The Best Weekend of Football Ever

Tetraptych of the four winning quarterbacks: Burrow, Bengals;
Mahomes, Chiefs; Garoppolo, 49ers; Stafford, Rams (WSJ photo)

Fans of professional football for over 50 years, we've always made a point of tuning into the Divisional Playoffs, four weekend games which pit the eight teams left in the Super Bowl tournament. We hope for one, maybe two exciting games; usually there are a number of stinkers that are decided by halftime.

Last weekend each game was exciting enough to have been the highlight of the weekend in past years.

the 2022 version of the divisional round may be the best ever.

Two No. 1 seeds were taken out in the divisional round, the first time that's happened since 2010. All four teams that won earned the victory in walk-off fashion.

Evan McPherson hit a game-winning 52-yard field goal to give the No. 4 Cincinnati Bengals a 19-16 win over the top-seeded Tennessee Titans.

Robbie Gould hit a game-winning 45-yard field goal to give the No. 6 San Francisco 49ers a 13-10 win over the top-seeded Green Bay Packers.

Matt Gay hit the winning 30-yard field as the Los Angeles Rams knocked off the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Patrick Mahomes connected with Travis Kelce on an eight-yard touchdown pass to give the Kansas City Chiefs an overtime victory over the Buffalo Bills.

The National Football League couldn't have written the script any better. The first game, Cincinnati's upset win over Tennessee that was decided by a last-second field goal, was exciting, but each succeeding game was even more thrilling as the stars elevated their play. IMHO, the games were "won," not "lost."

a football weekend like this past one, a four-contest, do-or-die playoff buffet in which the first game was totally wild, the second game was utterly wilder, the third game was straight-up bonkersville, and I really don’t have the term to describe the fourth game, because the English language has yet to come up with a sufficient word to precisely describe its final minutes of madness...

It was some 24 hours, starting with Cincinnati winning a football game they really had no business winning, to San Francisco winning a wintry game they had no business winning, to the Los Angeles Rams winning a game they did their best to gift wrap and leave on the doorstep for Tampa Bay, to a relentless jaw-dropper between Kansas City and Buffalo in which the lead flipped back and forth in the closing seconds of regulation.

Another reason this was a great weekend for football: for the first time in 5-7 years the focus has been on the games and not on fundamental threats to its popularity. Rule changes and improvements to safety equipment have halted, at least temporarily, the furor over CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). A combination of acceding to some of the players' demands and a general lowering of the political temperature has pushed the flag-kneeling controversy to the background. Vaccinations and greater knowledge of the disease have made COVID protocols less disruptive.

Go Niners!