The first weekend of the NFL postseason is over, and 8 teams are closer to the Lombardi Trophy. After three days of dramatic matchups, we have a list of winners and losers—but this post isn’t about the actual teams that won or lost the games (for the most part).
These were the first playoffs we’ve experienced without Tom Brady or Peyton Manning since 1998. New quarterbacks stepped up, teams not named the Patriots are shining, and bad weather made its mark in NFL lore. These are the biggest winners and losers of the 2024 NFL Wild Card Round.
Wild Card Winners
Lions Fans
This has to be the biggest winner of the entire weekend. Although the Detriot Lions made the postseason a few times in the 2010s, the team’s been waiting for a playoff win since 1991.
The last time the Lions won a postseason game, President George H.W. Bush was still in his second term. Text messages hadn’t been invented yet. The team didn’t even play in the NFC North division; they played in the NFC Central. That’s how long it’s been.
This year, not only did the Lions secure a playoff spot, they won the NFC North and entered the postseason with home field advantage. At Ford Field on Sunday Night, they beat the Los Angeles Rams 24-23 in front of a roaring crowd. Detroit finally got to celebrate in January for the first time in over 30 years.
Lions fans have been waiting for most of their lives—or, in a lot of cases, their entire lives—to witness this moment of victory formation. Ford Field was going nuts from the first second of the game to the last. Goosebumps all around.
The Packers’ Young Team
On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers roared into AT&T Stadium and accomplished what no one ever really believed they could do—beat the Dallas Cowboys at home.
And the Packers didn’t just beat the Cowboys. They embarrassed the Cowboys on their own turf in front of Jerry Jones. The Packers were up 27-7 by the end of the first half, completely silencing the home crowd and breaking a few records on their way to a win:
- The Packers became the youngest team ever to win a playoff game. With a roster that’s full of rookies and players just a couple of years into their careers, the average age of the team is just 25.
- Quarterback Jordan Love had one of the best playoff debuts ever. At one point during the game, Love had a perfect passer rating. He finished with a rating of 157.2—the fourth-best in playoff history.
- The Packers were the first #7 seed to win in NFL history.
The Packers had a weird, up-and-down season. Since Aaron Rodgers left, the future of the franchise has been in limbo. The team had a lot to prove on Saturday—and it showed up. Regardless of how the rest of the postseason pans out, there’s a lot of momentum going for Green Bay.
C.J. Stroud
As if C.J. Stroud needed more to make his case for Rookie of the Year, he visited Cleveland on Saturday and guided the Houston Texans to a quick, defiant victory, beating the Browns easily 45-14. Not many rookies even go to the playoffs, and Stroud became the youngest rookie quarterback to win a playoff game in NFL history at just 22 years old.
Stroud’s been able to legally drink for only a year and he’s playing cool and collected on one of football’s biggest stages. When Stroud becomes one of the defining quarterbacks of the entire NFL in the 2020’s, we’ll look back to this postseason and remember it as just the first of many playoff victories for him.
Similar to the Packers’ situation, even if the Texans don’t make it far into the playoffs, Stroud will always have this wildcard game.
Bills Fans who Got Paid to Play in the Snow
The Steelers-Bills game was moved from Sunday to Monday after Buffalo was blanketed with a snowstorm over the weekend. Before the storm hit, the Bills put out a call for volunteers to help shovel out Highmark Stadium, which doesn’t have a roof.
Maybe for any other fan base, that brazen call to action during a whiteout would have been mostly ignored. But this is the Bills Mafia. They were born in the snow. They’ll shovel for a few hours straight and then warm up by slamming into tables that are on fire.
Case in point: this guy, who found a way to sled through the stadium and help get the snow out at the same time.
Does shoveling snow in a blizzard make you a winner? Maybe not, but as a Broncos fan I would definitely show up at Mile High, shovel in hand, for $20/hour. I’d show up for the Broncos for free. Bills fans got paid well to frolic in the snow for their beloved team, and they got free breakfast.
Baker Mayfield’s Contract
It’s rare for a quarterback contract to be a win-win situation for both the player and the team—but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers locked in a good one when they signed Baker Mayfield to a one-year, $4 million contract this past offseason.
