This week’s normal $.10 is cut in half, as my family celebrated Christmas with our extended families over the weekend. Sunday was a travel day, so I was unfortunately unable to see much of the action other than the Colts/Texans and Cardinals/Eagles.

May you and yours enjoy a wonderful, Merry Christmas this week!

$.01--Carolina remains undefeated after a highly eventful 38-35 victory over the relentless New York Giants.

The Panthers surged out to an easy 35-7 lead with about 20 minutes to go. Cam Newton threw touchdowns to five different receivers, while the Giants struggled to do much of anything right on either side of the ball.

At one point on the Panthers radio feed, commentator Eugene Robinson noted, “it looks like the Giants have no idea what coverage they are supposed to be playing. They’ve got corners playing (cover) 4, safeties playing (cover) 1, linebackers who, uh oh man I don’t know what the heck they’re trying to do”.

The lead came too easy. New York finally figured it out and rallied furiously. Odell Beckham, blanked in the first half, started doing more than losing his head (more on that in a bit). They blocked a field goal, they nutted up for a pair of 3-and-out defensive stands, they forced and recovered a fumble deep in Carolina territory.

Just like that it was 35-35 and the weight of undefeated destiny looked awfully heavy on Cam Newton and the Panthers. After all, these are the same Giants who have a long and proud history of terminating undefeated seasons deep in the year.

Newton proved why he belongs at the pinnacle of the MVP race on the subsequent Carolina drive. He calmly led the Panthers 49 yards in 1:46 to set up Graham Gano’s redemptive game-winning field goal.

Folks will remember the comeback, the tale of two halves, for sure. But this game will probably best be recalled as the game where Odell Beckham Jr. lost his friggin’ mind. Star corner Josh Norman blanketed him with physical, intense coverage that kept the fantastic receiver off the stat sheet until late in the game.

Beckham did not act professionally in dealing with the adversity. He was called for three separate personal foul penalties and earned every one of them. At least one of them was cause for ejection, a blatant helmet-to-helmet spear job on Norman that had Joe Buck and Troy Aikman both calling for his ouster. Carl Banks on the Giants radio call echoed it, calling OBJ a fool and stating “he’s doing nothing but hurting his team and it needs to be stopped”.

Giants coach Tom Coughlin passed the buck--badly--in his postgame presser, stating he did not know Beckham was guilty of three penalties when asked if he considered sitting his star. That’s simply not credible. Pair that sort of leadership irresponsibility with yet another late loss in yet another lost season, and it’s easy to see Coughlin and the Giants severing ties after the season. 

$.02--The AFC South now goes through Houston after the Texans won for the first time ever in Indianapolis. Backup-to-the-backup QB Brandon Weeden guided the Texans to a 16-10 comeback win, though most of the credit goes to a combination of bad Indy offense and a stingy, playmaking Houston defense.

Early on, it sure looked like the Colts were going to run away with this one. Texans starting QB TJ Yates, filling in for concussed Brian Hoyer, was absolutely terrible on the first handful of Houston drives. He ran into sacks. He threw the ball behind open receivers. He was embarrassingly ineffective before hurting himself with an awkward slide, tweaking his knee (update--he tore his ACL).

In came Weeden, and in came the snickers from the football cognoscenti. This is a quarterback who flopped in Cleveland as a first-round pick, then flopped in his alleged reclamation effort in Dallas earlier this year. Surely the Colts, who led 10-0 after starting three straight drives in Houston territory, were not going to lose control of the division they have lorded over to that guy helming that team which had never won in Indy before. 

In his first drive, Weeden drove the team from 1st and 20 at the Indy 44 to a field goal just before halftime to cut into the lead. The fact Weeden didn’t screw the pooch right there had to give Houston confidence.

He wasn’t great in the second half, though he did manage to lead a 10-play, 90-yard touchdown drive to put the Texans ahead early in the fourth. With Indy’s own offense not topping 90 total yards (they managed just 55) in the second half, Weeden’s rollout TD throw to Jaelen Strong was enough to seize control of the division.

