The 2024 NFL playoffs are under way, and the Chiefs and Texans are safely through to the final eight.
The Wild Card Round started out with the bang as Houston and Cleveland exchanged blows early in an entertaining back-and-forth affair, but the Texans scored 35 straight to end the game and blow out the Browns, 45-14. Then in a cold and blustery nightcap, the Dolphins never looked comfortable or competitive as the Chiefs controlled all the way in an easy 26-7 win.
For Houston, it was just another reminder that Texans Island is real, and it is spectacular.
Remember all that talk about the historic Browns defense? Houston sure doesn't. C.J. Stroud and the Texans absolutely shredded Cleveland.
Stroud was making his playoff debut as the likely Offensive Rookie of the Year, but you'd never know it the way he played. He meticulously picked apart a banged-up Browns secondary all game with 274 yards and three touchdowns without a single interception, sack or fumble. The closest thing Stroud had to a mistake all game was an overthrown bomb to Nico Collins for what could've been a fourth touchdown.
Even so, Collins had six catches for 96 yards and a score, only the third wide receiver all season to catch six balls against the Browns, and Stroud found tight ends Brevin Jordan and Dalton Schultz for 76- and 37-yard touchdowns, respectively. Stroud was absolutely surgical. Before garbage time, he and the Texans gained 358 yards in 38 plays, a whopping 9.4 yards per play against an awesome, league-leading defense.
Houston only even converted two third downs all game. The Texans were so good, they didn't even need late downs.
The Texans defense played just as big a role in the win. After giving up two early touchdowns, Houston never allowed another point. Joe Flacco's magical run struck midnight in a hurry with two pick-sixes in a span of five third-quarter plays, and that was a wrap — on the game, on Flacco's retirement and on Cleveland's season.
The Browns started five different quarterbacks this season and set a league record by winning a game with four of them in a remarkable overachievement led by a historic defense, but it was Houston's No. 2 pick quarterback that got the job done. Cleveland's defense gave up 27 to Trevor Lawrence, 28 and 31 to Lamar Jackson, 36 to Matthew Stafford and now 45 to Stroud.
It's still a quarterback's league in 2024, and in the end, when you rotate all season between five quarterbacks, it turns out you still have no quarterback at all.
Cleveland ends its season right back where it started — with a ton of talent up and down a roster capable of a run and a giant question mark at quarterback.
Houston's season continues because of its exclamation mark at quarterback, and the Texans may not be done yet. Up next for the Texans is a road trip to either Kansas City or Baltimore, a daunting ask for a rookie quarterback, but Stroud has answered every question asked all season, so why stop now?
Stroud's next game might well come against Saturday's other winner, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
After all the hand wringing all season about the Chiefs, Kansas City is one game away from a sixth consecutive AFC Championship Game.
The Chiefs flat out dominated the Dolphins 26-7 in a game that never really even felt competitive.
It was cold in Kansas City, and when I say cold, I mean COLD. The temperature at kickoff was -6 degrees Fahrenheit, approximately 80 degrees cooler than it was in Miami, and the poor Dolphins looked the part. The Chiefs looked like a team used to playing in Kansas City, and the Dolphins looked like a team used to playing in Miami.
It was the fourth-coldest recorded game temperature in NFL history, so cold that Mahomes took a hit that literally cracked his helmet at one point, shattering the crown and sending a chunk flying into the air.
Patrick Mahomes just had his helmet broken pic.twitter.com/1VJdLjEmqV
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) January 14, 2024
The Dolphins looked like their namesake, like fishes out of water, just longing to find a warm sweater, a hot cup of cocoa and the first ticket back to South Beach.
Miami didn't crack 300 yards. The Dolphins would've barely even hit 200 yards if not for their lone score of the night, an underthrown 53-yard touchdown to Tyreek Hill. Miami averaged a measly 3.6 yards per play outside of that one, and honestly, even that feels high.
The Chiefs won the way every cold game is won — with defense, short passes and a steady run game. Isiah Pacheco pounded the rock, Rashee Rice and Travis Kelce caught short stuff on the run and the Chiefs defense was the star, bothering Tua Tagovailoa all game and keeping him totally out of rhythm.
