Week 12 in the NFL offered a classic early-window finish. In the span of mere minutes:
The Texans missed a tying 28-yard field goal and then took a safety, ultimately losing to Tennessee by five points.
The Cowboys ran back two kickoffs against the Commanders (one of which they shouldn't have!) to win a game that featured 41 fourth-quarter points.
The Bears recovered an onside kick and (finally!) made a field goal to send the game into overtime against the Vikings (where they lost).
The Panthers scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion to tie the Chiefs, though they ended up losing on the next drive.
I had a whole bunch of overreaction angles planned out around 3:30 p.m. ET, and by 4:15, almost all of them were obsolete. Yes, the football is getting good this time of year. And while 12 weeks' worth of data is enough on which to base some solid conclusions about this season, it's not enough to keep us from overreacting. So let's judge a few potential takeaways as legitimate or irrational.
Jump to:
Commanders missing the playoffs?
Buccaneers comeback for the NFC South?
Top NFC seed coming down to Lions, Vikings?
Packers should hit free agency hard more often?
Young playing much better in Carolina?
The Commanders are going to miss the playoffs
The Cowboys tried to hand Washington this game about a hundred different ways, but the Commanders wouldn't take it. The Commanders scored a miracle 86-yard touchdown with 21 seconds left to cut the lead to one point but then missed the PAT. They kicked onside, and the Cowboys' Juanyeh Thomas recovered it and ran it all the way back for a touchdown (which objectively wasn't a good call because Washington was out of timeouts, and going down inbounds with the ball would have ended the game).
The Commanders got close to midfield on the ensuing drive but ran out of Hail Mary magic. Dallas came away with an upset win, and Washington lost its third game in a row to fall to 7-5 for the season.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
The Commanders are three games behind first-place Philadelphia in the loss column in the NFC East (before the Eagles' game on Sunday night) and occupy the seventh and final spot in the NFC playoff field -- tied in the loss column with the Cardinals, Rams, Falcons and Seahawks. So yes, Washington is in real trouble here.
The Commanders get the Titans in Week 13, which sure looked like a winnable game before Tennessee took down Houston on Sunday. Washington has its bye in Week 14, which provides a chance to regroup for a final stretch that looks like this: at New Orleans, vs. Eagles, vs. Falcons and at Cowboys. The Commanders need a win next week against the Titans to stop their free fall, or else what once looked like a special season could very well end in disappointment.
The Buccaneers will catch the Falcons and win the NFC South
While the first-place Falcons got the week off to lick their wounds following a loss in Denver, the Buccaneers got to play Tommy DeVito and the Giants -- and did exactly what they were supposed to do. The Bucs crushed the Giants 30-7. The win broke a four-game losing streak and improved the Bucs' record to 5-6, which puts them a game behind 6-5 Atlanta in the division race.
The Falcons have three games left against teams with winning records, while the Buccaneers have one. Tampa Bay has won this division three years in a row and would love to knock off offseason darling Atlanta, whose surprisingly inconsistent offense and complete lack of a pass rush have kept it from fulfilling those lofty preseason expectations so far.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
I'm certainly not suggesting the Falcons are invincible, or that a one-game deficit is too much for Baker Mayfield & Co. to overcome. Full respect to the Bucs, their fight and their three-season division title streak.
But the problem with coming from behind is very specific: Tampa Bay doesn't play Atlanta again, so it can't make up ground by beating the Falcons head-to-head. Plus, the Falcons won both of the games they played against the Buccaneers earlier this season and own the tiebreaker, which means simply tying Atlanta wouldn't be enough to give Tampa Bay the division. The Falcons should come back from their bye rested and able to win three of their final five games, which would mean the Bucs would have to go 5-0 the rest of the way to pull this off.
Baker Mayfield scrambles, finds the end zone and does Tommy DeVito's touchdown celebration.
The Vikings-Lions game in Week 18 will decide the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs
The Lions won again Sunday, though the 24 points they put up on the Colts in Indianapolis seemed a little bit pedestrian compared to some of their recent offensive performances. They've won nine in a row, are 10-1 for the season and look like the best team in the league. The Vikings, however, are right behind them at 9-2, having blown an 11-point fourth-quarter lead to the Bears before escaping with an overtime win.
