Joe Burrow won’t win MVP, but who’s played better than him this season? He’s had 10 games where he’s thrown for at least 250 yards and three touchdowns.
That’s only happened three other times in NFL history: Tom Brady in 2007, Peyton Manning in 2013 and Patrick Mahomes in 2018. Each of those three won the MVP that year. If Burrow isn’t playing for the Bengals, they have three wins. That’s how good he’s been this year.
Since the Bengals don’t control their own destiny this week, that’s important. Because while the Broncos have a really good defense and Bo Nix is playing really, really well, if you ask anyone around the league, “Would you rather face a rookie quarterback in the playoffs or Joe Burrow,” they’ll say “Give me the rookie.”
Not only can the Broncos knock out the Bengals, but so can the Chiefs. If the Broncos lose to the Chiefs and the Dolphins lose to the Jets and the Bengals win, Cincinnati is in.
But the Chiefs aren’t playing anybody against Denver because this game means nothing to them. I think the Chiefs will go out with the most vanilla game plan of all time and say, “Hey, if we win, we win.” But I don’t think they’re going to be trying to win in any way, shape or form. That, more than anything, guarantees the Bengals are not making the playoffs.
When will the Vikings get the respect they deserve?
We talk about the Lions possibly being the best team in football, but the Vikings are right there with them in the standings. Why aren’t we talking about Minnesota the same way we talk about the Bills, Chiefs or Lions? What have they not done?
The Vikings have a great defense. Sam Darnold is playing out of his mind. They may have the best receiving corps in the league. They have a really good head coach.
The job Kevin O’Connell, Sam Darnold and the Vikings have done this year has been massively underappreciated. If they flame out early in the playoffs, people will say, “See, we told you,” and they’ll be right. But, I need to see that flame out before I’m ready to go down that road.
Mike Evans does not get enough credit
Despite missing three and a half games, Mike Evans needs less than 100 more receiving yards in order to reach 1,000 on the season. That would make it 11 straight seasons with at least 1,000 receiving yards. No one has ever had 11 straight to start an NFL career. He’s never not had 1,000 yards. People do not appreciate him nearly as much as they should.
I also love Baker Mayfield finding a home on his fourth team and becoming what a lot of people thought he would be when he was the No. 1 overall pick in 2018. Maybe with the success we’re seeing from Mayfield in the right situation, and Darnold in the right situation, we should stop giving up on these quarterbacks so quickly and understand they were drafted into a bad situation.
I have a lot of respect for the Buccaneers. At one point, they were 4-6 after losing their top two wide receivers in Week 7. Yet here they are, with the chance to control their own destiny and win the NFC South for the third straight year.
If Giants fire Brian Daboll, that’s a joke
The organization above Daboll, which is ownership and the front office, basically said, “Wins don’t matter” as soon as they decided to not play Daniel Jones. As you can see from Tommy Devitto and Drew Lock, Jones is clearly the best option under center — it’s not even a debate.
The Giants decided that they didn’t want to risk injury so that they’d have to pay Jones more money. They didn’t make him the backup or third-string, they made him the emergency quarterback. He was running safety drills on the scout team. They talked about it on the Hard Knocks in the offseason, this is Jones’ year, time to double down. Halfway through the year, you completely bail on him. Then you’re going to fire Daboll because you didn’t win? The organization told Daboll wins didn’t matter with the actions they made.
If the Giants fire Daboll over this, that’s a joke and the Mara family should be ashamed of themselves.
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