Thoughts on Wild Card Weekend

Assorted thoughts from last weekend's games:

Can we just eliminate Cincinnati AND Houston from the playoffs?

Really, Cincy? Zero targets for AJ Green (aka, your entire offense) for 35 minutes of game time? Really? No surprise your offense "led" you to a grand total of 6 points.

How was this Houston team the top team in the AFC a month ago? Matt Schaub is regressing weekly.

One thing is for sure, one touchdown in 5 red zone trips will not get it done for the Texans against the Patriots.

When did Christian Ponder's elbow injury flare up? I like to think of myself as pretty on top of all things NFL for a regular joe who doesn't cover the sport for a living. And when I saw on my phone about an hour before kickoff that Ponder was inactive, I was absolutely floored. Usually I'm not surprised by much unless I've been on vacation for two weeks.

And if you're forced to use a Joe Webb as your quarterback for a playoff game, why not adjust the offense to give yourself the best chance to win? Webb isn't a drop-back passer, he's an athlete playing quarterback. You saw what Webb could do effectively on the first drive, multiple read-option plays. You then saw what Webb couldn't do on every subsequent drive, as the Vikings essentially abandoned the read option for the rest of the game. They had no chance with Webb throwing the ball. Any throw Webb made over 10 yards was either floated to a wide open receiver, or missed the mark by yards. Not inches. Not even feet. Yards.

Baltimore, not a great defensive team this season, simply kept sending the heat at Luck and Indy couldn't make a play, be it receivers getting separation or the offensive line holding blocks for long enough. The most important thing for Indy? They're way ahead of schedule one year into their rebuild/reload. The most important thing for Baltimore? If you do that next week against Peyton Manning, he will eat your Papa John's pizza lunch.

Kudos to Baltimore for putting Ray Lewis on the field for the final kneeldown and giving him that moment in his last game in front of his home fans. No active player has meant more to his team than Lewis, and that was a fitting sendoff.

Amazing that the Redskins could look so good for two drives, and never cross midfield again. More impressive: rookie Russell Wilson and the Seahawks never panicking despite the early defecit, and despite never taking the lead until midway through the 4th quarter. I certainly wasn't as calm throughout.

Yes, the narrative will be RG3's injury, and yes, the game would have been different had he been close to healthy. Should he have played? I don't know. The answer sure seems to be "no", especially on that sorry excuse for a field. A field that also seems to have claimed the ACL of Seattle's best pass rusher, Chris Clemons. And yes, the state of that field was an absolute embarrassment. For a league that prints money and is full of teams that essentially print money, to subject the players to that field borders on criminal.

Mike Shanahan deserves every bit of second-guessing for his use of RG3 despite his quarterback's clear limitations. I don't care if Griffin told him he could play, Shanahan doesn't get paid over $7 million a year to just take his players' word for anything. As the leader of that team, that decision is on him. He can take input from the player, and the medical staff, but the decision is his.

When I was coaching (not at all apples to apples, I grant you) my collegiate club team on season, I had a team that I thought could make some noise in our region (one step below the national championships). The team was senior-heavy, but included a very talented young player who was playing through an injury. For most of the season, I resisted the urge to play this great player as much as I could have, to try and protect the injury. Fast forward to our regional tournament, and the team was losing a game that meant elimination, and all of a sudden I was playing this young player almost every point, trying to prolong the season. In the end, she suffered another injury that wiped out a substantial part of the following season. And we lost the game. For a long time afterwards I second-guessed myself for pushing the player harder, trying to balance the results goal with the goal for the player's health. Shanahan did the same thing on Sunday, and it blew up in his face.