Worst Performances of the Wildcard Round

Everyone likes to talk about the top performances from the weekend and hand out game balls all the time. But that won't be happening here. For the second straight year, The Wheelhouse will hand out the worst performances from the latest NFL week. We want to know who failed and really stunk it up each week. So instead of game balls being awarded for good play, this will be like eggs being thrown out for terrible play. We'll hand out a couple here each week, but there's no limit as we'll let the bad play deem how many to give out.

Tom Brady: 23/42, 154 yards, 2 TDs, 3 INTs, 1 fumble
That felt really good to write Brady's line above from last weekend. The Patriots were never in this game from the start when Ray Rice went the distance of the first play from scrimmage. Brady took the football and responded by turning the ball over all day. Before you knew it, the Pats were in a major 24-0 hole and Brady was forced to pass all day and the Ravens were ready for it. What made it all the more enjoyable to watch was that this was Brady's first playoff game since their loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII and he had been waiting for this game for the past two season. What a shame. Tom Brady gets the only individual egg this week right at his head.

Eagles defense and Packers defense
One of the best coaching moves of last weekend was Packers coach Mike McCarthy kicking a surprise onside kick in the second half. But after watching his defense not come close to stopping Kurt Warner for three quarters, did he really have a choice there? The Packers defense, who are actually ranked 7th in total defense in the regular season, was getting gashed last Sunday in the desert. Warner was pretty much unstoppable, going 29/33 for 379 yards and FIVE touchdowns. The Packers held the Cards to just one punt in the entire game. Now, the Cards defense didn't play much better, but at least they came away with the game-winning score so they can't get an egg here.

Another defense that stunk last week was Philadelphia. Every time you look at the TV, Felix Jones or Tashard Choice were eating up the Eagles D. The Eagles gave up 27 points in the second quarter to pretty much not give their offense a chance to be in the game. It's amazing how bad some of the defenses were last week. Will we see much of the same this week in the divisional playoffs?