Btw, if the Seahawks beat the Rams, and the 49ers beat the Seahawks, the 49ers could still get the #1 seed.

That team is a problem.

wv wrote:

They noted Aiden Hutchenson ran 18 mph and Colby was going 20.

.

Your healthy ostrich will give you 43.

InvaderRam wrote:

zn wrote:

And I think it was Brady who said this. His super powers that make him something more than just a solid receiver are “in the phone booth” type skills. Hands, sheer combative will, extraordinary body control, quick thinking, pure athleticism, timing, instantaneous reactions–-all combined, all in the phone booth space at the moment of the catch.

but again the same can be said for kupp. as well as this kupp had the same kind of physicality and attitude that made me worry about his durability. yet i don’t quite get the same feels as i do with him. and i’m not quite sure why that is. maybe it’s cuz kupp was much more of a technician. a professional. not that nacua doesn’t work at his craft. but when he’s out on the field it’s like he’s just having fun as opposed to kupp where it was much more cold and analytical. precise. i don’t know.

I think they let Kupp go because he and Puka are the same guy, but Puka is younger, bigger, and cheaper.

And the reason I like Puka better is because he has infectious enthusiasm and is seemingly happy all the time. And I have enough dreariness around me, so I tend to be drawn towards people who have a Phd. in happiness.

Both teams control their destiny. All either team has to do is win out, and they are the #1 seed.

Personally, I am hoping that it’s the Rams who do that.

I seriously have no ambition to see the Rams play in Chicago, or GB, or Philly. Or Seattle, either. Make the run to the SB go through the Rams.

This is the way.

zn wrote:

Nacua is good at every level as a receiver–blocking, routes, field awareness, hands. He’s not the magic dancer Adams is, but he’s solid. On top of it he’s enthusiastically physical. But that’s not what makes him special. Yeah sure when he’s wide open he catches it, etc. etc. He’s good at every phase of the game as a receiver, but that’s not what makes him special.

And I think it was Brady who said this. His super powers that make him something more than just a solid receiver are “in the phone booth” type skills. Hands, sheer combative will, extraordinary body control, quick thinking, pure athleticism, timing, instantaneous reactions–-all combined, all in the phone booth space at the moment of the catch.

I am trying to think of another receiver in NFL history that had that kind of “in the phone booth at the moment of the catch” specialness.

Yes. All that. AND…you have to be fully committed to tackling Puka Nacua because he has no interest in surrendering before the whistle. (“enthusiastically physical”)

And that is not something you see in many players, especially not WRs. I, too, was running comparisons through my head this week to GSOT (other thread), and remember how Bruce and Holt used to get insulted by opposing fans for sliding or running OB. And I just thought, “Okay, fine. Whatever. No need to get banged up to stretch a 16-yard catch into an 18-yard play when they’re just going to knife you for another 15 or 20 on the next play anyway.”

But Puka just adds 8 yards after initial contact because he can.

And I love that. I also worry about that, and think – as much as I love that – he would probably be on the field more if he chose his spots for that more selectively.

zn wrote:

Stafford missed a wide open Ferguson today. Was it just a bad throw by the qb? Ferguson has had other misses like that in other games. Is their chemistry not there yet? Is it Ferguson? Is their timing off?

I wondered the same thing, and I have to lean towards that being a misread by Ferguson. I mean…Stafford knows what he’s doing. He misfires sometimes, but he doesn’t make WTF throws like Goff used to do.

And, btw, I think that is the loudest I have ever heard SoFi for the Rams.

Yeah, Tutu’s catch was memorable. And Puka is just astonishing. That man is going to be expensive soon. Very expensive.

I don’t usually love going for it on 4th down, especially in FG range, but I grudgingly had to admit McVay was right with the way that game was going in the first half. I don’t know what the Rams did at half time, but forcing consecutive 3-and-outs on the Lions was a good coaching decision that I fully support. Somehow the Rams took a “Oh, crap. This game may slip away, and it’s supposed to be the easier of the two” into “Yeah, we’ll just blow you out now.” They got better pressure on Goff in the 2nd half, and Stafford got his aim back. And that pressure was coming up the middle, and Goff hates that.

