FAMILIAR FOES
AFC, NFC TITLE TILT OPPONENTS SQUARING OFF IN REMATCHES WITH TRIP TO SUPER BOWL ON LINE
Both NFL conference championship games are 2022 do-overs. Already. Remember New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? Just four weeks ago? The holiday might be so fresh on your mind that you still wince at the sniff of a glass of wine.
Yet since then, the Cincinnati Bengals and Kansas City Chiefs already have met on the field (on Jan. 2), as have the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams (on Jan. 9).
Those are the pairings for Sunday’s AFC and NFC title games, respectively.
Bengals at Chiefs kicks off at 3 p.m. EST (CTV via CBS) with 49ers at Rams to follow at 6:30 p.m. EST (CTV via FOX).
The winners clash Feb. 13 in Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles.
It was just the day before our kids were to have returned to school (grrrr) that young quarterback phenom Joe Burrow and the Bengals outperformed Patrick Mahomes and the visiting Chiefs 34-31.
One Sunday later, on the last day of the 2021 NFL regular season, Jimmy Garoppolo and the visiting 49ers rallied to force overtime against L.A., then won 27-24 in overtime to complete a regular-season sweep of Matthew Stafford and the Rams, and in the process squeeze into the playoffs as an NFC wild card.
Indeed, this will be the third meeting of the season between NFC West rivals San Francisco and Los Angeles, similar to AFC East arch-enemies Buffalo and New England in the wildcard round.
In the case of both title games on Sunday, the film study, game-planning challenges and strategic choices ought to be fresh in the minds of everyone, especially the coaches. Ditto the onfield nuances and tendencies between opposing players.
What might translate the most in these rematches?
No one knows, of course, but let’s revisit the recent headto-head meetings.
AFC CHIEFS at BENGALS
If you think no NFL quarterback could match, or outdo, Josh Allen’s performance for the Buffalo Bills against the Chiefs last Sunday, you obviously don’t know much about what Burrow did four Sundays ago.
Ditto if you believe no Bengals wide receiver could repeatedly burn and embarrass the Chiefs secondary as Buffalo’s Gabriel Davis did last week.
In Cincinnati’s 34-31 win over K.C. on Jan. 2 in benign, above-freezing weather at Paul Brown Stadium, Burrow completed 30-of-39 (77 per cent) for 446 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. The Bengals scored on six of their final seven possessions, including four touchdowns.
Burrow targeted his favourite wideout at LSU from 2018-19 — and now rookie Bengals teammate — Ja’marr Chase 12 times and connected on 11 for an NFL single-game rookie-record of 266 yards. Chase scored on three of those catches, from 72, 18 and 69 yards out
In comparison, Buffalo’s Allen went 27-of-37 (73 per cent) for 329 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions last Sunday night, while his top receiver on the night, Davis, caught eight of 10 targets for 201 yards and four scores.
So January hasn’t exactly been a great month for the Chiefs’ pass defence. An expert passer can carve them up at will. Allen is such an expert. So, too, is Burrow, thanks in large part to how he’s being developed under Bengals head coach and chief offensive strategist Zac Taylor.
“It’s a quarterback-driven league,” Taylor said. “It’s amazing what these guys can do on the field for their team, for their franchise. We’re really lucky to have a great one in Joe. He drives the ship, and we go as he goes.
We’re very fortunate to have someone who can compete at that level.”
The Chiefs, of course, have Mahomes. How he worked with tight end Travis Kelce in those fateful final 13 seconds of regulation time against Buffalo already has become legend: On the field, they altered the play sent in by offensive co-ordinator Eric Bieniemy to better take advantage of the ridiculously soft coverage presented by the Bills. That easy 25-yard pickup set up K.C.’S field goal that forced overtime.
At Cincinnati on Jan. 2, the Chiefs offence went three-and-out to start the game before Mahomes engineered consecutive touchdown drives of 72, 63, 75 and 73 yards as K.C. took a 28-17 lead into halftime.
In the third quarter, the Chiefs had two possessions and punted on both. Mahomes attempted nothing but short passes on those momentum-changing drives as the Cincinnati defence successfully took away Mahomes’ deeper targets.
Burrow and the offence, meantime, caught fire and scored two touchdowns to take a 31-28 lead with 11:44 to play.
“These young quarterbacks are great for this league,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said this week, “and (Burrow) is one of them. He’s a heck of a football player . ... He’s a coach’s kid who knows the game and gets it.”
As we’ve seen over the past four seasons, it’s really hard for any defence — late in a game when the players are mostly gassed — to hold Mahomes and crew to just a field goal at the end of a long drive.
But that’s what the Bengals defence did: A 52-yard, 11-play drive stalled at the Cincinnati 16, and K.C. kicker Harrison Butker tied the game at 31-31 with 6:04 to go.
