I spent 18 hours watching the six NFL Wild Card playoff games over the last few days and, like, 17 of those hours were worth it. (I did not enjoy watching the Patriots mush Justin Herbert into an unrecognizable sludge.)

There were 12 fourth-quarter lead changes in the first round, which is more than in any other complete postseason ever.

As a longtime “college football is more entertaining than the NFL” guy, I think I have to abandon that island. Every NFL game goes down to the wire; the most exciting thing currently happening in college football is Indiana beating everybody by 40.

– Rodger Sherman

Bears 31, Packers 27

The Bears got more than a quarterback with the #1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Two years in, Caleb Williams appears to be a silver bullet: The exact thing that kills the monster that’s been haunting the Bears for years.

In this case, the monster is cheese. And Williams is potentially the greatest grater of all time. The GGOAT.

Look at the technique! A lesser grater would snap that block in half.

No NFL rivalry has been as thoroughly dominated by one team as Bears-Packers. From 2009 to 2023, Green Bay went 27-4 against Chicago, including a win that ended Chicago’s lone playoff run in between the 2006 and 2018 seasons. The list of game results looks like the “Maryland-Penn State football rivalry” Wikipedia page, which exists for some reason. Aaron Rodgers famously said he owned the team, a claim barely contested by the Halas and McCaskey families. 

Bears fans seemed to internalize their two losses to the Packers every year as an unavoidable fact of Bearsdom. “Yeah, the monster eats somebody in the village every once in a while, what are you gonna do about it?” 

But now the Bears have Caleb Williams, who has twice in the past month pulled off miraculous comeback victories against the Pack. Three weeks ago, he threw a 45-yard, game-winning walk-off touchdown in overtime after the team trailed by 10 points with five minutes remaining. Saturday, the Bears trailed 21-3 at halftime and 21-6 entering the fourth quarter before scoring 25 points in the final 15 minutes to win 31-27.

The play of the game was this fourth-and-8 conversion. Williams moves to his left, gets hit by a guy to his right, then perfectly lofts the ball 25 yards down the field to his receiver among a swarm of four Packers defenders as he’s falling to the turf. It was the new Throw Of The Year, surpassing the last throw Caleb Williams made to beat the Packers.

Williams is not the NFL’s best QB — YET!!!! — but he’s clearly the NFL’s QB HORSE Champion. Funny: That used to be Aaron Rodgers, the player Williams described as “his football GOAT” before the draft. 

And if you grow up idolizing Aaron Rodgers, you know that it’s a big deal when the Bears beat the Packers. Williams now has three career wins against the Packers, which means he has already tied the Bears’ previous 13 starting quarterbacks (Jay Cutler, Mitchell Trubisky, Justin Fields, and a long string of randos) combined. New head coach Ben Johnson has also made it clear how much he cares about beating the Packers. That’s the thing about hiring a great coach from a division rival: not only does it make one of your regular opponents significantly worse, your new coach also already hates all the same teams as you.

I’m all in on Caleb Williams. After he set the franchise passing yards and touchdowns records in the regular season, it’s fair to ask whether he’s already the best Bears QB of all time. (And I would know! I’ve ranked the best Bears QBs of all time!) We know for sure he’s already the gratest.

Texans 30, Steelers 6

What is the opposite of riding off into the sunset? Getting tossed into a dumpster at midnight? Going through a trash compactor during a solar eclipse?

Whatever the answer, that is what happened to Aaron Rodgers against the Houston Texans. The baddest defense in the league brutalized the 42-year-old in one of the worst performances of his career — and really, one of the worst passing performances from any quarterback in a playoff game. (I have to imagine this post is psychologically scarring for any Packers/Rodgers fans out there. Apologies.)

On the likely final play of Rodgers’ career, the legendary QB threw an interception to Calen Bullock. As he tried to tackle the defender streaking down the sideline, he got juked, whiffed on the hit, and wound up among the photographers as Bullock scored a touchdown:

Look at the sheer violence of this play, the first of two defensive touchdowns for the Texans in the fourth quarter:

Defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins dump-trucks Isaac Seumalo, one of the best offensive guards in the NFL, with a powerful bull rush … and he isn’t even the guy who gets the sack. That’s Will Anderson, who lined up outside the Steelers’ wide receivers and still got home to batter Rodgers. Then Rankins picked up the loose ball and ran into the end zone.

In the past decade, there have been exactly two playoff games in which one team had multiple defensive touchdowns: last night’s Houston Texans win, and the Houston Texans’ 2024 playoff win over the Browns, both under head coach DeMeco Ryans and his merry band of marauders.

