Recapping the 2018/19 NFL season

#6 Drew Brees and Philip Rivers need to win this year

Drew Brees and Philip Rivers

With Brees this sounds more adequate to most people, neither of these guys is far from the end in my opinion. I thought both of them played like top five players at the position last year and not only did I believe they could square off in this last Super Bowl, their teams should be among the favorites once again in 2019.

With that being said, as the year went along their play certainly did decline. Their arms started falling off and opposing teams found ways to take advantage of that. Since that 13-10 loss to the Cowboys, Brees threw three touchdowns compared to three interceptions through the rest of the regular season.

His overall numbers in the Divisional Round were pretty good, but he underthrew a wide open receiver for an interception, which should have been a walk-in touchdown and later on he had his backup and gimmick player Taysom Hill all alone in the end-zone, but let the ball hang up there until somebody could get back.

The funny thing is that Taysom dropped back the very next snap and drilled the same throw to Alvin Kamara, which was called back unfortunately. I know he probably was a missed pass interference call away from going to the Super Bowl, but a lot of Brees’ success came due to the play-design of Sean Payton and there are definitely limitations to his game.

For Rivers, the end to his season was somewhat similar. Over the Chargers’ final two regular season games, he completed just over 60 percent of his passes for an average of 178 yards and one touchdown compared to four INTs.

The Ravens held him to just 160 yards through the air in the Wildcard Round and what was lost in that game with the way the Baltimore offense was incapable of doing anything, was the way Rivers couldn’t move his offense down the field either. Yet they were set up in scoring range so many times by their own defense.

The week after that they only converted two of their first eight third down attempts and were held to just seven points through the first 44 minutes. The Patriots sat on everything underneath and dared Rivers to go over their heads. So while the Saints and Chargers are front-runners to go make deep playoff runs once again in 2019, that should be their best and maybe last shot to go the distance.