NFL playoffs Panic Index 2019: Another Super Bowl for Patriots, sorry

Welp, looks like it’s going to be another Super Bowl win for the Patriots.

That was locked up Monday night when Clemson torched Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship with a 44-16 win.

For four straight years, the Crimson Tide and the Patriots have alternated championships. The Patriots won Super Bowl 49 after Ohio State won the championship in January 2015. Then the Broncos won Super Bowl after Alabama won it all in 2016.

Then it was the Patriots in 2017, and Alabama in 2018.

So you can probably guess what the blowout loss for the Crimson Tide means. It’s Tom Brady time, no matter how much you’re sick of him,

Panic index: Whatever blood oath Nick Saban and Bill Belichick made so they’d have alternating titles had to have an expiration date, right? Brady is 41 now and his statistics in 2018 were closer to the league average than the top of the passing leaderboards. If the Alabama-Patriots curse is going to end — and it has to at some point — this looks like the year it’d happen.

On Sunday, the Chargers won because they came through in the clutch. This was an entirely un-Chargers way of doing things in the postseason.

Los Angeles had every chance to choke their Wild Card win over the Ravens away. Six different Chargers drives sputtered out in Baltimore territory, but Michael Badgley stepped up to calmly drill five field goals despite the swirling winds of the Chesapeake Bay, and set the franchise’s postseason record in the process. A punishing pass rush sacked Lamar Jackson seven times. And when Jackson rallied to set up a potential game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter, the LA defense was there to snuff that out and deny the home crowd a happy ending.

It was an encouraging win, light years away from the 2013 postseason loss that saw the team shrug disinterestedly while falling into a 17-0 hole against the Broncos. Or the Chargers’ 2009 loss to the Steelers that saw Philip Rivers take an early lead before falling into a double-digit hole in the fourth quarter. And definitely not the 2010 team that watched Nate Kaeding botch three field-goal attempts in a 17-14 loss to the Jets.

Brady and the Patriots had no trouble handling the old, cursed-from-above Chargers. In 2007 they dispatched a 14-win San Diego team thanks to a Brady interception on fourth down. In 2008, New England took advantage of terribly-timed injuries to Rivers, Antonio Gates, and LaDainian Tomlinson to improve to 18-0 on the season.

But last weekend’s grinding, consistent win suggests these Chargers are built for more and unaffected by the dizzying highs of postseason football. Playing on the road didn’t rattle Rivers’ team, and the cold of Maryland in January didn’t stop it either. This Los Angeles team found a way to bully the Ravens and put up 23 points against their top-ranked defense. Now we get to see what it can do against New England and its 21st-ranked unit.

Panic index: Then again, Alabama lost college football’s National Championship Game, which clears the runway for another Patriots Super Bowl win. New England has never won a world championship the same season as the Crimson Tide. Instead, the two teams have traded title celebrations each year since 2014.

The Chiefs ... in January. We’ve seen this show before, plenty of times. The franchise has only been to a conference championship once since winning Super Bowl IV in 1970. More recent disappointments under Andy Reid include last year’s embarrassing loss to the Titans in Kansas City, narrow losses to the Steelers and Patriots the two years before that. The most painful one of all has to be the Colts’ dramatic comeback from a 28-point deficient in the 2014 Wild Card game to win 45-44.

This year’s Colts look really good, riding a five-game win streak (and 10-1 since Week 7) into this game. Indianapolis owes a lot of those wins to a tough defense, one that was 11th best at keeping opponents from scoring in the red zone during the regular season. The Colts have the fourth best run defense, according to Football Outsiders DVOA.

It’s the kind of defense that could cause problems for the Chiefs offense. But don’t take our word for it:

The Chiefs defense will have its hands full with the Colts offense too, especially Indianapolis’ offensive line.

Panic index: There’s hope. The Colts defense ranks 20th against the pass, in DVOA. That’s something the Chiefs have managed to do pretty well, in case you hadn’t noticed. But this is the playoffs. It’s going to be tough to score at will. And if it turns into a shootout, the Chiefs can hang with the best of them.

Kansas City may have found some resiliency this season too. Andy Reid’s team won a couple of grind-it-out slugfests against good defenses, including a Week 14 OT win against the Ravens. Maybe it’s a new kind of January in the Chiefs kingdom.

A month ago, we left them for dead. Now the Eagles have won four in a row and are back in the Divisional Round again. We’re still not sure how, other than Nick Foles being a witch, of course.

But while that underdog swagger fueled them to a surprising Super Bowl win a year ago, these aren’t those same Eagles. And this isn’t the same NFC as it was last year.

For starters, the Saints have been the best team in the NFL for most of the season. The Eagles held that title last year.

The Eagles also don’t get to play this month in the comfort of the Linc, in front of their sometimes-adoring, sometimes-jeering fans. They survived in Chicago, but next up is the Superdome, a whole other beast — one that chewed them up and spit them out, to the tune of a 48-7 thrashing — less than two months ago.

The Eagles have changed somewhat since that Week 11 disaster, but are they really THAT different? Can Foles’ January juju turn a 41-point loss into an NFC Championship-advancing win? In one of the hostile environments in the NFL? A place where Drew Brees and Sean Payton have never lost during the playoffs?

How many more times can they win by the skin of their teeth — or by the graze of a hand and a double doink missed field goal?

The expiration date on all this good fortune is Sunday in New Orleans, right?

Panic index: Wellll, this is matchup that pits one team that seems to have nothing but luck on its side against another that was ousted in the playoffs in one of the worst ways possible a year ago.

We’re not sure we want to tempt fate and count Foles out, either. The last time these two teams played, Foles was on the bench. It’s not unprecedented for a fluky backup to dominate in New Orleans either. Ryan Fitzpatrick did it in Week 1 when the Bucs left the Big Easy with a 48-40 win, one of the most inexplicable games of this entire season. The Fitzmagic supply was eventually exhausted. But maybe it died so that Nickmagic could live.

It’s a good thing the Rams had a bye last week. That should have given Sean McVay and his team plenty of time to study tape of the Cowboys, especially that Week 13 win over the Saints. Dallas has the kind of defense that can suck the life right out of the high-flying Rams offense, forcing Jared Goff and Co. to have to try to beat them at their own brand of low-scoring, grinding football.

Two things the Cowboys do well are a red flag for the Rams. First, Rod Marinelli’s group is one of the best at stopping the run. They choked out Seattle’s league-best rushing attack last week, holding them to just 73 yards on the ground. Los Angeles is 2-3 when defenses hold them to fewer than 100 rushing yards in a game.

And then there’s the Cowboys pass rush. Their 39 sacks this season put them squarely in the middle of the pack, but they were very good at getting pressure, something they did on nearly third of the time when an opposing quarterback dropped back to throw. It’s a group led by Demarcus Lawrence, but the entire unit (Tyrone Crawford and Randy Gregory each have more than a dozen QB hits this season) can make life hell for opposing passers.

The Rams lost that game against the Bears, 15-6.

Panic index: No question about it, the Rams are going to have their hands full against the Cowboys defense. However, they have a defensive weapon of their own, Aaron Donald. Nobody harassed quarterbacks more frequently than the assumed Defensive Player of the Year. He’s impossible to block. That could be a problem since Dak Prescott’s having the worst year of his career against pressure.

Is it possible this game could end up being a defensive battle?