[Indrid Cold]

Burwell likes the Rams over the Vikings, then the Bucs, and then losing to GB at home. That's kind of fringe, but I like his stuff in general.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/insider/story/ ... l-lix-pick

Minnesota Vikings (5) at Los Angeles Rams (4)
Monday, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN/ABC/ESPN+
Spread: MIN -1 (47.5)

The Vikings might be the best wild-card team in NFL history. They're the first to win 14 games and end up as a wild card, and while that's partly a product of the 17-game schedule, they have a narrowly better winning percentage than the past 13-3 wild-card squads. That list includes the 1999 Titans, who used the Music City Miracle to beat the Bills before advancing to Super Bowl XXXIV and nearly toppling the Rams. (Those Titans hosted a wild-card game, which is why that famous play isn't called the Lake Erie Lateral.)

The Rams don't seem worried. Coach Sean McVay could have clinched the 3-seed in Week 18 with a win over the Seahawks and avoided playing either the Lions or Vikings in the wild-card round, but he sat virtually his entire first-team offense and played defensive standouts Jared Verse and Braden Fiske only on obvious passing downs. The Rams came within a drive of winning anyway, but the loss means they end up playing the Vikings instead of the Commanders.

McVay might feel as if there isn't much to be worried about; after all, the Rams went 10-7 and won the NFC West despite facing the league's second-toughest schedule, per ESPN's Football Power Index. They played the Lions tough in Week 1, as Detroit needed a last-minute field goal at home to send the game to overtime, where it ran over Los Angeles. McVay's team then beat the Vikings in October, with Matthew Stafford throwing for 279 yards with four touchdowns.

That game was Puka Nacua's first after missing six weeks with a sprained PCL, and it's difficult to overstate how his return has transformed the L.A. offense. He averaged a league-best 3.7 yards per route run this season, with A.J. Brown and Nico Collins the only other wideouts over 3.0. And although his absence aligned with injuries to the offensive line that resolved around the same time, the Rams averaged 0.11 EPA per play with Nacua on the field and 0.00 EPA without him. That's the difference between being the Bucs or Eagles with Nacua on the field and the Jets without him.

While Minnesota coordinator Brian Flores' defensive pressures present problems for every club the Vikings face, the Rams might be uniquely built to attack those pressures. They are one of the NFL's best blocking teams on the edge for screens, which help provide answers for the Vikings' all-out blitzes. No one threw for more yards against Cover 0 than Stafford this season. Cover 0 means some form of man coverage across the board, and that's not a place teams want to be against Nacua and Cooper Kupp.

The Vikings also love to disguise their coverages, showing all-out blitzes before the snap but then dropping into zone shells afterward. As you might suspect for a guy who has seen so much over his career, Stafford does a great job of diagnosing and reading those looks; he ranks second in completion percentage and sixth in EPA per play on passes against disguised coverages this season.

One person who didn't handle the blitz well recently was Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold. Although he didn't throw an interception, the prime-time loss to the Lions in Week 18 might have been his worst performance of the season. He missed T.J. Hockenson twice on third down for early conversions and then left what looked like four different touchdowns on the field inside the 10-yard line. Some of those were overthrows, but Darnold simply didn't seem willing to throw a pair of would-be touchdowns to Jordan Addison on pick plays, even as his feet and helmet were pointed in that direction.

It's good that the Vikings were generating open receivers and getting into the red zone, but Darnold played poorly at an inopportune time. His 34.2% off-target rate was the second worst of his career, trailing only the infamous "Seeing Ghosts" game against the Patriots in 2019. Darnold was also hit on nearly 30% of his dropbacks and was limping on the sideline by the end of the game.

While I don't believe elevating Daniel Jones to the active roster will be meaningful for the Vikings this postseason, Darnold's performance worries me. Any quarterback can miss a throw or two, but I'm not sure anybody has left more big plays and potential touchdowns on the field with missed throws in a single game this season than Darnold did last week. He looked, mentally and physically, different from the guy who had been so impressive in December. And if I can see that, well, so can the Rams.

Prediction: Rams 27, Vikings 17


NFC divisional round
(4) Los Angeles Rams at (3) Tampa Bay Buccaneers

One downside of the Rams losing in Week 18 is having to travel to Tampa to face the Bucs instead of playing this game at home. It's also a fun reunion between Sean McVay and Baker Mayfield, the latter of whom revitalized his career as a waiver wire pickup in Los Angeles after disappointing in Carolina. He started only four games for the Rams and was playing behind second- and third-stringers up front because of injuries, but he did just enough in two victories to attract interest from the Buccaneers, who signed him the following spring. Oh, and his offensive coordinator that day was Liam Coen, who was allowed to leave for Kentucky after the season before returning to the league in 2024 in that same role for Tampa Bay.

Mayfield should have some success if he gets to play the Rams again. The Bucs are a heavy screen team -- only the Dolphins and Bears completed more screens than they did this season. The Rams don't do well against them, as they rank 31st in EPA per play allowed against screen passes. The Bucs, for what it's worth, are one of the league's two best screen defenses, alongside the Chargers.

L.A. also likes to create a different post-snap look for opposing quarterbacks, as it runs the disguised coverages I mentioned earlier at the highest rate of any defense. That's not a problem for Mayfield. He leads the league in completion percentage (75%) and ranks third in QBR against disguised coverages this season.

