X-Factors for every team in the divisional round

Now that we’re full-on into the playoffs, it’s time to stop looking in the rearview with our Secret Superstars series, and start looking forward to the next game with Postseason X-Factors. The principle is the same — using game tape and metrics to uncover those hidden gems for every team who are primed to bring their best when their franchises need it the most.

Here, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar has identified X-Factors for all eight teams in the divisional round; click on the title links to read the full articles.

Buffalo Bills: WR Brandin Cooks

Nobody reading this fine site right now is under any illusion regarding the state of the Bills’ receiver group right now. Joshua Palmer (ankle) didn’t even make it to Buffalo’s Wild Card win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, and both Gabe Davis (ACL) and Tyrell Shavers (ACL) didn’t survive the contest.

So now, with a top-tier Denver Broncos defense lying in wait, and with this as a road game for the Bills, there are exactly three active receivers on the roster:

— Keon Coleman, whose unfortunate status as a repeated healthy scratch this season tells you all you need to know about how well that’s going;

— Khalil Shakir, Buffalo’s most productive target in the 2025 season, who does most of his damage from the slot; and…

— Veteran Brandin Cooks, who the Bills signed on November 25 to a one-year, $1.255 million contract with no guaranteed money three days after the New Orleans Saints flat-out released him.

Overall, Cooks’ stat lines aren’t that impressive for Buffalo — eight catches on 16 targets for 172 yards — but if you dig beyond that to what happened against the Jaguars, and how the relationship between Cooks and Josh Allen has developed, it’s entirely possible that Cooks could be primed for a big game at the most important time.

Josh Allen can’t say enough good things about the 12-year veteran.

Denver Broncos: RB R.J. Harvey

Broncos quarterback Bo Nix has enjoyed a fine second NFL season for the most part, but one thing that has to have head coach and offensive shot-caller Sean Payton concerned as the Broncos’ postseason journey begins is how Nix has done against pressure. This season, Nix has completed 89 of 176 passes when pressured for 818 yards, seven touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 67.9. Among quarterbacks who have started at least 50% of their teams’ snaps, only Joe Flacco, Jordan Love, Geno Smith, and Cam Ward had lower passer ratings in the 2025 season.

While the Buffalo Bills, Denver’s divisional round opponent, don’t have one alpha pass-rusher, they manage to disrupt opposing quarterbacks just fine as a group. Their 35.1% pressure rate ranks 12th in the NFL, and fifth among the remaining playoff teams. Buffalo’s 37 sacks? That’s a bottom-third number, but when you can get enough pressure against a quarterback like Nix who would really prefer that you didn’t, that can be enough to end plays, drives, and games.

The obvious answer for Payton is to give Nix quick reads to get the ball out, and in second-round rookie R.J. Harvey, Payton has an able assistant. Throughout his time as an NFL head coach, Payton has always been great in utilizing smaller, quicker, versatile backs who can function equally in the run and pass games. Harvey has qualified in his inaugural campaign with 540 yards and seven touchdowns on 146 carries, and 47 catches on 57 targets for 356 yards and five touchdowns. At 5’9” and 208 pounds, Harvey isn’t your typical bellcow back, but when Payton and the Broncos got him, you had a pretty good idea how he’d be used.

San Francisco 49ers: DL Keion White

That Kyle Shanahan should be the NFL’s Coach of the Year, and Robert Saleh should be the Assistant Coach of the Year, based on what they’ve done with all the injuries they’ve had to deal with this season — well, that’s as much of a no-brainer as you’ll ever see in the NFL. But that kind of great coaching isn’t just about making the most of the players you have; you also need to go out and find credible replacements for the stars you don’t have anymore.

For the 2025 49ers, case in point was the late October trade with the New England Patriots for the services of defensive lineman Keion White. Selected by New England in the second round of the 2023 draft out of Georgia Tech, White was one of my favorite defensive linemen in his class, as he showed a ton of disruptive ability from multiple gaps. And I assumed that under head coach Mike Vrabel and defensive coordinator Terrell Williams, White would uncover his NFL potential in ways he didn’t in his first two NFL seasons.

It didn’t happen. The Patriots’ new regime utilized the 6’5”, 290-pound White primarily as an edge-rusher, when he’s better terrorizing ballplayers from every gap. Saleh must have been licking his chops when it was discovered that White was available.

Seattle Seahawks: LB Drake Thomas

How do you know when a team is well-coached?

There are all kinds of obvious indicators for this, but one way you know that a team has coaching that is above the mark is when, all of a sudden, guys you’ve never heard of before are becoming stars out of the blue. This has been a feature for the Seattle Seahawks’ defense under head coach Mike Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde all season long. Seattle has the NFL’s best defense by DVOA, and that is easy to see on the field when you watch the clear standouts like Leonard Williams, DeMarcus Lawrence, Ernest Jones, Devon Witherspoon, and Nick Emmanwori.

But on any championship-level team, there are also players who come out of nowhere to succeed on the field. With the Seahawks, you can point to pass-rushers Uchenna Nwosu and Derrick Hall, Josh Jobe and Julian Love in the secondary, and certainly linebacker Drake Thomas.

Thomas came out of North Carolina State in the 2023 draft and first signed as an undrafted free agent with the Las Vegas Raiders. The Seahawks picked him up on waivers on August 30, 2023. It was a gradual climb for Thomas — he spent most of his rookie season on injured reserve, elevated himself to special-teamer status in 2024, and finally got his shot as a starting linebacker as the 2025 season progressed. This season, Thomas has four sacks, 17 total pressures, 56 solo tackles, 24 stops, 10 tackles for loss, and in coverage, he’s allowed 40 catches on 62 targets for 250 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, six pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 72.8.

