Weekend Slate: No Climax

The hype around the possibility that playoff spots and seeding could be up for grabs failed to materialize outside of the NFC South

A Texans recap? Of a game that didn’t matter? Yes: I did it.

I am only covering the games that mattered for major playoff seeding/draft order scenarios today because a Week 18 Colts-Jaguars game with no implications that went to overtime is not something we need to breathlessly cover. I’m tired.

Main screens

Vikings 9 at Lions 31

I would like to tell you there was something interesting that happened in this game, but the reality of the situation is pretty simple: Sam Darnold held the ball too long and Aaron Glenn won every big down. The Lions ran man coverage on 66.7% of dropbacks per NFL Pro, the second-highest rate of the season. And Darnold simply could not get to the reads in enough time. The Vikings went 0-for-3 on fourth downs and 0-for-4 in the red zone, and a game that was close eventually splintered the Vikings defense.

The Vikings seemed unable or unwilling to cut these routes short, perhaps as a philosophy to punish the Lions deep, or perhaps just simply out of an abundance of “this has worked this year.” And when Darnold did have a throw — like here — he held it a bit too long. It looked like they were playing Texans offense, which is to say, everything was too difficult for the situation.

The biggest Lions play on offense — and Minnesota’s defense was mostly doing a great job up until this point — came when Jared Goff found the Texas route for Jahmyr Gibbs for the game’s second touchdown.

On the other side, you’ve got Goff standing in the pocket as two rushers bear down on him and hitting this throw. It was well-designed, there was plenty of space, but this isn’t a throw I’ve seen every quarterback hit this year.

The Lions claim the NFC’s No. 1 seed in a game that was closer than it looked but not exactly close. They also look to have lost Terrion Arnold for some time, if not the rest of the postseason, with a foot injury. Detroit’s defense is running on fumes, but it’s still running. Aaron Glenn isn’t a hot defensive coordinator candidate for nothing, folks.

Minnesota? They get a date with the Rams on Monday after the NFC’s settled-but-not-seeded 3-4-6-7 popped up with Geno Smith besting Jimmy Garoppolo as the Rams rested the starters. I earnestly can’t tell if I’d rather have battered Darnold (who was limping on several plays) or rested Matthew Stafford at quarterback in that one.

Chiefs 0 at Broncos 38

Welcome to the Carson Wentz redemption tour. Andy Reid’s long preamble led to this moment, where a game with massive playoff implications was so lopsided and so over that CBS switched me away from it in favor of Jets-Dolphins.

Wentz completed 10-of-17 passes for just 98 yards and was sacked four times. The Broncos, admittedly, have either the best defense in the NFL (I only look at stats) or one of the best defenses in the NFL (I’ve watched some games and seen who they frontrunned). This looks to firmly be in the territory of the latter.

Wanna see ol’ Carson Wentz — who didn’t run a single time in this game(!!) — get hit one more time for old time’s sake?

Bo Nix got so bored that he started doing forward laterals in the second quarter, and Sean Payton sheepishly said during his halftime interview (paraphrasing) that they couldn’t control who they were playing. The NFL season is pretty exciting most of the time, but there is no such thing as low stakes football. There is high stakes football, and there is preseason football.

(Aside: If we have to keep Week 18, can it just be for games that matter? Like I said above, I’m not covering Jaguars-Colts here. It technically had draft order implications, but what if we just locked that in after 16 games for any team without a chance to get the No. 1 pick? What if we gave teams a 16-game schedule, then we drew up de facto playoff and draft seeding games for Week 18 instead of having to deal with this crap.)

(Alternate title of above rambling: I was forced to watch Carson Wentz for three quarters and it gave me some crazy ideas about the world.)

Saints 19 at Buccaneers 27

How was the NFC South won? The way it deserve to be won: Barely and because of utter incompetence. Staked to a 13-3 lead midway through the second quarter, the Saints — using Spencer Rattler at quarterback and a Jamaal Williams/Clyde Edwards-Helaire combo at running back — failed to generate any offense for the rest of the game. They wound up with just two more field goals and, for the game, had 4.6 yards per play. I will give it up for interim coach Darren Rizzi, who I will forget about 15 minutes after posting this article, and note that the Saints probably wouldn’t have scored a touchdown if they didn’t go for it on fourth-and-short and convert twice. Both conversions kept the drive alive.

