Every week in “4-Down Territory,” Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar and Luke Easterling of Bucs Wire and Draft Wire go over the things you need to know about, and the things you need to watch, in the NFL right now. With the regular season in the books, and the Super Wild-Card round on tap, there’s a lot to discuss!
00:00 – Which under-the-radar player needs to be a Secret Superstar for their team to advance?
04:52 – Is it time to reseed the playoffs for a more fair result?
09:36 – How does the new draft order shift in the top of the draft for quarterback-needy teams?
15:13 – Where do you stand on the subject of resting your starters for the playoffs?
You can watch this week’s episode of “4-Down Territory” right here:
Who are the Secret Superstars of the wild-card round?
Now that the Super Wild-Card round is set for the postseason, and there are all kinds of potentially amazing matchups, which under-the-radar player needs to be a Secret Superstar for their team to advance to the Divisional Round?
Doug: I’ll cheat a bit and go with the Seahawks’ edge quartet of Boye Mafe, Uchenna Nwosu, Darrell Taylor, and Bruce Irvin. If Seattle is going to have any chance of upsetting the 49ers in Santa Clara, those pass-rushers have to get home. Not just pressure in a general sense, but hits and sacks. The Sehawks have to get Brock Purdy off his spot, because when Purdy has a clean pocket, Mr. Irrelevant has shown that he can do some real damage. In the Week 15 matchup between these two teams, which the 49ers won, 21-13, those four edge defenders totaled no sacks, no quarterback hits, and two quarterback hurries, both by Nwosu. This season, Purdy has a passer rating of 74.4 when pressured, and 113.3 when clean. In that game, without pressure, Purdy completed 15 of 21 passes for 197 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 132.4. If this edge quartet can’t do any better than that, the Seahawks might as well stay home.
Luke: I’m gonna take Bucs outside linebacker Anthony Nelson, who became a full-time starter when Shaq Barrett went down with a torn Achilles earlier in the season. He ended up tying for second on the team with 5.5 sacks this year, and in each of their back-to-back comeback wins over the Cardinals and Saints, he had a clutch strip-sack that helped seal the victory in crunch time. He’s headed for free agency in the offseason, so he can make himself even more money with a stellar postseason performance. The Bucs can’t afford to let Dak Prescott sit in the pocket all day, so they’ll need someone like Nelson to keep stepping up with big plays in key moments if they want to beat Dallas. Honorable mention to the Jags’ pass-catcher group (Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, Marvin Jones, Evan Engram).
Why do division winners get better playoff seeds?
It seems that every year in the playoffs, there’s at least one team that gets an unfair seeding in their favor because the NFL seeds the postseason favoring division winners. This year, it’s the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are the NFC’s four-seed with an 8-9 record (Tom Brady’s first losing season ever at any level of football when he’s the primary starting quarterback).
The Bucs will host the 12-5 Dallas Cowboys on Monday night, despite the fact that the Cowboys are the much better team by record and on the field for the most part. Now, the Bucs did beat the Cowboys 19-3 on the season’s opening night, but there’s also the matter of the 9-7-1 Giants, who are the NFC’s six-seed, the 9-8 Seahawks, who are the NFC’s seven-seed, and the 9-8 Lions and the 8-8-1 Commanders, who didn’t even make the playoffs. Should the Buccaneers be automatically rewarded for playing in a division where no team had a winning record, or is it time to re-seed the playoffs for a more fair result?
Doug: I’ve been on this soapbox for years, so here we go again. I see no sense at all in awarding teams better playoff spots for winning their division. It makes more sense to award playoff seeds based on special teams DVOA or PFF long-snapping grades. There have been multiple instances over the last 10 seasons in which teams have won their divisions with losing records, and I just can’t abide any team being rewarded for that. The NFL should take that value out of the equation entirely, and seed each conference based on everything but that – overall record, head-to-head, everything else in order. But no team should get a higher seed based on winning a division. It’s one of the league’s most nonsensical rules, and it needs to stop.
Luke: The Bucs have been on the other side of this, too. Back in 2010, they went 10-6, but were left out of the postseason, while the 7-9 Seahawks made the playoffs as the No. 4 seed after winning a lackluster NFC West. It’s long past time to do away with this process. I’m fine with division champs getting an automatic playoff spot, but they shouldn’t get a home playoff game as a reward for winning a bad division, while a much better team has to go on the road.
