(Well I got pretty lazy in January, gonna have to go back and remember all this)
Division Round
Texans 14-23 Chiefs
Another ho-hum Chiefs performance but they got the late TD (as usual) to seal it. The Texans hung with the Chiefs and had their chances to steal it.
Commanders 45-31 Lions
Whoa! This was the upside down game: the Lions just kept turning the ball over and the Commanders kept making them pay. That said, it was actually still a game in the 4th quarter but the Lions were just spent. The Commanders are a nice story and the Lions had been so dominant all season long that it felt like this would be a fairly easy game for the Lions, but they just could not get out of their own way on this day. Great W for the Commanders!
Rams 22-28 Eagles
Weird game. The Eagles had 3 long TD runs (a 78-yarder and 62-yarder for Saquon and a 43-yarder for QB Hurts) but otherwise the Rams played superior defense and really put it on the Eagles to get stops late in the game. The Rams drove into the red zone but couldn't stop the clock and their opportunities just dried up late. The Eagles were the better team, they made the plays, they scored the points, but the Rams played their asses off and were a handful of plays away from stealing this.
Ravens 25-27 Bills
The story of the game was the Raven turnovers in the 1st half and then the Bills just holding on for dear life down the stretch. One could argue that the Ravens were better or that this was the proper outcome but I'll take a different tack: the Ravens and the Bills were basically the exact same team this season, their offenses were virtually identical and the defenses were similar enough, too. So when one looks at how the Bills were unable (again) to get past the Chiefs, I would suggest that is exactly what the Ravens would've done, too. At any rate, both teams are totally capable of beating the Chiefs--and both did during the regular season!--but the Bills faltered and I think the Ravens would have, too.
Conference Championships
Commanders 23-55 Eagles
The Commanders just kept turning it over and the Eagles just kept putting up points. (I had family stuff going on this day, was in and out of this game--but the Eagles had more points every time I checked back!) Apparently the familiarity of divisional rivals helped the veteran squad rather than the upstart squad this time around. The Eagles were a weird team this season: everyone was down about how last season ended, they had some nice W's but never seemed as good as the Lions or Vikings, got overshadowed in their division by the emergence of Jayden Daniels and even though RB Barkley had a great season, it felt like all the behind-the-scenes talk was of how everyone hated the coach. So even though the Eagles were good from beginning to end this season, they were never anyone's focus--and what attention they did get was mostly disappointing. Well, they were the tops in the NFC this season and even though they were right there all along, somewhow no one saw it coming.
Bills 29-32 Chiefs
Okay, I'm a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan and, yeah, I'm pretty salty about losing to the Chiefs every god damn year. But, man, as a general sports fan: I don't like these Chiefs, I don't like the way they win. I'm not a hater, I admire athletic greatness and great teams: I didn't hate on the Brady-Belichick Pats or the KD Warriors or the Saban Crimson Tide or the Yankees back in the 1990s or the run the Astros had, I don't hate on Bayern Munich for winning the Bundesliga every year. I'm all for the best teams being the best. I'm not saying they suck, I fully acknowledge that Mahomes is one of the all time greats. And if the Chiefs just destroyaed everyone by 3 TD's every week, I'd be cool with them. Or if they were crafty veterans that figured out different ways to beat people, I'd be cool with them. My complaint about the Chiefs is that they get lucky. They need 2-3 calls from the refs every week that no other team in the league gets in order to win. Yeah, I said it: they win by special dispensation over and over again. They are a good team, they have a solid pass rush and a great QB and that keeps them in games; but its the love from the refs that get them over the top every time. And I'm fucking tired of it! Again, I don't hate on winners, but I get inured to the ridiculously lucky. And that's who the Chiefs are. We'll see if their lucks holds out.
Super Bowl
Chiefs 22-40 Eagles
Most folks thought this was a boring game but, man, the league has demanded that this is the only way the Chiefs lose, so the Eagles had to run up the score to even have a chance, so unless you're a Chiefs fan--the game HAD to be boring! And for my part....I loved every second of it! Word is that when the Eagles were up 40-6 in the 4th quarter, QB Hurts was begging to keep runing it up and I completely agree. Let the stomping continue! Indeed, the Chiefs scored 16 points after that and Mahomes was able to pull together some reasonable stats after arguably his worst performance as a pro, so the scoreline actually doesn't even suggest how bad a thrashing this was. The Eagles did everything they wanted on offense until they just stopped wanting anything by the 4th quarter and on defense they kept Mahomes so bottled up for 3 quarters, that the Chiefs had flat out nothing for most all of the game.
If the Chiefs had won by this scoreline I'd tip my cap to them but that was never going to happen; if the Chiefs had honestly engineered a solid W, I'd tip my cap to the them, but the Eagles were too good for that. But if the Chiefs had won this game the same way they acheived most all of their W's this season, man, I might've just stopped watching football for a while. Dead serious! I like all the sports and if the NFL wants to turn it into a shit league, I'll just move on to something else. But that didn't happen, the under-the-radar Eagles crushed the barely-getting-by Chiefs and frankly that's what should have happened. (And I'm currently confident that the Bills and Ravens and others will de-throne the Chiefs for real next year--the key is to stomp the shit out of them!)
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