They Took Care Of Business

It is rare and actually quite refreshing to see a team do what is necessary to secure home field advantage. The Baltimore Ravens have won six in a row now and with their latest victory at home against Miami, they secured a first round bye and home field throughout the AFC playoffs. QB Lamar Jackson appears to be the favorite to win another MVP award with his performance of late this season. Baltimore’s defense has been among the best for most of the season. Their first round pick, WR Zay Flowers has a chance to be the offensive rookie of the year. Getting home field doesn’t automatically get you a spot in the Super Bowl, but it will surely help them pursue that goal.

This Isn’t The Same Team

So Matt Patricia was supposed to solve the problem on defense? I think the Philadelphia Eagles have actually gotten worse with him calling the plays. Case in point with this last week against Arizona. They gave up 221 rushing yards and allowed 32 first downs to the Arizona Cardinals at home. To be fair, the offense didn’t do much better with their play calling either in the 4th quarter and settled for a field goal with Arizona needing to either kick a field goal to tie or score a touchdown to win. They did the latter. Just as I talked about the Kansas City Chiefs last week not likely to sniff the Super Bowl this season, the same can be said for the Philadelphia Eagles as well. There will not be a rematch for the Super Bowl this season.

So Where’s The Accountability?

Note the highlighted portion. You probably know by now what transpired during the Detroit Lions vs. Dallas Cowboys game this past week. This isn’t new with the NFL as it’s been happening for a very long time. What I and others have been clamoring for is some accountability for poor refereeing. What you might not know is that this isn’t the referees only job. They aren’t doing this on a full-time basis. They have other careers and working NFL games is a part-time job. Maybe a solution should be to finally have full-time referees. In turn that could lead to the accountability that has been needed for some time. As I stated in the above tweet, the only punishment for this crew, who has been apart of numerous bad calls or no-calls this season, is that they will not work a single playoff game this year. Now with that said, the Detroit Lions deserve some scrutiny on their head coach Dan Campbell. Not just for the decision to still go for the 2-point conversion after the Dallas Cowboys were called for an offside, where the Lions could just kick an extra point and go into overtime. They should have kicked a field goal in the 2nd quarter instead of going for it on 4th down at the Cowboys 4-yard line. Those extra three points could have come in handy late in the game I would imagine. I appreciate the aggressiveness of Dan Campbell to go for it on 4th down and win games going for the 2-point conversion. There’s a time and a place though and this one cost them the second seed in the NFC.