THE 2022 PLAYOFF CHAOS BANDWAGON GUIDE
So here you sit, you sad, pathetic Saints, Falcons, Panthers, Patriots, Jets, Raiders, Broncos, Rams, Cardinals, Texans, Colts, Titans, Commies, Browns, Steelers, Packers, Bears, or Lions fan. Your team sucks. Your season is over. You could have a second favorite team or throw your bandwagon behind whoever you think has the best chance to win. But you are more bitter than that. All of these teams made the playoffs over yours. You don’t want happiness. You want to see it all burn to the ground. If you cant watch your team in the playoffs, the playoffs should be as entertaining and as stupid as possible. Stats? Fuck em. We aren’t here to admire greatness. We are here to see greatness get punched in the face by absolute random bullshit, and new greatness we didn’t know we needed emerge from the ashes. This is chaos. Fuck sense. Fuck the best team winning. What we are here for is wacko ball.
These playoffs have the most chaos potential I’ve seen in quite some time. It feels like there are only 5 true contenders, all capable of beating each other: the Eagles, 49ers, Bengals, Bills, and Chiefs. Two teams (Ravens and Dolphins) are starting unproven backups due to QB injuries. Some teams are just happy to be here (Seahawks, Bucs), and some of these teams have spent the entire season defying the odds and logic (Vikings, Giants, Jags). Some are just…in the middle, and who knows what to truly expect from them (Cowboys, Chargers). So lets break these suckers down and see what’s what.
MINNESOTA VIKINGS – THE TEAM OF DESTINY
The Vikings are 13-4 and have a negative point differential. I’ve never seen anything like this team. This team is so chaotic that if a meteor actually hits the stadium and kills everyone, I would not be surprised, and somehow Kirk Cousins would then find the corpse of Justin Jefferson for a 35 yard gain to put the team in field goal range to win. This team is absolutely bonkers. They played 1 normal game all year: the week 18 game against a Bears team that had given up. Every other game was a baffling blowout where the Vikings looked like the dumbest team alive or a nail-biting, nonsense drunk-ass game where the Vikings could pull the most insane shit you’ve ever seen out of their ass. They won games all year on the back of their kicker! THE VIKINGS KICKER WAS WINNING GAMES. THAT’S NOT LEGAL.
On top of all that, the Vikings have an extremely strong history of chaos in the playoffs. The most successful team to never win it all, the Vikings playoffs are marred by inexplicable chokes and insanity like the freeing of Joe Webb. Just having the Vikings in the playoffs is a guarantee for chaos, and it’s this Vikings team, of all teams? A rookie head coach, a shredded Kirk Cousins, the best WR in football, and a heaping garbage defense, winning games by the skin of their teeth? Sign me the fuck up. Whatever this team does this year, be it win it all or go down by 50 in the first quarter of the wildcard round, it’ll be spectacular. Hell, at this point, the Vikings playing a normal game would count as chaos.
I’m almost sad my own team is in the playoffs against this, because if we weren’t in, I’d be full on the Vikings train. You should be too.
NEW YORK GIANTS – THE PHOENIX RISEN FROM THE ASHES OF EVIL LORD GETTLEMAN
It’s honestly a shame the two most chaotic teams in the playoffs, and maybe in the league as a whole, have to play each other immediately. The Giants have spent much of the season doing the same shit the Vikings have, just in a scrappier, less flashy kinda way. The Giants also won most of their games by 1 score or got blown out, but with a tie once. They have a roster that is the envy of absolutely no one in the league except for maybe the Texans and yet ended up a 6th seed. Daniel Jones is actually very good at being safe with the ball now. Barkley is healthy, and healthy Barkley does very fun things. Kayvon has come into his own in the second half of the season, and as it turns out, he’s a huge asshole! The playcalling is the equivalent of a Cheesecake factory menu. It’s varied as hell and has all kinds of nonsense to compensate for none of the ingredients being any good. Our top receivers are Richie James and a guy we signed off the Bills practice squad mid-season. Wink Martindale’s entire defensive philosophy is chaos: send pressure and try to force mistakes. Brian Daboll is a huge teddy bear and I want to hug him. The Giants have limitations on their roster but they’ve shown remarkable resilience and could potentially frustrate anyone, especially as now the defense enters the playoffs healthier than they’ve been. Any win by this team would be a surprise, and that is the essence of playoff chaos.
