National Football League

Can NFL playoffs live up to incredible regular-season finish?

Published Jan. 10, 2022 10:26 p.m. ET

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By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

There is no neat and tidy way to sum up the wildness that was the 2021 National Football League season, in which Sunday night’s extraordinary closing formed the only appropriate conclusion to a campaign that resembled perennial, unadulterated, jaw-droppingly entertaining chaos.

All season, nothing went to plan. Nothing could be taken for granted — or even at face value.

On Sunday afternoon, hours before the unthinkable took place and left us all wondering what the heck happened, the Detroit Lions (winless until Week 13) beat the Green Bay Packers (Super Bowl favorites and the NFC's No. 1 seed).

And that was one of the least surprising things of the day.

The regular season that just came to pass and ended with unfeasible drama involving the Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers seems to have been the creation of the most mischievous of all the football gods.

Chris Broussard: Brandon Staley cost Chargers the postseason in OT loss to Raiders I FIRST THINGS FIRST

The Las Vegas Raiders advanced to the playoffs with an overtime win against the Los Angeles Chargers. Chris Broussard explains why he believes Brandon Staley’s decision cost the Chargers a postseason appearance.

Teams playing at home won the same amount of games as those on the road. Underdogs on paper turned into winners in reality. Even at the end, when Week 17 seemed to have shuffled most of the postseason situation into some kind of sensible order, Week 18 brought twist upon twist –– and then, for the Chargers, a devastating final twist.

In terms of pure watchability, was this the greatest NFL season ever? If you like order, consistency and predictability, the answer is a resounding "no."

But if you enjoy having your mind blown and are willing to embrace the weirdness? Then, quite possibly, it’s a "yes."

It was a year when a team –– the Baltimore Ravens –– could lose its last six games yet see its postseason hopes extinguished only on the final play of the campaign, in overtime no less.

And another team –– the Miami Dolphins –– could win seven straight and eight of its last nine but still miss the postseason and then proceed to fire its head coach.

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Even more absurd, the Indianapolis Colts could turn things around from a miserable start and head into the final week as dangerous playoff contenders, only to miss out altogether by failing to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, an opponent bad enough that even that upset victory won’t stop them from picking first in the 2022 NFL Draft.

"We didn’t help ourselves," Colts head coach Frank Reich said. "Poor on third down, missed a couple of fourth downs that we should never miss. That goes back to coaching and playing."

It was a season in which Ben Roethlisberger effectively said goodbye because it looked so improbable for the Pittsburgh Steelers to stay alive, yet all the outcomes required to make that happen did indeed transpire.

And one of the most unfairly derided quarterbacks in football, Jimmy Garoppolo, booked the San Francisco 49ers’ playoff ticket with a season-saving, 88-yard drive in 61 seconds while plagued by an injured thumb.

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Jimmy Garoppolo talked to Tom Rinaldi after the San Francisco 49ers erased a 17-point deficit and secured a playoff berth.

In this season, the two quarterbacks with the best records are a guy who began the year considering a future as a game show host and a 44-year-old who just keeps on going. Meanwhile, the top seed in the AFC, the Tennessee Titans, played without its best player for half the schedule.

And for one week, the football world was smirking and joking about the quirky possibility of a tie between the Raiders and Chargers, with the smart heads admitting that there was no chance of it working out that way — only for it to get to the point where it was about to happen. It was destined to happen.

Except, ultimately, possibly thanks to an ill-advised timeout from Chargers coach Brandon Staley, it didn’t.

"Staley’s timeout was 100 percent defensible," FS1’s Nick Wright said Monday on "First Things First." "But folks don’t like his aggressiveness, so they’ll take any opportunity to crush him, even for the most obvious things."

Maybe, but that won’t stop the chatter about the fact that stopping the game allowed the Raiders to adjust to a less cautious third-down option that ultimately set up the winning field goal. Who knows? With sympathetic thoughts to long-suffering Chargers fans, whose team continues to find imaginative ways to leave them in tears, it was perhaps only fitting that there was one final shakeup in the game of the year.

In just more than a month, there won’t be any more Mondays like this for a while, the ones when you greet a new week uplifted by what you saw yet exhausted by all the plot turns. Maybe it’s for the best. Our nerves might not be able to take much more of this.

What a week. What a season. What a way for it to end.

OK, NFL playoffs, it’s your turn now. And you’ve got a heck of a lot to live up to.

Let’s see what you’ve got.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

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National Football League

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