NFL Divisional Round Awards: CJ Stroud, Broncos, Sam Darnold haters and more

The Football Gods just gave us two overtime playoff games. That means they were either smiling at us or apologizing for making everyone watch the 49ers and C.J. Stroud in uniform. Whatever the reason, it rocked. 

Now we only have four football games left. That’s four hours of football, and that’s it. Then we’re going to be hanging high and dry until September. We need to take it all in and appreciate every second of it. 

There’s no better way of showing that appreciation than by giving out awards to the best and the worst things we saw all weekend… And buddy, there was a lot of it. 

Bummer of the week: Everyone who won

You’ll never hear anyone who cares about football say that the postseason is boring, but if someone did call the rest of this postseason boring, they’d have a pretty solid argument.

We all wanted Josh Allen and the Bills to finally get to the Super Bowl … They lost to the Broncos. We all wanted Sam Darnold to choke again … He didn’t. We all wanted the Patriots to fall on their face ... They smoked the Texans. We all wanted the Bears to take down the Rams ... Didn’t happen. 

So now, we’re looking at a Championship round between a boring Rams team and the quirky Seahawks. And we’re looking at a boring Broncos team with a backup quarterback and the boring Patriots.

All of these teams have won Super Bowls in the last 15 years. It just would’ve been nice if there was some new blood in the mix. Instead, we’re going to get the Patriots and either Matt Stafford or the Seahawks. It stinks, and society loses.

Air Bud of the Week: The Bears

In Air Bud, it wasn’t just that the dog was playing sports (which is a feat in itself)... It’s that the dog was making elite plays. 

Caleb Williams’ 14-yard touchdown pass (which was a 55-yard touchdown pass) was unbelievable. The human body shouldn’t be able to bail straight backwards and blindly throw a ball 55 yards to the perfect spot in the end zone. That’s something only a dog from a movie can do. 

What are we doing here? When people say someone “has that dog in him,” they mean someone has a level of grit. Caleb Williams might legitimately be part Golden Retriever. 

Origami of the Week: C.J. Stroud

The postseason is awesome because you really get to see what players are really made of. Will they turn into a demi-god like Jalen Hurts? Or will they do the opposite and fold like paper… C.J. Stroud somehow did even more than the opposite. 

He turned into that really thin tracing paper, folded himself into an origami swan, and then played a full football game the exact way an origami swan would play football. He was straight-up terrible. 

We kind of knew that Stroud was going to struggle against the Patriots’ defense, but we didn’t know that he was going to look like he forgot how to be a human being. It was genuinely one of the worst postseason quarterbacking performances in the past decade (at least).

He did throw a touchdown, but he also threw four interceptions and was sacked three times. Based on those two numbers, you would think that a quarterback would get benched or that they’d try to move the ball almost exclusively on the ground… You’d think wrong. 

Stroud played the entire game, even though Davis Mills, who has shown that he can win games, was on the sideline… and he also threw the ball 47 times. 

When he wasn’t throwing violently pathetic interceptions, he was missing his receivers by five feet. Demeco Ryans and Nick Caley are either bullies for keeping Stroud in the game, or they were colorblind and hallucinating that those throws were close.

Ipecac of the Week: The Broncos

If you drink poison, you have to drink Ipecac because it makes you puke. You don’t want to puke, but if you want to live, you’re going to have to. That’s the Denver Broncos.

The Patriots are a wholly unlikeable team (purely because of their past), and no one wants to watch them go to yet another Super Bowl. The problem is that the only team standing in their way is the Broncos and Jarrett Stidham.

Unfortunately, that means if you want the Patriots to lose in the AFC Championship game, then you also want Sean Payton to win in the AFC Championship game. That’s vile. 

If Bo Nix were still healthy, it’d be one thing because he’s a perfectly fine quarterback… But Payton is the cockiest turd this era of the NFL has ever seen. Do you know how insufferable he’s going to be if he makes it to the Super Bowl with a backup quarterback? It’s going to be awful. 

But that’s better than the Patriots winning again. Right? If we don’t want to have our souls crushed by watching another Super Bowl parade go through Boston, then we have to send good vibes to Sean Payton.

No one wants to drink ipecac, but if it means you’re not going to die, then you’ll have to bite the bullet. 

Accountable People of the Week: Sam Darnold haters

We watched Sam Darnold play five years of terrible football from 2018 to 2022. Then, with the Vikings in 2024, he played really well for 16 weeks before turning back into that same old Darnold. 

Was he actually a good quarterback, or was his one good season fluky? Was he really the panicky cat who got sacked nine times in that playoff game? It didn’t really matter because the Seahawks gave him a $100 million contract.

During this regular season, we saw a whole bunch of the good Darnold. It really seemed like the real version of him was the good version… but we still didn’t know what he was going to do under the pressure of playoff games; Our one sample of him in that situation was terrible. 

This weekend was going to let us know whether or not he was going to puke all over himself again, or if he had completely turned the page.

Well, the Seahawks crushed the 49ers' souls and won 41-6… and we still don’t really know about Darnold. 

I think I would err to the side of, ‘He’s not a total headcase,’ but this wasn’t a real football game. The Seahawks had a seven-point lead before the game started because of Rasheed Shaheed’s opening kickoff return, and the 49ers followed that up by turning the ball over on downs.

The 49ers were dead, and the game was over; Darnold had exactly zero mental pressure for the rest of the game. He ended up only throwing the ball 17 times. 

So sure, he didn’t let the 49ers get back into the game or anything like that, but also, he was never really tested.

As a society, we need to be held accountable. If you’re like me and said, “I’m not going to believe in Sam Darnold until I see him not choke away a playoff game,” then we have no choice but to stay true to our word and actually believe in Sam Darnold…

There’s also a very real chance that he never gets put into a stressful spot all postseason. If that defense plays the way it played on Saturday night, they’re going to boatrace everyone that steps on the field with them. That was an unbelievable performance against a pathetic San Fran team.

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