THE JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS – THE DUUUUVALL DEMENTORS
Jacksonville was basically left for dead mid-season. The roster was overpaid middling free-agency signings. Lawrence was still struggling. Things looked promising…for maybe taking the next step…in a year. Then they took the next step seemingly in one week and went on a tear to finish the season as a 9-8 goon squad that embraced their role as villains and just ripped ass in everyone’s face. Lawrence now looks like the Clemson star that was drafted top of his class. Doug Pederson deserves Coach of the Year consideration at minimum. Even Engram catches balls now. Christian Kirk actually kinda played up to his nonsense contract. This team has… momentum and spirit. Like the Giants, they have no expectations because they already surpassed them. They are playing with house money, and they’re on a hot streak. Their mascot wears a speedo. The fans, drunk at all hours, scream the name of the county they reside to anyone within distance, and with every win their power grows.
BALTIMORE RAVENS – THE DRAMA LLAMAS
One of the facts about ranking teams by chaos is that by nature, low seeds with little chance are inherently higher chaos. When the most chaotic thing you can do is actually win, you are automatically high chaos. That said, the Ravens are probably screwed. With Lamar sitting out with his knee injury, probably to play it safe for his upcoming contract negotiations, the Ravens are starting Huntley and they just aren’t that good. The Ravens defense has stabilized as of late thanks to Roquan Smith, but this team was marred this season by an almost pathological desire to fuck around and find out in the 4th quarter. If this team puts up a fight in any game, they could also lose it at any time. They face the Bengals who beat them up just a week ago in the wildcard round. If they win, then we got a party baby. I just don’t expect them to.
MIAMI DOLPHINS – THE MESS OF MISSED POTENTIAL
No Tua. He’s out because his brain is still mush after 3 concussions in one season. This season by Miami was effectively marred by Tua’s health. Early on they looked like they could legitimately be the best team in the AFC, only to lose it when Tua got bopped and mishandled. They got streaky after that, losing a bunch of games, then winning a bunch of games, then losing a bunch of games again. They barely reached the playoffs at all after a disgusting slugfest of a game in week 18 against the Jets. With Tua out, there’s no real reason to expect anything from this squad. That, of course, is why them doing anything would be chaotic as hell.
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS – THE GENO SMITH POWER HOUR
Seattle was pegged by the vast majority of analysts to be contenders…for the #1 pick in the draft. Instead, Geno Smith balled his ass off and dragged a weak defense into the 7th seed by the hair on his chinny chin chin. It’s the feel-good story of the season! Who can be mad at Geno? We love Geno. Blessed be thy Geno. But the Seahawks are just lucky to be here, they needed the Lions to pull the Packers into the Sarlacc pit with them to even reach the 7th seed and face their OP rivals in the wildcard. The defense is rough. Geno himself has cooled off as the season went on. The team has very low odds to accomplish anything. But that’s when the magic could happen.
DALLAS COWBOYS – THE CONFOUNDING DIPSHITS
If Dallas wasn’t so good when they are good, they’d probably be much higher up these rankings. These Cowboys had a very weird year. They lost Dak and then somehow won 4 games in a row with something named Cooper Rush throwing the ball. They went 1-4 on grass fields. They beat the Eagles! They lost to the Commanders starting a rookie. McCarthy made the dumbest call of the entire season last year with the Dak Draw Play to lose a game. Micah Parsons is an animal. This team could nuke you at any moment and then Dak could throw a baffling pick the next. We don’t know what team will show up. It’s enticing. It would be even more fun if it wasn’t Dallas, a team everyone but Dallas fans hate.
LOS ANGELES CHARGERS – THE OTHER TEAM THAT’S HERE YOU PROBABLY FORGOT ABOUT
The Chargers are in prime Chargers territory right now. They made the playoffs with very little fanfare, have a top-shelf QB playing great ball constantly let down by the decisions and players around him. The Chargers feel destined to always be pretty good, above average, and then lose before anyone has to take them genuinely seriously. Brandon Staley’s gameday decisions are supposedly based on math but sometimes feel stupid as hell. They lost players to injury in week 18 for no reason. Still, Justin Herbert is just plain fun to watch and when the team clicks, it’s a blast. With the Jaguars in the first round, we could easily see them move on. Still, they also lost to the “bad” Jaguars earlier this year. This game might be great.
TOMPA BRADY BUCCANEERS – DIVORCED DAD ENERGY
This is probably the highest I would have ever ranked a Tom Brady team as far as chaos goes. Might be the most chaotic a Tom Brady team has ever been since his debut in 2001. Tom is the anti-chaos and that’s why I hate him so much. But this year? We got a little chaos out of our boy! He got divorced! He lost his fortune in FTX! He was…mediocre at football! That’s not entirely fair, Tom is Tom and will always be Tom until he turns into a red mist when a linebacker sacks him at age 65. But the Bucs are a mess. The running game doesn’t exist. The passing game is reliant on quick passes because they can’t hold up the protection any longer than that. The defense is fine, but has uninspired moments. This is a mediocre, losing team that simply happened to be the top of shit hill. Tom has us right where he wants us.
