NFL Week 17: New Year's resolutions
Well, not so much for the entirety of 2024. More just for the immediate future.
For some teams, the end to the 2023 calendar year was a celebration. The Ravens clinched the No. 1 seed in the AFC, the 49ers did the same in the NFC, Mike Tomlin secured a 17th consecutive non-losing season with the Steelers, and the Chiefs won the AFC West for the eighth straight season.
Others are probably glad to say goodbye to 2023, like the Broncos (no playoffs for the eighth season in a row), Patriots (will finish in last place in the AFC East for the first time since 2000), Giants (what were you doing, Brian Daboll?), and that one NFL officiating crew — you know which one I’m talking about.
I advise those franchises, coaches, and refs to take a little time to reflect and figure out what they need to do to make 2024 more successful. But I won’t offer up any New Year’s resolutions for them because many resolutions don’t even last a month.
Instead, I’m going to make a few “the start of 2024” suggestions to certain teams in the NFL. These “resolutions” are intended to be more ephemeral, specifically designed for the final week of the season and, in a couple of cases, for the playoffs.
Cowboys and Eagles: Figure out how to close out games
The NFC East will come down to next Sunday. All the Cowboys need to do is beat the Commanders again — Dallas won 45-10 on Thanksgiving Day — and they’ll clinch their second division championship in the last three seasons. If the Cowboys succeed, they’re guaranteed of playing host in the Wild Card Round, at the very least, which is a particular advantage for a team with a 16-game home winning streak.
It shouldn’t have come to this point, but the Cowboys have both the officials and the Eagles to thank for this golden opportunity.
On Saturday night, the Cowboys were on the verge of their eighth home win of the season against the NFC North-winning Lions. The Dallas defense had just intercepted Jared Goff at the Detroit 29-yard line right before the two-minute warning. Already up 17-13, the Cowboys could close out the game with a first down.
However, a tripping penalty (incorrectly, as it were, assessed to tight end Peyton Hendershot) pushed the offense back another 15 yards. At that point, game management wiz Mike McCarthy elected to call three straight passing calls, which barely took any time off the clock. Dallas kicked a field goal to take a seven-point lead.
Then, for the second week in a row, the Cowboys’ defense turtled at the most inopportune time. Goff expertly drove the Lions down the field, with zero timeouts, and found Amon-Ra St. Brown for a touchdown with 23 seconds remaining. Dan Campbell decided to go for two and the win, a beautiful trick play to left tackle Taylor Decker, the longest-tenured player on the team. But the refs wiped it out with an illegal touching penalty, saying that Decker didn’t report to the official as eligible. Afterward, Decker, Campbell, and the entire Lions team maintained that Decker did report and the two-pointer should have counted.
Instead, Detroit’s redo attempt failed, Dallas ended its two-game skid, the Lions have almost no shot at the No. 2 seed anymore, and we’re stuck with yet another officiating controversy. Yay!
I didn’t think the result would matter much for the Cowboys, who entered the week as the No. 5 seed and needed the Eagles to lose at home to the three-win Cardinals. And that’s exactly what the free-falling Eagles did, their fourth loss in five weeks.
Just like in their last loss (to Drew Lock and the Seahawks), Philadelphia’s defense couldn’t get a stop late in the contest against a so-so offense. This time, Kyler Murray and Co. went 70 yards in two minutes, and James Conner’s 2-yard touchdown put the visitors on top with 32 seconds left. The same Arizona offense that settled for two field goals in the first half scored a touchdown on all four of its possessions in the second half. No wonder the Philly faithful were left baffled (and angry).
In December, the Eagles were outscored in the second half of every matchup: 29-10 (loss to the Cards), 22-13 (win over the Giants), 17-7 (loss to the Seahawks), 9-7 (loss to the Cowboys), and 28-13 (loss to the 49ers). The good news for them, besides the fact that December is now over, is that they can still win the NFC East and if not, they’ll be the No. 5 seed and face the NFC South champs in the Wild Card Round.
The bad news is that the Eagles are heading in the wrong direction and are running out of time to turn things around.
