Matthew Coller: 10 takeaways from Divisional Round with a Vikings spin

The Divisional Round of the playoffs featured a ton of drama and a lot of interesting developments. Let’s have a look at what we learned with a Vikings spin….

What the heck, NFC North?

After combining to go 24-3 versus everyone else except each other, all of the NFC North’s supposed juggernauts went down in their first playoff game. Not only that, they all lost by at least two scores.

What happened? Was there something we missed about the best division in football? Were the Lions, Vikings and Packers not as good as their combined +444 point differential?

You can always look back and try to find explanations like the fact that they played the AFC South and ate up a bunch of free wins there or the key injuries that were at the most costly positions like Christian Darrisaw against the Rams pass rush or Christian Watson when Jordan Love needed all his weapons or Amik Robertson when the Lions were already down bad.

The explanation may be as simple as the NFC North squads just drawing the wrong teams. The Packers landed an opponent with the best secondary in the league and no true No. 1 receiver to lean on. The Vikings went into the playoffs with only one of their last five games grading above 60 (out of 100) by PFF in pass blocking after doing so in nine of the first 13 weeks. The Lions turned the ball over on just 8% of drives this year and then Goff was strip-sacked and threw two bad interceptions and they had no defense to make up for the miscues.

Kevin O’Connell has repeatedly mentioned the nature of the single-elimination tournament: Matchups and mistakes determine your fate. The NFC North was on the wrong side of both.

Washington had the answers against Detroit that the Vikings did not

Against Detroit in Week 18, the Vikings made the Lions’ defense look like untamed beast. The Commanders made it look like it had no claws at all. What was the difference? Jayden Daniels was PFF’s third highest rated passer when throwing the ball in 2.5 seconds or less and he’s a gifted playmaker. When the Lions blitzed (47% of the time, per PFF) he ate them alive by getting the ball out fast or scrambling.

When throwing under 10 yards vs. Detroit, Daniels went 16-for-19 with 166 yards and two touchdowns. When the Lions blitzed, he went 12-for-15 with 200 yards and had two scrambles. Daniels was sacked zero times and his average time to throw when he was kept clean was 2.22 seconds. Lightning quick.

Washington also controlled the game with their run game. Austin Ekeler and Brian Robinson combined for 21 runs for 124 yards.

The Vikings struggled to connect on quick throws against the Lions, giving their pass rushers like Za’Darius Smith and Levi Onwuzurike time to take advantage of one-on-one matchups and disrupt the passing game.

It was also hard not to notice Daniels’s calm demeanor in the madhouse that was Ford Field. That was not what we saw from Sam Darnold.

The other difference was that when Washington took the ball away from Goff, they took advantage of it. The Vikings failed on fourth downs or settled for field goals while the Commanders converted their fourth downs and scored touchdowns.

Was that the Lions’ best chance at a Super Bowl?

No one would ever argue that the Lions’ winning window closed on Saturday afternoon because they are bringing back all the bones of their roster including a healthy Aidan Hutchinson. They will have some cap space to work with before all the big contracts really explode but winning 15 games and landing the No. 1 seed is a very difficult feat to repeat, particularly because the Lions will play a difficult schedule next season that includes the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens, Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Rams.

It’s possible that they will just keep swinging until they get there but things can change expectedly in the NFL. The 49ers were in the Super Bowl and then missed the playoffs this year. In 2022, the Eagles went to the Super Bowl and then were eliminated in the first round of 2023.

As great as they have been over the last two years, there has to be some pang in the back of everyone’s minds in Detroit about whether they have the ingredients to get all the way through the postseason. Whether it’s Dan Campbell’s intense style being connected to some of the struggles to stay healthy or Jared Goff’s limitations as a playmaker (notice all the final four QBs are runners).

Or it might just be bad playoff luck and Detroit will be right back here in 2025.

The NFC has its Josh Allen in Jayden Daniels

The poise and playmaking of Jayden Daniels against the Lions has to raise the question: Does the NFC have one of those aliens now?

The AFC is stacked with Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Josh Allen — three playmaking wizards who spend their regular seasons jockeying for MVP and spend their postseasons eliminating each other. The NFC has simply not had one of these fellas since Aaron Rodgers started going on darkness retreats and Drew Brees retired. The door was open to QBs like Goff, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jalen Hurts and Brock Purdy to make it as second-tier players.

Daniels looks like the type who could quickly become a similar unstoppable force to his AFC counterparts. He already threw for 25 touchdowns to just nine interceptions and ran for 891 yards in the regular season, ranking as PFF’s fifth best quarterback this year. And he can still get better.

