We’re on to Championship Sunday after the Chiefs, Bengals, Eagles and 49ers advanced with wins in the divisional round this weekend. We’ve been highlighting the best performances during the regular season and now the best efforts in the playoffs deserve to be recognized by our MMQB staff.
Here are the divisional round standouts:
Gary Gramling: Joe Burrow, QB, Bengals. In a world where seemingly every quarterback is getting an assist from some clever, play-action-based system (thanks, Mike Shanahan!), Joe Burrow is keeping the “spread it out, read the mail before the snap and shred ’em” approach alive. If you ever wondered what Tom Brady or Peyton Manning would have looked like in this era if they also had perfect functional athleticism for the position, that’s Burrow. And once again, on the road against an AFC blueblood in the postseason, Burrow’s now unique style of play won out.
