I have a Question: What matters more, an elite line or elite weapons?

 

Alright. It's Super Bowl week, and I haven't had much to say in a while – so I went looking through some of my notes for something I felt like I had to say. And I found a little gem that seems prescient of Sunday's game:

What is more valuable to a team: an elite corps of weapons or an elite offensive line?

Let's start with the Rams, because we all know the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl with an historically bad offensive line, right? And yet, according to this article from PFF, the Bengals were 20^th this season and the Rams were 7^th. Nowhere near as bad, evidently, as the Dolphins (32^nd) and Panthers (31^st). Meta-data mining this article for a moment, I'm surprised by how the Playoff teams cluster within the top-ten of each half of the rankings. But I'm not really talking about the way the offensive lines performed; not conceptually.

I'm talking about how the teams are built.

So let's take a look at the Rams. From Left Tackle to Right:

• Andrew Whitworth is 40 years old and was drafted by the Bengals in the second round. He's probably making about $10 million this year (3 yr/$30 mil). I'm not interested deeper than that.

• David Edwards is 25 and was drafted in 2019 in the 5^th round (by the Rams). FWIW – he graded out 66.4 OVR by PFF.

• Brian Allen is 27 and was drafted in 2018 in the 4^th round (by the Rams). Graded out at 80.2 by PFF.

• Austin Corbett is 27 and was drafted in 2018 in the 2^nd round (by the Browns). Graded out at 68.8.

• Rob Havenstein is 30 and was drafted in 2015 in the 2^nd round (by the Rams). Graded out at 81.5.

My first takeaway here is that I'm not doing that for the Bengals. My second is that there isn't a single guy on that line who is a first round pick. Andrew Whitworth has been one of the best tackles in the game his entire career and graded out as maybe the best pass protector this season. Otherwise, I'd say what you've got here is a not-especially good line.

I don't need to tell anyone what the Rams have for weapons.

After a moment's reflection on what I can leave unsaid because you aren't coming here to hear what you've been hearing others say all season, I think that this Super Bowl answers the question of what is more important – an offensive line or playmakers.

Neither of these teams has a perfect quarterback. I don't know that there is any such thing, but what I suppose I mean is that neither of these teams has Tom Brady or Peyton Manning at their very best. The situation is not unideal for either head coach – but then again, neither head coach is exactly the typical ideal. We are very much watching a new style, a new generation, perhaps, of football being played. There was a time when investing heavily in the offensive line was enough. It wasn't enough to get the Chiefs over the hump – it wasn't even enough to get them in the Big Game again. They lost to a team which, traditionally, had no business being in the Championship: a team that couldn't protect their quarterback – a team with a basically first-year quarterback.

I wouldn't even say that either of these teams has a running game.

So what do both of these teams have that got them here? Defense. Defense wins championships, right? Sure, Burrow and Co scored when it mattered – and we'll get to how they did that – but it was the defense that gave them a chance when the offense stumbled in the first quarter. Complimentary football, right? I wish I could remember what happened in the 49ers/Rams game. But then again, I'm just glad the Rams are the team who won; I couldn't deal with another Jimmy G Super Bowl. Not if it would ruin the narrative I'm trying to spin, here.

The 49ers, by the metric I'm trying to establish, didn't have the one thing these two teams did: a plethora of weapons for their limited quarterback to sling it to. Deebo Samuel was enough – until he wasn't anymore.

Here's my thesis: You're only as good as your third wide receiver and second tight end.

I've done a lot of soul searching on another thesis of mine (which I've published, you can find it here): that Joe Burrow and Ryan Tannehill are the same sort of quarterback as Tony Romo – and that Burrow is the best possible version of that guy. Since then, I've privately wondered whether Matthew Stafford isn't also that guy. I do not think so. I do know that I don't know enough about “quarterbacks” to know what guy Matthew Stafford is. Maybe he has the same whatever it is that Jameis Winston has – whatever it is that makes coaches and teams keep sticking with Winston even though he's Jameis Winston. I was beginning to wonder whether it isn't that same thing that had coaches like (former Rams) Jeff Fisher clinging to Sam Bradford; but I don't know that it's that.

Matthew Stafford legitimately has got one of the game's great arms, even at this late stage of his career. He also throws balls ten yards too short, sometimes, and gift-wraps pick-sixes to defenses. But he has an unquestionable uncanny knack for the game – and an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the quality and depth of his pass-catchers. But Chip Kelly and, later, Jared Goff taught us that there is no such thing as the quarterback-proof offense. Your quarterback has to be a killer. He has to be able to win games in the fourth quarter and on the final drive with too little time on the clock. There can be no exceptions in the Playoffs.

Tom Brady and the Patriots proved this post-season that you have to have more than three receivers and more than one tight end. Without Antonio Brown and his full compliment of pass-catchers, even Tom Brady wasn't enough to get over that hump. Aaron Rodgers wasn't enough without the chemistry with those other two receivers and the tight ends. (I still don't know how much of that game comes down to Aaron Rodgers choking, Aaron Rodgers trusting himself and Devante Adams too much, or Matt LeFleur bungling another Playoff game, and I don't want to be thinking about it again.)

So what does Burrow teach us?

Burrow teaches us that your offensive linemen are playing the 3-second rule in two-hand touch. Literally: give the quarterback a three-count to make a decision – either throw it or get out of the pocket. Against the greats among pass rushers – really, even against the only-goods – offensive linemen are overmatched. There's a reason the best pass protector in the league is a 40 year-old man whose body is held together with duct tape and scrap wire – it takes a long time to learn how to slow down these men and defend against the variety of moves they've learned to get past you with if you're an offensive lineman.

