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Top 10 takeaways from Sunday’s Week 13 NFL action

Derek Carr

Week 13 of the NFL season was chock-full of the unexpected. The New Orleans Saints and Drew Brees laid a complete egg at home against the hard-charging Detroit Lions. Meanwhile, in Oakland, the Raiders came back from a 15-point second half deficit to earn their sixth consecutive win.

Speaking of winning streaks, two came to crashing halts on Sunday. The Miami Dolphins were absolutely blown out by Joe Flacco and the Ravens in Baltimore. Meanwhile, Eli Manning’s horrendous performance played a role in the New York Giants dropping their first game in nearly two months.

While playoff contenders themselves were either living up to that definition or putting themselves behind the proverbial eight-ball, the San Francisco 49ers proved to the NFL world that the Cleveland Browns weren’t alone at the bottom. Really, it was a disastrous performance from Chip Kelly’s squad in Chicago.

These are among the top-10 takeways from Sunday’s Week 13 NFL action.

1. What exactly are the Rams doing? 

Jeff Fisher

Earlier in the day, the Los Angeles Rams announced that they have signed head coach Jeff Fisher to a two-year contract extension. Mere hours later, the Rams would go on to lose to the New England Patriots by the score of 26-10. With this, the Rams lost their eighth game of the season.

Now in five seasons as the Rams’ head coach, Fisher has failed to finish with a winning record. In fact, the long-time head coach has not put up a winning season since all the way back with the Tennessee Titans in 2008.

At this point, Fisher and the Rams are becoming a butt of their own joke. No punchline. Instead, that comedian you boo off the stage after he he bombs out in a massive way. We’re actually not sure where to start here. Was it the Rams putting up 25 total yards against the Pats in the first half? Maybe it was Fisher himself misplacing his challenge flag on the sideline (watch here).

While the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers have proven themselves to be the two worst teams in the NFL this season, it’s hard to imagine another organization as clueless as the Rams. Unfortunately, all this is taking place in the team’s first season back in Southern California. That’s led to multiple celebrities calling Fisher and the Rams out, including Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson (more on that here).

2. Eagles are as good as done

Things started out so swimmingly for the Philadelphia Eagles and rookie quarterback Carson Wentz. A 3-0 record and some glimmer of hope following last year’s disaster under Chip Kelly. New head coach Doug Pederson had his football team playing good ball. Now, two months later, and the Eagles are as good as done.

Taking on a struggling Cincinnati Bengals team on Sunday, the Eagles simply didn’t compete. They were already down 19-0 at the half, a span of action that culminated in Cincinnati — without the likes of Giovani Bernard and A.J. Green — running up and down the field on a 93-yard touchdown scoring drive immediately prior to intermission.

That very same first half saw Philadelphia put up 85 total yards in the team’s worst offensive showing of the season. Not until Cincinnati had opened up a 29-0 lead after another long scoring drive late in the third quarter did Philadelphia’s offense come close to showing any sign of life.

Overall, Wentz completed 36-of-60 passes for over 300 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions. All three of those picks came in the second half with two of them leading directly to Bengals scores. To be fair, Wentz should never have been put in this situation. Whether it was a lack of a solid game plan from Pederson or an inconsistent rushing attack, no rookie quarterback should be forced to toss the rock 60 times in a single game.

After starting the season with seven touchdowns and one interception in his first four starts, Wentz has now thrown five touchdowns and 10 picks in his last eight games. And in reality, the Eagles are no longer putting him in position to succeed.

With a 5-7 record, the Eagles can pretty much kiss any hope of playoff contention out the window as they enter the final quarter of the season. It’s now going to be all about whether Wentz continues to regress under center.

3. Fazed by nothing, Raiders continue to roll 

The Oakland Raiders were down 24-9 with under six minutes gone by in the third quarter on Sunday against the Buffalo Bills. That’s when the Raiders, much like we’ve seen all season, decided to turn on the jets. They ended up scoring the final 29 points of the game to win going away.

This has been a common theme for the first-place Raiders all season. Despite boasting a young squad, it appears that Derek Carr and Co. are not fazed by a darn thing. In the final 24-plus minutes of the game, Oakland outgained Buffalo 230-70, scoring four unanswered touchdowns in the process.

And much like previous wins, it was all about Derek Carr on offense as well as NFL Defensive Player of the Year candidate Khalil Mack on the other side of the ball.

After a typically slow start, Carr would end up completing 19-of-35 passes for 260 yards and two touchdowns. Meanwhile, Mack added seven tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery. Heck, the pressure he put on Tyrod Taylor late in the fourth quarter led directly to a Raiders touchdown just a few plays later.

At 10-2 on the season, Oakland heads into Thursday’s titanic tilt with the Kansas City Chiefs will an opportunity to pretty much put the AFC West to bed. It is also currently atop the playoff standings in the AFC and would have home-field advantage throughout the postseason if things continued at this pace.

