Here’s a attending at the best and affliction from the Wild Card Round:
Best
Chiefs' Defense
Kansas City won its aboriginal playoff bold aback Jan. 1994 with an advancing aegis that addled Brian Hoyer and the Texans. The Chiefs pitched a shutout, banishment 5 turnovers and burglary Hoyer three times. Houston accomplished with just 226 yards on 62 plays (3.6 yards per play), while authoritative alone one cruise to the red area (which concluded in an interception).
Kansas City’s 30-0 win represented the third bigger annihilation win by a alley aggregation in NFL postseason history. The Chiefs are now acceptance just 11.6 credibility per bold over the team’s accepted 11-game win streak. Tom Brady and the Patriots are up next.
LB Ryan Shazier, Pittsburgh Steelers
Shazier played like a heat-seaking missile for the Steelers adjoin the Bengals. He tallied a game-high 13 tackles, with two tackles for losses, two affected fumbles and a bollix recovery—but his appulse transcended statistics.
His aboriginal big play came if he formed down Giovanni Bernard and wrestled the brawl abroad with the Bengals active in the additional half. Later, Shazier helped detect out and stop Cincinnati’s odd two-point attack afterwards the Bengals took the advance backward in the contest. He adored his best for last. Shazier kept the bold animate if he bare Jeremy Hill afterward a Landry Jones interception, giving the Steelers the brawl aback with 1:36 larboard in the fourth quarter. We’ll awning what happened next later.
Packers Breach
Has the Packers breach assuredly flicked on the switch? Sunday’s win over Washington was a big footfall in the appropriate direction, as Aaron Rodgers threw for 210 yards and two touchdowns and Eddie Lacy and James Starks accumulated for 116 hasty yards and two added scores. Rodgers took just one sack—in the aboriginal analysis on a safety—and Green Bay denticulate 35 credibility for the aboriginal time aback Week 3.
The Redskins don’t acquire one of the NFL’s ascendant defenses, but accepting a little aplomb advanced of a rematch with the Arizona Cardinals—who accursed Rodgers and the Packers by 30 credibility in Week 16—can’t hurt. If the backstab MVP gets hot, Green Bay can still exhausted anyone.
S Eric Berry, Kansas City Chiefs
Berry has to get a mention. From assault cancer, to arena in all 16 games, to authoritative the Pro Bowl, to bearing a playoff interception? All in one year? Berry continues to address the Software for the actual best adventure of the 2015 season.
Worst
QB Brian Hoyer, Houston Texans
Hoyer’s postseason admission was an bound disaster. Houston bootless to account over 12 possessions, as the Texans quarterback threw four interceptions and absent a fumble. Four of Hoyer’s 5 turnovers came in the aboriginal half, but arch drillmaster Bill O’Brien ashore with him admitting a constant choir of boos from the NRG Stadium crowd.
While the Chiefs managed just two acreage goals off the 5 giveaways, the six credibility were added than abundant to exhausted an breach that angry the brawl over on its alone absolute scoring befalling of the contest. Hoyer’s four picks apparent the 39th time in NFL history a quarterback has befuddled four or added interceptions in a postseason game. Not surprisingly, teams are now 2-37 in those games.
LB Vontaze Burfict, Cincinnati Bengals
Scan the boxscore and it’ll be a abruptness to see Burfict’s name here. He accomplished Saturday’s accident to the Pittsburgh Steelers with a sack, two tackles for a loss, a affected bollix and an interception. For the bigger allotment of 59 minutes, Burfict was arguably the best amateur on the acreage for the Bengals.
A few abnormal of carelessness from one of the a lot of airy players in the NFL beggared the Bengals of a aboriginal playoff win in 25 years. Burfict’s absurd and alarming hit on Antonio Brown handed the Steelers 15 chargeless yards on their final drive, while aswell ambience up the game-changing battle amid Adam Jones and Joey Porter that tacked on addition 15 yards. A play later, Pittsburgh kicked the ambitious acreage ambition and able Cincinnati with one of the craziest wins in contempo playoff memory.
K Blair Walsh, Minnesota Vikings
Walsh’s three fabricated acreage goals, from 22, 42 and 47 yards, provided the Vikings a 9-0 advance through three quarters. But it was his adverse miss—from 27 yards out with just 22 abnormal larboard in the fourth—that amount Minnesota what should accept been a cinch win. Holder Jeff Locke gave Walsh the laces (as he did already beforehand in the game), and the Vikings article pulled his game-winning bang advanced left. Struck from the larboard hash, the attack never had a chance. It was an unfortunate, abortive absence on the cruelest of stages.
Home Teams
For the aboriginal time ever, all four alley teams won in the Wild Card Round. Put addition way, all four home teams lost. The Texans were destroyed out by 30 points, the Bengals threw abroad a improvement win, the Vikings absent a chip-shot acreage ambition for the win and the Redskins accustomed 35 of the game’s final 42 credibility in a 17-point loss.
The accepted denominator in all four games? The alley aggregation bedevilled the better, added accomplished quarterback. Just like that, bisected of the NFL’s analysis winners in 2015 are out of the postseason.
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