NFL Week 15: Mike Phipps' late delivery

Chiefs: 119 yards total offense, five first downs. Raiders: 385 yards, 21 first downs ... and five field goals.

 

Odds would be better of converting a 4th-and-4. Dallas just wasted a 40-yard punt return.

 

If the Texans had played the Colts early in the season, we would not have had to wait for today to find out who the AFC South champion was.

 

Sure we would. It would just have been a different opponent. My take is the Texans were better and the Colts worse in September. Houston would have gotten its 12 wins one way or another. Maybe today could have been the rematch meeting. I just think two games so close together is not good for either team.

 

I'm not sure I get your point here, why does that matter?

 

With the Giants in third on tie-breakers.

Also a massive jizzfest at ESPN because they get to go full East Coast bias, and at NBC because they can safely assume the Week 17 Cowboys-Redskins-RG3 lovefest is going to be the most compelling matchup of the week.

 

The trickery by McCarthy on that punt return is one of the worst coaching decisions I've seen in a long, long time.

Not sure what the analogy is to other professions, but if any of us did something THAT stupid in our line of work, we'd be summarily fired.

Also: The Bears have a leadership crisis. It's been painful watching the organization fail to win a SB during the Urlacher-Briggs-Peanut era (the championship window that defense had). And they won't.

 

Also to ESPN's benefit -- with the Steelers losing, they can actually with a straight face bill the MNF game as vitally important to the Jets' playoff hopes. If Steelers beat Bengals next week and then both teams lose in Week 17 (Cin vs. Bal, Pit vs. Cle), Jets can sneak in alone at 9-7. They'd lose 9-7 tiebreaker to Pittsburgh but I think they'd beat Cincinnati at 9-7. So if the Bengals beat Pit and lose to Bal, the Jets have a chance.

Jets play Ten/SD/Buf, so if they pull their heads out of their asses a 9-7 finish should be doable.