4. Drew Brees’ horrendous day dooms the Saints

Most expected Brees and the New Orleans Saints’ offense to have a field day against the Detroit Lions on Sunday. After all, Detroit’s defense headed into Week 13 yielding 74 percent completion mark and a 106.4 rating to opposing signal callers on the season.

For his part, Brees was playing at an exceptionally high level heading in. In fact, the future Hall of Famer was on pace to make some history (more on that here).

As we have seen multiple times throughout the season, we should have expected the unexpected. Brees threw three interceptions in a 28-13 home loss to the Lions. And it couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time.

Now at 5-7 on the season, New Orleans can pretty much kiss its playoff hopes goodbye. Unfortunately, it was Brees’ performance in an otherwise great season that led to this.

5. Bucs make a statement in NFC Playoff race

By virtue of their 28-21 road win over the San Diego Chargers on Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are tied atop the NFC South with the Atlanta Falcons. And while they currently lose the tiebreaker against Atlanta, the Buccaners have passed the Washington Redskins for the sixth and final playoff spot in the NFC.

Sunday’s outing was what we’ve typically seen from Tampa Bay during its hot streak. Tremendous football from Jameis Winston and the offense coupled with opportunistic play on defense.

While Winston did throw an early interception in this one, he rebounded by leading the Buccaneers to three second half scoring drives, each of which spanned 50-plus yards and included key third-down conversions.

Defensively, it was Lavonte David who put the Bucs up with a 15-yard interception return for a touchdown with just over four minutes remaining in the third quarter.

And ultimately, a Keith Tandy interception of Philip Rivers in the end zone late in the final stanza put the game on ice.

Fundamental football has been the name of the game for Tampa Bay under first-year head coach Dirk Koetter. Mistake-free football on offense and ball-hawking ability on defense. Both of these things were on full display Sunday in San Diego.

Now at 7-5 on the season and in the midst of a four-game winning streak, there’s little doubting the Buccaneers as true playoff contenders in the NFC. One could even make the argument that Winston and Co. are now the favorites in the NFC South. Boy, how a month changes things in the NFL.

6. Cleveland has company at the bottom

Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick entered Sunday’s action against the Chicago Bears on a bit of a roll. Over the course of his previous four starts, the embattled signal caller was averaging well over 300 total yards per game and had put up nine touchdowns compared to two interceptions.

Well before the clock struck zero in the fourth quarter at Soldier Field, Kaepernick was on the sideline after being benched in favor of Blaine Gabbert. In order for this to have happened, something needed to go terribly wrong. Unfortunately for a 49ers team that’s now lost 11 consecutive, that’s exactly what happened.

Playing in less-than-stellar winter-like conditions in the Windy City, San Francisco set the passing game back a half century. Even with Gabbert throwing for a whopping 35 yards in the fourth quarter, the 49ers finished with six net passing yards en roue to completing 5-of-10 passes. Let’s give you some more perspective here.

When Kaepernick was pulled from the game, he had completed 1-of-5 passes and totaled negative 21 net passing yards. In fact, the Bears had more sacks of Kaepernick (five) than he had passing yards (four). This was through three quarters.

Maybe San Francisco was going into full tanking mode during its humiliating 26-6 loss to the Bears. Heck, no one could really blame the team. After all, we’re now looking at a 1-11 squad that has failed to remain competitive for most of the season.

This still doesn’t quiet skeptics. And there’s a lot of them. These skeptics have concluded that CEO Jed York is in over his head and general manager Trent Baalke has no idea what he’s doing from a player personnel perspective. They also conclude that Chip Kelly may not be the same coach that caught the NFL world by fire his first two seasons in Philadelphia.

Whatever it might be, the 49ers simply can’t continue to throw out an embarrassing product and expect naysayers to remain quiet. Sunday’s historically bad performance is another representation of this.

7. Blake Bortles’ disastrous season continues

It was this time last season that Bortles looked to be the Jacksonville Jaguars’ franchise quarterback. Sure he was mistake prone as a sophomore in 2016, but the good far outpaced the bad for the former first-round pick. It was also at this point that the Jaguars’ trajectory seemed pointed upwards.

Since then, everything has gone downhill for Bortles and his Jaguars. The struggling quarterback threw two more interceptions, including this ridiculous pick-six, in a 20-10 loss to the undermmaned Denver Broncos on Sunday. He’s now thrown a league-leading 15 interceptions for a Jags squad that’s 2-10 on the season and has lost seven consecutive games.

We’re not too sure where to begin here. What started with calls for head coach Gus Bradley to be fired has been replaced by his imminent departure. That’s fine and dandy. Simply put, Jacksonville has not progressed under Bradley and he needs to be given the boot.

However, that won’t change the larger issues in Jacksonville. This team has absolutely no rushing attack to speak of, its young defense has taken a step back and Bortles can no longer be considered the future at the quarterback position.

No matter who comes in to replace Bradley next month, all that needs to change in order for the Jaguars to improve off this season’s disastrous performance. Sunday’s outing was yet another glaring example of this.

