NFL Wild Card Recap and That Dallas-Detroit Flagtroversy

Yeesh.  If only the weather had been better this weekend so that I wouldn't have been so glued to a pretty ugly slate of wild card games.  Whether or not you liked the outcome, at least the Cowboys-Lions game saved us from a total snoozefest and gave me plenty of fodder to beef up these musings.  Here's the best and worst of this Wild Card weekend, plus what to make of the Dallas-Detroit Flagtroversy.

The Best of Wild Card Weekend 2015

Baltimore in Spoiler Form - Nobody said it'd be pretty, but the Ravens got the best of the high-flying Steelers on Saturday night in surprising fashion.  I'm not sure Pittsburgh was as bad off on offense without Le'Veon Bell as I might've thought since they outgained Baltimore by almost 100 yards, but the Ravens put the hurt on them at the line of scrimmage and in the red zone.  They sacked Ben Roethlisberger five times, came away with three turnovers and made Pittsburgh's offensive line look far worse than it has all season.  Joe Flacco got back to his strong-armed ways, and while it wasn't a career day stats-wise, he did enough to keep Baltimore in scoring position despite little help in the running game and also helped draw some key pass interference calls on the deep ball.  Patriots beware, yet again.

The Stingy Colts and Panthers - It's hard to find many bright spots from this wild card weekend given the overall sloppiness and poor matchups in these games, but the Colts' and Panthers' defensive efforts deserve gold stars, even if their offensive opponents were kind of doomed from the get-go.  I'll get more into Panthers v. Cardinals further down, but there's arguably never been a more dominant defensive performance than resurgent Carolina had on Saturday.  They held Arizona to 78 net yards - the lowest in NFL playoff history, even factoring in the slugfests of the 1940/50s - and absolutely blew up the line of scrimmage with an untold number of tackles for a loss and sacks.  The Colts too proved they're a different defense than half a season ago, keeping the Bengals' Jeremy Hill and Giovanni Bernard to under 100 yards collectively and dealing plenty of heat to Andy Dalton all afternoon long.  In the end, the Colts held the ball almost 10 minutes longer than the Bengals, which gave Andrew Luck plenty of time to dissect the Bengals defense in the second half.

Dallas Getting It Done - There's still plenty of space below to get into whether or not the Cowboys "deserved" their first playoff win since 2009, but for a moment, let's recognize that they pulled of a heckuva comeback on Sunday.  Dallas fizzled for quite a while against Detroit's good-as-advertised defense, allowing six sacks on Tony Romo and facing a 13-point deficit in the third quarter.  This is usually where we kick up our heals and wait for the Dallas meltdown to conclude so that we can all relish it at the water cooler on Monday.  I know I was.  But then, something different happened and it wasn't all dumb luck or terrible officiating.  Regardless of the surrounding circumstances, the Cowboys came alive in the last stretch of the game, putting up 17 unanswered points and forcing the Lions to punt/turnover on downs on their final three drives.  It was impressive for a squad that looks a whole lot more resilient in the clutch than we've ever known since Tony Romo and Jason Garrett have been in charge.  Some level of kudos is required and deserved.

The Worst of Wild Card Weekend 2015

All Injuries and No Fun - There isn't a team in the playoffs that doesn't have notable injuries to contend with right now.  Still, what a bummer of a wild card weekend this was without Le'Veon Bell, A.J. Green, or about 30% of the Cardinals' roster.  Their absences had a clear impact on the quality of competition and on the thinner highlight reel we're left with at the end of the day, and it's a shame that these three teams will be wondering "what if?" until next September as a result.  Nothing could be done of course, but we're clearly worse off for Arizona's string of bad luck and the aftermath that brutal Week 17 closer in Pittsburgh that took both Bell and Green out of the playoffs altogether.

Pretty Much Everything About the Cardinals - To be fair, the Cardinals' defense played as well as could be expected on Saturday and got absolutely no help from their offense or special teams, but woof, what an abysmal game this was for them.  The Panthers didn't come out smelling like roses either with a muffed punt, four turnovers, a missed field goal and a safety, but that's Pro Bowl worthy compared to what the snakebitten Cardinals brought to the slaughter.  Notable woes by the numbers include:

• Managing only 78 net yards on the day, the lowest total in NFL playoff history
• Averaging less than 1.0 yards on first down
• Turning the ball over three times, once on a kickoff return deep in Cardinals territory and once on an end zone interception from Ryan Lindley
• Converting just three third-downs
• Punting for less than 35 yards five times
• Refusing to play Logan Thomas at QB at all despite Ryan Lindley's 44.4 passer rating and 2.93 yards per pass
• Making Larry Fitzgerald very sad

Bruce Arians was handed far less than a full deck going into Charlotte this weekend, but it's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the Cardinals than what they got.  I'm guessing he'll regret not taking a few more chances with the playcalling and with Logan Thomas, though it's also shocking that Arizona scored two touchdowns in spite of the carnage.

