With the conclusion of the Eagles-Buccaneers Monday Night showdown, Wild Card Weekend is officially in the books. Let’s take a look back at the wild weekend that was a rank every team’s defense.
Bye: Baltimore Ravens
The Ravens will face the Texans. This won’t be easy for Baltimore, it will be a good one.
Bye: San Francisco 49ers
The niners are big time favorites over the Packers in San Fran.
12. Dallas Cowboys
It doesn’t get much worse defensively than the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday. Honestly, with how they played, they may as well have not even showed up. Green Bay jumped all over them, racking up 27 points in the first half.
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It didn’t get much better after halftime for the Dallas D either, as Jordan Love continued to carve them up and Aaron Jones gashed them left, right, and center. When all was said and done, the Cowboys had allowed over 400 yards of offense and 48 points in the humiliating defeat. And this was supposed to be the strength of this team. Yikes.
11. Philadelphia Eagles
Things went from bad to worse for the Philadelphia Eagles this year in stunning fashion. After a 10 – 1 start, during which, they looked like one of the top defensive teams in the year, the unit completely fell apart.
Just look at their abysmal performance during Wild Card Weekend against Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Mayfield completely tore their secondary to pieces, completing 22 of 36 passes with three touchdowns and no interceptions. It wasn’t just the counting numbers that made this defensive performance so bad, but they looked completely overmatched, as the Bucs racked up over 400 yards of total offense and 32 points in route to the stunning upset win.
Granted, Philly did have a number of key injuries on the defensive side of the ball, but this was still a truly rough showing.
10. Cleveland Browns
Obviously, allowing 45 points in a playoff game is not ideal, but the Browns defense didn’t play as poorly as the scoreboard indicates. For starters, the offense directly gave Houston 14 points via pick-sixes, but the impact ran deeper than that. The offense also put them in a number of challenging situations and left them on the field for far too long, which helped enable C.J. Stroud to make short work of them.
9. Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins defense had no answers for Patrick Mahomes, Isiah Pacheco, and the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs offense this weekend. It wasn’t the typical high-flying Chiefs offense we’ve seen in years past, but they moved the ball relentlessly—and, frankly, without resistance.
The biggest concern was that Miami was unable to unwilling to adapt to the game flow. Once Kansas City set the tone, it was all downhill from there.
8. Pittsburgh Steelers
To be fair to the Pittsburgh Steelers, no one even thought that they’d make it this far and once they did, they were marked an easy out. Then, to make matters worse, their best player, T.J. Watt as ruled out of the game with an MCL sprain that he sustained during the Steelers playoff-clinching win against the Ravens.
Losing a player like Watt, especially for a team like Pittsburgh, is no small matter… But the defense fought hard all game—even after Buffalo jumped out to an early 21 – 0 lead. The Steelers D, to their credit, didn’t panic. They weathered the storm and really tightened up in the second half.
The Steelers, however, needed to do a better job of securing the line of scrimmage. Buffalo was able to run the ball very effectively against them, as James Cook, Josh Allen, and Ty Johnson combined for 179 yards on the ground.
Giving up 31 points in a playoff loss is tough, but Pittsburgh really had the deck stacked against it in this one.
7. Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills defense came out of the gates firing against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night, limiting the Steelers to just seven first-half points. Honestly, it could’ve been even fewer too, if not for a blocked field goal that brought Pittsburgh back into the game by setting up their first score of the game.
Buffalo was impressive against the run, particularly when Najee Harris was in the game. The burly running back had been hard to stop of late, but against Buffalo this week he was only able to manage 37 yards on 12 carries.
The Bills defensive line only got to Mason Rudolph once, sacking him for 11 yards, but they made him uncomfortable all night—and the secondary was lights out for most of the afternoon. George Pickens, the Steelers dynamic wideout, was limited to just five catches for 50 yards, as most of the passing game was funneled short, over the middle of the field to Pat Freiermuth and the Steelers running backs.
Buffalo will have a bigger challenge next week when Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs come to town and the Bills need their defense to perform at a high level if they want to finally get past their vaunted rivals.
6. Green Bay Packers
There were a lot of questions about the Green Bay Packers defense this year, even after they rallied to string together a few strong performances in route to their postseason berth, but they absolutely balled out on Sunday against Dallas.
Yes, if you look at the box score, you will see 32 points and 500 yards of offense for Dallas, but almost all of that production came in the second half once the game was already in hand thanks to their lights out performance in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.
The Packers will have their hands full next week with the 49ers, but if they can match their level from the first half against Dallas, who knows what will happen!
5. Los Angeles Rams
The Rams defense wasn’t exactly its calling card this season, but the unit played extremely well on Sunday against the Lions. Well enough to win if you ask me.
They held the high-flying Lions offense to 24 points, 21 of which came in the first half, meaning they limited that potent attack to a mere field goal after the half.
Aaron Donald and co. held up their end of the bargain, unfortunately the offense just couldn’t muster up enough fire power to get over the hump and the Lions edged them out by one point at the final whistle.
4. Detroit Lions
The Lions defense looked like it was in trouble when the action kicked off against the Rams on Sunday. Matthew Stafford and co. marched up and down the field early and often in route to 17 first-half points.
But to Detroit’s credit, the group tightened up in a big way after halftime, holding the Rams to measly six second-half points, helping lift the team to its first postseason win in decades!
3. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tampa Bay still has a lot of work to do in terms of fully proving out its defensive prowess, as they weren’t exactly the most consistent bunch in 2023, but their showing against the Philadelphia Eagles during Wild Card Weekend was a great starting point.
The Buccaneers held Jalen Hurts and co. to just nine points and were staunch against the run, limiting the dynamic Eagles rushing attack to just 42 yards—and even stopping the Brotherly Shove in its tracks!
Tampa will have its work cut out for it next week facing off against Dan Campbell’s Detroit Lions, but if this defense can show that it is for real, they very well may be capable of making a deep playoff run.
2. Houston Texans
The Texans defense delivered a remarkable performance on Saturday that was chock-filled with game-changing plays, including two pick-sixes. Their defensive prowess essentially ended the game in the third quarter!
It wasn’t just the two turnovers that made this such an impressive showing though. Houston was so steady the entire game—and DeMeco Ryans deserves a lot of credit for deploying such an adaptable and effective defense. The blitzes and coverages were both well-disguised and made things extremely challenging for Joe Flacco, a season veteran who has seen it all!
1. Kansas City Chiefs
Kansas City’s defense showed up in a big way this weekend, holding the high-flying Miami Dolphins offense to just seven points.
The Chiefs d-line was particularly impressive and really set the tone for the game, by getting after Tua time and time again. It wasn’t just Chris Jones either… The entire unit was a in the backfield on a regular basis, forcing Dolphins star QB into a number of rushed and uncomfortable throws.
When all was said and done, Miami was limited to just seven points and 264 yards of total offense, largely because Kansas City was so sound on 3rd down—allowing just one conversion on 12 tries.
