The NFL’s Wild Card weekend was wild

(News4usOnline) – Here’s a quick reaction to what happened in the first round of the NFL playoffs. Well, what we can say about Wild Card weekend in the NFL is that parity reigns. 

The road team became the dominant factor in all of the games played, ending with the Houston Texans pummeling the Pittsburgh Steelers in front of their home crowd. 

After that 30-6 beatdown by the Texans and their ferocious defense, what is sure to come for the Steelers is that they need to go out and get a viable young quarterback who can either back up Aaron Rodgers or take the team in a new direction. 

Change can be hard for some teams like the Steelers or maybe better put-they’re stuck in their old ways-but it is always inevitable. The Steelers have not won a playoff game in nine years. 

That’s almost a decade, nearly 10 years. Anybody else outside of Mike Tomlin as head coach of the Steelers would have been gone a long time ago. And that’s the truth. 

We all live in a performance-based reality. We are all charged with getting the job done at a very high level. This goes if you’re a janitor cleaning toilets or running a business. We are all judged by the bottom line and the end results.  

It’s time for the Steelers to start living in this truth and not a perceived bubble of us against the world. The Steelers have had only three head coaches in the history of the franchise. Maybe they’ll stick with Tomlin for at least another year. Maybe they won’t. 

What we know for sure is that Pittsburgh got the can kicked out of them by the Texans. Houston held Rodgers to a 50.8 quarterback rating and 146 yards passing for the game. If this were to be Rodgers’ last game, he went out with a thud. 

The Texans and their vaunted defense move on to play the New England Patriots in the AFC semifinal round, which could be another game in which putting points on the scoreboard might be a stern test for both teams. 

The Patriots, the No. 2 seed in the AFC, kept their season alive by scoring a whopping 16 points in a 16-3 snoozer against the Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers…it’s hard to describe where the Chargers are as a franchise. 

They have a very competent head coach in Jim Harbaugh and a pretty good quarterback named Justin Herbert. They also have a top-flight defense.

But for some reason, the Chargers can’t get it together to win a postseason ballgame for Herbert. Herbert just wrapped up his sixth season in the NFL. He still has not won a playoff game. 

So what gives? Throwing for a whole bunch of passing yards in the regular season doesn’t mean squat in the postseason. 

In a  Wild Card game played last year, Houston bushwhacked Herbert and the Chargers to the tune of a 32-12 loss handed to LA. Year 2 of the Harbaugh era ended with the same results: A one and done disappointment in the postseason for the Chargers. 

If there is a ray of light for the Chargers is that Harbaugh was brought in to bring winning stability to the franchise. Although they have yet to pick up a playoff win under Harbaugh, it’s clear that the tone and direction of the team seem to be in place for the present and the future. 

For Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams their future lies in the hands of quarterback Matthew Stafford, who is now in his 17th year playing in the NFL. That’s a long time. Stafford, however, still appears to be at the top of his game. 

He showed as much when he led the Rams to a 34-31 win against the upstart Carolina Panthers in the first of what could be a four-game road trip should LA manage to play and win all the way to Super Bowl LX.  

An MVP candidate, Stafford hit tight end Colby Parkinson with the winning touchdown pass with 38 seconds left in the game in order for LA to escape. Stafford and the Rams play another team on the rise in the Chicago Bears with another young hotshot quarterback. 

After surviving Bryce Young and the Panthers, the Rams take on Caleb Williams and the Bears. The Bears did the unthinkable, outscoring the Green Bay Packers 25-7 in the fourth quarter of their NFC Wild Card playoff game to come away with a 31-27 win. 

Talk about a meltdown, the Packers did just that in the final period of their season. Green Bay deserves to be sitting at home for the rest of the postseason after blowing an early double-digit lead to the Bears. Perhaps Green Bay’s defense didn’t have enough cheese to refuel.