Ravens: Don’t get complacent
Lamar Jackson won his first NFL MVP award in 2019, when the Ravens went 14-2 and secured the No. 1 seed in the AFC. They promptly lost their postseason opener, a pitiful 28-12 showing in the Divisional Round against the Titans.
Now, Jackson is on the precipice of winning his second NFL MVP award after the 13-3 Ravens locked down the No. 1 seed with their blowout win over the Dolphins.
Last Monday night, Jackson took over as the MVP frontrunner when he (majorly) outdueled Brock Purdy in a 33-19 victory in San Francisco. At the time, Jackson didn’t have much to say about potentially winning the league’s top individual honor because he remembered what happened four years prior and only wanted to focus on winning the next game.
Six days and 2,000-some miles of traveling later, Jackson still didn’t want to talk about the award, despite another incredible performance by the 26-year-old. Jackson completed 18 of 21 passes for 321 yards, five touchdowns, and zero interceptions for a 158.3 passer rating. That was the third time in his career he’s recorded a perfect passer rating, matching a feat that only four other QBs — Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, and Kurt Warner — have accomplished. And if you wanted to calculate what his passer rating would be if the NFL didn’t curb it to 158.3, then Jackson’s performance against Miami was the second-best by a quarterback since 1970, right after … Jackson against Miami in 2019.
Baltimore fans were serenading Jackson all day with MVP chants, but the QB said he blocked out the noise. First, he wanted to make sure the Ravens kept their foot on the gas and didn’t let the Dolphins back in the game. Last season when these two teams met, Baltimore held a 35-14 lead heading into the fourth quarter and lost. All three of the Ravens’ losses this season have come in similar fashion.
Second, Jackson is still thinking about the last time they had the No. 1 seed and how they came up short. He doesn’t want that to happen again. As he said after the game, "We can't go out there thinking [that] since we're the favorites, teams are just going to bow down and play how we want them to play.”
That’s a smart attitude to take into the postseason, especially in the loaded AFC where no team will be an easy out. Hopefully the rest of his teammates follow his lead.
Dolphins: Stop with the injuries!
Last season, the Dolphins barely made the playoffs — their first trip in six years — after injuries nearly derailed their season. Yet even without Tua Tagovailoa, Raheem Mostert, and a couple of starting offensive linemen, they almost upset the Bills in the Wild Card Round.
This year, the Dolphins have another pivotal matchup with the Bills, this time in the final week of the season. And once again, Miami is dealing with a boatload of injuries.
With the AFC East title on the line next Sunday night, the Dolphins will be without defensive starters such as Jaelan Phillips, Jerome Baker, Bradley Chubb, and maybe Xavien Howard, who have all been injured in the past five weeks. Howard and Chubb are the most recent. The former was carted off with a foot injury early on Sunday and did not return. The latter appeared to have torn his ACL while, for no reason at all, playing the final minutes of a 37-point loss. Now Miami’s defense will be without its star pass rusher, who leads the team in sacks (11) and the league in forced fumbles (six).
Chubb’s injury specifically is making me believe in a Hard Knocks curse. This is the third year that the show has followed a team around in-season. Two years ago, the Colts completely blew their chance of making the playoffs in the last week. A year ago, Kyler Murray tore his ACL and weeks later, Kliff Kingsbury was fired. And now, the Dolphins keep losing key players, and this time, the injury should have been avoidable.
Miami’s offense has its own share of setbacks. Tua also left the game early with a sore shoulder, though he insists he’s fine. Mostert and No. 2 receiver Jaylen Waddle were both inactive with injuries this week, and at least in Waddle’s case, probably won’t be back until the playoffs.
The Bills already beat — in a rout — a relatively healthy version of this Dolphins team earlier this season. A lot has changed in that time, and win or lose next Sunday, Miami will be playing on Wild Card Weekend. But if the Dolphins are going to notch their first playoff win since 2000, they better start praying to the injury gods to spare them any more bad luck.
Bears: Focus, for now, on beating the Packers
The Bears have a couple of big decisions to make once the season ends. Will they keep Matt Eberflus as head coach? Who will they draft with the No. 1 pick? Will they move on from Justin Fields?
