NFL Playoffs 2018: Will defense win the championship?

The final four of the NFL Playoffs 2018 may have dominated all season, yet this is one of the most inexplicable pair of conference title matchups in history. Will defense win it all?

We are down to the final four in the 2018 NFL Playoffs. The teams involved aren’t technically surprises. They are the top two seeds out of the NFC and the one seed and three seed from the AFC. Ho-hum. Ho-no though! Look again, and this is one of the most inexplicable pair of conference title matchups in our lifetimes.

Before the season began, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles were coming off of last place division finishes. The Minnesota Vikings finished .500 and had no clear way to push through the teams above them. All three obviously managed and now are in the conference finals with Blake Bortles, Nick Foles, and Case Keenum respectively leading their offenses. Tom Brady and the Patriots are always exceptions. In the NFL Playoffs 2018, they are egregiously so.

Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate the NFL Playoffs 2018 in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

Even as we have seen three you-can’t-win-a-Super-Bowl-with-him-at-quarterback quarterbacks, each passer’s story is different. Bortles is the game manager who just needs to not make mistakes so his defense and running game can win. Foles is the injury replacement just trying to not ruin a season for the ages by the MVP who went down. Keenum is the reclamation project who was finally put in a place to succeed.

That argument that a team needs a certain level of quarterback to win a title has always been stupid and misinformed. People continually point to exceptions immediately after they say such a thing, as if the exceptions prove their point. When there are multiple exceptions, it means the theory is incorrect. Trent Dilfer, Joe Flacco, 2016 Peyton Manning, Mark Rypien, Brad Johnson, and Jeff Hostetler aren’t all exceptions. They are just guys who won championships on good teams.

This season, it seems obvious that any of Bortles, Foles, and Keenum are perfectly capable of leading a team to a Super Bowl title. They have already reached the conference title games. It is partially a coincidence that three “bad” quarterbacks are here together. It is also a sign that that old phrase really means nothing at all. You can win a title with a “bad” quarterback if he plays well enough to do so. That isn’t a caveat; that is common sense.

Since finding a franchise signal-caller is always a toll, organizations are always on the lookout for alternatives. Do you have a feeling about which strategy teams without a franchise passer may employ in the future? Since Foles wasn’t Philly’s plan, this really comes down to Bortles and Keenum (though Keenum wasn’t Minny’s preseason plan either). Is betting on a game manager or a reclamation project a better plan for the future?

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Bortles doesn’t ever really win a game. What he does instead is keep it within reach as best he can. He avoids negative plays, ranking tied for third in the league in sacks taken. But he can also aim for the big play when necessary, ranking in the middle of the pack in 20+ yard completions. With the intelligence in front offices these days, it seems logical that other franchises will try to build a roster like the Jaguars, essentially spending highly on everything except quarterback, the highest-paid position in the sport.

Or teams can look for the next Keenum, the veteran passer who has never been in a great spot before. With a good offensive line and great weapons around him, Keenum performed like one of the better quarterbacks in the league.

Each strategy has its pitfalls. You could end up with a roster not good enough to carry the quarterback, or you could find Mike Glennon instead of Keenum. But this season has officially taught us that Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks aren’t out of one single mold…unless Brady wins again.

Dan Salem:

No matter how great or average a starting quarterback is, defense wins and loses championships. Its true that even average quarterbacks must play a streak of solid games in order for their teams to win, but this is more about a lack of mistakes than it is about making the proverbial big play. Being in position to make that ‘big play’ comes down to ball control and defense. Tom Brady deserves credit for being pretty awesome, but New England won titles with great defense and mistake free football. You don’t overcome the biggest deficit in Super Bowl history without stopping the other team from scoring and controlling the football.

This argument normally falls on deaf ears. There are two reasons for this, with the biggest being that its boring to credit a lack of mistakes and solid defense for the win. Its infinitely more fun to anoint the quarterback as the hero. This also promotes reason number two. Everyone loves a star. Yet the NFL Playoffs 2018 are the epitome of defense and turnovers winning, rather than a star quarterback and his offensive entourage. Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, and Drew Brees all fell to quarterbacks who rarely make the flashy play. They all lost to superior teams and football is a team game after all.

I don’t think that attempting to win with a game manager or reclamation project is anything new. Teams do this all the time if they don’t have their franchise guy, it just doesn’t work very often. You know what also doesn’t work as often as we think? The franchise quarterback getting his team to the playoffs! Brees and his Saints missed the postseason for quite a long time. Oakland has its franchise quarterback, yet they fell way short this season with Derek Carr. The same is true of Seattle, Dallas and the Los Angeles Chargers. For every franchise passer that gets his team to the playoffs, there is one who fell short. One player alone can not breed success. Look at the 2017 New York Jets.

New York took the game manager approach to quarterback this past season and it was a stellar decision. Josh McCown had the best season of his career, becoming a reclamation project as well. Yet he could only take the Jets so far on his own, and when he got hurt it all fell apart. New York looked great with McCown, but as a young team they often fell a touchdown shy of victory. They couldn’t close games in the fourth quarter. McCown proves that a game manager and/or reclamation project can completely turn around a season for even bad teams. Both are solid approaches to filling the quarterback position, but neither are long term solutions.

Next: 20 Bold predictions for the Conference Championship Games

Finding a young quarterback to build an offense around and groom in your team’s image is still a necessity. That game manager may not be able to manage games year in and year out. That reclamation project may fall apart down the road. The veteran quarterback may get hurt. All of these things are true of a young quarterback as well, but youth provides time and room for growth. Someone like Flacco hit his ceiling and won a Super Bowl because the team was right around him. Yet repeating lightning in a bottle has proven as challenging as we would think. This is why Kirk Cousins is so coveted. He’s been consistently great on average teams. Imagine what he would do on a great team.

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