If this is the end for Rodgers, what a gross way to go out. Out of 278 career games in which Rodgers threw at least 10 passes, the Texans loss ranked 271st in yards per attempt, and 270th in passer rating. Yahoo’s Nate Tice posted that out of 283 games in which a quarterback has thrown at least 20 passes in the postseason since 2013, Rodgers’ performance ranked 283rd in success rate and EPA/dropback.

Rodgers is, decisively, not the QB Williams once idolized. Rodgers finished the season 30th in yards per attempt, 32nd in success rate, and 32nd in QBR. He had the lowest average depth of target in the league (6.4 yards per attempt, per Pro Football Focus) and still was one of the least accurate quarterbacks in the league (finishing 28th in bad throw percentage, per Pro Football Reference). The Steelers built this offense to compensate for Rodgers’ weaknesses, but there weren’t enough strengths in his game to make it work.

Rodgers could have rode into the sunset! Instead, he spent multiple offseasons will-he-won’t-he-ing about his retirement, first strong-arming a trade from the franchise where he’d played most of his entire career, then deciding his preferred destination was the New York Jets, where he whined about management after they went to great lengths to hire his preferred coaches and wide receivers. Then he spent his final season for these Steelers, throwing the shortest passes in the league.

Can’t wait until August when Rodgers decides he’s un-retiring to play even worse in 2026!

49ers 23, Eagles 19

The big story surrounding the 49ers this week was a wild conspiracy theory that their years of injury woes were caused by electromagnetic fields emanating from a power station near the team’s practice facility and stadium. On one hand, this was easily debunked fact-free woo-woo nonsense that Aaron Rodgers will look into in his now-ample free time.

On the other hand … damn, how do they have so many guys injured every single year?

In 2022, the Niners lost their top two quarterbacks to injury, somehow got QB1-level production out of Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy, and then lost Purdy to an injury in the NFC Championship game against the Eagles (they then lost backup Josh Johnson to injury after that). In 2024, the Niners were the most injured team in the NFL. And this year, their two best defensive players, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa, suffered season-ending injuries by Week 6, and their first-round pick, defensive end Mykel Williams, tore his ACL in Week 9. 

On top of that, the player who filled in for Warner at middle linebacker, Tatum Bethune, also went on injured reserve, and for Sunday’s game against the Eagles, they were also without starting linebackers Dee Winters and Luke Gifford. They also had injury issues at wide receiver (heightened by Brandon Aiyuk’s decision to just, uh, not play football this year) with WR2 Ricky Pearsall out for Sunday’s game, along with several of his backups.

And then against the Eagles, star tight end George Kittle tore his Achilles. DAMN YOU, POWER GRID!

Luckily, the 49ers are coached by schemelord Kyle Shanahan, who maximized every advantage among the players remaining on his roster. For example: a touchdown pass thrown by receiver Jauan Jennings, a highly-ranked QB prospect in high school:

Let’s run down the randoms:

And then there were the Eagles, who still had most of the stars from last year’s Super Bowl champions, but looked as disjointed and incoherent as any team in football. They had trouble lining up for plays, they had miscommunications, and A.J. Brown got into a yelling match with head coach Nick Sirianni on the sideline and also dropped Jalen Hurts’ three best passes of the night.

Philadelphia’s coaching was egregiously bad. It felt like the Eagles’ coaching staff was calling plays at random, without considering where the Niners’ injury woes had left them weakened, nor even the down and distance. (I’m thinking about that third-and-long QB draw.) As I type this, I am not quite sure why offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has a job (let’s check back in 24 hours.)

It was the coaching mismatch of the year: a doddering doofus against a virtuoso who squeezed a symphony out of scraps. If we could just get the Niners some ligaments and tendons, they’d be a Super Bowl contender.

Quick rundown of the other three playoff games:

🦬 Bills 27, Jaguars 24: I did not even have a dog in this fight and I am going to go to my grave angry about the Jags averaging 8.4 yards per carry on 14 carries by their running backs and 6.9 yards per attempt on 30 throws by Trevor Lawrence (with two interceptions.) Run the damn ball, Coco! (Coco is what I call Liam Coen when I am attempting to do a “run the damn ball, Bobo” joke.) 

🐏 Rams 34, Panthers 31: The 8-9 Panthers almost beat the Rams, arguably the best team in the league, after Matthew Stafford spent about half the game throwing wildly inaccurate passes after slamming his fingers into a lineman’s helmet. This will never happen on my NFL team because I’ll make all the offensive linemen wear those guardian caps. They may not do it to protect their own brains, but they will do it to protect their quarterback’s fingers.

🏥 Patriots 16, Chargers 3: Remember that writeup about how the 49ers overcame a ton of injuries? That did not happen with the Chargers’ extremely injured offensive line. They had to scrape Justin Herbert off the field with a spatula.