Tampa Bay might also like its chances stylistically on the ground. The Rams rank 29th in success rate against gap-scheme runs (duo, power, trap, etc.) this season. The Bucs led the league in yards per carry on gap-scheme runs (5.8) and gained the fourth-most yards per game. They're not a great zone-running team, but they don't need to do that often against L.A.

Meanwhile, L.A. has revitalized its run game by getting away from the zone concepts McVay excelled with earlier in his career, but that plays into Tampa Bay's strengths. The Bucs are the second-best run defense in terms of success rate against gap runs, limiting opposing teams to a league-low 3.1 yards per carry. They also saw fewer gap runs than any other team, which could be a combination of a small sample and the fact they have immovable object Vita Vea at defensive tackle.

I mentioned Tampa Bay's zone-heavy approach on defense earlier, though, and that's going to be a problem against Matthew Stafford. He ranked sixth in QBR against zone coverage this season, and that jumped to fourth with Puka Nacua on the field. The Bucs don't have great answers to deal with Nacua and Cooper Kupp, not that many teams do. The Rams also run play-action at a rate well above league average, and that's a concern for the Bucs, who rank 24th in QBR allowed and EPA per dropback against play-action.

This feels like a shootout, and frankly, it might come down to which side is healthier. Tampa Bay is already down Chris Godwin, is waiting to see about tight end/power slot receiver Cade Otton and has injuries tearing apart its secondary. L.A. has battled injuries, but this might be the healthiest McVay's team has been all season, as it expects to get safety John Johnson back from injured reserve this week. If the playoffs are a battle of attrition, that favors the Rams.

Prediction: Rams 31, Buccaneers 24


NFC Championship Game
(7) Green Bay Packers at (4) Los Angeles Rams

The Rams probably weren't counting on hosting the NFC Championship Game, but the top three seeds have all been eliminated in this scenario. This sounds unlikely, but the Rams hosted the 2021 NFC Championship Game under the same circumstances, when they were the 4-seed. They ended up with a home game against the 6-seed 49ers, who beat the 1-seed (Packers) and 3-seed (Cowboys) in the first two rounds.

These two teams played in Week 5, with the Packers prevailing 24-19, but the Rams were without star wideouts Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp. One of their starting guards was Logan Bruss, who finished the season on the Titans. They didn't have tight end Tyler Higbee, who returned to the team late in the season. The Packers, conveniently for our purposes in this preview, didn't have receiver Christian Watson or cornerback Jaire Alexander available, and Romeo Doubs was suspended by the team, which meant Malik Heath ran as a starter at receiver.

Even without Kupp and Nacua, Matthew Stafford did his best to try to unlock the league's best downfield pass defense. He went 1-of-7 for 24 yards with an interception in the process. Kyren Williams was excellent, turning 22 carries into 102 yards and a touchdown with a 59% success rate, but L.A. mustered only two scoring drives. A pick-six on a Jordan Love attempt to avoid taking a safety helped make the score closer, but it seems fair to say the Rams will hope to do more on offense with Kupp and Nacua this time around.

Will the Rams mix up their personnel packages? Even without Kupp and Nacua in the first game, they stayed in 11 personnel on nearly 95% of their offensive snaps, where coach Sean McVay has usually been comfortable. He had shifted toward more 12 personnel packages two weeks earlier in the win over the 49ers, but that change didn't stick for long. They went back to it for stretches against the Vikings and Patriots later in the season, but over the final seven games, they were in 11 personnel about 87% of the time.

McVay's offense was more successful in 11 personnel than it was in 12 over the whole season, so change for the sake of change might not be helpful. But the Packers were the league's best defense by EPA per play against 11 personnel and ranked 25th against 12 personnel, so with Higbee back in the fold, a Green Bay matchup would seem to be the right time to play more 12 personnel groupings.

Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula, meanwhile, might look back at his blitz packages and think he should lean further into sending extra rushers at Love in the rematch. Love went 11-of-15 for 217 yards with two touchdowns without being blitzed, but he was just 4-of-11 for 7 yards with a pick and seven pressures when the Rams blitzed. L.A. already blitzed him at its second-highest rate in any game all season, so it probably couldn't get much more aggressive, but given that he struggled against the blitz while also being blitzed at the highest rate of any starter over the season, it seems worth going after him and seeing whether he can prove Shula wrong.

If the blitz isn't working, I'd be worried about the Rams' chances here. They've managed to survive on defense by being extremely fortunate with their red zone performance. They rank 30th in EPA per snap outside the red zone, but that improves to fifth once teams get inside the 20. They've allowed touchdowns on 50% of opposing trips inside the 20, also the fifth-best rate in the league.

It's tough to count on that sustaining into the postseason. Take the 2023 Bucs, for example, who were 22nd in EPA per play on snaps outside the red zone and second inside the 20-yard line during the regular season. The Lions went 3-for-4 in the red zone against them in the divisional round and knocked them out. Bend but don't break isn't a sustainable thing. If a defense is not good outside the red zone but manages to thrive inside the 20, it gets figured out eventually.

While I'm giving the Rams some benefit of the doubt in terms of their season being split into the parts with and without Kupp and Nacua, this isn't a close matchup by advanced metrics. DVOA had the Packers as the NFL's third-best team on a play-by-play basis, just ahead of the Bills and Eagles. The Rams ranked 17th, behind the Cardinals and Bengals. Even giving L.A. credit for being a better team with its two star wideouts, Green Bay is the more talented squad. And although the Rams would be at home, it's not hard to imagine how many Packers fans would travel to Los Angeles for this game. They wouldn't regret the trip.

Prediction: Packers 27, Rams 16