That Lions team is trouble on offense, and Aidan Hutchinson is a load. What an athletic play that was. And was it Ferguson who ran him down? Not bad for a TE. For all the good it did them. That felt like a 14-point swing.

So Adams goes down with a clear hammy, and a moment later the season flashed before my eyes when Nacua dropped like he’d been shot.

Colby Parkinson is starting to remind me of Ernie Conwell. Even his number matches. He seems to have figured out how to play in the past 6 weeks or so. Tyler Higbee Who at this point. The TE room has just become another strength in an offense that isn’t lacking anywhere. Two very good RBs, perhaps the best WR tandem in the NFL, an OL that pushing people out of the way, and a QB who makes a couple of shots a game that would impress Meadowlark Lemon.

Xavier Smith scared me with that one punt catch. The whole return game seems solid, if not spectacular. It’s nice to have Tony Horne and Az-Zahir Hakim returning kicks, but what you really really have to have is a return game that doesn’t screw up which kicks to field, and holds onto the damn ball. That doesn’t try to do too much. I’m okay with the return game. Kicking game seems set. Evans nearly nailed another punt at the 1-yard line. Mevis has been perfect (And I just checked: Karty is no longer on the roster. I didn’t get that memo).

Time to start getting apprehensive about Thursday, I suppose. No time to lose.

InvaderRam wrote:

we must have the best pair of guards in the nfl. i haven’t looked at the entire list, but dotson and avila both rank in the top 5.

and then you got mcclendon at right tackle who ranks 11th and jackson at 7th. both among all tackles.

even coleman shelton ranks 9th among centers.

wow. and avila is the highest drafted player among the five. he was drafted in the second round. a testament to the players listed as well as the oline coach.

stafford and williams should be buying these guys some nice christmas presents this year.

I don’t think the Lions are better than the Rams.

I do think the Lions are better than the Panthers.

I think all three teams have to be thinking that they have to win out. The Rams have to beat both Detroit and Seattle to win the inside track in the playoffs, and that matters a lot because they do not want to travel to Seattle or GB. So I see the next two games as Must Wins.

We gonna have a wild 5 days.

zn wrote:

I don’t agree that the kicking game is a problem. They not only replaced Karty, they replaced their long snapper, and if you look at inactives lists, you see that they shuffled the blockers on the FG/XP kicking unit.

The fact that they have not kicked that many FGs is not because they’re avoiding kicks. Bizarrely, the article seems to hint at that. Naw they have not been kicking FGs because the offense is on such a tear right now. They are first in the league in points scored in the first quarter. They are 3rd in this very important stat: NFL Team Red Zone Scoring Percentage (TD only)

They have not needed to kick FGs.

That does not mean the kicker is a problem, it means we don’t really know where he stands. Mevis does, however, have a good history.

I agree with that. I don’t think “kicker is a problem.” As I said earlier, I think it’s a “question,” only because Mevis hasn’t “done it” yet for the Rams.

I had the same reaction to that writer that you did. I suspect the article was actually written by Nittany Ram because it seemed to lean into Seattle on a flimsy premise.

Super Bowl Survivor: Which two teams are left standing in one of the NFL’s most unpredictable seasons?
Using six championship trends, we narrowed 23 contenders down to the final two teams with a real path to Super Bowl LX

The NFL script writers have cooked up one of their best seasons ever in 2025. Every division race is tight as we enter the final month of the season. The traditional superpowers have left the door open for new contenders as the Chiefs and Eagles look cooked. Some of the league’s top quarterbacks are currently on the outside looking in, and now 44-year-old Philip Rivers has pounded his fist on the table and says he wants a piece.

In many ways, this is the most wide-open Super Bowl race ever.