How Week 18 changed the 2023 draft order -- and the 2023 draft itself
Week 18 did a real number on the 2023 draft order. The Houston Texans lost by winning – they beat the Colts to move from one to two in the draft order, and then fired head coach Lovie Smith for good measure. The Chicago Bears moved from two to one. The Arizona Cardinals moved from four to three, the Indianapolis Colts moved from five to four, and the Seahawks moved from three to five. The Bears and Cardinals don’t need quarterbacks, and the Seahawks may not either. The Texans and Colts really do, but how does this shift in the top of the draft affect the ways in which other quarterback-needy teams might move heaven and earth to get to the top of the draft?
Doug: When you move past whichever quarterbacks might be available in free agency or the trade market – Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo, maybe Aaron Rodgers – there are more teams in need of great quarterbacks than there are great quarterbacks. Which happens in every season, ever. This is a draft class with two potential franchise quarterbacks right out of the gate in Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, which is unlike last year’s quarterback class. Only Kenny Pickett went in the first round, and nobody was calling him “generational.” So, I do think there will be a lot of movement to get to those No. 1 and No.3 slots. Beyond that, you have guys with question marks in Will Levis, Anthony Richardson, and Hendon Hooker, but when you have guys at the top like Young and Stroud, we could see all kinds of jockeying for the top of the draft.
Luke: Getting that No. 1 pick was a huge win for the Bears, because now they can auction it off to whoever wants to jump ahead of Houston at No. 2 for the QB of their choice. Even the Texans could make an offer of their own, if they prefer one of those top passers significantly over the other. If someone does jump the Texans, and those QBs go 1-2, that No. 3 pick won’t be a destination for those QB-needy teams anymore. The Bears already have their star quarterback in Justin Fields, but need just about everything else, making them a perfect trade-down candidate. The Colts could jump their division rivals for the top spot, but could the Raiders outbid them? The Panthers? How far would the Bears want to move down? So much drama and intrigue now at the top of the draft, and I am HERE for it.
Should coaches play or sit their players in "meaningless" games?
Chargers head coach Brandon Staley is taking a lot of heat for playing his starters through most of L.A.’s 31-28 loss to the Broncos on Sunday. The result of the game had no effect on playoff seeding – the Chargers were going to be the AFC’s five-seed no matter what. Edge-rusher Joey Bosa and receiver Mike WIlliams were dinged up in that game, and Staley defended his thought process after the game, saying “These aren’t easy decisions. They’re not easy decisions and hindsight is perfect for everybody on the outside, but these games are not easy to manage. They’re not, because you don’t have that many players and we did it to the best of our ability.”
Where do you stand on the subject of resting your starters for the playoffs when you can versus whatever arguments about momentum might be out there?
Doug: Well, you go back to the Texans, and the fact that they did everything they could to win, knowing full well that it could affect their draft slot. Players and coaches are wired to compete. I’m more inclined to focus on Staley’s post-game rationale here. Yes, he was operating with a limited roster. And yes, he wanted to expand a momentum that had his team winning four straight, and five of six, before this loss.
But managing the moment as well as the roster? That’s Job One for any head coach, and I think this was an instance in which Staley got a bit over his skis. Not the first time we’ve seen Staley engage in questionable decision-making – he’s probably forced more misbegotten arguments about analytics than any other head coach over the last two seasons. Were it me, I would have made this the Chase Daniel Bowl from the start, and rested my guys. Also… if the Chargers are one-and-done against the Jaguars, and injuries to Williams and Bosa play a part, is Slaley’s job on the line?
Luke: We had the opposite situation with the Bucs on Sunday. They were up 17-10 on the Falcons at halftime, but pulled every starter they feasibly could (Antoine Winfield Jr. had to keep playing because they were down three safeties), and got outscored 20-0 in the second half. That loss gave Tom Brady his first losing season ever, his first-ever loss to the Falcons, and 9-8 certainly would have looked better on paper.
That said, just like with the Chargers, the Bucs couldn’t change their playoff situation with a win, and they got out of the game relatively unscathed from an injury standpoint. Tampa Bay could have used that momentum as well, especially on offense, but they also got a chance to finally look at a young quarterback in Kyle Trask (eh), and made sure they were as healthy as possible for the games ahead that really matter. It was hard to watch that second half as a Bucs fan, but it was the right call by head coach Todd Bowles.
