Head Coach Ranking

Early Storylines for the Four Possible Super Bowl LIII Matchups

By Don Banks | Jan. 18, 2019

As would seem to logically follow when you have the two top seeds in each conference squaring off on Championship Sunday, a glamor Super Bowl matchup is already assured. Not to look past the two marquee showdowns that will unfold in New Orleans and Kansas City on Sunday, but let’s take a first, semi-deep dive into the storylines and pre-game angles that await two weeks worth of exploration and dissection in Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta:

Chiefs vs. Rams

This has to be the Super pairing that the entire football world (outside of New England and New Orleans) is rooting for, a rematch of that epic 54-51 instant classic Monday-night shootout in the Los Angeles Coliseum in Week 11 — won by the Rams. That was first game in NFL history where both teams topped 50 points, and this meeting would pit two of the youngest quarterbacks to ever start a Super Bowl, the Chiefs’ 23-year-old Patrick Mahomes and the Rams’ 24-year-old Jared Goff.

The L.A. coaching plot line would be interesting as well, with Sean McVay leading the Rams, and Kansas City’s Andy Reid having grown up in Los Angeles, often frequenting the Coliseum in childhood (including this appearance in a Punt, Pass & Kick competition). It also would be the first Super Bowl matchup to feature two teams in the NFL’s West divisions since Seattle throttled Denver five years ago. And lastly, Chiefs receiver Sammy Watkins and Rams cornerback Marcus Peters joined their new clubs last offseason, after previously playing for the opposite team in 2017.

Patriots vs. Saints

Sure, we’d get the headline collision of two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Drew Brees, and that’s reason enough to hope for this matchup. But it’d also be another Bill Parcells Coaching Tree Bowl, with Bill Belichick and Sean Payton matching wits on the sideline. If the Saints won, Payton would become the third branch of the Parcells tree to win at least two Super Bowl rings, joining Belichick and former Giants coach Tom Coughlin.

The Patriots and their fans will always have a soft spot for New Orleans in their hearts, since they won their first Super Bowl in the Superdome, upsetting the Rams, in February 2002. And the two franchises could commiserate in their anti-Roger Goodell stances of yesteryear, believing their Bounty-gate and Deflate-gate scandals were largely creations of the league office. In addition, both clubs gave up on receiver Brandin Cooks after recent seasons, and Saints tight end Ben Watson, who is retiring after this year, was the Patriots’ 2004 first-round draft pick. If there’s anything worse than having the Saints use the facilities of their NFC South rival Falcons during Super Bowl week, it’d be the Patriots hanging around Atlanta, reminding everyone about that 28-3 blown lead in Houston two years ago.

Saints vs. Chiefs

For starters, having the two top seeds face off in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in six years is a habit that we could get used to. With their high-octane offenses and adept play-calling by head coaches Sean Payton and Andy Reid, we might be in for one of the highest-scoring Super Bowls of all time. Not to overlook a pair of defenses that have come up big so far in the playoffs.

Both the quarterbacks — Drew Brees and Patrick Mahomes — are Texas kids who very nearly became teammates in New Orleans. The Saints were thinking about drafting Mahomes in 2017 at No. 11 as Brees’ successor when the Chiefs traded up to No. 10 to nab him.

And let’s not forget the dapper dresser and big talker who was Hank Stram, the coach who led the Chiefs to their only Super Bowl win in January 1970 — at New Orleans’ Tulane Stadium, no less. After 15 years in Kansas City, Stram later coached the Saints for two dismal seasons (1976-77), losing more than his share and never coming close to reproducing his success in Kansas City.

Rams vs. Patriots

This is the only Super Bowl rematch we can get, but what a doozy it is. New England logged one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history in beating the St. Louis Rams in New Orleans 17 years ago, launching the Patriots dynasty and the Tom Brady era that still rolls on today. And can we please hear the “Beat L.A.’’ chant ring out in Boston one more time, after the Red Sox bested the Dodgers in October and the Patriots embarrassed the Chargers in last week’s AFC Divisional round?

The coaching matchup of veteran defensive genius (Belichick) versus youthful offensive genius (McVay) would be beyond intriguing. And the old-young quarterback pairing of Brady and Goff, just a couple of California kids from the Bay Area makes for fine fodder as well. It would also be the first Super Bowl since the Ravens-49ers pairing in the 2012 season without a No. 1 seed involved. Interestingly, a No. 2 versus No. 2 Super Bowl hasn’t ever happened before, since the NFL went to a 12-team field in 1990. And ex-Patriots Aqib Talib and Brandin Cooks now star for Los Angeles and might have something to say about what life is like playing for the dynasty in Foxboro.