Cam Newton's Mechanics - Although the final score suggested a dominant Panthers performance on Saturday, they'll be hard-pressed to repeat if Cam Newton plays the same way in Seattle next weekend.  To be fair, he did what he had to in the biggest moments, scoring two touchdowns and scrambling to convert some key third downs, but he looked as erratic through the air as he has all season. He missed wide open receivers several times, threw two near-pick-sixes and barely surpassed a 50% completion rate, often throwing off balance with faulty footwork.  I don't doubt Newton's playing through pain after surviving a recent car accident and getting sacked and hit too many times to count this season (unless you're industrious enough to look it up, anyway), but unless he improves his form and accuracy dramatically this week, Richard Sherman's just about the last guy he'll want to be visiting.

The Flagtroversy: A Blown Call to Remember

And finally, the thing this otherwise insipid Wild Card weekend will be remembered for years from now: the controversial picked up flag in Dallas.  In case you missed it, this was one of the oddest bouts of officiating we've seen since the replacement referee debacle of 2012, and it happened at a critical moment in the game that could well have impacted the outcome.  Detroit was leading by three around midfield when Matt Stafford attempted a pass to Brandon Pettigrew on third down.  Cowboys OLB Anthony Hitchens clearly committed pass interference (or holding at the very least), making contact with Pettigrew well before the pass got to him and keeping his back to the ball.   See?  The refs immediately called pass interference, and that was unequivocally the right call or at least one that didn't seem like it could possibly be contested after the fact.  But then about 10 seconds after announcing the call, the officiating crew picked up the flag without any explanation, leading the Lions to punt just outside of field goal range instead of getting a new set of downs deep in Cowboys territory.  Adding to this very Dallas-friendly outcome was the fact that Dez Bryant ran out to argue with the referees without his helmet on, which should have resulted in a 15-yard personal foul regardless of the interference call and given the Lions another set of downs.  So what should we make of this?

On the one hand, I can't even imagine how angry Detroit fans must be as I type this, and they have every right to be. It's very rare to see referees overturn their own calls, especially when the penalty seems clear cut and double-extra-especially when they wait several seconds to do so without providing any immediate explanation whatsoever.  The non-explanation was simply unprofessional even if the officials have good reason to overturn the call, and it's a disservice to both sets of fans wondering about the legitimacy of their win or loss.  It's equally disheartening that they missed Bryant's personal foul and that they flagged Lions defenders for correct but more subtle holding calls on the Cowboys' ensuing drive while failing to notice some obvious holding calls on Dallas's offensive line when Romo threw the game-winning touchdown pass.  It's enough for some people to cry conspiracy given Dallas's status as America's Team and a certain party bus incident with the head of officiating.  You can call the non-call a lot of things, but you certainly cannot call it fair.  It was the wrong move, it took the Lions out of a scoring opportunity and made it that much harder for them to protect a lead and win.

But on the other hand, I've said this before in times when I've agreed with a controversial call and times when I haven't: one play [or resulting blown call] does not singlehandedly cause a loss.  The Lions had a very favorable situation to win when they were leading by 13 at one point in the third quarter, but a culmination of several plays on both sides of the ball swung that outcome.  The blown call didn't cause Detroit's punter to shank the ball on the next play for 10 yards, setting up Dallas with excellent field position.  It didn't cause Detroit to give up the go-ahead touchdown to the Cowboys on the next drive or to fail to get past midfield and turn the ball over on downs to end the game.  As I mentioned above, the Cowboys scored 17 unanswered points and the Lions came away with nothing on their last three drives.  Those are much more significant reasons the Lions lost.  Though it's not the outcome I would have hoped for, Detroit let a lead slip and Dallas was good enough to take advantage of it.  For all we know, the Lions could have been held to a field goal or missed it/turned the ball over had the drive continued, and neither of those would be enough to beat the Cowboys if everything else in the game happened exactly the same way.  But in the grand scheme of the playoffs, this is a good thing for non-Lions fans.  I'd take watching the Panthers get dismantled in Seattle and the Cowboys and Packers having a very competitive matchup next week any day over Lions-v-Seahawks and Panthers-v-Packers.