The Vikings visit Detroit in the final week of the regular season, and if they're still only one game apart at that point, that matchup could very well be for the division title -- or more. These teams already met in Week 7, and it was a thriller, with the Vikings scoring 12 straight points in the fourth quarter to take a 29-28 lead, only to lose on a Jake Bates field goal with 15 seconds left.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
Only three of the Lions' nine wins in their current streak have been by fewer than 10 points, and three of them have been by more than 37. The Vikings are playing well, but the Lions are on a different level from them or anyone else in the league.
Let's not forget about the Packers in this same division, too; they just beat the 49ers to get to 8-3. Same goes for the Eagles, who were 8-2 heading into Sunday night's game against the Rams. Either or both of those teams could still mess things up for the two teams at the top of the NFC North, especially because the Packers still have games to play at Minnesota and at Detroit.
It sure would be cool if the Lions and Vikings kept winning and that Week 18 game ended up being for the division. But the Lions have a head-to-head win in hand and haven't lost a division game yet (so they hold the second tiebreaker, too). And frankly, their lead just feels more significant than a single game. I have the Vikings as more likely than the Lions to slip up somewhere along the way to Week 18. And if they do, that's about all Detroit would need to make this academic.
The Packers should hit free agency more often
Green Bay isn't generally known as a big free agency team in March. It tends to lean into the draft-and-develop model as much as any team in the league, building from within. But this past March, the Packers made a couple of big splashes.
They joined the free agent running back party, signing Josh Jacobs to a four-year, $48 million contract, and they signed safety Xavier McKinney away from the Giants for four years and $68 million. The idea was to augment their young core with free agents who were still relatively young and in their primes. Jacobs is 26 years old, and McKinney is 25.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
In Sunday's 38-10 victory over the undermanned 49ers, Jacobs rushed for 106 yards and three touchdowns on 26 carries, and McKinney intercepted his seventh pass of the season. The offense leaned on Jacobs right from the start -- he had 19 carries in the first half alone -- knowing the Niners were down a number of key players and wanting to make sure they controlled the game physically. Nevertheless, it was only 17-7 Packers when McKinney picked off 49ers quarterback Brandon Allen in the third quarter to snuff out a potential San Francisco scoring drive.
Per ESPN Research, Jacobs became the third Packers player over the past 35 seasons with 100-plus rushing yards and three rushing TDs in a regular-season game, joining Aaron Jones (2019 at Cowboys) and Dorsey Levens (1999 vs. Cardinals). And this marked the Packers' sixth game this season with three or more takeaways, the most in the NFL and the Packers' most in a season since 2011 (six).
The Packers believe both players have contributed high-level locker room leadership as well as cornerstone-caliber on-field performance. And while no one's suggesting the Packers go away from what has worked for them for decades in terms of drafting, developing and re-signing their own, it must be good for Packers fans to know the team can be this good at free agency when it decides to try it.
Bonus: This week's underreaction
This is the part where we flip the script and throw out something people are underreacting to right now -- something that's not getting the attention we think it should.
Bryce Young has turned a corner
Benched earlier this season for Andy Dalton, the first overall pick of the 2023 draft got the starting job back in Week 8 thanks to a Dalton injury. And since then, Young showed enough improvement that he has been able to keep it even with Dalton back healthy. Young hasn't set the world on fire by any means, but his QBR has improved in each of the past three games.
On Sunday, he went toe to toe with Patrick Mahomes and a very tough Chiefs defense. He led a pair of second-half touchdown drives, the second of which tied the game and forced Mahomes to have to drive for a winning field goal (which, of course, he did). Young finished 21-for-35 for 263 yards, a touchdown pass and no interceptions against one of the best defenses in the league. He looked especially good against the blitz, completing 11 of 13 attempts and averaging 10.4 yards per attempt.
Chuba Hubbard punches in a short touchdown and also runs in a two-point conversion to tie the Panthers with the Chiefs late in the fourth quarter.
Again, the numbers don't blow you away. But Young looked confident and in command, which is a far cry from where he was last season or even this September. Sunday was his 21st career start, all of which have come with one of the worst supporting casts in the NFL. The Panthers might just be able to end this season feeling better about Young's future prospects. If nothing else, he's authoring a weekly reminder that it's a mistake to give up on talented young players too quickly. The Dalton injury might turn out to have been a lucky break for Carolina, if there's a chance that Young can be the player it thought he was when it traded up to draft him first overall.