The offensive line and what it is is a conversation I have to save for another time, because this is about Burrow – not about his line. Well, it's about Burrow in that what Burrow has, and how the Bengals have found success this season, is receivers who get open inside three seconds.

Burrow is phenomenal pre- and post-snap. Don't get me wrong, and don't let me take a single thing away from him. But even Marino's then-record-setting quick release wasn't enough to cover up the dearth of receiving and defensive talent his teams had.

But having guys who can actually get open is everything.

It's one thing to have Tom Brady's timing and anticipation and “throw guys open”. But Burrow is throwing into incredibly tight windows, sometimes, and that's on his receivers. That's more than trust. That's his receivers being that good. And they are. Higgins and Boyd have been elite in this postseason. They've made plays when their numbers have been called. Higgins, specifically, had the game of his life in the Championship.

And that makes that pretty much that. You have to have a quarterback who possesses all three necessary traits – he's a leader, a scholar, and a murderer (of dreams) – and he has to have quality weapons and a defense. It doesn't matter how much you pay him, it doesn't matter how much you're paying the receivers, frankly. The Rams have managed to get it done with what I imagine are extreme investments in their receivers and defense. Because you can't forget to invest in your defense. Most especially not if you're going to put a young hotshot offensive guru in place as your head coach. The defense almost has to take care of itself as a separate entity.

And it almost has to know that and feed off it.

You can really see it with both of these teams; not just in their public perceptions and the way they're sold to us fans, but in how the games are coached on Sundays.

I have never seen Sean McVay coaching the defense. How can he if he's calling offensive plays? If he's in Matthew Stafford's ear up until his mic is cut off?

That's not even a criticism. It's an observation. The defensive coordinators for these head coaches are head coaches in and of themselves. That's probably why they don't have the Assistant Head Coach title but why they very often seem to get the Interim title when the offensive guru finds himself canned. Rich Bisch (RIP) is reminding me that the previous statement is probably wrong in the aggregate.

So let's close this out as a Super Bowl preview, because that's basically what the piece is. Without running down the levels of the defense, we've basically matched these teams up as pretty even. It comes down to the veteran wide receivers and quarterback versus the newbie receivers and quarterback. For that matter, it's the original Young Gun versus the Not-So-Young-Anymore Gun.

Sean McVay's coaching tree – which is really Kyle Shanahan's coaching tree – which is kind of Jay Gruden's coaching tree – which has so many roots in Miami – is really remarkable, isn't it?

This game is going to find a way to not get into the 80s of points. These quarterbacks are flawed enough and the coaches stubborn enough to establish the run after two weeks of rest – and the defenses are legitimately good enough – that the score could be maybe 13 – 17 going into halftime. It could also be 33 – 35. So, I mean. I would rather see a game in the 110s of points.

I'm torn about how I want this game to go, otherwise.

Let me tell you a story from my life. It was the 2011 season. Matthew Stafford was backing up Dante Culpepper in Detroit. I was waiting tables for a mom n pop Italian restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. I learned about the rule that servers weren't allowed to talk, here, to the kitchen when I heard the owner talking about the Detroit Lions. I was 24 and had never worked with anyone who was interested in the NFL even the least bit. They were talking about how Dante Culpepper was finally going to get the Lions over the hump. I waited til a lull in their conversation (for what it's worth, the dining room was literally empty and the chef-owner could see that as well as I could), and said, “I don't know. That Matt Stafford looks like a real one.”

The owner looked at me like I'd grown tentacles. It was weird.

It's hard for me, remembering the limb I put myself on (I eventually lost that job because I broke too many unspoken rules which were just Don't [be human]. Whatever) to say I want to see Matthew Stafford lose this game. It's also difficult for me, knowing that on more than one occasion I've written that I don't know that he's very good at football – or even know it at all from the evidence I was seeing – to say that I think he can, if it comes down to a duel with Joe Burrow.

Joe Burrow shook Patrick Mahomes's faith in Patrick Mahomes's ability to overcome a Joe Burrow comeback. We all saw it happen.

I can't tell you when it happened. Sometime either during or immediately after halftime, I guess. Maybe he crushed it like a flower beneath a literal steel-toed boot by getting the game to halftime. That isn't what really matters.

What matters is that Burrow might be one of the all-time greats already. He's really something unlike anything I've ever seen. An exception? No. Exceptional? Yes.

My heart is going to be rooting for the Bengals because, secretly, since I was the smallest child, I was a Bengals fan. Among my earliest memories – and earliest disappointments – was watching a Bengals game with my dad and enjoying myself so much I declared that they would be my favorite team. Even as a child I was determined to be my own person, being skeptical of following him in his footsteps even in choice of team. I ultimately did not pursue that dream when he told me, “You don't want to be a Bengals fan,” and took the little ceramic Bengals helmet I was holding (my mother had made them for each team and they were arranged on the wall behind the TV by Conference and Division – I was fascinated by and very proud of them as a child (it was I who first noticed the Steelers in their logo)) and he put it back on the wall.

So I guess maybe in my secretest little boy's heart I've been waiting for them to be in the Super Bowl so I can emotionally root them on while the Dolphins are a dumpster fire yet again.

We'll see how that goes. Emotions like those are difficult to manage. I'll probably shy away from the intensest of them.

Hey— Thanks for reading this. I'm not writing a typical football blog, and I appreciate your time and your attention. I wouldn't ask for anything else. Have a great day, alright? I'll talk at you soon.