3 lessons Colts can learn from how Ravens, Chiefs, 49ers and Lions got this far

Lamar Jackson vs. Patrick Mahomes. Dan Campbell vs. Kyle Shanahan.

In this weekend's AFC and NFC championship games, two superhuman quarterbacks will go to battle in one conference and two galvinizing coaches will square off in the other.

The other 28 teams will be taking notes on the way the Ravens, Chiefs, 49ers and Lions have ascended to the semifinal weekend.

The Colts are in an earlier stage but are also in a place to dream. With a second-year coach in Shane Steichen and a second-year quarterback in Anthony Richardson, fresh off a 9-8 season, they have some of the upside for this time of year without the experience.

That's where those lessons can be most valuable. Here are three that should sink in:

In the AFC, you need an alien at QB

The NFL lives in tiers at quarterbacks, and the ones teams need to live in right now differ vastly based on which conference they reside. Nothing summed that reality up quite like the divisional round.

In the AFC, the worst quarterback among the four teams left standing was C.J. Stroud. The Texans quarterback just finished one of the most electric rookie seasons in history, throwing for 23 touchdowns to five interceptions on 8.2 yards per attempt while leading the NFL in interceptions percentage and passing yards per game.

His biggest flaw is that he's new to the playoffs, and Lamar Jackson was not. And the other AFC matchup happened to pit arguably the top two quarterbacks in the sport against one another in Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.

It's a different world over in the NFC, where the best of the remaining four quarterbacks is up for debate between Brock Purdy and Jordan Love. Purdy was a seventh-round pick who has become one of the better draft success stories in recent seasons but who mostly is a high-level operator of the most well-schemed and dynamic offense in football. Love was a late first-round pick who had to sit three whole seasons behind Aaron Rodgers before he got a chance to start.

Purdy and Love combined for 6.1 yards per attempt on a rainy, low-scoring night in San Francisco. It wasn't exactly the duel Mahomes and Allen put together, trading superhuman throws and truck sticks in a battle of who could play ball control away from the other the longest.

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The AFC has become the conference of mutants at quarterback, where schemes and offensive lines and offensive weaponry aren't enough to cover up a position that eventually has to win with an arm, legs and a willingness to be the hero. That's the pressure that defined Allen's battle with Mahomes and eventually swallowed him on a final drive in which he launched one pass 60 yards in the air and through the hands of Stefon Diggs and then ignored Diggs on an open crossing route to try and miss on another bomb for a touchdown, and the Bills whiffed on a game-tying field goal.

Stroud's career is only just getting started. Allen, Mahomes and Jackson are entering their prime, and so are Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert. Trevor Lawrence, Rodgers and Deshaun Watson have all played at stellar levels before, too.

It makes the swing the Colts took on Richardson last spring not only wise but necessary. The time for minimizing the role of the quarterback and relying on non-physical traits is over. Now, you need a guy who can turn a defensive win into a loss on a play just with his ability to improvise, the way Jackson did time and again when Demeco Ryans sent well-timed blitzes and effective rushes his way and he found rushing lanes or forced a teammate open. It's what Mahomes has done for six AFC title game appearances in six seasons.

The Colts have the most athletic quarterback prospect the league has ever seen. Richardson isn't experienced, and he isn't fully developed as a passer, and he hasn't yet proven he can be durable or handle the biggest stage. But the bullet is in the chamber in a way it hasn't been for this franchise since 2018, in a way the AFC now demands.

Tight ends are meal tickets in crunch time

A Batman always needs his Robin in a passing league. For as much as the super-human quarterbacks can create for an offense, they still need someone to reciprocate that chemistry and turn it into bankable play calls in the do-or-die moments.

Any more, those Robins are often arriving at tight end.

It's the trail Tom Brady blazed for so long with Rob Gronkowski, the ultimate mismatch tight end who could block with force, sell the play fake and rip off an explosive play from a condensed formation. It's now what each of the four teams left standing have in some capacity.

For Mahomes, four-time first-team All-Pro Travis Kelce is his only truly reliable target left standing after the Chiefs have reduced wide receiver spending by allowing Tyreek Hill, JuJu Smith-Schuster and others to walk.

For Jackson, Mark Andrews is the only target he's ever had a true No. 1-style bond with, and though he didn't have or need the three-time Pro Bowler to route the Texans or secure the No. 1 seed, he knows his possible return this week is the best chance they have at cracking a Chiefs defense that hasn't allowed more than 24 points in seven weeks.

For Purdy, George Kittle is merely one of four explosive weapons he can look to at any given time but is the one most likely to rip off the chunk play in the middle of the field portion where Shanahan's passing game lives, like the five-time Pro Bowler did with a 32-yard touchdown against the Packers to inject life into an otherwise dead offense.