CINCINNATI BENGALS – THE BURROW BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN
I had Cincy as a top regression candidate but they somehow passed that energy onto the Rams instead. Cincy looks like they might be here to stay for a while. That’s great! I love some fresh blood. I still have my doubts that Zac Taylor is a smart coach, but to his credit it seems he gave Burrow more power halfway through the year, and that’s when the offense once again took over. Burrow remains cool as hell. Chase remains an absolute baller, and as I stated earlier in the year, Burrow to Chase can strike at any moment for massive chaos, and it rules. Don’t forget Tee Higgins, a legitimately great WR in his own right. This is a fun team and, as it should be noted, has KC’s number, should that matchup occur.
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES – EVERYBODY HURTS, SOMETIMES
Hurts was a guy I figured would take a step forward this season but I didn’t expect him to make a Josh Allen-esque leap into MVP leagues. Him and AJ Brown have made all the difference. The Eagles are fire when they fire on all cylinders. But the Eagles are still a bit of a mystery and might be vulnerable. Hurts played in week 18 despite probably not needing to, while still nursing a shoulder injury. The Eagles in general have faced an easy schedule this season. They are capable of getting in their own way, like they did against the Commies and Colts. This team is a presumptive favorite and for good reason, but should they lose, take note: it won’t be as big a surprise as it might feel at first.
BUFFALO BILLS – FOR DAMAR
Damar might actually be at the game at this rate and if he is, Bills by a million. The Bills have largely lived up to billing (lol) this season. They’ve had inconsistent patches but they are just such a well-coached and talented squad that even if they have an off-day, they can still be on. Hell the Patriots gave them a scare in week 18 but they grabbed a win from the most unlikely place: special teams! The Bills have the spirit and the ability to go all the way. They aren’t very chaotic, but with Damar in mind, it might be easy to root for them anyway.
SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS – PURDY GOOD
I guess there is a not-unreasonable chance that the best QB on the team was actually Brock Purdy the whole time. He’s played very well since being thrust into the role, and if this 49ers team has any sort of vulnerability, it’s probably still him. That’s kind of the issue here. The 49ers are so stacked and so well-run that it’s actually kind of hard to judge how good Purdy actually is at this point. They could win the Super Bowl and we still might not know. But this team traded for CMC and hasn’t looked back once, and is my honest pick to go all the way. The only unknown factors here are the small amount of chaos the team has: a 3rd string QB who might play like one at any second, and Kyle Shanahan’s tendency to get too cute with games on the line.
KANSAS CITY CHIEFS – MAHOMES AND AUTOMATIC
KC has already reached the point where most of us are tired of them. It’s a shame too, because in a lot of ways KC is still a ton of fun to watch. Unlike those Tom Brady Patriots of yesterdecades, KC still knows how to get weird with it. Andy Reid will send the team out in nonsense formations for no reason other than to try it. Patrick Mahomes, as good as he is, still makes Quarterbacking look…fun! It’s still fun to watch Mahomes run around and throw a ball in a way you’ve never seen before to Travis Kelce, who somehow got wide open. They are sadly just a victim of their own success. 4 straight championship games, and probably a 5th. 2 super bowl appearances. Non-stop dick-sucking from the announcers and media. There is no true chaos here. When the most chaotic thing your team can do is lose, you lose us all.
And there you have it. If you don’t know who to root for, root for nonsense. Root for bullshit. Root for teams getting screwed over by weather or officiating making no sense. Root for the meteor. Root for Jerry Jones falling out of the booth and breaking his neck on live TV. Root for the championship game in Atlanta should it be Bills/Chiefs. Root for chaos. It’s the best!
Miami had the double whammy of the contents of Tua’s head being turned to blancmange and our traditional December meltdown.
It’s not going to be us, not with Skylar starting – we are going to get absolutely fucking Gallaghered tomorrow – so I want a Buffalo-Minnesota Super Bowl.
Something’s gotta give.
0-4 vs 0-4. They’ll just take turns missing field goals until the end of time.
Blancmange? Angus Podgorny what dooo ya mean?
Could you even imagine a Bills/Vikings chokeoff in triple OT? Kickers having missed a combined five game winning kicks only for the whole mess to be decided by a flag thrown for intentional grounding in the end zone resulting in a safety. That’s the kind of chaos I’m rooting for.