 

There is a chicken/egg argument about whether the Colts offense is to blame or the Texans defense to credit for Indy’s abysmal offensive output. QB Matt Hasselbeck, who is 8 years older than the butt of all the age jokes in Weeden, misfired on several throws. He and his receivers, notably 34-year-old Texans legend Andre Johnson, frequently wound up on different pages in reading the defense.

For a brief time Hasselbeck left, and the game featured one of the most unlikely QB duels for a December first-place contest in NFL history…

 

Hasselbeck did return, but it didn’t matter. Houston’s defense picked off his final pass, the first play after going up 16-10 with a field goal. At the time, I thought being conservative there would doom the Texans. Once they got in the red zone they didn’t even try to score but rather just played for the field goal. It turns out Head Coach Bill O’Brien knew his defense could handily snuff out Indy’s anemic offense.

The Texans only have to win one more game to clinch the AFC South, and next week they face the 3-11 Titans--who lost rookie QB Marcus Mariota to a knee injury in a blowout loss to New England. Because Jacksonville somehow lost to reeling Atlanta today, the Texans could technically lose out and still win the division if the Jaguars lose next week at New Orleans and the Colts lose one of their final two.

$.03-- From the “be careful what you wish for” file, Kellen Moore finally got his chance to play in the NFL on Saturday night. When Matt Cassel once again bombed as quarterback for the woebegone Dallas Cowboys, Jason Garrett tabbed the former Boise State star to take over.

Moore is largely unknown to the casual NFL fan, other than perhaps his storied college career in leading the Broncos to a BCS Bowl win in 2010. The Boise State faithful, however, have hoisted him up as an almost God-like figure.

I got to experience this firsthand covering the Detroit Lions, who picked up Moore as an undrafted free agent. For three seasons, I had to deal with the Kellen Moore sycophants and their weekly drumbeat to elevate their messiah over Matthew Stafford as the starting QB. Never mind he wasn’t even the backup and wound up never being a game-day active. For a good example, check out the comments of this positive article on Moore I wrote for Bleacher Report.

Moore regressed in the 2015 training camp and preseason and was ultimately, mercifully cut. He found his way to Dallas to reunite with former Lions Offensive Coordinator Scott Linehan, who was his champion advocate in Detroit.

It took Brandon Weeden being overmatched and Cassel being even more embarrassing than Weeden could ever be in relief of Tony Romo and his shredded left shoulder before Garrett reluctantly inserted Moore into Saturday night’s game against the New York Jets.

Moore was not, as his ardent supporters often proclaimed he’d be, Joe Montana crossed with Tom Brady. He threw three INTs, one of which was perfectly emblematic of every criticism lobbed his way: staring down his receiver, late to deliver over the middle, throw completely lacking zip.

Those of us who had to deal with the Moore zealots just shook our heads in bemused validation. Except it isn’t quite so easy.

He did lead the Cowboys to three scoring drives in part by not being afraid to throw the ball to the wideouts, something Cassel proved completely incapable of doing. He moved the sticks and kept the offense on schedule. If nothing else, Moore proved he’s better than Cassel in this humdrum Dallas offense. That’s akin to being the least grotesque orc in a Lord of the Rings movie, but hey, it’s something.

The Jets were happy to escape Jerry World with the 19-16 win. They improved to 9-5 and remained in contention for one of the two AFC Wild Card spots. Yet barely beating a fourth-string QB on what is now a 4-10 bottom-dweller doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for any type of postseason run. 

$.04--A gift basket of NFL Quickies

--Props to A.J. McCarron for playing pretty well for the Bengals as Cincinnati clinched a playoff berth. He completed 15-of-21 with a QB Rating of 115.6 and avoided mistakes by smartly taking what the San Francisco defense gave him. At worst, he’s proving he’s a reliable young backup.

