With the second-to-last week of regular season football nearly over, the playoffs are quickly shaping up thanks to several new team developments. The Steelers’ win against the Chiefs clinched a wild-card playoff berth yesterday and the Patriots secured a first week bye thanks to a one-point win against the Jets. In total, the Packers, Steelers, Cowboys, and Seahawks all secured shots in the post-season in their games yesterday.
Week 17 will obviously finalize the brackets, but tonight’s Broncos vs. Bengals game itself—one of the best Monday Night Football match-ups of the year—could even clinch Denver their own first round bye or help Cincinnati make it to the postseason themselves.
Check out our picks for the best plays of the week below.
Seattle crushed the Arizona Cardinals with a franchise record-setting 596 yards of offense. That huge number was helped in part by Marshawn Lynch’s 113-yard game, with a single 79-yard touchdown run as one of the game’s biggest plays in the fourth quarter. Lynch didn’t even start the game with the team citing an “upset stomach.”
Lynch is obviously just as good in the red zone, and his ability to consistently bounce off defenders has become one of his calling cards.
After the game, he gave reporters a slight and comical twist on his usual non-answer approach.
In that same one-sided Seattle game, Russell Wilson had his own wild but much shorter touchdown run as his team scored a total of 21 points in the final quarter of the game.
Likely the most the talked about on-field moment of the week came when Lions center Dominic Raiola stomped on the ankle of Bears defensive tackle Ego Ferguson while walking away from a dead play. Raiola claims it was an accident—”It was totally unintentional” he said after the game—but the video was convincing enough to earn him a single game suspension. The unpaid suspension puts Raiola out of Detroit’s final regular season game, but since they’ve already earned a playoff spot, it’s not very severe in the end.
In the same game, another Lions player stirred a separate bit of controversy with a concussion-producing helmet-to-helmet hit on Bears quarterback Jimmy Clausen. Ziggy Ansah was responsible for the blow, and this afternoon the Bears announced that Jay Cutler will start instead of the now-concussed Clausen in their last game of the season against the Vikings.
The Giants vs. Rams game was contentious all the way through, from a mule-kick to the face of Cody Davis courtesy of Giants kicker Josh Brown to an all-out brawl caused by a late hit on Odell Beckham Jr.
Here’s that random donkey-kick which earned Brown a penalty for unnecessary roughness.
The Rams had one of the week’s best plays with a blocked kick against Brown later in the game and the fact that the offense turned the ball over themselves on the next play doesn’t diminish Daren Bates’ monster leap to make the block.
Here’s the brawl that quickly escalated after the increasingly impressive Odell Beckham Jr. took a late hit on the sidelines.
Green Bay sealed their playoff future thanks to a bounce-back win against the Bucs, and both Aaron Rodgers and Eddie Lacy played major roles in the win.
Watch Lacy’s 44-yard touchdown rush below.
After trailing 20-7 against the Bengals coming into the second half, Peyton Manning and the Broncos nearly mounted a successful comeback before Cincinnati pulled away for a 37-28 win and a guaranteed spot in the playoffs.
A couple of touchdown passes put the Broncos up 28-27 very briefly in the third quarter.
In the end, Dre Kirkpatrick’s big interception and following touchdown runback sealed the win for the Bengals. The pick also earned him his second in as many weeks after snatching the first interception of Johnny Manziel’s starting debut last week.