There are 10 teams with at least nine wins, tied for the most entering Week 15 in the last 40 years.

*Last season’s Super Bowl teams (Chiefs and Eagles) are 3-7 since the start of November.
*The current top three seeds in the AFC (Broncos, Patriots and Jaguars) were 18-33 last season, and none of the current AFC division leaders won their division last season.
*This could be the first postseason without Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes since 2008.
*Looking at the 23 teams still in Super Bowl contention, you could make a legitimate Super Bowl case for 10 to 15 of them. At this point, it just feels like March Madness. If you can get into the dance, anything can happen.

On the one hand, I’m looking forward to an unpredictable ending. That’s especially true in the AFC, where one of Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Joe Flacco or Ben Roethlisberger have represented the conference in the last 22 Super Bowls. There might be room for a new name — finally.

On the other hand, I work in numbers. They may not always hold true, but they usually provide a pretty good indication of where we’re heading. In this case, I used six trends that are good indicators of championship-caliber teams to narrow the field of 23 to just two for Super Bowl LX.

23 teams in Super Bowl contention
Let’s get familiar with the field. Feast your eyes on this beauty pageant of 23 teams still alive for the Lombardi Trophy. No surprise, the Jets and Browns are nowhere to be found. I am pretty surprised the Commanders aren’t on this list after making the NFC title game last season, though. Plus, I didn’t think the Raiders would already be out after a busy offseason bringing in Pete Carroll, Chip Kelly, Geno Smith and Ashton Jeanty.

The Patriots are still here. Not bad after losing 13 games last year. Anyway, let’s hop to it. We’re going trend-by-trend to eliminate teams until we get down to two in a game of Super Bowl survivor.

AFC contenders
Patriots
Bills
Dolphins
Steelers
Ravens
Bengals
Jaguars
Texans
Colts
Broncos
Chargers
Chiefs

NFC contenders
Eagles
Cowboys
Packers
Bears
Lions
Vikings
Buccaneers
Panthers
Rams
Seahawks
49ers

Weeding out the bad teams
Only one team has ever won a Super Bowl with a negative point differential in the regular season: the 2011 Giants. That history eliminates nine teams.

Dolphins, Steelers, Vikings, Bengals, Buccaneers and Panthers:

This is a no-brainer. There are teams on this list that just don’t belong, so we need to weed them out. I don’t think anybody is going to miss them.

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Ravens: Baltimore might have beef for getting booted off the island, but it just lost to a slumping Steelers team. Controversy or not, it was a costly loss.

team logo
Cowboys: Dallas has come on lately, but it just reminded us that Quinnen Williams can’t save a defense that gives the offense little margin for error.

Bears: Chicago has a chance to be this year’s Cinderella, and it has only been outscored by one point. The Bears just pushed the Packers at Lambeau and Ben Johnson brings juice — shirtless celebrations and all.

But the résumé still doesn’t hold up. This defense isn’t good enough to win a title. They’ve played the easiest schedule in the NFC, tied an NFL record with five wins when trailing in the final two minutes, and lead the league in takeaways.

That’s a lot of regression signs. It’s hard to trust a 9–4 team that’s been outscored on the year. Goodbye, Chicago!

Remaining AFC contenders
Patriots
Bills
Jaguars
Texans
Colts
Broncos
Chargers
Chiefs
Remaining NFC contenders
Eagles
Packers
Lions
Rams
Seahawks
49ers
Must be elite on one side of the ball
The last 12 — and 56 of the last 59 — Super Bowl champions finished top seven in scoring offense or scoring defense (or both).

To win a Super Bowl, you have to be elite on at least one side of the ball. You can survive a dreadful offense (2000 Ravens, 2002 Buccaneers, 2015 Broncos) if your defense is historic. You can survive a soft defense (2006 Colts, 2009 Saints) if your offense is electric. What you really can’t do is win it all when you’re merely average to above average on both sides — not unless you catch lightning in a bottle like the 2011 Giants or 2012 Ravens.

