Here's Your NFL Playoffs, Which Have Mostly Everything, Including, Yes, the Cleveland Browns

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

It was a game so painful to watch, my eyeballs may need to go on injured reserve—Washington edged the barely-there, comically-disengaged, Bartleby-the-Football-Coach Philadelphia Eagles Sunday night, capturing the somebody's-gotta-win-it NFC East with a hardy 7-9 record, and slinked into the NFL's last playoff spot like a wedding guest without a present or shoes.

Washington will host Florida man Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next Sunday in the Maryland 'burbs.

Also in the NFC postseason party: Green Bay, New Orleans, Seattle, the Los Angeles Rams and the Chicago Bears.

In the AFC, it's the defending Super Bowl champions Kansas City, the Buffalo Freaking Bills—hosting a playoff game in Buffalo for the first time since 1996—Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Baltimore, and a frisky Indianapolis outfit.

And I think that's it.

Yeah, that’s it. That’s your NFL playoff field. 

JUST KIDDIN’! WE KNOW WE LEFT SOMEONE OUT. THE 11-5 JUGGERNAUT CLEVELAND BROWNS HAVE MADE THE PLAYOFFS! RUN TO THE WINDOW, BROWNS FANS, AND SCREAM TO THE NEIGHBORS. YES! IT’S ALL HAPPENING! YA-HOOOOO!

OK: stop screaming, Browns fans, you’re scaring all of the neighborhood pets. 

Feel good for Cleveland.   It’s been some kind of wait: 18 seasons, since 2002. The Browns didn’t make it especially easy on themselves, as they nearly let an apprentice-quarterbacked Steelers outfit rally Sunday and toss a great season down the drainpipe. 

That’s just life with the Browns. Doesn’t matter now—they’re here. Baker Mayfield and Cleveland have a return date with Pittsburgh—and presumably, Steelers starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger—next Sunday in prime time. 

I’m actually going to type out the specifics here so Browns fans can stare at it for a couple of hours. 

NFL Wild-Card Round. Cleveland at Pittsburgh. Sun. Jan 10. 8:15 p.m.

Pretty to look at, no? 

You know what wasn’t pretty? That Washington-Philly game.   Yeeeesh.  

There are a lot of people on Monday morning—they’re called Giants fans—who are extremely miffed that the Eagles coach Doug Pederson seemed to get a midgame divorce from coaching competitive football, changing over to a third-string quarterback who hadn’t played in a regular-season game since 2018, and effectively handing D.C. the final playoff slot over New York, but I have to ask: What about that clodhopper of a game was surprising?   Did you watch any of the NFC East   this season? 

This was, after all, a division that raised soul-crushing football and inexplicable coaching to rare art—ask a Cowboys fan—and should have been collectively banished from the postseason. Had Philadelphia triumphed, the NFC East would have been won by a Giants team that went 6-10, which I’m 60% sure is a violation of the Geneva Convention. 

While there are inspiring, happy stories to root for with Washington—head coach Ron Rivera, who coached through radiation and chemo, and quarterback Alex Smith, now returned to football after a catastrophic leg injury two seasons ago—this was a division that wore ineptitude like a badge. 

The no-nickname WFT will have their hands full with Tampa Bay, an offense-minded octopus which won its last four regular-season contests to finish 11-5. For all the midseason blah, blah, blah about Brady and how he needed to get “in sync” with his receivers and head coach Bruce Arians, it proved to be another sprightly year: 4,633 yards passing, 40 touchdown throws, at age 43. If that’s not “in sync,” I’d like to know what is.

The Super Bowl is in Tampa in February. No Super Bowl participant has ever played the Super Bowl in its home stadium. To get there, the Bucs will have to win on the road. We’ll see. 

Meanwhile, in Brady’s former home of New England,   they mournfully turn the page   to the Celtics, Bruins and Red Sox. 

I know what you’re thinking: OH BOO-HOO THE PATS KILLED US FOR YEARS. HAVE A DUNKIN’ AND TAKE THE WINTER OFF.

Elsewhere, Buffalo will host Indianapolis on Saturday. The Rams visit the Seahawks and Russell Wilson’s and Pete Carroll’s radiant positive energy. The Ravens and Tennessee—two clubs still marvelously loyal to rushing the ball—have a bar fight scheduled for Sunday. Chicago wanders to New Orleans. 

They have got a bye up in Green Bay, where the Packers own the No. 1 seed and home field amid ice fishing season. In the AFC, the top seed belongs to Kansas City, and more important, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, football’s most electric player. 

Is it possible we get an all-frozen Green Bay-Buffalo Super Bowl, played in the languid humidity of the Gulf Coast? Who knows. Remember:   This column picked the Detroit Lions   to win the Super Bowl this year. You should really just use this thing to scoop out the cat’s litter box, and do apologize to the cat. 

The NFL managed to get here, in a pandemic. Like the NFC East, it wasn’t especially smooth—there were team outbreaks, postponed games and even the bizarre sight of Wednesday afternoon football. It isn’t like the issue has gone away, either; New Orleans played this weekend without star running back Alvin Kamara, who tested positive, but hopes to return versus the Bears. 

The only thing you can expect in this year’s playoffs is a little more chaos.

And amazingly, the Cleveland Browns. Go to the window, Browns fans, shout. It’s real.