You have to wonder if the possibility of Daniels elevating to that level is making the Vikings think about their QB situation. On one hand, a rookie was able to make it deep into the playoffs for the second straight year. Maybe that speaks well of JJ McCarthy’s odds to quickly adapt to the NFL. Also, the Vikings will have to fight fire with fire, meaning take full advantage of the rookie QB contract.

Or would the Vikings, realizing the NFC is suddenly highly competitive, want to have more of a proven veteran at QB to compete with in 2025?

The Rams D-line was that good

It was shocking to see the Rams sack Sam Darnold nine times in their Wild Card playoff win. The explanations ranged from the offensive line’s problems to O’Connell’s play calling to Darnold hanging onto the ball too long but it turns out that maybe the Rams just deserve a ton of credit for putting together a freak show on their D-line.

Against the elite Eagles O-line, the Rams did the same exact thing to Jalen Hurts that they did to Darnold: Sacked him. They took down Hurts seven times for 63 yards and a safety.

Yet the Eagles won.

The difference? Well, the Rams turning the ball over, seemingly because of the weather (and there was no overturned “forward pass” fumble), but also because Philly could run against the Rams. They had a counter punch by the name of Saquon Barkley. The former Giants top pick ran for a breathtaking 205 yards and Hurts added an additional 70 yards on the ground.

Three of the top four rushing EPA teams are in championship weekend

The evidence is piling up that offensive lines are just not capable of completely stopping today’s pass rushes. Defenses have too many athletes and too many schemes to cause havoc. The run game is one of the answers and the Vikings have not been able to consistently swing back at tough pass rushes on the ground since 2020.

Whether it’s Darnold or McCarthy, the Vikings are not going to have a Daniels, Allen or Hurts who can run for 50 yard bursts. That makes it even more vital that they put together an O-line who can push the pile and running backs who can make something out of nothing. Bringing back Aaron Jones and leaning on him heavily again doesn’t seem like it can be the only answer.

Figure out instant replay review, once and for all

Over the weekend, there were game-altering screw-ups by the refs all over the board. History buffs will tell you that there are hundreds of examples of such zebra gaffes throughout the years but the difference is that in 2025 the technology exists to make reffing so much more accurate than it is.

At the end of the first half in Baltimore, Tre White was flagged for pass interference on a play that actually looked more like the Bills receiver took him to the ground. The enormous penalty was so far off that it prompted CBS’s booth ref Gene Steratore to divert from his usual defense of the refs and criticize the call. The Bills scored to go up by 11 points at the half, completely changing the complexion of the game.

How hard would it be to have an instant review of a flag that is costing one team 30 yards? The same goes for penalties that were thrown against the Texans as they bumped into Patrick Mahomes. The NFL can readjust a bad spot of the football immediately from upstairs, but not an infraction that crushes one team’s chances to win? It’s time that they adopt the UFL’s instant replay model and transparency.

Turnovers decide the playoffs

One thing that is always extremely hard to accept in a world where we preview every game to the gills before it happens is randomness. The NFL’s head of analytics Michael Lopez tweeted that the winning teams from Sunday’s games recovered six of the seven fumbles to hit the ground.

On Saturday, the Lions’ turnovers crushed them. The Vikings’ fumble that was recovered by Jared Verse could have just as easily bounced the other direction and things might have gone differently but instead it totally changed the game. That’s life in the postseason. If Ravens TE Mark Andrews falls down rather than trying to cut back in the fourth quarter, maybe the Ravens win.

Reactions from teams and narratives that get shaped by playoff games can often be traced to singular moments that swung games. It’s a wild sport.

Jared Verse vs. Dallas Turner

Nobody can walk away from the playoffs thinking that the Rams rookie is anything short of a superstar. Verse instantly became one of the most impactful players in the league, right up there with guys like Myles Garrett and Jonathan Greenard. You can bet that it will be mentioned many times this offseason that Verse was picked behind Dallas Turner, who the Vikings made a big move up in the draft to acquire.

It’s not a fair comparison because Verse had much more time to develop in college but the comparisons aren’t going to go away just because that’s the truth. There will be enormous pressure on Turner to take a big step up this offseason. That would have happened anyway considering his draft status but Verse’s excellence made it even more vital for the Vikings that Turner proves them right.

Minnesota understands how you feel, Mark Andrews

Once upon a time, a kicker…

The worst thing about the playoffs is that sometimes somebody becomes the goat — in a bad way — of a particular game. On Sunday that was Andrews dropping a potential game-tying 2-point conversion. Minnesota has been there many times in the playoffs before. There’s nothing else to say other than that it stinks that a classic contest will forever go down as “The Mark Andrews Game.” It also stinks that Lamar Jackson (yes, he played poorly at times) will have to carry around another playoff failure because he was let down by a fumble and a dropped ball against a 13-win team.