NFL Column: 10 Things to Consider as Championship Sunday Looms

By Don Banks | January 15, 2018 2pm PT

Nick Foles There’s a lot of history on the line next weekend on Championship Sunday, and no matter who the Super Bowl participants wind up being, we’re going to have an interesting matchup on the evening of Feb. 4 in Minneapolis. Here are 10 things to consider about the looming AFC and NFC title games:

 

1. Jacksonville is in its 23rd season since being a 1995 expansion team, and the Jaguars are this year’s only final four qualifier that has never reached the Super Bowl. If Jacksonville ends that streak with an upset in New England, it will become the NFL’s greatest worst-to-first team of all time by at least one barometer. No club has ever made the Super Bowl a year after finishing with three wins or fewer, as the Jaguars would do (3-13 and last place in 2016).
The only two teams to win as few as four games and then make the Super Bowl the following season were the 1988 Bengals (4-11 and last place in the ’87 strike season, then lost the Super Bowl) and the 1999 Rams (4-12 and last place in 1998, then won the Super Bowl).

2. As has been well-noted, Minnesota is trying to become the first team to ever play a Super Bowl in their home stadium. But these Vikings have already made history, in that no team before them has ever reached the conference championship round in the season its city has played host to the Super Bowl.

3. The Eagles and Vikings have two of the NFL’s most tortured fan bases when it comes to their dearth of titles. The Eagles haven’t won a league championship since beating the Packers in the 1960 NFL title game, a drought currently in its 57th season. They are 0-2 in the Super Bowl and 2-4 in NFC Championship games.

Coincidentally, the Vikings, a 1961 NFL expansion team, are also in their 57th season of existence, and still waiting for their first Super Bowl championship. They are 0-4 in Super Bowl play — tying Buffalo for the worst record — reaching the game four times in an eight-season span of 1969-76. Minnesota is 4-5 in NFC title games, having lost the last five times they made the game. The Vikings only league championship of any sort was the 1969 NFL title, in the fourth year of the Super Bowl era and the last season before the AFL and NFL merged.

4. Minnesota’s 41 years between Super Bowl berths is the third longest current such streak in league annals. It’s topped only by Kansas City, which hasn’t been in the game since the 1969 season, and the Jets, who haven’t made it back since 1968. But at least the Chiefs and Jets won Super Bowl rings for their trouble.

5. The past eight AFC/NFC title games have been won by the home team, which obviously bodes well for Philadelphia and New England, the top seeds. The last time the road team won on Championship Sunday came in the 2012 season, when both San Francisco and Baltimore (coached by the Brothers Harbaugh) prevailed and met in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.

6. Jacksonville made the AFC Championship game twice in its first five years of existence, last going in the 1999 season, which was almost the entire Patriots dynasty ago. As the No. 1 seed, the Jaguars were upset at home in that game by Tennessee, 33-14, failing to fully capitalize on a franchise-best 14-2 season.

Four days after that AFC title game in late January 2000, Patriots owner Robert Kraft hired Bill Belichick away from the Jets as his head coach, and the rest is history. Later that spring, New England drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round, and the Patriots have virtually owned the AFC ever since.

While the Jaguars haven’t been back to this level of the postseason since, the Patriots have made it their annual January excursion, qualifying for the AFC title game 12 times in the past 17 seasons. They are 7-4 in those games entering Sunday’s matchup, including an NFL record seven consecutive championship game appearances. There are 10 NFL teams that haven’t played in even one conference final in that span.
And how this for a mind-boggling stat? The longest New England has gone without making the AFC title game in the Belichick/Brady era is a three-year streak from 2008-2010, and Brady missed almost all of 2008 with a knee injury.

7. Jacksonville entered 2017 with nine consecutive non-winning seasons, and six straight double-digit loss records. They produced a league-worst 22-74 (.229) mark from 2011-2016 and even Cleveland did better than that, going 24-72 (.250) in that same span.

And yet here are the Jaguars, preparing to take on the vaunted Patriots, who just logged their 17th consecutive winning season, and 15th in a row with at least 10 wins. You can very nearly flip Jacksonville’s 22-74 regular season mark from 2011-16 and get New England’s record in those same six years: 75-21 (.781).

But all that matters now is that No. 3-seeded Jacksonville is 12-6 this season and will go into Gillette Stadium to face the 14-3 top-seeded Patriots with a world of confidence after Sunday’s 45-42 shootout win in Pittsburgh. The Jaguars’ 1-10 career record against New England feels like ancient history at the moment.

8. The Eagles on Saturday beat Atlanta 15-10 to earn their first playoff victory since the 2008 NFC Divisional round. The Vikings on Sunday got that miracle Stefon Diggs 61-yard touchdown catch to stun the Saints 29-24 and collect their first postseason win since the 2009 NFC Divisional round.

In the preseason, if you had the Vikings and Eagles making it this far, it would have been with Sam Bradford and Carson Wentz at quarterback. Instead it’ll wind up being a matchup of Case Keenum and Nick Foles, the two former 2015 Rams part-time starters on that 7-9 team in its final dismal season in St. Louis.

