Hobbs, who was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of DUI late in the season. Safety Johnathan Abram, a first-round pick in 2019, has improved to competent after being barely playable in 2020, but there are major questions about whether this defense is in a good place.
Given all the young players the Raiders are running out around Carr and tight end Darren Waller on offense, there’s still questions about their ceiling. Jacobs and Renfrow play fungible positions. When I wrote that piece in October, they still had wide receiver Henry Ruggs, who has since been released after a car crash left a woman dead. (Cornerback and fellow first-rounder Damon Arnette also was released since that article was written for brandishing a gun and making violent threats in a video.) Wideout Bryan Edwards had a pair of 80-plus-yard games during the first five weeks of the season, but he averaged 30.5 yards per game after Bisaccia took over. Zay Jones has shockingly emerged as a useful wide receiver, but now he will be a free agent after the season.
The Raiders aren’t hopeless by any means, but as team owner Mark Davis decides what to do with the future of this franchise, they need to separate their four-game winning streak from evaluating this team and their progress on the whole. If the Raiders thought Bisaccia and Carr were their future before the final month of the season, that’s one thing. I’m just not sure how much a feel-good December should actually move the needle for a team nearly 20 years removed from a playoff victory.
We saw the Raiders begin to indicate that they would be heading toward a reset on Monday, when they fired general manager Mike Mayock and announced that they would be interviewing new candidates at both coach and GM. Bisaccia is expected to interview for the permanent job. It’s entirely possible that they end up with a less impressive coach than Bisaccia, who did a credible job during his time in charge, but I think they are right to at least consider other options.
The loss: 47-17 to the Bills
Takeaway: The Patriots need to add another star.
Patriots fans probably would have happily signed up for what they saw from their team in 2021. After the 2020 Pats posted the organization’s first losing record in 20 years, 2021 was a step back toward relevance. Bill Belichick’s team went 10-7 and returned to the postseason. A roster buoyed by a free-agent spending spree served as the foundation for first-round pick Mac Jones, who was often solid and sometimes more during his rookie campaign. The quarterback posted a league-average ANY/A+ (adjusted net yards per attempt, accounting for era) as a rookie, which is 15th out of the 66 rookie passers to throw 300 attempts in their debut season.
Over the past month of the season, though, the Patriots fell off. After their dramatic win amid the wind in Buffalo, they went on bye and won just one of their final five games. While they blew out Jacksonville, they lost to the Colts and Dolphins and dropped a pair of games to the Bills, including the blowout that ended their season.
Jones wasn’t the reason the Patriots lost to the Bills, but in many of those games, we saw stretches in which he looked overmatched or unable to keep up. Facing early deficits in each of those losses, he was forced to throw against defenses expecting the pass and turned the ball over eight times in five games. He couldn’t have done much about Micah Hyde‘s spectacular interception in the first quarter of the wild-card game loss, but he must have longingly looked over at the other sideline to see Buffalo’s Stefon Diggs
Diggs’ impact in Josh Allen‘s development is unquestionable, and the former Vikings star gives the Bills a wide receiver who can both win one-on-one and draw attention away from other defenders. The Patriots spent tens of millions of dollars on receiving talent last offseason, but in adding Nelson Agholor, Kendrick Bourne, Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith, they brought in supplemental players. During the vast majority of the Tom Brady era, they had that guy in either Randy Moss or Rob Gronkowski. (When they didn’t have either, Brady was understandably more capable at making the whole thing work than a rookie would be.)
On the other side of the field, the Patriots added a difference-maker and struggled when he slowed down. Matthew Judon was the team’s marquee defensive addition, and the former Ravens star delivered. Through that first Bills game, he racked up 12.5 sacks and 25 knockdowns in 13 games, putting him in line for All-Pro consideration.
In that Bills game, though, Judon was sidelined by a rib injury. After the bye, he wasn’t the same. He failed to rack up a single sack and only generated one quarterback hit across the final five games of the season. He only played 39% of the snaps against the Bills in the playoff loss, and the Patriots felt his absence. After generating sacks on 6.7% of opposing dropbacks before the bye, the Pats dropped to 3.3% during their four regular-season games afterward. In the playoff loss at Buffalo, Belichick’s defense failed to sack Allen even once on 25 dropbacks.
