Barnwell: Teams each superbowl contender should look to avoid in the playoffs

[SVN]

Matchups that could take down Super Bowl contenders

 

[fnordcircle]

The Steelers and not the Broncos or Ravens?

Yeah paying attention to history is for nerds.

 

[fnordcircle]

Also:

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TRIGGER WARNING: ESPN
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[patchick]

The Steelers and not the Broncos or Ravens?

Yeah paying attention to history is for nerds.

I don't know...he's looking at this year, and I think he has a point. IMO Ben is the most dangerous opposing QB in the 2016 NFL.

Mostly, though, I just want to tip my cap to Barnwell for having a heck of a good idea for an article. Anybody want to take a stab at their own answers?

 

[sb1]

I wouldn't care for a rematch of the 2014 SB if the Pats can avoid it. I have no problem with a playoff game vs Pitt

 

[TB_Helmet]

I can see why the Steelers are on his list; the narrative is that they have an explosive offense that our defense won't be able to contain. Fair enough.

But traditionally, the Patriots lose to teams with an excellent defense and fierce front 4 pass rush. That's the case with the Broncos and Ravens in recent years, the Giants in the two Super Bowls, the Jets in 2010...The one exception might be the Colts in '06, where the offense was the strength of their team.

We usually beat teams with good offenses. All those Steelers teams last decade, all the Pink Head teams before he finally broke through in '06, the Colts a couple times this decade. Most of those teams had strong aerial attacks. We just had stronger ones. We almost always win the shoot-outs; we lose when Brady has no time and we only score around 21 points.

So if that holds true this year, then we would be expected to beat the Steelers and the Raiders, but might have problems with the Chiefs or the Ravens, or the Broncos, assuming they make it.

I'm not saying the Steelers can't beat us; you'd have to be way too overconfident to make that claim. I just think that's not the type of team we usually lose to in the playoffs.

ETA: I guess the Broncos in 2013 had an incredible offense, obviously, so that is another exception...but they were still very good on D. And they played dirty, and still do; another reason we'd want to avoid them this year.

 

[Uptown]

For the "most part" 23-24 points is the magic number for us in the playoffs. Usually when we eclipse that mark, we are okay.

 

[TB_Helmet]

I made this chart of the results of all playoff games in the Brady era (hopefully shows up here as intended).

I sorted by result and then by points we scored. You can see that we only ever lost one shoot-out, to the Colts in '06 (played in '07). The second most we scored in a loss was 21.

However, it's rare that we win without scoring more than 25 points; it has only happened once since '07 (and we got super lucky in that game which was the conference finals against the Ravens).

Now, some of this is captain obvious -- if you don't score a lot, you're going to lose. But I bet that there are a lot of playoff games the last ten years where the winner scored 24 points or fewer. I predict that we will have to win one such game this postseason if we want to win the Super Bowl.