At no point all night did Tagovailoa ever look crisp or comfortable.
Miami's season started so promising, peaking early with an awesome 70-point showing against the Broncos, but it ended with a sputter.
The Dolphins finished 1-6 against playoff teams with a -110 point differential, better than only the lowly Washington Commanders. Miami lost its final six games against playoff teams last season too, which means Mike McDaniel's guys have now won just one of their last 13 against playoff teams. Woof.
Miami's high-powered offense scored just a single touchdown its final 16 possessions to end the season. The Dolphins managed just 27 points over their final 10 quarters — under a field goal a quarter — in back-to-back-to-back losses to the Ravens, Bills and Chiefs.
Entering that Ravens game, Miami was 11-4 and controlled its destiny for the AFC 1-seed and a path to the Super Bowl. Instead, the Dolphins were shown up by the conference's top three teams. It's a familiar ending for the Dolphins, who started last season 8-3 before losing six of their final seven. Injuries played a part in both collapses late, but they were collapses nonetheless.
Combined, Miami has started the last two seasons 19-7 but finished them 1-9. Egads.
So is Saturday's disappointing playoff loss a referendum on a Dolphins season gone awry? I'm not so sure it is.
Miami's offense peaked early before the speedsters all got hurt midseason. The defense struggled early but peaked midseason once it learned Vic Fangio's system and got Jalen Ramsey back. Then both sides cratered late when the injuries piled up too high on the offensive line, at edge rush, in the secondary and all over the place. Last season ended with a pile of key injuries too, most notably to Miami's top two quarterbacks.
This wasn't a referendum on Miami as much as an injury-laden team that just never got all its guys healthy and gears going all at once.
It might be more of a referendum on McDaniel's offense, so beautiful and unstoppable when it's on rhythm with all its speedy parts whirring, but so easily thrown far off kilter when all that perfect flow is disrupted.
That offense continues to struggle against top-level competition, and it continues to break down in cold weather. Look at the three teams Miami lost against to close out its season. Baltimore, Buffalo and Miami are all capable of winning games with defense and a cold-weather power rushing game. Miami is not.
More than anything else, though, this felt like a possible referendum on Tagovailoa.
Mahomes was hardly spectacular on the day. He barely completed over half of his passes, threw for just one score and had a stat line that doesn't look too far off of Tagovailoa's at first glance. The most notable Mahomes plays all night were a 28-yard scramble on fourth down and the shattered helmet.
Still, it always felt like Mahomes could be trusted to make the play when his team needed one. And it just never feels like that with Tagovailoa.
Tagovailoa might be McDaniel's Jimmy Garoppolo. He's the point guard of a beautiful whirring offense of speedy machines, and he did a great job most of the season getting the ball out quickly to Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Raheem Mostert and De'Von Achane.
But when those guys couldn't make Tagovailoa look good with huge YAC breakaways, Tua repeatedly proved incapable of making those plays himself. On Saturday night, it never even looked like Tagovailoa had a shot.
Pass after pass was wobbly, underthrown, off target or pick another bad-QB adjective. Tagovailoa's stuff didn't hold up in the bad weather. He couldn't escape and make a play with his legs like Mahomes, couldn't hit his guys in stride despite pressure and couldn't move the chains on fourth down.
McDaniel has taken this offense to great heights through two seasons in the league, but Miami has fizzled out in both of them. It's fair to wonder at this point if Tagovailoa might not be the right point guard to get the Dolphins to the next level. McDaniel might need to find his own Brock Purdy.
As my old colleague here at Action Network, Raheem Palmer, always quotes Jay-Z: "There's only so long fake thugs can pretend."
As the playoffs began in earnest Saturday, two teams that pretended all season to have a quarterback solution saw themselves exposed on the league's biggest stage. Two others celebrated victories at the hands of franchise quarterbacks — Stroud and Mahomes — who made the winning plays.
In the end, NFL fans learned Saturday what they probably knew all along.
Flacco and Tagovailoa simply aren't that guy, Mahomes always was and Stroud might very well be next in line.
It's still a quarterbacks league, after all.
