WHAT WE LEARNED: NFL SUPER WILD CARD WEEKEND

BY ADAM GREENE

For the second year in a row we had supersized football over Wild Card weekend, with six games across three days. Here’s some thoughts on the contests as well as events surrounding them in the NFL.

MIKE MCCARTHY SHOWS AGAIN WHY HE SHOULD BE UNEMPLOYED

Hosting the Wild Card game and coming in as a three point favorite with the most productive offense in football should mean you can’t lose to a team that scored 23 points. Yet, that’s exactly what happened when the Dallas Cowboys were unceremoniously removed from the playoffs by the San Francisco 49ers, 23-17, in a game that never even felt that close.

The Cowboys were dominated from the opening whistle and never once got it together. In spite of that, they were still mathematically in the game, in possession of the ball in the game’s final minute and ran what McCarthy referred to as the “best option” as somebody, reportedly offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, called a QB draw on second down on the Niners’ side of the field with 14 seconds to go.

Is Moore guilty? I don’t know. That could just be slimeball McCarthy damage control. I do know this, if Moore did call it and McCarthy didn’t overrule it, and he most certainly didn’t, then the blame still falls squarely upon his humped and rounded shoulders.

It was perhaps the dumbest playcall in NFL playoff history. Now, granted, I don’t have an encyclopedic memory of every call in every NFL postseason game, but as far as my own mental Google search can go, it’s the worst I can remember.

This certainly feels like fertile ground for one of those NFL Network Top 10 lists. If it’s not No. 1, it’d be a serious contender.

This is not the first time a 49er team came into his own house and embarrassed McCarthy in the playoffs. In fact, losing games as home favorites in the postseason was a hallmark of McCarthy’s time in Green Bay, underachieving in spite of all the offensive talent on the team.

It’s no secret that the Packers missed the playoffs in McCarthy’s final season and went 13-3 the very next year, with a nearly identical roster, with Matt LaFleur as head coach.

Jerry Jones seemed disgusted after the loss as best as I can tell with his plastic face and he should be. But, really, this was preordained when he hired McCarthy. The man is not an NFL head coach. He has been dragged along by player talent for his entire career. Not only should Dallas have not hired him as their head coach, the Packers shouldn’t have either. It was a dumb mistake, which is pretty much tattooed across McCarthy’s forehead at this point.

As of this writing, McCarthy remains employed by the Cowboys and there doesn’t seem to be a serious move to replace him in spite of the fact that he could lose both his coordinators (and Dan Quinn is as good as gone) to head coaching opportunities. Moore, after this debacle, is probably going to stay unless he wants to roll the dice with the Jacksonville Jaguars or Houston Texans.

But for Dallas, the NFL’s flagship franchise and its most valuable (and popular) team, this is just another self inflicted disaster, made worse by the fact that in keeping McCarthy around, they are wasting the best years of Dak Prescott’s career. Just like Green Bay did with Aaron Rodgers.

THE TEAMS THAT PLAYED IN DECEMBER SHOWED UP IN JANUARY

I noticed something crazy happening amongst NFL punditry leading into the Wild Card weekend. An abundance, if not a majority, of the NFL’s media were picking the Arizona Cardinals to upset the Los Angeles Rams.

A Rams team that finished the year 5-1, beating those same Cardinals in the process, and only losing in overtime to the aforementioned 49ers, who the day before, solidly clobbered the Dallas Cowboys.

The Cardinals, on the other hand, had lost four of their last five games, their only victory coming over the Cowboys and that result only occurred because the refs missed an obvious fumble. Arizona should have ended the year 0-5.

So what did punditry see that I missed?

I ask the same of the folks that picked the New England Patriots to beat the Buffalo Bills. The Bills? 4-0 over the last month of the season. The Pats? They went 1-3, losing to these same Bills by double digits in the process with their only victory coming against the Jacksonville Jaguars. They were also starting Mac Jones, a rookie, making his first postseason start.

Now, to all our credit as an industry, no one picked the Philadelphia Eagles to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but a lot of people saw the potential of a significantly better coached 49ers team, that went 4-1 to end the season could go toe-to-toe with a Cowboys squad that went 5-1 in that same span.

The Pittsburgh Steelers too had no serious takers facing the Kansas City Chiefs and pretty much delivered on expectations. Ben Roethlisberger got one more postseason shot, but Kansas City was just so much better across the board.

No team exemplifies the December We Should Remember strategy better than the Las Vegas Raiders, who were obviously overmatched not only by the Cincinnati Bengals, but by pretty much everyone down the stretch and still managed to scratch out a 4-0 end to the regular season. They were not going down without a fight.

The lesson is clear when it comes to the playoffs, especially in the Wild Card round in two very top heavy conferences. The teams that played well through the Christmas season are the ones that can deliver the gifts come January. Overall records don’t matter and neither do Pro Bowl nods. The team with the most Pro Bowlers, the Indianapolis Colts, never even made the tournament.

Follow Adam Greene on Twitter @TheFirstMan.

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