The Buccaneers, faced with the clean standard of “just get out of your own way,” eventually managed to get there. The Saints kept it a little feisty on defense in the third quarter and managed to pick the ball off of Baker Mayfield once and snuff out a Jalen McMillan screen to create a drive-ending second-and-16.

But the Bucs did catch up, and after Bucky Irving crossed the goal line with 1:51 left to create an insurmountable eight-point lead, the NFC South title was delivered back to sender. The Bucs will take on the Commanders — a Week 1 rematch — in their NFC Wild Card round match.

Congrats to Mike Evans, who is beloved, on catching this ball with almost no time remaining to get some extra contract incentive money:

Bengals 19 at Steelers 17 — AFC North games have a way of getting ugly in a hurry, but the story here was Pittsburgh’s pass offense disappearing into the muck against a Bengals defense that had been bad all season. Russell Wilson had just 149 passing yards, took four sacks, and was pressured on 10 of 35 dropbacks. He hit an early moonball on the sideline to Mike Williams, then spent most of the rest of the first three quarters racking up incompletions and George Pickens drops.

Mike Tomlin called a give-up punt down 19-14 with 5:25 left on fourth-and-1 — in fairness, the team went for a fourth-and-1 in their own territory earlier in the game, failed, and gave the Bengals three points because of it — and a Bengals blocker had the ball deflect off his shoe to the Steelers for three of the six points they needed to win the game.

Then there was this sequence:

In particular, there was this:

You can’t do this scramble when you’re 20 yards from a game-winning field goal and it is first-and-10. You certainly can’t do this scramble and not get out of bounds. The Steelers ran out of time. And even though Wilson’s last ball to Freiermuth was on the money, they likely would have run out of time even if he had caught it because the Steelers had to hurry to the line after that scramble and waste their final timeout to stop the clock on the ensuing sack.

The Steelers, reeling as losers of their last four, get to try to figure things out against the Ravens.

Cincinnati did not see its dreams come true thanks to Carson Wentz and will now enter an offseason that they absolutely must get right. Lemme put it this way: If the Bengals can’t get a Ja’Marr Chase extension and a Tee Higgins contract, ownership should be forced to sell the team. There’s no reason to break this offensive roster up. The Chargers literally spent nothing on defense this offseason and found a way to create a top-half defense. That should be the goal for the Bengals rather than cutting off Higgins to try to pay the latest vet free agent who won’t solve much.

Browns 10 at Ravens 35 — To me the most notable thing here as the Ravens rode a 14-0 lead to an easy win over a team intentionally playing Bailey Zappe is: Lamar Jackson didn’t exactly make any plays that would win him the MVP. That’s not to say that he didn’t play well (he’s literally Lamar Jackson, of course he played well), but with Josh Allen taking Week 18 off, he had a chance to make one more big statement. But a lot of Jackson’s big moments or potential big moments were dropped passes. The Ravens turned it over on downs three times in the first half alone, one of which looked like this:

Great play design, Jackson hookshots it. Would have looked really cool if he hit it — and that’s not like subtle criticism, it would have been sick — but it didn’t happen.

Anyway, the Ravens rode King Henry to the finish. Cleveland’s offense, as you’d expect, never seriously threatened.

Wrapping up the AFC’s No. 3 seed, the Ravens will get a rematch with the Steelers and we’ll get to worry about Zay Flowers leaving early with what is reportedly a sprained knee. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he were not able to go against Pittsburgh, and the Ravens are not exactly brimming with wideout talent behind him.

The Browns enter the offseason by firing Ken Dorsey, admitting that Deshaun Watson had a setback in his Achilles, and capturing the No. 2 overall pick by virtue of New England’s win over Buffalo. It’s certainly possible they have an entirely new quarterback room and one thing I blurbed for Rotoworld last week was The Athletic’s Browns beat writer Zac Jackson saying he doesn’t think Deshaun Watson will play a meaningful snap in 2025.

