Not much excitement came from the opening weekend of the playoffs with the first four and five of the six games resulting in lopsided wins for the home teams. It wasn’t until rookie Jayden Daniels led Washington to a last-second win in Tampa that we saw any real drama over the weekend.
Some takeaways from watching from the couch:
-It felt like the dominance in the running game for Baltimore, Buffalo and Philadelphia made the games appear a bit closer than they actually were, particularly the two AFC games. The Ravens and Bills controlled their games throughout but at times the scoreboard in both told a different story.
This was especially true in the Bills game where Buffalo seemed to possess the ball for all 60 minutes yet led just 13-7 with less than four minutes left in the third quarter. James Cook and Ty Johnson ran all over Denver’s defense to the tune of 210 yards, but as is often the case running production doesn’t always lead to points. Then Josh Allen was finally allowed to air it out and he fired a pair of touchdown passes and the rout was on.
To a lesser extent this was the case in Baltimore and Philly as well. The Ravens rode the legs of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry to a 21-0 lead, but a conservative approach allowed the overmatched Steelers to hang around. Twice Pittsburgh had the ball down 14 in the second half, where another touchdown would have made things interesting, but the Ravens defense closed it out. It felt like Baltimore enjoyed a much bigger lead, but Jackson attempted only six passes in the second half and the Ravens scored just 7 points despite Henry’s huge night. The approach made the game closer on the scoreboard than it was.
The Eagles never really got in gear offensively throughout, but when Green Bay kicked a field goal to cut it to 10-3 in the third quarter, Jalen Hurts attempted three of his eight second-half passes and completed them all, the first two to DeVonta…
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