I think this postseason taught me a couple valuable things, namely a major new metric for the grading rubric that'll have profound impact on my analysis of wild-card games as well as a slightly more nuanced take on home field advantage that takes weather into account.

New Metric: MOMENTUM

Watching the Steelers and Vikings lose as badly as they did a couple weekends ago had me shook up. I needed explanations. How could Pittsburgh lose so pathetically despite holding a tactical edge against the Ravens, at least on defense?

The Steelers know better than anybody that Baltimore lives to run the ball. Not only that, but it can be argued no team has been more successful than Pittsburgh at limiting Baltimore's ground game. Not to mention the Steelers pride themselves on a brand of physical toughness that plays well against teams that lean hard on their ground game. And regarding the Vikings, why were they embarrassed so badly against the Rams on a neutral field? Don't get me wrong...Los Angeles is a solid team, but I had the Vikings pegged as a dark-horse contender for the Super Bowl. So how did I read them so wrong?

After watching and rewatching tape, I still couldn't fathom why I was wrong. But it kept dawning on me that both teams limped into the postseason on sad notes. Pittsburgh was riding a four-game losing streak while Minnesota suffered their worst game of the year against Detroit the week before. I remember in an earlier iteration of the grading model, I noted momentum as a metric to judge teams, but it was never a metric that sat well with me considering teams like the 2009 Saints and the 2017 Eagles slid into the playoffs rather unremarkably only to end up winning it all. So momentum as a differentiating factor quickly went out of vogue the next year.

But similar to tactical edges, maybe I wasn't nuanced enough in my approach to judging momentum. Maybe I should only be judging teams who played meaningfully and wholeheartedly in the last week of the regular season only to still lose. On top of that, I should also only look at teams forced to play in the wild card round, as any break in action (via the bye) could be enough to cull negative momentum (similar to how basketball teams call timeouts when their opponent gets hot and goes into a scoring frenzy).

When I restrict negative momentum to only teams playing in the wild-card round who lost their final regular season game despite playing at full strength, I suddenly noticed a historical pattern that was almost always predictive. Any time a team afflicted with negative momentum would contend against a team not affected by negative momentum, the former would almost always lose (typically in a blowout). This trend holds pretty true going back ten years.

• In 2024, both Minnesota and Pittsburgh lost their first postseason games pretty terribly.
• In 2023, Miami and Philadelphia lost their wild-card games.
• In 2022, the Chargers lost their wild-card game against the Jaguars after Brandon Staley forced his starters to play the last week of the regular season even though winning or losing the game would change nothing. To be fair, the game was a bit bizarre as the Jaguars had to stage a 27-point comeback to win the game, but they won the game regardless.
• In 2021, the Patriots lost in embarrassing fashion against the Bills, despite holding what may have been a tactical edge after losing to those same Bills just a month prior.
• In 2020, Pittsburgh lost against the Browns despite having played them just a week before to close out the regular season. Yet another game where tactical edges didn't matter much.
• In 2019, New England lost in a surprising upset against the Titans. Likewise, Seattle should have lost against Philadelphia after losing the division crown against the 49ers the week before, but the Seahawks were lucky enough to knock Carson Wentz out early. Without their starting quarterback, Philadelphia was completely helpless on offense.
• In 2018, no team entered the postseason with negative momentum.
• In 2017, Jacksonville won their game against Buffalo despite closing out the regular season with two straight losses. But it was a weird game. Despite being major favorites, it took every fiber of their collective being to win the game. Looking at the raw statistics alone, it's hard to believe the Bills even lost the game - Blake Bortles only passed the ball for 87 yards. On top of that, Buffalo possessed the ball longer and were just much more productive on offense. Given that these same Jaguars would eventually find themselves one successful pass away from reaching the Super Bowl, it's evident that negative momentum significantly impacted their level of play in the wild card round.
• In 2016, the Raiders and the Lions lost their wild-card games after failing to claim victory in what were meaningful games to close out the regular season.
• In 2015, the Packers won, but it can argued their last regular-season games weren't really meaningful. In fact, I've noticed Mike McCarthy has a habit of jumping the gun when it comes to preparing for the postseason - if that last game will not really impact seeding, then more time will be spent getting ready for the wild-card game, should his team be required to play one.

As noted above, a couple exceptions do exist, but those can be explained away as resulting from extraordinary circumstances. So the historical record pretty clearly supports this idea of negative momentum - teams immediately playing in the postseason right after closing out their regular season with an emotional loss are destined to underperform. This is why the Vikings and Steelers lost so dismally - both teams were suffocated under the weight of negative momentum. And it makes sense given that negative momentum can throw an entire organization into a depressive funk - it's incredibly difficult to win at the highest levels when a club is operating from a depressed state. However, if that team is going up against a team lacking serious weaponry or even going up against another team currently mired by negative momentum, then it's possible for them to emerge victorious. We saw this with the Rams in 2021 when they met an especially repulsive Cardinal team coming off an upset loss against the Seahawks in a game they needed to win to claim the division.

So if anything happens, the best part of this postseason may not be the money I might end up winning if the Chiefs and Eagles meet in the Super Bowl...it's discovering this trend that should hold for years to come.

New Match-up Metric: Weather

Watching the Rams try to win a postseason game in wintry weather was painful. I think I counted at least seven times where snowy conditions messed with the Rams, leading either to incomplete passes, botched runs, blown coverages, and even turnovers. If it wasn't for the snow, the Rams would have won this game fairly easily. Aaron Schatz's proprietary Post-Game Win Expectancy rate (PGWE) supports this too - PGWE indicates that the Rams would have been expected to win this game more than 80% of the time given the raw statistics as well as the rate at which they succeeded passing the ball in this game. But too many unforced errors ended up being their undoing here.

Going forward, I'll be penalizing warm-weather teams traveling on the road and playing in wintry conditions. As weather is something that cannot be assessed weeks in advance, this variable can only be factored into the grading rubric we use to compare two teams against one another. The general model will remain unaffected here.