So we say goodbye to four more teams.

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Chargers: Los Angeles faces an uphill climb without either of its starting offensive tackles.

Eagles: Nobody outside of Philadelphia is going to miss this team. The offense has been miserable, capped by Monday’s five-turnover disaster from Jalen Hurts. The defense just got shredded by the Bears on Black Friday.

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49ers: San Francisco has navigated a soft schedule to get to 9–4, but its offense lacks explosiveness and the defense hasn’t been the same without Nick Bosa and Fred Warner.

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Jaguars: You could make a case for Jacksonville. The Jaguars have won four straight, and their only post-deadline loss was blowing a 19-point fourth-quarter lead to Houston. Their defense ranks fourth in EPA per game since the deadline and the passing game is showing signs of life.

But do we really trust Trevor Lawrence or Liam Coen right now? A rookie head coach hasn’t won a Super Bowl since George Seifert in 1989 — and he inherited Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and the West Coast offense. It’s safe to let Jacksonville go.

Remaining AFC contenders
Patriots
Bills
Texans
Colts
Broncos
Chiefs

Remaining NFC contenders
Packers
Lions
Rams
Seahawks

Must make critical stops
None of the last 18 Super Bowl champions were bottom 10 in third-down conversion rate allowed.

To win a Super Bowl, a defense has to make critical stops to get off the field. That tracks. But this is where things start to get a little testy.

Here are the three teams eliminated:

team logo
Bills: Do the Bills really have to go here? You could pick from a handful of potentially fatal flaws. They still don’t have a true go-to target for Josh Allen. They can’t stop the run (27th in success rate) and their pass rush doesn’t scare anyone (except maybe Aaron Rodgers). Buffalo sits right on the edge of this category as the 10th-worst third-down defense, but you can easily see how that side of the ball could again be its undoing.

Then again, if they finally don’t have to go through Patrick Mahomes in the AFC playoffs… maybe this is the team of destiny. We’ll see.

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Chiefs: Kansas City could still run the table and get some help from the Chargers to sneak in. But one thing that could derail both its postseason chances and its bid for a fourth straight Super Bowl appearance is surprisingly simple: the blitz has gone flat.

As ESPN’s Mina Kimes pointed out on X, Kansas City ranks 29th in yards per play allowed and 31st in sack rate when blitzing this year — after finishing top five in both metrics from 2022–24. If Steve Spagnuolo’s pressure packages aren’t landing, the Chiefs aren’t getting off the field on third down. Combine that with an aging roster, no explosiveness in the run game and Mahomes missing the deep ball, and the blitz becomes one more serving of humble pie.

team logo
Colts: We could list a dozen reasons the Colts won’t be in Super Bowl LX. Let’s leave the defense alone and just enjoy the Philip Rivers subplot for a moment. For what it’s worth, the last team to win a Super Bowl with a bottom-10 third-down defense was the 2006 Colts — and Rex Grossman wasn’t able to make them pay for it in the big game.

Remaining AFC contenders
Patriots
Texans
Broncos

Remaining NFC contenders
Packers
Lions
Rams
Seahawks

Win close games
The last 14 — and 23 of the last 25 — Super Bowl champions were .500 or better in one-score games during the regular season.

Now we’re down to the wire. The margin for error is razor thin, so we’re trimming the contenders that have been inconsistent in close games.

Here are the two teams eliminated:

team logo
Lions: I don’t feel too bad about getting rid of the Lions here. They are 3-4 in one-score games, so they’re right on the edge, but who really trusts them? I don’t trust Jared Goff, that defense or Dan Campbell’s wild fourth-down gambles to win four games for Detroit in the postseason — potentially four road games.

The Lions haven’t converted a fourth down in over a month, and without those momentum swings they’ve dropped close games to the Eagles and Packers. Chances are they will live … and die … with fourth-down gambles in the playoffs.

