potentialities

People thought that the 2024 Chiefs were frauds. People thought that Patrick Mahomes wasn’t a top three quarterback in the league and didn’t deserve to go to the Pro Bowl. People thought that Josh Allen was the dangerous one when he used his legs. People thought that this year could actually be the Bills’ year. People thought that their prayers to be spared seeing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl again this year might be answered by some kind of merciful deity. People thought a lot of things.

The Chiefs are going back to the Super Bowl. That's already farther than any other back-to-back winners have made it in the third year. Obviously I would prefer to complete the threepeat, but I think we're doing pretty okay so far.

Commanders @ Eagles — This game really got out of hand by the end and thus did not hold a lot of interest for the neutral fan. It did end up introducing quite a lot of more casual viewers to the concept of the palpably unfair act which is found in the NFL rulebook. Good times!

Bills @ Chiefs — People find it ridiculous when Chiefs fans say that the Chiefs will simply start playing better in the playoffs, but here's the thing: they legitimately do. They've adopted a paradigm whereby they play a twenty game preseason in order to prepare for a three- to four-game season.

This game was nothing like our regular season game against the Bills. Not that they wouldn't have liked to win that game, and they tried to win that game, but not the same way that they tried to win this game. It helped that we’d gotten various offensive and defensive players back, of course, but we were also doing things like calling Patrick Mahomes designed runs, which never happens in a mere preseason game. (I've seen fans of other teams not realize that Andy isn't calling any of these runs. Pat is just so good at reading the defenses and knowing when he can scramble successfully that it seems like it might have been designed.) Xavier Worthy made the Bills live to regret trading back with us to let us draft him. On the other side of the ball, Spags was calling blitzes so exotic that I think you might need a license to keep them. Genuine works of art.

They had to go ahead and be dazzling, because the Bills are a good team with a really good quarterback who happens to be living in his own personal timeloop hell. This is the fourth time in five years that he's had his postseason ended by the Chiefs and frankly he looked like a hollow shell of a man in the postgame. He seems like a pretty nice guy and it’s fun to watch him play, especially if I don’t need him to lose for seeding purposes, but honestly, I feel like it gives us an edge in each subsequent postseason game when he sees our uniforms and flashes back to the previous losses and that’s so helpful. Don't really feel bad for a lot of Bills fans, though, especially the ones who attacked our players with snowballs last year and hanged a Mahomes muppet in effigy. I hope they, specifically, never experience joy.

There was an adorable moment after Pat ran in his second touchdown when he tried to spike the ball and completely muffed it, possibly because Travis was all up in his personal space. I think he was just being proactive, lest any Bills players try to start something with Pat like they did when he ran in his first touchdown and Trav had to fend them off. ❤️

It's kind of wild that we’re rerunning our matchup against the Eagles after we already had a rematch with the 49ers last year. Jason has already committed to rooting for the Eagles against his own brother, much to Travis’s disgust. That subplot should be entertaining!

Three days, six games, and one inexcusable Peacock exclusive later, we have the bracket set for the divisional round. Is the newly-expanded “‘Super’ Wild Card Weekend” good? No. Is it wild? Also no. Is it a lot of football? Yes.

(5) Browns at (4) Texans

Ordinarily, I'd have been happy to root for a quarterback barely a year younger than me getting signed off the couch and leading his former division rival to the playoffs, an outcome both heartwarming and chaotic. Unfortunately, the team in question is the Cleveland Browns, and I would never want anything good for the Browns after they traded away a king's ransom in draft picks for the privilege of giving Deshaun Watson an unheard of fully-guaranteed five-year $230 million dollar contract after he was outed as a serial predator who sexually harassed or sexually assaulted at least twenty-two massage therapists, so I could hardly enjoy the Joe Flacco Renaissance.

It was extremely fitting that the Browns were matched up against the Texans, a team that rebuilt itself partially on the draft picks they got from the Browns for Watson, who, in addition to being evil, has also been ineffectual and injured for the Browns, the sin that even the amoral fans don't forgive. Speaking of sins, the Texans had a very weird period where they were taken over by Jack Easterby, a chaplain with minimal football experience who somehow rose through the ranks to become a kind of co-general manager and then interim general manager. During his brief but baffling reign, he released Andre Johnson and traded DeAndre Hopkins for peanuts, seemingly because he perceived them as threats to his leadership. However, the team course corrected quickly after someone broke his spell, hiring a good new coach, drafting a new young quarterback who's looked amazing all year, and, of course, using the aforementioned draft haul. They still have the Browns' first-round draft pick next year, too!

Joe Flacco turned back into a pumpkin and threw back-to-back pick-sixes. The Texans cruised to a 45-14 victory. This game was not very interesting to watch but at least the Browns were not rewarded for their bad behavior.