And for Jared Goff, second-round rookie Sam LaPorta has been a revelation, turning in 889 yards and 10 touchdowns in just his first season in the offense to provide the perfect secondary option whenever Amon-Ra St. Brown is double-covered.

These are often the players quarterbacks will go to when they have to have a third- or fourth-down conversion or a touchdown, the way that Mahomes found Kelce for two red-zone scores to beat the Bills. They're easier to disguise in their responsibility with their ability to play in 11, 12 or 13 personnel, to be as relevant on the play sheet on 4th-and-inches as they are on 3rd-and-8.

When a quarterback develops that quick connection with a player in a mismatch body on a short depth of target and can operate play action, he can place even the best defenses in a bind.

The Colts needed a piece like that this past season. They went all 17 games without their high-upside option in Jelani Woods, who could never get his hamstrings to work properly. They pieced production together with Mo Alie-Cox, Kylen Granson, Drew Ogletree and Will Mallory for more than 800 yards, but that model was naturally inconsistent as a concept to the quarterback and play caller. And when the Colts faced 4th-and-1 with their season on the line, they could have used that kind of reliable mismatch player to create a short throw that didn't have to go to a backup running back.

Offensive lines can be expensive, but only with a specific purpose

To find hope in the idea a team can go from a top-five draft pick and a feeling of hopeless direction to a Super Bowl contender in short order, look no further than the Lions.

Their turnaround from a 3-13-1 team in Campbell's first season to the 12-5 club that has its first two playoff victories in three decades can be traced back to many factors — Campbell's culture, Aidan Hutchinson's arrival, St. Brown's breakout, Goff's ascension — but it really starts with the offensive line.

Their rebuild of the front five has roots dating back to 2016 (my first season covering the team). They spent first- and third-round draft picks on left tackle Taylor Decker and right guard Graham Glasgow, respectively, in an effort to better protect an increasingly battered Matthew Stafford.

The plan never came together in time for Stafford, but like what the Colts tried this past offseason, the Lions chose to keep building that unit rather than to tear it down or move off its importance. They rolled back Decker and 2019 first-round center Frank Ragnow, signed Glasgow again and used the No. 7 overall pick in 2021 on right tackle Penei Sewell. This season, it is the most expensive offensive line in all of football with a $50.6 million cap hit, just ahead of the Colts' $49 million.

INSIDER: How Tony Sparano Jr. rebuilt the Colts offensive line

It's also the best unit in football by adjusted line yards, according to FTNFantasy.com. In the run and pass game, it is the driving force of the physical, balanced and methodical team the Lions are.

This line and its ability to win in obvious drop-back situations has saved Goff. The Rams gave up on the 2016 No. 1 overall pick when Sean McVay's play-action designs lost their punch and he was forced to win under pressure and couldn't in the playoffs.

With a general manager who knew him well in Brad Holmes, the Lions traded for Goff and gave him the dominant pass protection to avoid his Kryptonite. It has restored his confidence, accentuated his accuracy in order to complete a career-high 67.3% of passes this season and allowed offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to design slow-developing routes that can lead to explosive gains.

That is spending with a purpose in a way that moves offensive line value away from the inefficient and conservative approaches at the expense of premium positions that can sometimes doom this approach. That has at times been a criticism of Ballard.

The Colts do not have the same reliance on the front five to create the basis of their run game as the Lions do. They're paying top-of-the-market money for a rushing champion in Jonathan Taylor, and they have the type of dynamic runner at quarterback in Richardson to create the effect of an extra blocker on read-option designs. Richardson can also escape pressure in the passing game in a way Goff cannot.

The Colts instead have an immense need to protect Richardson, who missed the final 12 games with an AC joint sprain. He's a developing superhuman athlete who needs to prove he can play so physically and stay on the field.

It's a similar burden to what Jackson faced this past season after missing 10 combined games the previous two years. It became such a concern as the Ravens were weighing a long-term extension that they fired offensive coordinator Greg Roman and moved the offensive philosophy from run-heavy to more of a balanced attack with quick answers under new coordinator Todd Monken.

As the Ravens moved pass-first, they turned their offensive line from East-West cogs of the machine to the protectors of their most valuable asset, whom they had just promised $260 million over five seasons. In that sense, they increased their value by shifting their focus, and they also paid the front five more than every other team this season than the Lions and Colts.

Jackson played all 16 games until the Ravens locked up the No. 1 seed. He attempted a career-high 457 passes and averaged a career-high 8.0 yards per attempt. And yet that shift in focus didn't negate his value as a runner, as he still ripped off 821 yards and five touchdowns while leading the league with 5.5 yards per carry.

As the Colts build out their offense around Richardson, the offensive spending will need to extend beyond the line to the weaponry, with Michael Pittman Jr. due for a monster extension. But thanks to Richardson's rookie contract, which will pay him nearly $25 million less next season than Jackson, they don't have to choose one or the other.

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts news: 3 lessons to learn from AFC, NFC conference finalists