As much as they invested this past offseason, and as good as they were in 2021, the Patriots aren’t a finished product. Disappointing first- and second-round picks in recent years have cost them the sort of superstars you just can’t find in free agency. Their offense might have looked different on Saturday night, for example, if the Patriots had passed up N’Keal Harry at the end of the first round for Deebo Samuel or A.J. Brown, who were the next two wideouts off the board in the second round.
Going after one of those players, possibly via trade, might be in the cards for New England. It’s generally easier to find a star edge rusher in free agency than it is a similarly talented wide receiver, but with Judon in the fold, the Pats need the wideout far more. Davante Adams is set to be a free agent, but it would be shocking if the Packers let him leave. A more likely target might be Calvin Ridley, who could be available via trade from the Falcons this offseason.
The loss: 31-15 to the Bucs
Takeaway: The Eagles need to use their first-rounders on defensive help.
So much of the discussion surrounding the Eagles over the past year has been about what they’ll do at quarterback. A year ago, we were waiting to see whether they would trade Carson Wentz, with the embattled quarterback eventually ending up in Indianapolis. They didn’t draft a quarterback in 2021, but after amassing three first-round picks in the 2022 draft, the possibility of using those to make an upgrade at quarterback has loomed over their entire season.
Jalen Hurts has played effective football, especially after the Eagles moved to a more run-heavy approach in midseason. They did make a genuine shift, but one of the reasons they were able to make that change is because their schedule got much easier, which kept them out of obvious throwing situations. Hurts isn’t just a running quarterback, but he is unquestionably at his best when he can threaten defenses with his legs.
On Sunday, we saw the Eagles struggle against one of those juggernauts that beat them before the shift. Hurts, who has been dealing with an ankle injury, wasn’t able to consistently throw the football and sailed too many of his passes. Facing one of the league’s best run defenses, the Eagles carried the ball 17 times for 95 yards, but their passing game wasn’t able to do enough.
Hurts’ performance has led to more discussion about what the Eagles should do at quarterback. I think it’s fair to start wondering about the other side of the ball. Philadelphia came into the playoffs ranked 25th in defensive DVOA, with new D-coordinator Jonathan Gannon running one of the most conservative schemes in the league. Coach Nick Sirianni suggested that the Eagles needed to give Tom Brady more to think about in their rematch, but the future Hall of Famer rolled through Philly for 31 points across his first nine possessions before the Eagles slowed things down. By then, the game was all but over.
The Eagles might use some or all of their pick haul in 2022 to go after a quarterback. Given how they’ve played this season, though, defensive help is a more pressing concern. Gannon was without defensive end Josh Sweat, who missed the playoff loss for medical reasons, but this is a defense in flux. DE Derek Barnett committed an early roughing the passer penalty, which will likely be his final act of note in an Eagles uniform. Stalwart end Brandon Graham will be turning 34 and is coming off a torn Achilles tendon, while fellow veteran end Ryan Kerrigan is a free agent. Starting safeties Rodney McLeod and Anthony Harris, linebacker Alex Singleton and cornerback Steven Nelson also will be unrestricted free agents after the season.
It would be a major surprise if the Eagles didn’t shift a significant amount of their draft capital toward defenders. They haven’t used a first- or second-round pick on a defensive player since winning the Super Bowl in 2017, marking a run of eight consecutive picks on the offensive side of the ball. (That number grows even higher if we count the picks traded for Wentz.)
I would suspect they see spending more on the offensive side of the ball as an organizational philosophy, but that imbalance has grown too significant. Throughout general manager Howie Roseman’s time with the team, the Eagles have been built around a deep, talented defensive line, even if it’s meant sacrificing spending elsewhere. Things are a little different with Darius Slay occupying north of $20 million on their cap at cornerback, but with Barnett and Kerrigan leaving, Graham possibly limited by his injury and Fletcher Cox turning 32 next year, I’d expect them to prioritize rebuilding their line this offseason, if not the defense as a whole.
The loss: 23-17 to the 49ers
Takeaway: The Cowboys had a bad day, but I’m not sure the solution is regime change.
