Six most shocking results from NFL Week 16

One word comes to mind when thinking about the NFL Week 16 calendar: weird. So much of what we thought we knew coming into the week was turned upside down.

So which were the most surprising results?

We ranked them, according to the wow factor involved.

6. Arizona Cardinals 38, Green Bay Packers 8

We start with a game that wasn’t an upset, but it sure was surprising.

The Arizona Cardinals are a good team. Scratch that. The Arizona Cardinals are a great team — perhaps the most complete team in the NFL. The Cardinals beating the Green Bay Packers in Arizona is not surprising. Beating them into submission the way they did, though, is extremely surprising.

How often do you see Aaron Rodgers pulled from a game? When it happens, it usually means that the Packers are way up. Not today.

Arizona’s defense returned two fumbles for touchdowns. On top of that, the Cardinals flat-out abused Rodgers all day, sacking him eight times and adding one more against his backup, Scott Tolzien. Dwight Freeney recorded three sacks, while Calais Campbell added 2.5 of his own, making the Packers’ offensive line a punch line.

Green Bay is going to the playoffs, and with a Week 17 win against the Vikings the Packers will even win the division. But on Sunday, they looked miles removed from the NFC’s best teams.

5. Washington Redskins 38, Philadelphia Eagles 24

While the result of the game was technically an upset, the final score is not what’s so shocking here. What’s shocking is how good Kirk Cousins played. He was 31-for-46 with 365 yards passing with four touchdowns and no interceptions, giving him some rather gaudy numbers over his last two road games.

These numbers are even more impressive in context than on face value because Washington had dropped its first five road games in 2015. All of a sudden, Cousins looks like more than just a game manager, and the Redskins aren’t exactly a team that the NFC’s two Wild Card teams should be clamoring to play. 

The win was also surprising for two other reasons.

One, the Redskins will have nothing worse than a .500 record. For much of the year, it looked as though the NFC East champion would be 7-9 or worse.

Two, it clinched the NFC East for the Redskins. Given how close Washington, the Philadelphia Eagles, and New York Giants were all year, it’s surprising that the division is clinched with a week to play.

Now, Cousins and the Redskins can spend two weeks practicing when it’s appropriate to take a knee and when it’s not.

4. New York Jets 26, New England Patriots 20 (OT)

The result here is surprising, but only mildly. While the Patriots are currently the AFC’s No. 1 seed, the New York Jets are playoff contenders, were playing at home against a team they played relatively tough on the road and needed the game a lot more.

What’s surprising is the way that it finished. After the Patriots clawed back into the game to force overtime, confusion ensued around what should be a fairly simple part of the game, the coin toss (watch here).

Coach Bill Belichick later said that the Patriots in fact wanted to kick. That’s rare but with the current overtime rules not an unprecedented move. The confusion seemed to stem from which way New England wanted to go.

When you win a toss, you’re granted one decision. You can choose to kick, receive, or the direction you want to play. The first words you say are your decision. So, when Matthew Slater said “We want to kick off that way,” nothing mattered after “kick off”.

A similar situation happened in the 1962 AFL Championship Game. While that’s a long time ago, someone involved in Sunday’s game knew all about it the history.

New England still could have won Sunday’s game with a stop on denfense, but the Jets went 80 yards on five plays, winning it with a six-yard touchdown pass from Ryan Fitzpatrick to Eric Decker.

3. St. Louis Rams 23, Seattle Seahawks 17

After watching the St. Louis Rams handle the Seattle Seahawks, it’s hard to come up with many positives for the Seahawks and their fans. Fortunately, there is one rather obvious one.

What makes this worse is that the Rams didn’t exactly play a flawless game. They had just over 200 yards from scrimmage, while quarterback Case Keenum barely scratched out 100 yards passing.

Seattle just couldn’t get out of its own way. The Seahawks committed 10 accepted penalties, quarterback Russell Wilson (who had been as hot as any quarterback in NFL history for five straight weeks) was responsible for two of the Seahawks’ three turnovers and they had only 60 yards rushing.

The loss broke a five-game winning streak, while the 16 points scored ended a six-week run of 29 points or more. For the moment, the Seahawks fell to the sixth seed in the NFC. If that holds, then Seattle will have to win three road games to be the first NFC team to make three Super Bowls in a row.

2. Atlanta Falcons 20, Carolina Panthers 13

Julio Jones is good.

Okay, that may not be too surprising, but the Atlanta Falcons being the team to hand the Carolina Panthers their first loss is pretty stunning.

The Panthers entered the game undefeated and had dominated the Falcons, 38-0, only two weeks earlier. So, heading into the game, any win would be considered a major upset.

The score was even more shocking. Carolina had scored 20 points or more in every game this season and had scored 33 or more in five straight. The fact that they managed only 13 points against Atlanta is truly amazing.

The Panthers just never really got it going in this one. Cam Newton threw for only 142 yards and Carolina had nobody top 50 yards rushing.

We’ve had a team win a championship with an undefeated record, and we’ve had a team finish a 16-game regular season undefeated, but we’ve never had a team do both. Maybe there’s a reason for that, which is likely what Panthers fans are telling themselves tonight as they try to forget about the loss.

1. Baltimore Ravens 20, Pittsburgh Steelers 17

Things were lined up so well for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were the hottest team in the AFC, and with the possible exception of the Patriots, Pittsburgh also looked like the best team in the conference. All they had to do was beat the Ravens and Browns — teams that entered Week 16 with seven combined wins — and the Steelers would make the playoffs.

With the loss to the Baltimore Ravens, the Steelers will now need a Week 17 win and a New York Jets loss to the Buffalo Bills to qualify for the postseason.

As surprising as the loss was, the poor offensive effort is the true shocker from this result. The Steelers had won four of their last five games. In all five of those games, they had scored 30 points or more and gained no fewer than 354 yards. Against the Ravens, they scored only 17 and picked up 303 yards from scrimmage.

All hope isn’t lost, as the the Jets will need to go on the road to beat a Bills team that already defeated New York earlier in the season. However, scoreboard watching in Week 17 is never desirable.

Baltimore has allowed more than 25 points on average per game, but the Steelers could only muster 20 in a Week 4 loss and 17 in defeat on Sunday. If the Steelers end up watching the postseason from home and are wondering why, they’ll need to look no further than two underwhelming offensive efforts resulting in losses at the hands of a team that will be no better than 6-10.