8. Dolphins, Giants come crashing back to earth

Winners of six consecutive games heading into Week 13, the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants were looking to continue their winning ways against difficult AFC North competition. Both would fail to earn that elusive seventh consecutive victory.

For the Dolphins, it was all about an inability to stop Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco, who had been among the worst regular starting quarterbacks thus far this season. Flacco completed 36-of-47 passes for 381 yards with four touchdowns, including two scoring strikes to Dennis Pitta.

This came against a Dolphins defense that entered Sunday’s action ranked in the top 10 of the NFL against the pass. And in reality, it just seemed to be a continuation of the struggles we saw from this team in the pre Adam Gase era. Riding high after a nice stretch before ultimately coming to their own demise.

Not to be outdone, Miami’s offense couldn’t string together any type of success against a Ravens defense that has been among the best in the game this season. After throwing one interception during the Dolphins’ six-game winning streak, Ryan Tannehill was picked off three times.

You simply can’t win on a consistent basis in the NFL when you are unable to move the ball through the air and can’t stop the other team from driving up and down the field. For the Dolphins, this resulted in a loss and a two-game disadvantage in the AFC Wild Card race.

Over in the NFC, the Giants ruined a tremendous opportunity to pick up a game on both the Washington Redskins and Atlanta Falcons. Primarily due to the erratic play of Eli Manning and an inability to do anything of substance on offense early in the game, New York lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers by the score of 24-14.

If it wasn’t Manning holding onto the ball too long, it was all about him making dumb decisions throughout the game. One play in particular comes to mind. With the Giants down 21-7 and riding some momentum following a Ben Roethlisberger interception, Manning decided it made sense to throw the ball deep down the field across his body. The predictable end result was a Sean Davis interception, the second pick for Manning on the afternoon.

Good quarterbacks playing bad football. There was a whole heck of a lot of that on Sunday. However, Manning’s uninspiring performance definitely takes the cake here. It came within the confines of the same game that saw New York hold Big Ben and Co. to just 24 points. Even an average performance from Manning probably would have resulted in a Giants win.

Unfortunatley, by virtue of this loss, the Giants are pretty much completely out of the NFC East race. That could have been avoided by a better outing from Manning and his offense.

9. Eric Berry’s all-world performance 

Eric Berry

Taking on the league’s No. 1 scoring offense, the Kansas City Chiefs were in for a battle Sunday afternoon. Could the team’s defense find a way to shut Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons down? For a while there, it wasn’t looking too promising.

Atlanta drove down the field 81 yards on 10 plays for a touchdown on the very first possession of the game. All said, the Falcons racked up 205 yards on their first three drives. Needless to say, things weren’t going swimmingly for the Chiefs here.

That’s when Pro Bowl safety and former Comeback Player of the Year Eric Berry took things into his own hands. Almost literally.

With the score tied at 13 late in the second quarter, Berry stepped in front of a Ryan pass, picking it off and returned it for a 37-yard touchdown (watch here).

Then, after Atlanta had scored to take the lead with just over four minutes remaining in regulation, something weird happened. Something we’ve rarely seen in the history of the NFL. Going for two in an attempt to make it a three-point lead, Ryan was again picked off by Berry.

No harm, no foul. Wrong. Berry returned that pass 100 yards for two points to give the Chiefs a 29-28 victory at the Georgia Dome (watch here).

It as an exceedingly rare ending, but it just goes to show us how dominating Berry can be when he’s on top of his game. For a guy that just recently received a clean bill of health after battling cancer, Berry himself can act as an inspiration to others. If just for one day, he proved this to a T.

Now 9-3 on the season, Kansas City has won seven of its past eight games. It has done so with Jeremy Maclin and Jamaal Charles both injured. It’s in this that Eric Berry and the Chiefs’ defense has stepped up big time. Good for them.

10. Seahawks declaw the Panthers

This may have been a rematch of last year’s NFC Divisional playoffs, but it sure didn’t play out like one. Both the Seattle Seahawks and Carolina Panthers were heading into Week 13 coming off disappointing losses. Though, the Seahawks remained in first place in the NFC West while the Panthers were in last place in the NFC South. And in reality, it played out just like that.

Seattle absolutely dominated from the get-go, eventually throttling Carolina by the score of 40-7 in a game that was marred by a serious injury to Earl Thomas and the surprising benching of Cam Newton.

In terms of the game’s outcome, it was never really in question. Russell Wilson rebounded from a horrendous performance last week against Tampa Bay by putting up 300-plus total yards. Meanwhile, the injury-prone Thomas Rawls added over 100 yards and two scores in the ground. Heck, Seattle’s special teams came up big on the opening play of the second half (watch here).

Now at 8-3-1 on the season, Seattle is currently in position to earn a first-round bye in the NFC Playoffs. It is also three games up in the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC West with four games remaining. On the other hand, the defending conference champion Panthers head into Week 14 with a 4-8 record and three games out in the NFC South. Ouch!

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