I don’t blame anyone for having a strong reaction to how the Cowboys lost Sunday’s game to the 49ers. Kyle Shanahan’s team outplayed its higher-ranked opponent for most of the game, as the same Cowboys who led the league in penalties during the regular season committed 14 for 89 yards. Dallas’ offense spent most of the contest backed up and unable to pass block against a stout Niners front. Mike McCarthy’s game management was called into question when Dallas followed a fake punt by leaving its punt team on the field. An interception thrown by Jimmy Garoppolo got Dallas back in the game, only for the Cowboys to do what you saw them do at the end of the game. It wasn’t great.
Was the performance bad enough to justify firing McCarthy? After all, this isn’t exactly his first rodeo. McCarthy repeatedly struggled managing games with the Packers, including what has to have been one of the most damaging single-game decision-making performances I’ve seen in losing the 2014 NFC Championship Game to the Seahawks. He hasn’t been significantly better so far in Dallas, where he doesn’t run the offense or the defense. What’s the point of having a CEO coach if you can’t trust him to run the game?
Those are fair questions. Let’s think about the alternatives. The Cowboys could fire McCarthy to keep one of their two coordinators, both of whom are in line for head-coaching consideration.
Defensive coordinator Dan Quinn ran things in Atlanta for six years, and his game management there left a lot to be desired. Quinn could certainly have improved and learned from his mistakes, but McCarthy sold that same bill of goods after his year out of the league. It’s also likely that the defense would suffer if Quinn was moved into a general role as head coach.
1:58
Stephen A. Smith outlines the problem with the Cowboys and why he doesn’t see the franchise going anywhere.
I would be even more concerned about offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, who didn’t have a great day. His offense repeatedly struggled to find steady protection or easy completions for Dak Prescott, who seemed to spend most of the game throwing contested field outs and curls to CeeDee Lamb. The Cowboys averaged less than 3 yards per carry from their backs and receivers and less than 6 yards per attempt from Prescott through the air. And while McCarthy is being blamed for the ill-fated decision to run Prescott on a draw to set up the final play, Moore is the offensive playcaller in Dallas, not his boss. I suspect McCarthy played some role in the final playcall, but Moore also deserves blame for how things went Sunday.
The Cowboys did win the one game they played without McCarthy this season, when the coach sat out with COVID-19 and Dallas beat New Orleans 27-17. With that being said, the Cowboys would have happily signed up for this before the season. One year after a lost 6-10 campaign, they went 12-5 and comfortably won their division. The Cowboys led the league in overall DVOA, and they appear to have one of the best cores in all of football. Trevon Diggs & Co. probably won’t force as many turnovers next season, but the Cowboys aren’t about to turn into pumpkins, barring another serious injury to Prescott.
We’ve seen lambasted coaches turn things around and win a Super Bowl with better decision-making and better postseason performances. Coaches such as Andy Reid, Gary Kubiak and even McCarthy himself have won Super Bowls despite subpar game management before and/or after their titles. Even if they were to get someone like Jim Harbaugh to take over, doing so could cause them to lose Quinn and Moore, which would simultaneously set the team backward. The Cowboys had a bad day. As tempting as it is to assume that making a change would somehow solve their problems without creating any new ones, I’m not sure I agree.
The loss: 42-21 to the Chiefs
Takeaway: It’s time.
It has been clear to all but the most dyed-in-the-wool Steelers fans for much of the past two years, but if Pittsburgh wants to make a serious run toward another championship, it will need to make a change at quarterback. As tempting as it’s been to blame the offensive line, the coaching staff or whichever wide receiver has been used as a scapegoat, Ben Roethlisberger hasn’t been the same since returning from his 2019 elbow surgery. With their defense being carved up by Patrick Mahomes on Sunday night, the Steelers had no chance of competing in a shootout.
I don’t think this is in much dispute. Roethlisberger’s final numbers, as modest as they were, overstate his impact on the game. The future Hall of Famer hit halftime with all of 13 net passing yards after a 5-of-14 start. The Steelers offered virtually no meaningful downfield threat, allowing the Chiefs to attack the line of scrimmage without any fear of giving up a big play. Complaints about the offensive scheme ignore the reality of what Roethlisberger has been capable of doing at this point of his career.
