By Brandon Simmons
Which Team Will Rise/Fall in the Wild Card Race?
With over a month left to go in the season, the Wild Card is at its hottest right now, with either a team that’s going to make the cut or a squad who’s going to fall off completely. In the AFC, 3 teams are tied at 6-5 for the final playoff spot, with the Los Angeles Chargers holding that 7th position at the moment. In the NFC 3 teams are tied at 5-6 for that 7th and final spot, which is currently being held by the Minnesota Vikings. That is not to mention the teams in these conferences who are 1-2 games behind the Wild Card leaders. But in a race that looks to be jumbled at the end of the year, who will retain that final spot for their conference.
The Vikings have not held that spot and they might not be relinquishing it anytime soon. The New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons sit behind them with the same record but both of those teams =have their own limitations. The Saints don’t have enough offense to compete down the stretch and the Falcons have a tough schedule ahead for them. Out of these 3 teams, the Vikings are the only ones with solid offensive attack. Vikings Quarterback Kirk Cousins has the luxury of two x-factors on the outside with wide receivers Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson. With their schedule, they have a little bit of room for maybe one loss, but could possibly run the table.
In the AFC, the same can be said for the Los Angeles Chargers, whose aerial attack and easy schedule might land them in the postseason. The crazy thing is that the Chargers enjoyed some early season success, which had them at the top of the AFC West, including a win over the slumping Kansas City Chiefs, which sparked a 3 game winning streak. Despite being 2-3 since their bye week, they have some winnable games coming up against the New York Giants and Houston Texans, in addition to the home rematch against the Chiefs.
Where Does Baker Mayfield Land on QB List?
Scrolling through Twitter and I pulled up on a tweet asking about Cleveland Browns QB Baker Mayfield and his place amongst the rest of the starting QB’s in the league. It was an interesting that usually gets brushed off but I decided to give it some real thought and come up with a legit number
The process to do this was not easy and I had to sit down and go through a couple of methods. My first approach was just calculating this in my head through my own eye tests, which teams were winning and my own mental organizer. So it was pretty much light approach for his ranking. I started the comparison with all the QB’s in his division, then conference and gave him his first ranking off that. Afterwards, I applied the same criteria comparing him to his NFC counterparts and adjusted his ranking which sent him down a few spots and finished with a first ranking of 18. But instead of relying on my judgments, I decided to dig in a little more by checking out his stats, in which he fell among the high 20’s among the standard categories for completions, completion percentage, yards, touchdowns and QBR.
After going through this fun, somewhat strenuous, exercise it felt like I couldn’t give him a solid number ranking based, but rather place him in tiers; however, if I had to give him a number it would probably be 20th based on an average between my first and 2nd processes. There are are a few things I considered. My first thought was comparing him to Tennessee Titans QB Ryan Tannehill, a quarterback that has had strong success with a superior backfield. Tannehill had privilege of having running back Derrick Henry by his side until he got his season cut short by injury; Mayfield has the double dose of Browns running backs Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt. It was a tough split between these 2, because Tannehill has more touchdowns but Mayfield has less picks; but the Titans signal caller has the team at the top of their division. All that entangled knowledge just to say Baker has a lot of work to do. While he is ranked low in those categories, they are still near his career averages and could still see some improvements. Of course, his team performance did factor into his final result, but the great ones overcome that.
Shoutouts/Shutouts
Shout out to Green Bay Packers wide receiver Davante Adams for his hilarious response to Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.’s jersey swap request. Before the Packers beat the Rams Sunday, Adams spoke with NFL analyst Michael Irvin and told him OBJ requested a jersey swap earlier in the week. Adams revealed to Irvin he told the new Rams receiver “to get a Cooper Kupp jersey since that’s obviously the guy he wants be with.” Adams was vocal about trying to recruit OBJ to Green Bay but says there are no hard feelings towards him.
Shut out to Kirk Cousins for lining up under the wrong offensive lineman. In Sunday’s loss against the San Francisco 49ers, Cousins took his team to San Francisco 10 yard line, attempting to go for it on 4th down. However, Cousins accidentally lined up under the guard, which prompted Vikings running back Alexander Mattison to rush up and place the QB in the right spot. However, Cousins had to take a timeout to prevent the play clock form running out, but he ended throwing an incomplete pass on 4th down and lost the game. Mistakes do happen in 2 minute drills all the time but it’s something like that occurs. But he’ll bounce back from this soon enough.
December is here and ready to wash away the non-playoff teams. The Cincinnati Bengals will host the Los Angeles Chargers, featuring 2 of the young gunslingers in Bengals QB Joe Burrow and Chargers QB Justin Herbert. This should be nothing short of a shootout have weapons on both sides that can help light it up. The game of the week will be the Buffalo Bills hosting the New England Patriots. The Bills have been kind of up and down in the past couple of weeks while the Patriots are riding a 6 game winning streak, which has put them in first place of the AFC East. The Bills are looking to regain that spot and that defense is ready to terrorize Patriots rookie QB Mac Jones. But until then…I’ll holla.
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