With only the final week left in the season, unless the Ponies capsize at Jaguars, the only wild card left in the League will be born between the Lightning and The Raiders, and the league will also schedule the two teams' head-to-head meetings in the regular season finale.
The final situation is roughly:
Ponies and Raiders win: Raider Seed 6 vs. Tiger, Pony Seed 7 vs. Chieftain.
Chiefs and Lightning win: Pony Seed 6 vs. Tiger, Lightning Seed 7 vs. Chief.
However, if the Ponies unexpectedly lose to the Jaguars, the Steelers and Ravens have hope of making the playoffs. However, the Ponies scored 15.5 points at the start of the game, and losing the game ensured that the Jaguars who won the lottery had almost no reason to beat the Colts. So in this article we think that the pony is determined to advance, and the lightning and the raider compete for the last wild card.
Then let's examine which of the two 9-8 teams has more promise of becoming a dark horse in the playoffs?
After the hot start, lightning slowed down
The Lightning are the most puzzling team of the season, with the ability to beat the Chiefs in overtime and lose miserably to the Texans, giving them a chance to turn things around after a big win over the Broncos. The opening season was 4 wins and 1 loss to occupy the top spot in the American League, followed by an unstable attack and poor defensive run, and finally fell to this step.
If we measure offensive ups and downs in offensive EPA, then this season's Lightning is second only to the Tigers and the second most unstable in the league.
The Lightning Raiders last met, taking a 21-0 lead at halftime, the Lightning beat the Raiders 28-14 on Monday night. Justin Herbert received a PFF pass rating of 82.6 and hit three touchdowns. The Lightning defended badly this season, but that defensive EPA was the second best performance of the season. The Lightning applied a total of 21 pressures and completed 10 run-stops in 16 runoffs.
Lightning is the reason for the dark horse
Word: Herbert. As long as he stays healthy, the Lightning have a chance to beat any team.
The sophomore has made great strides in full line with expectations and broken the team's record of single season touchdowns held by Big River, completing seven games with a PFF rating of over 80.0 so far in the season, far more than three in the rookie season.
The chart above shows how unstable the Lightning offense is, but it also shows how good Herbert is. His bad game is really bad, but his super level of play has reached the elite quarterback level. In fact, despite losing to the Texans, he led the Lightning to the highest offensive positive scoring rate since 18 years.
Herbert is experiencing career peaks in the past five games, with three games having an EPA above the season average. The first game against the Chiefs was a three-stop four-gear conversion failure and a cut that was pointed out by a teammate, causing the total EPA to plummet by 15.73.
On the other hand, if we look at his third week against the Chiefs, it was a lot of four-time successes that made him the best game of the season.
Although Herbert's receivers have seen 33 catches this season (the fifth-most in the league), his stats are still pretty. Many people on Twitter complained that Joe Lombardi didn't let Herbert do his best, but in fact he let Herbert manage the big picture. Only four teams in the league, the Chiefs, Pirates, Beal and the Rams, had a higher-than-expected pass rate than the Lightning.
Herbert's best game was still in third gear. Sometimes the defensive team has a way to create three long yards, but Herbert always gets it right — this season he has the second most EPA in the league in three gears, behind Keller Murray.
Lightning is hardly the cause of a dark horse
Despite Brandon Starley's enthusiasm for playing four gears and his courage to express his ideas at a press conference, it was a bit disappointing to see him coach in tenth-to-last defensive EPA. Delvin James and Joey Bossa are both top players in their respective positions, but the Lightning defense has struggled.
At the beginning of the season, the lightning defense difference was historical. Then Staley tried to increase the number of people in the initial box, and the data was slightly better. However, several defensive backcourt players were injured and were abused by Davis Mills, Mahomes, Big Ben and Cousins.
You can see that every American League playoff team has a good quarterback, but whenever the Lightning wants to win, Herbert has to go all in. Herbert would be much easier if the defensive team could pack the Broncos every week as they did last week, but unfortunately the Broncos are an offensive group that is seriously short of major generals.
Here's how the lightning pressure has been applied over the past four weeks:
If the Lightning can't keep putting pressure in the playoffs, they'll have a hard time blocking high-energy offense like the Chiefs, Tigers and Beal.
Starley's defensive philosophy has spread throughout the league this season, and his strategic abandonment of the pavement defense to block large-size passes is theoretically fine. However, after changing the owner, he was unable to get a defensive front like Aaron Donald, which made the Lightning repeatedly suffer in the defensive run. If the playoffs meet a rushing team like the Titans, Ponies or Patriots, the anti-run problem will be infinitely magnified.
The raiders were not impressed
Despite the farce of Gruden's mid-season resignation, the recently miraculous three-game winning streak raiders have found that just one more win can secure a wild card.
Similar to lightning, Raiders also have some confusing defeats, such as against Nameless and Giant. While the recent three-game winning streak looks good on the surface, it's nothing remarkable. Brown was sidelined due to a large area of the epidemic, winning only 4 points against the Broncos led by Drew Locke, and the Masons only won 3 points.
Raiders are the reason for the dark horse
To put it bluntly: in fact, there is nothing scary about the raiders. They only scored more than 24 points once in their first eight weeks on offense. After losing Henry Lagos and Darren Waller, the attack was dry and lifeless. Their defense is also not very good, defending EPA0.038 in sixth-to-last place.
If you have to look for strengths for them, it's passing offense. Here are some good indicators of raider passing.
Max Kroosby is fighting for big contracts this season, and the other defensive fronts are doing well. Some of the Raiders' investments in the offseason also paid off. Yannick Ngaku pressed 58 times, Quinton Jefferson 38 times and Solomon Thomas 29 times, and offseason reinforcements made pressure a strong point for the Raiders.
Raiders are hardly the reason for the dark horse
Since cutting Lagos, the Raiders have completely lost the vertical attack capabilities they showed at the beginning of the season.
Signing Deshaun Jackson was supposed to help Derrick Carr pull the defense. But that didn't happen because Karl has only passed 12 big heart passes since Jackson joined in week 10, compared to 26 in the first half of the season. Waller was sidelined due to injury and the pandemic, and in the four games before the Mas, Carl's EPA was negative.
Road attack was a strength a few years ago and hasn't been up to target this season. This season's Raiders rushed EPA-0.200 to the bottom of the EPA league. While we often complain that they picked a running back with one of three first-round picks in '19, Josh Jacobs has actually been doing well in recent years, with more problems on the offensive front.
They have four starting attacking fronts who have released more than 30 pressures this season, including Brandon Parker, who only took the right-hand side in the fifth week. In this year's first-round pick, Alex Lesserwood also released 68 pressures from interception to defensive forward, imagine the tragic situation when he entered the American League playoffs against tough characters such as Chris Jones, Jeffrey Simmons, Deforest Buckner or DJ Reed.
Even if Waller returns in blood, what other offensive threats will the Raiders have? That's why the white man took over Hunter Renfrew. It is estimated that the Raiders will struggle to score 20 points in the playoffs.
forecast
The Lightning have been a better team all season and so far their offense has been better. Raiders defensive coordinator Gus Bradley is known for not changing his defensive plans, while Herbert has an offensive EPA of 0.190 and a PFF pass score of 81.9 when facing Raiders' most common cover3, which is a great positive for lightning.
The regular season finale is the equivalent of a playoff, and a team with a stronger quarterback should have some advantage, and the Lightning should beat the Raiders and send themselves to the Chiefs, hoping to be a shame to be beaten by Kelsey in the Thursday night game a few weeks ago.