The Eagles do have vulnerabilities, late down the stretch they stopped forcing turnovers, started committing them, Darius Slay has become a borderline liability in coverage as of recent, how healthy Hurts’ shoulder will be come the divisional round is anyone’s guess.
That said, the easy schedule argument is something that annoys me to no end, be it about the Eagles or any other team. First because the NFL is no college football, teams don’t pick their opponents. And this argument is usually brought up early in the season based on previous records, which is pointless when we all know how much turnover there is in the NFL every year, as we saw the Rams going from SB champs to 6th overall pick, or the Jaguars jumping from worst team last year to division champs. And apparently this kind of narrative sticks even late in the season when reality says otherwise.
Of this year’s playoff teams, 5 ended up with an weaker SOS (SF, LAC, KC, SEA, JAC), and another was tied (MIN) with the Eagles. SF had the easiest schedule by far at .417. Are they frauds because of it? Hell no, they are freaking good and given their current play they earned the right to be considered favorites in the NFC, and nobody should be surprised if they win it all.
TL;DR the Eagles have issues but the easy schedule argument (in general) is silly. That concludes my ‘Old man yells at cloud’ rant.
Absolutely, this season should finally kill off the temptation to look at the upcoming schedule that comes out the day after Black Monday and pretend you can pick all 17 games months in advance. Who’d have thought the Seahawks would have been a harder match up for the Giants than the Colts back in February? No one in the NFC East should bank on getting the Cards and Rams next year as slam dunks (though out of those eight games at least two are likely to be blowouts by an NFC East team).
You forgot us pathetic Packers fans.
One last fuck you witch reminds me, FUCK YOU
It’s okay, he forgot the pathetic Bears fans, too.
He left both teams off because they’re both just happy the other isn’t in the playoffs.
I am happy for kenny to go 9-8 next year will be the year (I hope)
Ravens chaos! We have a top defense, great OL, and a pair of dangerous RB’s… Who’s ready for some 2000-era football sullying your shiny 2022 playoffs?
I still think the Bengals should cut the cord to Zac Taylor’s headset and have Burrow call the plays on the field. He’ll never know!
the vikes are gonna blow it! it’ll be great! it’ll be some insane never-before-seen type shit. like, I learned recently that there’s a such thing as a defensive conversion safety, and it is worth one point. It has never occurred in a Superbowl Era game (1935 was the last one, iirc.).
I HEREBY PREDICT: Superbowl, fourth quarter, the vikes just scored on a cousins-jefferson circus catch to make it a 28-28 game, pending the XP. but – WHAT’S THIS? – the vikes are going for the 2 pt conversion to end the game! BALLSY FUCK YEAH! The snap… oh, the snap saaaails waaaaay over cousin’s head, half the vikings charge backwards to corral the ball, resulting in accidentally kicking it further down the field! the bills recover, and fumble the ball near the goal line, cousins, in a heroic sprint, scoops the ball, and turns, looking downfield for the throw of his life, only to be absolutely fucking pancaked by.. DAMAR! for the defensive safety conversion! BILLS WIN 29-27 and i die from safety-related joy.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
What we are here for is wacko ball.
if there ever was a single sentence that could encapsulate my evolving attitude toward football over the past decade, this would be it
What can be said, if the game is scripted expect the Bills to win the whole thing.
If the bills eagles or Niners don’t win it all, I want the buccs to, so everyone is pissed off by the dick sucking the media will give Brady all off season.
Three cheers for the Duval Dougs!
Long live Geno Smith the Goddamn Linebacker
Arvil Nelson the Quarterback
>Unlike those Tom Brady Patriots of yesterdecades, KC still knows how to get weird with it.
C’mon, man. I know you hate Brady/Patriots, but this is unfair and not accurate. The Patriots threw multiple goal line TDs to linebacker-playing-TE Mike Vrabel. When they did it in 2004 in Super Bowl XXXVIII, it was the first offensive TD by a defensive player in a Super Bowl since Refrigerator Perry just bowled people over running the ball.
They threw a double pass with college option QB Julian Edelman in a playoff game. They had wide receivers report as ineligible while linemen went out for a pass play. They ran direct snaps to tiny Kevin Faulk while Brady faked that the snap had gone over his head. Adam Vinatieri threw a touchdown pass on a fake FG play. Slot WRs Troy Brown and Edelman converted to DB for part of a season and actually broke up passes. Hell, they tried the “throw a pass TO the QB” play in the Super Bowl BEFORE the Eagles ran the “Philly Special” to Nick Foles.
The list goes on an on of weird plays they ran through those years. I’m not taking anything away from the creativity of Reid or the Chiefs, but acting like the Patriots were always bland ignores a pretty big sample size of weird.