--The flip side of that game, which wound up 24-14 but was never in question, was the suffocating Cincy defense. This tweet came from early in the third quarter:

 

--Miami didn’t even try in a 30-14 loss at San Diego. Danny Woodhead scored four TDs for the Chargers, who led 23-0 for a long time. This was almost certainly the last game in San Diego for the franchise, and it’s nice they gave the loyal fans a resounding win. It helped that the opponent has already mailed in the rest of the season though.

--The hottest team outside of Carolina remains Kansas City. The Chiefs won their 8th in a row after starting 1-5 and now hold an AFC Wild Card spot, crushing what’s left of the Ravens 34-14. If they win out, and they have winnable home games with Cleveland and Oakland left, they can catch the Broncos for the AFC West title if Denver loses to Cincinnati next week. What an amazing turnaround.

--Don’t count Russell Wilson out of the MVP race just yet. He’s coming from well back in the pack but is really pouring it on in the final furlong, surging past others with a blistering pace. He’s the first QB in NFL history to throw at least three TDs and no INTs in five straight games. Seattle punched out Cleveland 30-13 to improve to 9-5 after starting 4-5 and leaving many wondering if they could possibly sneak into the playoffs. Affirmative.

--Perhaps the most impressive win came when Pittsburgh rallied from a big deficit to stun the visiting Broncos. The Steelers scored the last 24 points in a 34-27 win, with Big Ben throwing for 380 yards and 3 TDs. In the victory, wideout Antonio Brown caught 16 passes. He’s the first player to ever catch that many passes more than once in a season. The win also nudged the Steelers ahead of the Jets in the tiebreaker for the final AFC Wild Card spot, as both teams are 9-5.

--Even with Washington’s impressive win over wilting Buffalo and Philadelphia’s bad loss at home to Arizona, next week’s game between those two in Philly will all but settle the NFC East. If Kirk Cousins plays the way he did against the Bills and the Eagles are somewhat close to the team that got mauled Sunday night, Washington will win handily. But I still don’t trust Cousins and the Eagles can flip a switch and look really good.

--Green Bay clinched a playoff berth for the 7th year in a row with a hard-fought, sloppy (for both Aaron Rodgers and the field) 30-20 win in Oakland. That’s a heck of an impressive run.

$.05-- I can’t just ignore one of the bigger, growing draft stories of the year…

Ole Miss defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche has been charged with possession of marijuana in connection with an incident where he leapt out of a fourth-floor hotel window in Atlanta on Dec. 12th. On Saturday, the Rebels opted to suspend the enigmatic athletic freak for their bowl game.

My friend Ian Wharton and I discussed Nkemdiche and his status in a wide-ranging podcast which I strongly recommend you to download and listen to for all sorts of draft and bowl season discussion. One of our points of agreement was that his underwhelming production probably doesn’t trump the growing off-field issues for most NFL teams. If he were putting up Aaron Donald or even Nick Fairley numbers in college, that would be different. But three sacks, 7 TFLs and 13 total tackles doesn’t exactly scream “can’t miss”.

In my initial big board, the 6’4”, 296-pound junior checked in at No. 10 overall and I considered him a top 15 lock. I had already received feedback from an AFC South scout that I was too high, both in my own evaluation and in how the NFL sees him. Without coming out and saying so, he strongly intimated there was more to the story than someone in my position could possibly know. And that was before he leapt out of a window with some bud ablaze in his wake.

It’s hard to ascertain just where his draft stock sits now. The most fitting comparison is Fairley, who had several brushes with trouble and didn’t exactly help himself in the interview process. He went 13th overall in 2011 but also had a final college season with 24 TFLs, 11.5 sacks and a tour de force performance in leading Auburn to a national title. That’s more than Nkemdiche posted in three years in Oxford.

At this point, I’m dropping him into the 30s overall on my big board. The considerable athletic promise just hasn’t translated to enough production to justify anything loftier, certainly not when paired with the festering off-field issues. I’m not doing another mock draft until after Week 17 of the NFL is complete, but you will not see Nkemdiche in the first 40 picks and that comes on direct input from a trusted NFL source.