One of the most impactful last 3 weeks in NFL history
 

Over the last 25+ years, as the NFL season winds down there are normally just a few teams left fighting for scraps to squeeze into the last few Wild Card slots.

This year as each week brings a new "best team in the NFL", we have a hell of a lot of impactful games over the next 3 weeks to close out the season. Gonna be a unique finish for almost all spots.

Has parity finally hit the NFL or is this just an anomaly? :hmmm:

Anomaly. We’d be running away with it if it weren’t for KT…

I don't see anything different than the last 3 decades of salary cap era football. Having an extra playoff team just allows 2 more mediocre as crap teams to back that ass up Herm style into the playoffs

The addition of the 7th seed has kept a number of teams relevant for sure. The Saturday games are really cool as well. The only thing I don't like is the Chiefs playing at noon on Christmas. That's just odd scheduling.

I think there’s better parity at the top in that there doesn’t seem to be a dominant team (unless SF shakes off their playoff yips).

But most of the parity is unfortunately that really really bad teams are for some reason in playoff contention. Leaguewide there are too many teams who are awful to the point of being unwatchable.

There may not be a dominant team but I’d be shocked if the SB winner wasn’t one of KC, Baltimore, SF, Dallas or Philly. Is that more or less than at this point most years? I don’t know. But your point about mediocrity is 100% spot on. This is the worst year, in regards to quality of games, I can ever recall.

I've said for a long time the NFL is the Bud Light of leagues, watered down for mass consumption.

I don't even know what to call it this year... it's been relegated to hard seltzer.

Well, at least be glad it's not the NBA, where over half the teams make the playoffs.

The NFC is a dumpster fire. Pretty much every playoff team after Detroit, San Fran, Dallas and Philly could have losing records including the NFC South champ.

Yeah, the 7 seeds have been bad enough, and this year the NFC could technically get a couple .500 or under teams into the playoffs.

It's good for the Chiefs this year though.

and first round crappy, lopsided games

I absolutely love having playoff games at Arrowhead, especially the AFC Championship game 5 years in a row. But, if it doesn't happen, so be it. If I'm being honest, I have often wondered (and, in a small way, want to see) how Mahomes would do on the road in the playoffs.

It’s been a weird year. I feel like defenses are up so offenses are down. But the nfl also has a huge problem with injuries. And bad QBs look really really bad against great defenses.

Normally pro leagues take this and introduce offense friendly rules in the offseason. Wonder if that’ll be the case here. I agree that more teams in contention is good for $ even if it’s uglier to watch. I also feel like Vegas must be making bank on this too because ugly football is harder to predict.

I'd narrow it further. I don't see the winner not coming from SF, Philly or KC

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Toney is a mole.

Baltimore KC 49ers.

One of those 3.

Everytime we think a team is dead or out of it, they bounce back.

49'ers are the team to beat at this point-they are firing on all cylinders.

Both the Eagles and Chiefs look like two very tired teams.

Yes, but they're working on it. Add 1 more team in each conference, and there you go, half.

The 49ers are pretty dominant

Purdy had a midseason slump but the guy is an inexperienced 7th round pick. It wasn’t going to be smooth sailing every week

I see them as dominant until someone proves me wrong

2019 we stood no chance of beating the 49'ers due to that dominant defense.

This year more than most, it just seems like the regular season doesn't matter.

Wake me up when the playoffs start.

This is franchise can win 10 games a season with its eyes closed. I mean you have to go to 2014 to find our last no 10 win season. And oddly adding the extra game to the schedule and now expanding the number of playoff teams, ten wins gets you in.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching this team every week, but its starting to feel like 17 weeks of preseason. We are working on stuff, developing players, dealing with some injuries. The real football begins in January.

I sure hope not.

But I doubt they will try that any time soon. Heck, it took them forever to expand to more teams (mids 70s until mid 90s). And they talk as though they are perfectly fine with 32 for the foreseeable future.

And I really hated seeing them go to 7 playoff teams, especially since now only the #1 seed gets a bye. But the playoffs expansion was decades in the making.

KC or SF. I think Purdy is extremely overrated, but he's better than Janeane Garoppolo ever was and has a tremendous team around him.

Lamar Jackson's brain will limit how far the Ravens go, which likely means one and done for them.

The Cowboys? Please.

But is Purdy really all that?

And that was 100 percent correct. No one thought Jimmy G would pee down his leg ...

I prefer to view that as the Chiefs took that game rather than the 9ers let it slip away. I mean Jet Chip Wasp, Chris Jones dominating at the end and tipping passes, Damien's late rushing TD to seal it. Those things had nothing to do with Jimmy G pissing down his leg, as you claim.

No one will know about Purdy until it gets to maximum sphincter time in the playoffs. If he has the Joe Montana gene, he'll be great. If not he'll be just another QB.

Those predictions may have made sense at the time, but they weren't correct. They were 100% incorrect.

Jimmy G was always the glaring weak link on that team.

Oddly, a few of the things they've focused on in recent years have hurt offenses.... calling illegal man downfield when a lineman is a step forward, and the 10+ offensive offsides called this year compared to like 2 last year, the weird Jawaan Taylor thing.... shit that has very little to no impact to games.

They are dominant, but I wouldn't pick them over Philly in a rematch.

Brock Purdy has the best weapons in the NFL. He has had multiple chances to go win games in the fourth quarter and has given the ball away.

One of the most impactful last 3 weeks in NFL history
 

People always say things like “this year is just so much different due to xyz going on” but if they say it every year how can it be true? I’m guessing every year it’s basically the same. About half to 2/3 of the teams are split between being good and bad with the other remaining being in the middle.

I took a random season 2004 and compared winning % to this season.

In 2004, 9 teams were above .600. 8 this season.

In 2004, 11 teams finished between .400 and .599. 15 like that this season.

In 2004, 12 teams under .399. 9 this season.

I suspect the only real difference is teams that otherwise would finish under .399 are now trying harder with the extra playoff spot being much more proactive in preventing the team from completely folding by bringing in QBs. Think teams like the Vikings and Browns this season who may have folded in previous seasons.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It&#39;s good to be football. <a href="https://t.co/t6uhuEhXOe">pic.twitter.com/t6uhuEhXOe</a></p>&mdash; Eben Novy-Williams (@novy_williams) <a href="https://twitter.com/novy_williams/status/1743274768940290154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I was looking into it and the Chiefs were pretty heavily represented in the top 20 until I stopped caring enough to keep reading. I want to say LVII and the AFCCG against the Bengals were the two most watched games of 2023.

I remember the Eagles v Chiefs rematch being there as well as the Christmas Day debacle against LVR.

It's wild to see it laid out like that.

And that is why spring football continued to be tried.

Also, it is why the NFL doesn't fix any of the issues. The nation keeps watching.

Football is king which is why the NFL continues to raise prices and outsource their broadcasts (such as Peacock). Owning a NFL franchise is one of the easiest ways to print money that there is.

That's a result of steering games to keep things interesting....

My takeaway: How it the **** is the Academy Awards in the top 100? Bunch of old people and women?