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Texans: With this defense, almost every game will be a one-score game for the Texans. They are 4–5 in one-score games this year, but have won four straight, and that doesn’t include Sunday night’s win in Kansas City when they were tied in the fourth quarter before closing on a 10–0 run. The defense is electric, as Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes can attest to.

Nobody should be surprised if their offense (and offensive line) lets them down in a close playoff game — if they even make it.

Remaining AFC contenders
Patriots
Broncos

Remaining NFC contenders
Packers
Rams
Seahawks

Clutch kicks
Only one of the last 25 Super Bowl champions ranked in the bottom five in field goal percentage (the 2022 Chiefs).

Then there were five. Sometimes the last game of the season comes down to one kick — just ask Adam Vinatieri or Scott Norwood. Harrison Butker drilled a 57-yarder in Super Bowl LVIII in a game the Chiefs eventually won in overtime against the 49ers.

Since 2000, there have been 100 potential game-tying or go-ahead field goal attempts in the fourth quarter or overtime of playoff games. That’s roughly four critical kicks per year. If it comes off the wrong leg, you might be staring at a double doink and a quick exit.

Here are the two teams eliminated:

team logo
Packers: Green Bay fans have every right to be uneasy about Brandon McManus. He missed a 40-plus-yard attempt in a three-point home loss to the Panthers last month, and followed that with a 64-yarder to tie the Eagles that wasn’t even in the right area code. He’s 15 of 21 on field goals this season.

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Rams: Los Angeles’ only real weakness right now is its kicking game. The team is 13 of 18 on field goals this year and had a disastrous finish in Philadelphia earlier this season, when Joshua Karty had two field goals blocked in the fourth quarter — including one for the win.

Harrison Mevis is kicking now, but the Rams have attempted just four field goals over their last seven games, and none in pressure situations. If anything is going to take down the Super Bowl favorites, it’s probably the kicking game. And if any team understands how important postseason kicking is, it’s them.

Remaining AFC contenders
Patriots
Broncos

Remaining NFC contenders
Seahawks

Trenches
Twenty-one of the last 23 Super Bowl champions had a positive sack differential.

The final category to eliminate a Super Bowl contender is, surprisingly, not quarterback play. It’s the guys who get overlooked the most — the dudes in the trenches. We saw how critical they were in last year’s Super Bowl, when the Eagles’ front four destroyed the Chiefs.

team logo
Patriots: That’s why I’m eliminating the Patriots. They’re bottom 10 in sack rate and pressure rate allowed this year, and they’ve already given up 40 sacks. Drake Maye has been terrific against pressure and outside the pocket, but don’t be shocked if this becomes New England’s undoing, especially if it runs into the Broncos’ or Texans’ pass rush in January.

If you need more convincing, here’s one more historical nugget: the 1999 Rams are the only team ever to win a Super Bowl after a season with four or fewer wins. The Patriots’ turnaround has been miraculous too, so maybe they could become the second team to pull this off.

Super Bowl LX matchup: Broncos vs Seahawks
And then there were two. The Broncos and Seahawks win this survivor pool, and if the trends hold, maybe we’ll see a Super Bowl rematch in Super Bowl LX thanks to two of the best defenses in the NFL. The Broncos lead the league in sacks, and the Seahawks lead the league in pressures.

Both teams have big question marks at quarterback, but it isn’t impossible for either signal-caller to do enough to make a run. Bo Nix has been clutch in the fourth quarter, fueling a string of Broncos comebacks, and the Seahawks still have one of the most explosive passing games in the league with Sam Darnold. I’d be the first to admit I don’t fully trust either, but I can absolutely be convinced of a path where these two teams end up meeting at Levi’s Stadium on Feb. 8.

So as you’re scratching your head on Sundays wondering who’s going to be left standing when it’s all said and done, remember what the numbers say: Denver or Seattle.

zn wrote:

Wright is crazy in that.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. It wasn’t a Goff for Stafford trade.