With Roethlisberger expected to retire, the Steelers will consider an uncertain future. While the defense didn’t show it Sunday, Pittsburgh has the players on that side of the ball to compete for years to come. Wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster is again a free agent, but with Roethlisberger retiring, the team will have more than $44 million in cap space. An extension for wideout Diontae Johnson will take up some of that room, but the team should be able to add a quarterback and help along the offensive line this offseason.
1:19
Ben Roethlisberger shares his thoughts on the 2021-22 Steelers’ season after their 42-21 AFC wild-card loss to the Chiefs.
Who will that quarterback be? Sunday’s loss might lead the Steelers to think about how aggressive they need to be in going after a new signal-caller in 2022. Backup Mason Rudolph has shown no evidence of being someone capable of winning a shootout with Allen or Mahomes. The Steelers will pick 20th in April’s draft, which isn’t regarded as particularly loaded with quarterbacks. They have had a full year to scout options and might have their pick of the draft class at No. 20, which helps, but the Patriots’ loss also shows how important it is to have someone capable of a high ceiling against the top AFC quarterbacks.
The trade market might not be as robust as we thought heading into the year. It seems more and more likely that the Packers will hold onto Aaron Rodgers if he wins a second consecutive MVP award. Russell Wilson might stay in Seattle, and if he does, the best quarterback on the trade market might be Kirk Cousins. The top of the free-agent market would include Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jameis Winston, both of whom offer upside but also are coming off of season-ending injuries.
This might end up being more of a takeaway for other teams than it is for the Steelers, who are left hoping the right quarterback lands in their lap after Roethlisberger retires. Without an upgrade at QB, they can have one of the league’s best defenses and still have little hope of piecing together a deep postseason run. As tempting as it is to hold on for dear life and ride a star player until he retires, the best time to get a new quarterback is before you need one.
The loss: 34-11 to the Rams
Takeaway: The Cardinals need to focus on depth, not stars.
Nobody would blame the Cardinals for making the moves they’ve made over the past couple of offseasons. Every one of us would have traded running back David Johnson and a second-round pick for wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. I don’t think many people had an issue with signing defensive end J.J. Watt, and while he’s not as big of a name, anyone who pays close attention to offensive lines can tell you how much of a difference-maker center Rodney Hudson can be up front. Arizona has generally attempted to add high-profile players over the past couple of years, and when those guys have been healthy, they’ve delivered for the most part.
For the second year in a row, though, the Cardinals faded badly during the second half of the season. (This is a habit of Kliff Kingsbury teams going back to his time at Texas Tech.) They did enough during the first half to make it into the postseason, but even with Watt returning, they were overmatched against the Rams. After losing 34-11, the Cardinals finished by losing five of their final six contests. Hopkins missed most of that run with a torn MCL, while Watt was out with a shoulder injury and Hudson was on the reserve/COVID-19 list. The latter two returned for the playoff loss, but quarterback Kyler Murray sorely missed his star wideout.
In many cases Monday night, the Rams were able to take advantage of underfunded or underdeveloped parts of the Cardinals’ roster. The early touchdown pass to Odell Beckham Jr. came with him isolated against rookie fourth-round pick Marco Wilson, who allowed a passer rating north of 120 in coverage this season. The second score was set up by a blown coverage involving journeyman special-teamer Kevin Peterson, filling in for the injured Robert Alford. The Rams overwhelmed an offensive line featuring low-cost veterans Kelvin Beachum and Max Garcia, reducing Murray to a panicked mess during a disastrous second quarter.
The Cardinals can’t go through this again for the third time in 2022, and it’s not as simple as telling your stars to stay healthy all season. Kingsbury and general manager Steve Keim can’t count on everyone being present and accounted for in December. In 2020, it was Murray playing through an injury and Chandler Jones out for the year. They are never going to have a huge playbook and don’t have the flexibility to add pieces without having to make difficult choices, especially with Murray expected to receive a massive raise this offseason
As such, Arizona is going to have to be thoughtful this offseason about the choices it does make. Adding one more big piece in the secondary or up front might help, but this is a team sorely crying out for multiple additions. Even if it means letting Jones or James Conner walk in free agency, the Cardinals need to spread the money and draft picks they do have around to try to add meaningful depth along their roster. They can’t be depending on replacement-level players in meaningful roles come January, because unless their stars are all healthy and playing at a high level, it’s too easy for other teams to find their weak spots and pick them apart.
