AFC and NFC Championship Recap: One word takeaways from each games

January 27, 2021

One more NFL game remains between now and August. After 1 entertaining and 1 not-so entertaining game on Sunday, the Super Bowl 55 matchup is set. The baby GOAT Mahomes will face off  against the GOAT TB12. Let’s see how each of the teams won their respective title games, to become the AFC and NFC champions.

 

Buccaneers at Packers: 31 – 25

Perplexed. There are many parts to this game that I cannot grapple onto. First let’s start, with the winners of the game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tom Brady is going to his 10th! (10th!) Super Bowl. It’s crazy how he can turn a 7-9 team into legitimate Super Bowl Contenders. An interesting fact that I saw Tom Brady has a better chance at making the Super Bowl than Steph Curry making a 3 pointer! Tom Brady has more than a 50% chance to make the superbowl when he starts at least 10 games of the season. He also broke the Bucs franchise records for passing TD by a QB with 7 TD. I think that statistic shows just how bad the Bucs have been as a franchise. He has the same number number of NFC titles as Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers who both have been in the NFC for 15+ years. I could go on for another couple hours on his accomplishments but we have to stop there. For the Packers I have  absolutely no clue what Matt Lafleur was thinking throughout the last part of the game. When you have Aaron Rodgers as your QB and your down by 8 you have to go for it on 4th down. You know that TB12 is on the other side and that he could easily end your season. But arguably even worse, on the previous play Rodgers has a wide open field in front of him where it looked like he could have easily ran it in, but instead he made a throw that stood no chance.

 

Another thing in this game that was very questionable was the refs. Although on the very last play they made the right call, throughout the game they seemed to have questionable calls with other clear holding calls but didn’t call them. If you were “letting them play” then why do you call a penalty on the last play. Then we come to Kevin King- this man single handedly gave Tom Brady a trip to his 10th Super Bowl plays. I’ve never seen on the wrong side of the highlight reel so many times. If the Packers don’t cut him after this season I don’t really know what they are doing with their franchise.

It’s felt like the Packers always end up in the NFC championship but fail to make it to the Super Bowl. They wasted the career of Aaron Rodgers by making the NFC title so many times and often coming out it with nothing. It always feels like they can make the Super Bowl there is always one thing that comes in their way and destroys the chance of making the Super Bowl. As some final thoughts on this game, I want to be mad at the refs for their poor calls, but the Packer didn’t execute when needed and had multiple opportunities to win this game.

 

Bills at Chiefs: 24 – 38

Invulnerable. The Chiefs seem like the team to beat in the Super Bowl. After having a scare last week against the Cleveland Browns, a lot of of people were questioning whether Mahomes was ready to go for the AFC title game. However Mahomes went through the concussion protocol pretty smoothly, and was ready to go for the AFC title game. A lot of the people were betting this would be close game and the Bills would be able to rival the Chiefs. It looked like that through the first quarter with the Bills driving down the field goal, and scoring a TD off of Mecole Hardman’s blunder. But then again we have been here before, the Chiefs down by about 10, they come roaring back and decimate the opposing team. Then for the rest of the night the Chiefs looked unstoppable. Granted the Bills don’t have the best defense in the world, but combination of Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill seemed too much for the Bills who struggled covering these receivers all night. Big play after big play, it just seemed like that was normal for the Chiefs. This is the type of team that can turn on the jets when needed. This was not a great game for Bills. The offense failed to get much going, and Stefon Diggs had his first bad game of the season. Josh Allen had a solid game, but there wasn’t anything special about it for him. But even more confusing was when the BIlls were on the Chiefs 8 yard line, and 2 yard line they decided to kick field goals. The Bills know how dominant the Chiefs were, and how the only way they could win is through a shootout. Regardless instead of going for the TD’s to make this a more compelling game, they decided to play. But this team has a lot to look forward, they have a young and emerging Qb in Josh Allen, an All-Pro Receiver in Diggs and a young RB core. Their defense isn’t that bad, but there is work that needs to be done with it. I’m going to make an early prediction that the Bills will be back in this game next year and they will look better than they did this year.

Stefon Diggs was the only Bills player remaining on the field during the Chiefs celebration (Source: The Buffalo News )

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