Mahomes never touched the ball again.
Burrow piloted a 74-yard, 15-play drive that ended as the clock ran out when rookie Evan Mcpherson chipped in a gimme 20-yard field goal for the win.
All Mahomes could do was watch, staring blankly as he walked off the field.
“You want to do a great job in limiting yards,” Bengals defensive co-ordinator Lou Anarumo said this week of his team’s goal against the Chiefs. “But at the end of the day — limit the points, win the game. How do you do that? You do that by playing great red-zone defence, taking possessions away from (the Chiefs) on take-aways. We have to do that this weekend to give us a chance.”
Said Reid this week of that Bengals victory: “They made big plays on us, on both sides of the ball. They were able to slow us down and then pick it up on the offensive side. ... They beat us. It wasn’t a fluke. They beat us, so they’re a good football team.”
NFC 49ers at RAMS
Imagine being head coach Kyle Shanahan or one of his San Francisco 49ers players.
You’ve defeated the Los Angeles Rams — your NFC West and instate California archrival — six straight times. Indeed, the Rams haven’t beaten you in more than three years, since Dec. 30, 2018.
And yet, not many people believe the Niners can knock off the Rams in Sunday’s NFC championship game and advance to the Super Bowl.
The Las Vegas spread is much fairer to San Francisco than the chatter this week, that’s for sure; the 49ers are only 3½-point road underdogs.
Looking at the big picture, it’s quite possible we’re seeing a rebirth of one of the NFL’S best rivalries. That is, as long as the Rams can make it competitive again.
Each club has had the same (young) head coach since 2017 — Shanahan in San Fran, Sean Mcvay in Los Angeles. The 36-year-old Mcvay won three of the first four head-to-head meetings, but since then the 42-yearold Shanahan’s Niners have won by scores of 20-7, 34-31, 24-16, 23-20, 31-10 and 27-24 in overtime.
These teams know one another about as well as any two rivals in the NFL. The foundation of that familiarity was poured when Shanahan and Mcvay were offensive assistant coaches together under Shanahan’s dad, Mike Shanahan, with the Washington Football Team from 2010-13.
They’re still good friends and Mcvay constantly cites both Shanahans as having had an enormous influence on his coaching philosophies, and for his meteoric rise up the ranks.
Adding to their teams’ mutual familiarity is the fact they play in the same division and thus meet twice a season, home and away.
Now that the teams will play for a third time this season, including twice in 22 days, must these coaches and their teams caution against trying to change too much to foil the other’s pat knowledge?
“I believe so,” Shanahan said. “You know each other so well. We hadn’t played Dallas for a while ... but when you’re going against a team like us against the Rams, or them versus us, there’s not much to soak in. We knew what the tape was going to look like before we turned it on. And they’re the exact same way. So when you have something like that, I think it makes for a little bit more fun of a football game.
“We’ve been through this so much over the last few years, so it’s not much new seeing them the third time, as it was the second time . ... There aren’t many secrets. There aren’t many things we can surprise them with, and same with them with us, which I think is kind the most fun way. It will be two really good teams and a really good football game where you can’t really trick each other. You have to go out and beat somebody.”
Following are the prime reasons San Francisco has gone out and beaten L.A. over their last six meetings: ❚ San Fran has hogged the ball, averaging 35½ possession minutes per game, compared to L.A.’S 25½. The Niners have won the time-of-possession battle in five of the last six games.
❚ San Fran has outgained L.A. by a substantial margin, averaging 364 total yards per game to L.A.’S 286. San Fran has amassed at least 331 yards in all six wins, while L.A. has amassed more than 311 yards just once (395 in December 2019).
❚ San Fran has outrushed L.A. in four of the last five games, averaging 131 yards to the Rams’ 85.
Even though the Rams have upgraded at quarterback, from the physically limited Jared Goff to the supremely talented Matthew Stafford, you wouldn’t know it by the results.
In both 2021 regular-season games it was the same old deal: The 49ers outrushed the Rams (156 yards to 52 and 135-64), overall outgained the Rams (335 yards to 226, and 449-201) and out-possessed the Rams (39 minutes to 21, and 36 minutes to 31 including overtime).
What has been L.A.’S big problem?
“The simple answer is they’re a really good team,” Mcvay said. “They do a great job . ... Those previous matchups, they have found a way to get it done. And in a lot of instances, those second games in each of the last few seasons have come down to the wire.
“But they aren’t going to get any excuses out of me. They have done a great job. They have found a way to win. And every single game is its own separate entity. There’s going to be a lot of similarities in terms of the players, the personnel, some of the schemes, but we have to do a great job of playing our best ball for a full four quarters. And if we need another extra quarter to do that, then so be it. But we’re excited about it. We know it’s a great challenge.”