NFL Playoffs 2017: Blowout Games Bad for Football?

The 2017 NFL Playoffs saw an unprecedented 80 percent of games end in a blowout. Is that a bad thing for football?

So, these NFL Playoffs stunk, right? So many blowouts, and after all that, we are still left with the Evil Empire, the New England Patriots, hanging around to win another Super Bowl. This is bad for football, right?

Of the 10 games played in the postseason thus far, an idiotic eight were not close. The only two games that even finished in single digits were the two Sunday games of the Divisional Round. Those doubled as the only two times the home team didn’t advance this year. Small things helped this, such as Le’Veon Bell going down early this past Sunday with a groin injury, but the overall trend is weird to harness an explanation for. Are so many blowout games bad for football?

Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem discuss the 2017 NFL Playoffs in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

I don’t know what to make of all the terrible games. Home-field advantage seemed to be dissipating during the regular season, not increasing, so I don’t know why that would switch in the playoffs. You could argue that we simply had a small collection of teams that were that much better than everyone else, but that didn’t seem to be the case during the regular season either. And besides, two of the victors in blowouts in the early rounds were the same guys who were ran off the field in the conference championships.

Maybe it had something to do with offenses dominating 2016. No dominant defense made it through to the final four. Offenses ruled the day and carried both New England and the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl. Perhaps great offense and wildly unpredictable defensive play leads to a runaway final score more often than the reverse. The logic checks out. Great defenses with shaky offenses are rarely going to blow anyone out. However, if a great offense gets even an adequate day from its defense, the score could be run up rather easily.

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That leaves us with an 80 percent blowout rate in the postseason and the possibility of one more in the Super Bowl as two elite offenses and bad defenses square off. New England is admittedly a very good rush defense, and has been for the entire year, but neither the Patriots nor Atlanta even ranked in the top 15 in defensive DVOA during the regular season. And the Falcons were genuinely bad on that side of the ball before this late winter turnaround.

At least we know everyone outside of New England will be rooting for the Falcons to secure their first championship in team history. The storyline of the matchup is a fun one: the hated, cheating Patriots versus this out-of-nowhere offensive behemoth that has never won a ring. This is something we can all get behind since the rest of the postseason has been a huge bummer.

Dan Salem:

Apparently defense doesn’t always win championships, or does it? Based upon the fact that 80 percent of playoff games were blowouts, one might assume that offense ruled the day. The old adage is dead. Long live the offensive juggernaut! Except that’s simply false logic and blatantly untrue. Defense caused all of the blowouts thus far in the playoffs and defense will determine the winner of Super Bowl LI.

I find it interesting that you keep harping on Atlanta’s sub-par defense. Perhaps you missed the context, which was eloquently mentioned by the broadcast team doing the NFC Championship game. The Falcons have scored a lot of points all season, meaning their opponents had to score a lot to keep up. Their opposition was forced to go pass happy, skewing the numbers for Atlanta’s defense in the process. Their defense was pretty good and infinitely better than the stats would have you believe.

Do you fault Green Bay for being unable to stop the Falcons pass rush, or credit Atlanta for consistently getting after Aaron Rodgers? Do you fault the Steelers for being unable to get their offense going, or credit New England for shutting down Pittsburgh’s best players?

The Patriots were near the top of the NFL in nearly every defensive ranking and first-overall in points allowed per game. The Falcons stats were skewed, but ultimately their defense shut down the Packers unstoppable force after silencing the Seahawks a week earlier. Blowouts put the focus on the team who scored most, but someone had to stop the opposition in its tracks. Defense had to be great in order for someone to get blown out in the first place. One team’s defense was great in 80 percent of the playoff games thus far.

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The 2017 NFL Playoffs have played out more or less as expected, or at least how I expected them to. The Wild Card games felt like miss matches and all were blowouts. Then the Divisional games were more evenly matched and half of them were close, while the two games that weren’t featured the best team in each conference. Ultimately the Conference Championships were miss matches as well, yielding blowouts. Has the NFL become the NBA? Not quite, but defense is still winning despite the attention put on Matt Ryan, Tom Brady, and their offensive units.