(6) Dolphins at (3) Chiefs

Extremely cynically, this game was selected to be made available only on Peacock, NBC's streaming service, unless you were in the home market of one of the teams playing, in which case they are still required to show it on actual broadcast television. I hate this. NBC is bragging that they set a “new record” with 23 million viewers, which is indeed the most viewers for a streaming-exclusive playoff game in history, since it's also the only streaming-exclusive playoff game in history. Meanwhile, Browns-Texans, an utterly uncompetitive rout, easily drew a casual 29 million viewers in the afternoon slot because they put it on actual fucking NBC.

The game itself was pretty fun! I mean, not if you like the Dolphins, or close final scores, or seeing more total touchdowns scored than field goals kicked, but the game was competitive for longer than the final score of 26-7 would suggest, and there was also plenty of extreme weather-related amusement, from Andy Reid's mustache freezing to Patrick Mahomes's helmet shattering on contact. (That was obviously also worrisome, but they got it replaced with minimal disruption and everyone was okay, so all's well that ends well.)

My favorite play of the game was this pass to Travis Kelce, where he fell on the Dolphins player who tackled him in such a way that he was never actually rendered down by contact and then popped back up to gain more yardage and a first down. It's just a little thing, but it's a fun combination of luck and high football IQ. Overall, the team looked a little more like themselves than they have all year, and while I still don't have expectations of a deep playoff run, I at least believe that it's plausible that they could avoid embarrassing themselves for as many games as they manage to stay in it.

Taylor Swift and Brittany Mahomes wore matching football jersey winter coats customized by Kristin Juszczyk, wife of the 49ers' fullback. They look like they're having a lot of fun and it's adorable.

(7) Packers at (2) Cowboys

For the first time since the expansion of the playoffs in 2021, a seven seed has defeated a two seed and advanced to the divisional round. The game wasn't even as close as the final score of 48 to 32 makes it look, and that is actually not very close at all. This is hilarious because the Cowboys found a completely new way to disappoint their large and annoying fanbase, but it is also terrible because the Packers are still in the playoffs. Albeit they are matched up against against the 49ers, who currently have a four-game postseason winning streak against them dating back twelve years, so hopefully they will not stick around for long. (I live in the AFC West but I come from the NFC North and I maintain the traditional grudges of my people.)

Does this unprecedented outcome justify the addition of two whole wild card games every year? No, it is an abomination.

(6) Rams at (3) Lions

This was another narrative game that they clearly scripted up in the NFL writers' room. Matt Stafford had endured twelve years of futility with the Lions when the Rams came calling, looking to jettison former number one overall pick Jared Goff. This trade paid off immediately for the Rams, who won a Super Bowl with Stafford in his first year. Meanwhile, the Lions ended up hanging on to Goff, who had almost been an afterthought in the trade, and when they won the NFC North for the first time since that division was even created and earned a home playoff game for the first time in exactly thirty years, it was only fitting that their opponent should be Matt Stafford and his new team.

This was the only game all weekend with any interest at all for the neutral fan. Matt Stafford battled valiantly through a painful-looking hand injury and Puka Nacua set a new single-game receiving yards by a rookie record, but Jared Goff edged them 24-23 for his revenge, best served cold. Although Detroit has a dome, so it was probably actually pretty warm.

(7) Steelers at (2) Bills

This game had to be delayed a day due to a blizzard but the Steelers could only put off the inevitable for so long. The Bills have been a confusing team this year because as far as I've been able to tell they either look amazing or terrible with no in between, but they had no difficulty making the Steelers look like they didn't belong here in this game. Which they didn't. The seven seed is an abomination

I was rooting, however futilely, for the Steelers to come out on top, since that would have meant that the Chiefs got another home game against the Texans next week, but a 31-17 Bills win means that Patrick Mahomes is headed to Orchard Park for his very first away playoff game. In six years as a starter, Mahomes has played in fifteen postseason games so far, and they have been twelve home games and three Super Bowls. Obviously, the Chiefs demonstrated this week that they're not afraid of playing in the cold, but it's still nice to have a home crowd. Alas.

(5) Eagles at (4) Buccaneers

This game was just sad. I felt bad for Jason Kelce, whom I've really gotten to know from all the hours of podcasting with his little brother as well as well as the intimate documentary on Prime Video. The Eagles' 11-6 record disguises the fact that the team had been in freefall for the last third of their season and this game was more of the same. Even the “Brotherly Shove,” their signature unstoppable version of the quarterback sneak, was stoppable in this game, possibly because they overused it for a want of confidence in any other plays. Jalen Hurts apparently cannot read the defense properly when he's moving left, which might be what Nick Bosa was talking about when he said that the 49ers had figured him out. He's not an ambi-turner, okay?

I was extremely not surprised when Jason decided to retire after that game, because he looked completely done with everything by the end. It was at least a little bit satisfying that the Bucs managed to win a playoff game with Baker Mayfield at quarterback, since he was the one that the Browns cast off so they could overpay for a serial sex offender instead.