9. Making this Minnesota-Philadelphia saga even more interesting is that Bradford and Foles were once traded for each other, when the Eagles shipped Foles to St. Louis in exchange for Bradford and picks in March 2015. Foles didn’t last long with the Rams and Bradford didn’t last long with the Eagles, and now Bradford will back up Keenum as he takes on Philly and Foles. Small world, this NFL.

10. We have three of the top four seeds advancing to the conference finals, which gives us a pretty good chance of continuing the recent trend of the Super Bowl featuring nothing but No. 1 and No. 2 seeds for a fifth year in a row. It’s No. 1 Philadelphia versus No. 2 Minnesota (both 14-3) in the NFC, with No. 1 New England (also 14-3) hosting in the AFC.

But then there’s No. 3 Jacksonville. The last time a No. 3 seed in either conference made the Super Bowl was back in 2006, when the Colts and Peyton Manning won it all, beating the Bears in South Florida. Since then, the No. 3 seed in the AFC has been anything but a launching pad for Super Bowl dreams.
The only No. 3 seeds in that span to even make the AFC title game were the 2016 Steelers and the 2007 Chargers, and both lost — don’t tell the Jaguars — at New England.

The 10-1 Eagles seem Super Bowl bound, but we’ve all been fooled before

By Don Banks | November 27, 2017 2:00 pm PT

These are heady, giddy days in Philadelphia, with what has amounted to a season-long party atmosphere enveloping the City of Brotherly Love. The Eagles are 10-1, have won nine in a row, and are a decent bet to clinch their first NFC East title since 2013 at some point in Week 13, a full month before the regular season ends.

Philadelphia has a strong MVP candidate in second-year wunderkind Carson Wentz at quarterback, a ferocious defensive front that makes opposing passers miserable and stuffs the run, and the blowout wins just keep rolling in — three in a row now by exactly 28 points, and four by at least 23.

There has been a Super Bowl-bound vibe to this Eagles team for weeks now, and with the No. 1 playoff seed in the NFC currently in its possession, Philadelphia has the following history on its side:

  • In the past four NFL seasons (2013-2016), teams with the top seeds have made it to the Super Bowl in seven of a possible eight chances (88 percent), the only exception being last year’s No. 1-seeded Dallas team that lost in the divisional round.
  • The last two times the Eagles started a season 10-1, in 2004 and 1980, they went to the Super Bowl. The third time it happened, the 1949 Eagles won the NFL championship, giving the franchise back-to-back titles.
  • The 2004 Eagles were the most recent NFC East team to earn the conference’s top seed and use it to punch their Super Bowl ticket. Since then, Dallas has failed twice with that opportunity (2007 and 2016) and the Giants once (2008). Can you say Minneapolis and Super Bowl LII is their destiny?

With so much good karma and so many fun-filled game days for the Eagles this charmed season, what could possibly go wrong in the 10 weeks between now and Super Bowl Sunday?

Plenty, as any experienced Eagles fan probably knows. This is the NFL. Stuff happens all the time to teams that were seemingly on a season-long magic carpet ride. It’s cruel and shocking and usually leaves a psychic scar on a team and its fans, but it’s hardly rare. Before anyone pencils in Philadelphia for the NFL’s grandest stage just yet, consider how many times the football fates have been unkind.

As someone who covered the 15-1, record-breaking Minnesota Vikings as a beat writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I can tell you first-hand that no team has ever been a bigger mortal lock for the Super Bowl all season long, without making it. An overtime 30-27 loss at home to the 11-point underdog Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game was as gut-wrenching as any NFL outcome I’ve witnessed, and kicker Gary Anderson missing his only attempt of the entire season with just more than two minutes remaining in regulation was an epically bitter twist.

The 2011 Green Bay Packers can tell you something about heartbreak at the end of a once-in-a-lifetime kind of season as well. They went 15-1, averaged 35 points per game, and had the game’s best quarterback in MVP Aaron Rodgers. Oh, and they lost badly to the fourth-seeded 9-7 New York Giants, 37-20, in the divisional round, never even getting to play for a Super Bowl berth.

The same basic fate befell the top-seeded 2006 Chargers (14-2), the No. 1 2005 Colts (14-2), and the 2004 Steelers, who went 15-1 and lost to New England at home in the AFC title game. That was the year we were supposed to have a Steelers-Eagles all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl pairing, remember Philly fans?

Eagles fans have their own recent enough memory of what can wrong and ruin four-plus months of great work in one lousy afternoon. Before Philadelphia made the Super Bowl with its 2004 team, it lost three consecutive NFC title games from 2001-2003, the final two as the No. 1 seed, falling at home by double-digit margins to big underdogs from Carolina and Tampa Bay. It was an excruciating stretch in Eagles history.

So enjoy the ride, Philadelphia, but don’t assume to know how it’ll all end. The Eagles are clearly the NFC favorite and look unstoppable for now. But let’s see if the next two weeks and tough road games at still-proud Seattle Seahawks (7-4) and the surging Los Angeles Rams (8-3) change our view of these high-flying Birds. This is the unpredictable NFL. Dominance in late November turns to dejection in January all the time.