Preach brother! History is all I have now and I do not want to see it diminished unfairly 🙂
Sure if you rack up all the occasional fucking around the Patriots would do over the course of 20 fucking years into one paragraph it sounds exciting
I was there for 20 years, the occasional pass to Vrabel or weird punt barely registered by year 10, and watching Tom Brady’s clinical dissection statue ass was never half as fun as Mahomes backyard ball is. I fully expect that fatigue to kick in for the Chiefs soon enough, but they’ve only been at it for a fraction of time and seem to do it more frequently and are generally just more explosive and fun in general
I don’t have much to add here other than that it’s kind of unfair to compare a 20-year run to a 5-year run, and even then, most of what you listed is just… not that weird? They might have been quirky for the Patriots, but outside of the strange formations they ran in the Divisional Game against Baltimore in 2014, there isn’t anything here that is all that outside the box.
To me, the issue here is that we’re not admitting the real reason why these Chiefs are more tolerable than those Dynasty Patriots: They don’t feel inevitable. For all of the success that they’ve had over these past 5 seasons, they only have one Super Bowl win to show for it. That’s not to diminish the accomplishment, but it just goes to show how hard it is to actually win in this league. Those Patriots (and by extension Tom Brady) made it look way too easy. They took the fun out of watching football because you could always predict with near 100% confidence that they would at least be in the AFC Championship. Before KC’s run, that game was nicknamed the New England Invitational because they literally made it every. single. year. for EIGHT STRAIGHT YEARS. And they usually won.
Kansas City has been super successful, but despite all of that, even they’ve still fallen victim to those same Pats/Brady in 2018 and 2020. Until they reach that level of inevitability, which they are nowhere close to and likely never will be, they will never be as insufferable and boring as those Dynasty Pats were to outside fans.
I dunno man, I spent a good chunk of the second half of their dynasty in New England having to watch them play, and the Pats were super boring. They were so competent, efficient, and effective, that they just drained any fun out of most games. Not to mention that outside of their whole “Patriot Way” dynastic run, the team had no real identity, or tradition, or really anything particularly distinct to them to make them fun. They were a bland monolithic, a strip mall McDonalds of a franchise.
I have no idea if I’m going to watch the Vikings game or not. This whole season, I kept turning off the game in disgust, thinking, “This will be the game where they blow it and my blood pressure is too high already.” And then they kept winning. I know superstition is BS, but some tiny part of me wonders…
Anyway, SKOL!
Well, I watched the whole game and they lost. Though with that atrocious defense, no amount of luck was going to help them. That was painful to watch. FIRE ED DONATELL IMMEDIATELY!
“The Vikings are 13-4 and have a negative point differential”
Lmao, I honestly didn’t know that.
It’s only -3 points, which for a 13 win team is still embarrassing, but keep in mind that this was after they beat the Bears by 16 points in week 18, meaning that going into that game, it was EVEN WORSE
It really goes to show how fucked up this season is that the team starting Mr. Irrelevant at quarterback is “low chaos”.
That offense is so talented and their offensive system is so elite that all they needed was a QB with an above average IQ to keep it running smoothly. Purdy is the only chaotic thing about that team.
While the idiotic Brady Sycophant in me is still holding out hope that he’ll pull another BS Super Bowl run out of his rear end, I’m mostly banking on a Vikings vs Bills/Bengals Super Bowl. It needs to be 2 teams that have been to the big dance a whole bunch with nothing to show for it. Everything on the line for both fanbases. Something has to give. Vikings-Bills would obviously be the most ideal version of that, but Cincinnati’s 0-3 record is more than a worthy possible replacement.
That said, I don’t even think Minnesota will make it out of the first round, let alone get to the Super Bowl, so that dream is already out the window.
Fuck you, Vikings.
My dad sent me a clip of WPTV’s weatherman raising a gimmick flag that said “Snuggle Warning” I guess because they expect a cold snap this weekend. Guy was wearing what definitely looked like a Skylar Thompson jersey, and all I could think was, “Where the fuck did he get that from?”
Anyway, Fins by 200. Super Bowl here we come.
I’ve been a Vikings fan for 55 years. I have no hope and no expectation except disappointment. It’s been a fun season and the fact that the Peckers failed at the end is my yearly satisfaction. Wake me up when it’s over.
We all know they’re going to rig a Super Bowl run for the Bills, as they have the best storyline heading into the playoffs. It just depends on who has the best story from the NFC. 49ers maybe?
Hopefully you’re joking
Another year another fraudulent NFC North team