Football is a strange sport, where one play, a veritable fork in the road, can turn a game on its head and ultimately lead to a final score that reads quite lopsided, but perhaps would have been much closer if the game diverged differently at said critical juncture.
To wit, the Houston Texans’ 32-12 win over the Los Angeles chargers in the wild card round of the NFL playoffs this past Saturday, on the scoreboard, was a 20 point blowout, and certainly the box score gives every indication that the Texans earned this win. However, in a game with two upper level quarterbacks still with something to prove, you can pinpoint one specific play for each where the game turned.
For C.J. Stroud and the Texans, the fork in the road ended up at pay dirt, with a ton of positive to draw from. For Justin Herbert and the Chargers, they may have wound up at rock bottom at some point anyway, but I think there is a specific play where the game started to get away from them, before unraveling in the second half.
In other words, there were turning points for each quarterback that, if they go differently, maybe we see a much different outcome on Saturday. Let’s start with Herbert, whose afternoon really started to unravel badly after this Kamari Lassiter interception:
SITUATION: 1st-10 at HOU 40 yard line, 11:38 remaining in 2nd quarter, Chargers up 6-0
This play came immediately after C.J. Stroud had thrown his first and only interception of the afternoon. It came on the Texans’ fourth drive, with their first three drives ending in a fumble on the first play and two punts. In other words, the Texans were dead in the water and this was a chance for a kill shot. Lassiter made sure that kill shot never came.
Here were Herbert’s numbers before and after throwing this interception:
BEFORE: 7-13, 78 yards, 71.96 passer rating
AFTER: 7-18, 164 yards, TD, 3 INT, 51.39 passer rating
Despite the 20 point delta between the before and after passer ratings, these numbers are a tad misleading, in two respects. First, most of Herbert’s damage before the pick was done on the first two drives, where the Chargers scored two field goals and he had a 91.96 passer rating. In other words, it was already getting bad for Herbert — the pick by Lassiter just fast tracked the really awful version of him.
Second, his post-Lassiter INT numbers are inflated by one massive 86 yards touchdown catch by Ladd McConkey, with the Chargers training by 17 points in the fourth quarter. Aside from that one (somewhat lucky) play, Herbert was 6-17 for 78 yards and three interceptions after the Lassiter pick, a dismal 11.03 passer rating for those 17 throws.
Now onto C.J. Stroud’s pivotal play:
SITUATION: 3rd-16 at the HOU 17 yard line, 2:24 remaining in 2nd quarter, chargers up 6-0
Believe it or not, this was the key play of a 99 yard touchdown drive
It should be pointed out, that on a drive that was ultimately 13 plays for 99 yards, the Texans before this play had run a total of seven plays for 16 yards and run nearly four minutes off the clock, starting at their own one yard line. Including this pass to Hutchinson, the remainder of the drive was six plays for 88 yards, and Stroud was a different guy after the above circus play:
BEFORE: 9-16, 83 yards, INT, 44.53 rating, 5.2 yards per attempt
AFTER: 12-16, 164 yards, TD, 128.39 rating, 10.3 yards per attempt
Now, what remains to be seen is whether or not this play is something that flips a switch for C.J. Stroud for the next game as well, but it has to give him much more confidence heading to Kansas City for the divisional round.
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