Houston Texans: Safety Calen Bullock

If Aaron Rodgers returns to the NFL for the 2026 season (no doubt after months and months of self-generated debate on the subject), it could well be because his last throw in a game was so disastrous. With 2:52 left in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 30-6 wild-card thrashing at the hands of the Houston Texans on Monday night, Rodgers tried to hit receiver Calvin Austin III on a three-man frontside vertical concept. What he may not have expected was to see safety Calen Bullock in the slot, backpedaling right to where Rodgers wanted the ball to go. Not that the Texans needed Bullock’s 50-yard pick-six, but it was a nice capper as the Texans move on to meet the New England Patriots in the divisional round.

But the most interesting and encouraging thing about this play was Bullock’s presence as a slot defender. Throughout his NFL career, Bullock has been primarily a deep safety, because he became one of the NFL’s best in very short order. In his rookie year of 2024, he lined up in the deep third on an NFL-high 1,063 of his 1,113 snaps, and overall, he allowed 13 catches on 29 targets for 159 yards, two touchdowns, five interceptions, five pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 45.7.

And if you want consistency from year to year, well, you can’t do much better than this: In his second season, Bullock has lined up in the deep third on 938 of his 1,070 snaps, allowing 17 catches on 36 targets for 247 yards, two touchdowns, five interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 49.0.

New England Patriots: OL Thayer Munford Jr.

Here’s some next-level analysis you won’t get anywhere else, folks:

The Houston Texans’ defense is absolutely terrifying.

Okay, maybe that’s not next-level, but when you dig into the particulars, it’s even scarier. The Texans rank second in Defensive DVOA behind only the Seattle Seahawks, and head coach DeMeco Ryans’ crew has been this good with less eye candy than another defense has used. The Texans have blitzed on just 18.9% of their snaps this season (fifth-lowest in the NFL), but their 47 sacks is tied for sixth-best, and when you have Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. on the edges, and Sheldon Rankins and Tommy Togiai as your primary inside guys, who needs all that blitzing crap?

And at a time when most defenses are using as many safety switches as possible to confuse quarterbacks, Houston has done so on just 21.4% of their snaps. It’s the same principle — when you have the NFL’s best cornerback in Derek Stingley Jr., the NFL’s best cornerback nobody talks about in Kamari Lassiter, the NFL’s best deep-third safety in Calen Bullock, and one of the NFL’s best box/slot defenders in Jalen Pitre, you don’t need a ton of schematic frosting.

Patriots quarterback Drake Maye is a worthy NFL Most Valuable Player candidate because he’s been great against every schematic sleight of hand this season, but when you’re facing a defense where “His’n is better than your’n,” (to paraphrase something Bum Phillips once said of Don Shula), that’s another matter. The Patriots will need to do everything possible to at least manage that his’n/your’n disparity.

Chicago Bears: LB Tremaine Edmunds

The Chicago Bears may be the most fascinating team left in the postseason, because you have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get — from game to game, drive to drive, and play to play. This is absolutely true on defense, where Dennis Allen’s squad has the NFL’s best turnover differential (+20 including the Wild Card round), and still ranks 25th in Defensive DVOA.

In the Divisional Round against the Los Angeles Rams at Soldier Field on Sunday night (6:30 p.m. EST, NBC/Peacock), you can add to the specter of that boom-or-bust defense the fact that Sean McVay, the Rams’ head coach and offensive mastermind, had a complete change in philosophy in-season, which is highly unusual. Before receiver Puka Nacua was injured in the first half of his team’s game against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 6, McVay hadn’t run a single snap with 13 personnel — one running back, three tight ends, and one receiver. Since then, McVay and the Rams have become the masters of 13 personnel, using it on 331 of their snaps (by far the most in the league), and the results overall tell you that it’s not changing anytime soon.

This season in 13 personnel, Matthew Stafford has completed 89 of 131 attempts for 1,097 yards, 20 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 133.2. And on 204 rushing attempts out of 13 personnel (again, by far the NFL’s most) the Rams have 973 yards, 578 yards after contact, 12 touchdowns, 27 broken tackles, and 58 first downs.

Los Angeles Rams: Safety Quentin Lake

Football is the most interdependent sport, so when we’re discussing the effect of not having one particular player on your roster, you have to look at a lot of different things. Just because things are falling apart on one side of the ball, it doesn’t automatically mean that things would be this or that much better with Player X back in the fold. While Player X has been out, Player Y could have been playing with his own serious injuries, and Player Z, who is replacing Player X until he’s healthy, simply isn’t qualified to run his coaches’ concepts.

But in the case of Rams defensive back Quentin Lake, the issues in his absence were pretty clear. Lake suffered an elbow injury in the 21-19 Week 11 loss to the Seahawks, and from then through the end of the regular season, L.A.’s defense was not the same. The Rams went from 8-2 to 12-5 without Lake. In the second half of the season, their defensive EPA rose from -0.04 to 0.0 (defensive expected points added is better when it’s negative), the defensive DVOA dropped from third to ninth, pass defense DVOA dropped from second to eighth, and the run defense DVOA dropped from fourth to 14th.

Plus, Lake got himself a new three-year, $38.25 million contract extension on January 1 — while he was still coming back from injury. That’s quite a statement.

Lake returned for the Wild Card Round, and while there were a few rusty spots, his value was very much in evidence.