The #1 draft pick in 2018, Mayfield has spent the last couple of years drifting from team to team, long separated from his days as the Brown’s starting quarterback. Mayfield was hoping to land in a city where he could compete for the starting job again. The Buccaneers needed a cheap, decent option to operate in the long shadow of Tom Brady’s departure.
The decision to sign Mayfield was a good one. Mayfield led the Buccanneers back into the playoffs, where they defeated the ghost of the Eagles, and he’s shining while the Buccs stay relevant. More millions next year?
Wild Card Losers
A Playoff Game on… Peacock?!
Did you ever go to turn on a playoff game, and couldn’t find it on TV? Yeah, me neither. Until this season, due to NBC’s decision to stream the Dolphins-Chiefs game solely on Peacock, a streaming service that’s owned by a subsidiary of NBCUniversal Media Group.
Which meant that if you wanted to watch two of the biggest teams go head-to-head in the PLAYOFFS, you had to cough up six bucks (and a new password) to sign up for another streaming service. We all know that 50% of the people who signed up for Peacock on Friday/Saturday will completely forget they signed up. The other 50% will remember and cancel on Sunday.
NBC is happy—23 million people watched the game, between the local markets and streaming on Peacock itself. Still, this is a short-lived, resentful streaming boost.
Fans were pissed. The NFL is a business and it’s all about the money, but who thought this was a good idea? Playoff games should be accessible to everyone—bottom line.
Jerry Jones
Jerry Jones really, really wants to win a Super Bowl. As the years go by, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys becomes more and more disappointed with his team’s performance in the playoffs, and rightly so. The dude’s getting old.
The best chance the Cowboys had to go all the way to the Super Bowl might have been this past year. Dak Prescott was the frontrunner in MVP talks for a while, the defense was on fire thanks to defensive coordinator Dan Quinn (who’s already interviewing for other team’s head coaching jobs), and the roster was stacked with excellent players.
But after a great season that saw the Cowboys break multiple home game records (they won 16 games in a row at home), the team failed to make to the conference championships—again. This time, losing to the Packers in the first round at AT&T Stadium.
What’s Jones to do? Fire Mike McCarthy? Find even more synonyms for “surprised”? Go mope in the offseason on his giant yacht? We’ll see what his patience (or lack of it) brings. And we’ll probably see the Cowboys in the playoffs next year… losing. Again.
Andy Reid’s Mustache
It was cold during the Chiefs-Dolphins game on Saturday night. So cold, fans couldn’t even drink their beer because it was frozen over, Patrick Mahomes’ helmet cracked, and we got some really great memes out of the evening.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid didn’t get the memo, apparently. The guy didn’t even keep his ears warm, going for just a ballcap with his headset, and by halftime his walrus mustache was completely frozen over.
It looked painful. After the game, he said he just hoped it wouldn’t fall off. Somebody get that guy a red-and-gold scarf.
Joe Flacco’s Fairytale Moment
While 2023 was filled with feel-good storylines featuring young quarterbacks, a veteran quarterback emerged from the void and lit up his own path in the second half of the season.
Joe Flacco signed with the Cleveland Browns after the team lost its starting quarterbacks to injury. At 39 years old, Flacco had spent most of the fall staying in shape hoping that someone out there would call him up. The Browns had a top-notch defense and they just needed to slot a competent quarterback into the offense to keep their decent season going.
Flacco was the answer—surprising everyone along the way as the Browns snuck into the playoffs. In five games, Flacco went 4-1 and had 13 touchdowns, throwing for over 1,600 yards and showing that veterans deserve second chances.
Unfortunately, Flacco’s fairytale was completely crushed by one of those feel-good young quarterbacks—C.J. Stroud, who helmed the Texans into a cruising 45-14 win over the Browns on Saturday. Flacco threw two pick-sixes at the worst time, and his return to the Browns next year isn’t guaranteed. It was cool while it lasted.
This Dude
There were two people at Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday night who absolutely did not care about the weather—Andy Reid, and this guy, who was a Fin out of his natural habitat:
Those couple of seconds perfectly capture how Dolphins fans have felt since September.
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