While Eberflus’ job seems to be safe, the Fields question is much more up in the air. Since returning from injury in mid-November, Fields has played mostly well and he continued that run against the Falcons. On Sunday in the snow, he completed 20 of 32 passes for 268 yards and a dazzling touchdown to DJ Moore, while adding 45 yards and another score on the ground. Those numbers alone don’t quite do justice to Fields’ skills either, like on third-and-8 when he Houdini-ed his way out of … three? four? … sack attempts and scrambled for a first down.
Fields’ performance — and the Bears’ fifth straight win in Chicago — led fans at Soldier Field to make their opinion known: They don’t want Fields going anywhere.
But the front office has a little more time to make that decision, and we have more time to dissect the options in front of them. For now, though, I think the Bears need to take a page from Lamar Jackson’s playbook and only focus on their next game. Because what happens in Green Bay in Week 18 could shape their entire offseason.
The Bears have already been eliminated from playoff contention, but they can play spoiler to the Packers, who simply need to defeat Chicago to grab the final wild card spot in the NFC. The Pack have won nine straight in this rivalry, dating back to the start of Matt LaFleur’s tenure, and haven’t lost to the Bears in Green Bay since 2015.
Entering this season, I thought the Bears had the potential to be this year’s version of the 2022 Lions, in that they would start to put it all together in the second half and go into 2024 with momentum. That’s sort of how things have played out. Since Week 10, the Bears are 5-2 and easily could have (and should have) won all seven. Their defense has developed into one of the league’s fiercest and has racked up 18 turnovers in that time. One more win — and a chance to keep the Packers out of the playoffs, just like the Lions did last year — would be confirmation that the Bears are on the right path, especially after they lost in uninspiring fashion to the Packers in Week 1.
That would also give GM Ryan Pace a reason, if he needs one, to run it back with Eberflus and Fields and reap the benefits of trading the No. 1 pick again. On the other hand, a loss, particularly if it’s ugly, could give him a reason to part ways with Eberflus, trade Fields, and draft a QB of his own choosing at No. 1. So no pressure, Bears. Just the immediate future of the franchise is at stake next Sunday at Lambeau Field.
Every team in the NFC South: Get your s*** together!
I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to any NFL fans that it’ll take until Week 18 for the NFC South to be decided and that the winner will be, at best, 9-8. But just when I thought there was a little semblance of competency in this division, I was proven wrong.
This week, the Buccaneers could have clinched back-to-back titles with a win at home over the Saints. The Bucs were riding a four-game winning streak (second-longest in the NFL after the Ravens), had turned the ball over just twice during that stretch, and Baker Mayfield was playing some of the best football of his career. Meanwhile, the Saints were just 2-4 since Week 10, didn’t force any turnovers in three of those losses, and hadn’t gotten a W on the road since before Halloween.
So naturally, New Orleans jumped out to a 17-0 lead at halftime, won the turnover battle 4-0, and stayed alive in the division. For the first time all season, Mayfield had a multiple-interception game and also left early with a ribs injury (X-rays were negative).
The Saints were the only NFC South team to emerge from Week 17 victorious. The Falcons, one week after switching to Taylor Heinicke at QB and topping the Colts, sputtered in snowy Chicago. Heinicke completed only 34.5 percent of his passes and was picked off three times, and Desmond Ridder, who was brought on in relief, threw one more interception to cap off the butt-kicking Atlanta endured. (It should be noted that the Falcons can still win the division. Gross!)
The Panthers, who were coming two decent weeks in a row, face-planted in Jacksonville. They couldn’t muster a single point against the Jaguars, who had lost four in a row and were starting C.J. Beathard at QB. One week after Bryce Young threw for a career-high 312 yards, he stumbled to a career-low 112 yards, was sacked six times, and is guaranteed to finish with the worst passer rating in the NFL. Carolina also sewed up the worst record and the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft … which belongs to the Bears.
The biggest loser of all, though, was Carolina owner David Tepper, another rich man who gets rid of anyone who tells him “no” and believes he has the right to throw a drink on fans. Now that Dan Snyder is gone, Tepper is arguably the most terrible owner in the NFL.
I’ve changed my mind. I do have one suggestion for a New Year’s resolution, and it’s for Tepper: Stop being such an entitled jerk.