Side screens

Bills 16 at Patriots 23 — I’ll get into the Jerod Mayo firing tomorrow, but what I really want to talk about is Joe Milton. Yes, the Patriots rested Drake Maye after one series and Accidentally Joe Miltoned the Bills to knock themselves out of a top-three draft pick. Here’s how that looked:

Can we build a Matt Flynn career for this guy? He had some surprisingly big plays. In a drab Week 18 full of Davis Millses and (ugh) Bailey Zappeses, Milton brought some juice to the screen. 22-of-29 for 241 yards and a touchdown. And more importantly, zero sacks behind a bad offensive line.

I haven’t been a big fan of New England’s player acquisition department. I’m struggling to understand how Mayo takes full responsibility for this season without the Patriots really acknowledging how they set this roster up to fail. But they nailed Maye and they might have something here. You can do much worse than “front office that nails picks at quarterback.”

Panthers 44 at Falcons 38 (overtime) — How do you give up 44 points to the Panthers despite no defensive or special teams scores? How do you give up 44 points to a team that has Adam Thielen and nothing at wideout? The answer is unsexy: It’s mostly field position. Carolina's scoring drives started at the Carolina 30, Carolina 42, Carolina 25, Atlanta 21, Carolina 42 (again), and two more Carolina 30s. The Falcons outgained the Panthers 7.0 yards per play to 6.5, but the pass rush that had been propping up their defense disappeared as Bryce Young took zero sacks and was hurried on just six of 34 dropbacks. He was confident enough to start dropping looks like this:

This was a fourth-and-1, by the way. They hurried to the line. He was completely unfazed, and then did the Lamar pre-celebration. The Falcons did hire a defensive-minded head coach, right?

The Falcons got a touchdown to go down one, took the extra point instead of going for two, then lost in overtime without ever touching the ball. For the second week in a row! They would have won the NFC South had they gone for and converted two two-point conversions.

The Panthers had as good of a second half as any team that was going nowhere in the current season can have: They found out that Bryce Young deserves more chances and that they need to build him a better receiver room, then fix the defense. The Falcons, well, they know they need to get rid of Kirk Cousins. It sure does feel like these two teams enter 2025 on equal footing except for the part where Michael Penix has Bijan Robinson, Tyler Allgeier, Drake London, and Darnell Mooney. The Panthers have Chuba Hubbard and Thielen. That’s the difference over the course of a full season. For now.

Dolphins 20 at Jets 32

Aaron Rodgers ended the 2024 season on a high note, throwing for four touchdowns, getting to 503 for his career while passing Fran Tarkenton’s unoffical NFL sack record, and causing Tyreek Hill to finally say “I’m out.”

Hill, who was targeted just three times and needs wrist surgery, looks likely to be a big offseason domino. The Dolphins have committed to bringing Chris Grier and Mike McDaniel back, but they don’t really have cards left to play. Without Hill they are the early 2020s Saints of the AFC. A middling quarterback and some decent talent that will try to fight the aging curve for one more season.

New York managed to, for one of the first times all season, play complementary football. They strip-sacked Tyler Hundley in the two-minute warning, recovered, then threw a touchdown to take a 15-6 lead that Miami was chasing the rest of the game.

(Aside: I love the phrase “complementary football” because, just like “that’s analytics,” it has been overused by players and coaches so much that I don’t even know what it means to people anymore. To me: It’s when the offense and defense work together to create something in a chain. But to a player, complementary football can mean something as simple as the running game not working so the passing game has too much on the plate. All you really need to know is: When bad things happen, it’s because of not enough complementary football. When good things happen, it’s because of complementary football. Great cliche.)

The Jets are … well, who knows what the Jets are. They are a stack of head coaching interview requests and an owner who desperately has to defend well-sourced reports that his son Brick has input in football decisions. We won’t have any clue who they want to be until we see what the new football operations staff is about, but the Rodgers era looks like it’s over and all their good young players are about to get expensive in a hurry. They’ve got to choose between soft reset and full rebuild, and the soft reset would be without a good quarterback. These aren’t the words that Brick and company want to hear, which is why they will probably hire someone who tells them what they do want to hear. Which is why I say the Rodgers era “looks like” it’s over instead of telling you it’s over. Because I can’t rule out anything when ownership is this disentangled from reality.