$.01--There was only one playoff opening entering Sunday’s play. Okay, technically the Texans hadn’t officially clinched the AFC South, but the Colts needed more things to go right than Rick Santorum does to win the Presidency to overtake them.

The race for the final AFC Wild Card spot was simple. If the Jets win, they’re in. Pittsburgh needed a Jets loss and a win over Cleveland to seize the final spot away from New York…and that’s exactly what happened.

Of course Pittsburgh beat Cleveland. It’s what they do; the Steelers have beaten the Browns just six times in the last 16 seasons and they play twice a year, every year. This one won’t win any artistic praise, but the 28-12 win in Cleveland accomplished the goal. Sacking Austin Davis (he’s apparently Cleveland’s QB, who knew?) seven times paved the way, as did yet another monster outing from Antonio Brown and his 187 receiving yards.

The real drama came in New York, where Rex Ryan laughed last as his Bills eliminated the team he coached for the previous six seasons. In a game where the first quarter produced just one drive that lasted more than 5 plays or 25 yards, the Bills led throughout. New York kept it close, and when Ryan Fitzpatrick found Eric Decker in the back of the end zone to pull the score to 19-17 just before the end of the third quarter, it sure looked like the Jets were on their way.

Buffalo went 3-and-out and at this point the Jets had all the momentum. A strong start to the ensuing drive and the snowball was rolling down the mountain.

And then it happened. The snowball melted into tears for Jets fans and tears of joy for the Pittsburgh faithful. Fitzpatrick threw not one, not two, but three INTs on successive drives. There were OL breakdowns. There were dropped passes, notably Kenbrell Thompkins treating a potential TD more like Telma Hopkins. Opportunity knocked three times, but the Jets couldn’t open the door.

The Steelers finish 10-6 and earn the sixth seed in the AFC, which means a trip to Cincinnati to face a Bengals team they beat--in Cincy--in Week 14. Andy Dalton’s status as Bengals QB is questionable at best, so the Steelers figure to have drawn the best possible scenario.

The Jets also finish 10-6, but lose the tie-breaker based on win percentage in games against common opponents. It’s a bitterly disappointing ending for a team which beat the hated rival Patriots as part of a 5-game win streak to get to 10-5. But their old coach Rex Ryan, as well as too many gunshots to their own feet, proved too much to overcome. 

$.02--We knew all six playoff teams in the NFC heading into the weekend, but we did not know who the NFC North champion would be. Minnesota visited Green Bay on Sunday Night Football to settle that one, with the winner taking the division crown and third seed and the loser falling to the fifth spot.

The Vikings tried oh so very hard to lose, but they were less terrible than the Packers. That’s the most honest way to assess Minnesota’s 20-13 win. From Teddy Bridgewater throwing a left-handed INT to Cordarrelle Patterson fumbling away a kick return deep in Packers territory to Adrian Peterson fumbling at his own 20 late in the fourth quarter, the Vikings sure didn’t impress. Bridgewater threw for just 99 yards.

It was still enough to hold off the Packers. Aaron Rodgers fumbled on a play where his hand was hit just as he started to throw. Captain Munnerlyn returned it 85 yards for a TD. Rodgers also threw an INT and had trouble (once again) finding any receivers to throw at. The Packers converted just 2-of-15 third downs.

The Packers, unfortunately for their fans, looked offensively starved once again. With LG Josh Sitton forced to play tackle and a strong Minnesota defensive front, we probably should have seen this coming.

Green Bay heads to Washington, another team with a strong defensive front and opportunistic secondary. Right now, it’s very hard to see a Packers team that has lost six of its last 10 games beating anyone in the playoffs. They have to hope for bountiful healing and first-time jitters from a Washington team very short on playoff experience, but make no mistake--Washington (which beat Dallas 34-23) is the better, hotter team entering the postseason.

Minnesota hosts Seattle, which appears to be peaking at just the right time. It’s a tough draw, but reveling in an unexpected NFC North title and earning a home playoff game is a great accomplishment for the young Vikings. Hats off to Mike Zimmer, one of the best coaching hires of the decade.

$.03--News broke during the week that the Colts will fire Chuck Pagano, which will probably be official by the time you read this. It’s not a surprise, but it is also not the only move the badly declining franchise needs to make.

General Manager Ryan Grigson is an abhorrent failure at his job. Colts fans will tell you I’m being kind. Despite lucking (sorry for the pun) into one of the highest-rated quarterbacks ever to hit the league, Grigson has created a miscast roster with no depth, cap issues and on the precipice of falling to the bottom of the NFL’s weakest division.

Now there are several articles out, notably from ESPN’s Mike Wells and Stephen Holder of the Indianapolis Star, which detail Grigson’s meddling (read: sabotage) by forcing players on Pagano and demanding he play them. Never mind that everyone can easily see that Grigson moves like Bjoern Werner, Trent Richardson, Gosder Cherilus, Hakeem Nicks, Kelvin Sheppard to name a few, are just not NFL players.

Grigson is quite tight with owner Jim Irsay, so he appears safe. Yet if Irsay can see the bigger picture, he will see that no quality coaching candidate will want anything to do with a rotting roster, a meddling GM and a star QB who had quietly stagnated in his development a couple of notches below where everyone expected him to rise.

Some of the obvious names as Pagano’s successor have ties with Grigson from his history with the Rams and Eagles. Steve Spagnuolo, Marty Mornhinweg, Brad Childress, all retreads who had very little success as head men. There are some who believe Mornhinweg nearly got the job when the Colts opted to hire Pagano.

If any of those are hired, Luck would be wise to not agree to any new contract in Indy. Loyalty is one thing, but staying loyal to a ship loaded with tons of wasteful ballast and holes all over the hull--and that’s what this team is without Luck and with Grigson--would be stupid.

$.04--This year will be a great test of the power of momentum heading into the playoffs for the top two seeds in the NFC. The Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals had already earned byes before playing on Sunday, but the No. 1 Panthers and No. 2 Cardinals will take decidedly divergent outcomes into their two-week rest.

Carolina throttled Tampa Bay 38-10. The Panthers left nothing to chance, scoring 24 points in the second quarter to snuff out any delusions of Buccaneer grandeur. Cam Newton played until the final kneel-downs, proving Ron Rivera had no intention of letting up even after the game was well out of hand. They finish 15-1 and regained some of the momentum they lost in last week’s stumble versus Atlanta.

The flip side is Arizona, where Bruce Arians gruffly stated during the week that he had no intention of resting any starters. The Seahawks, in their awful sweat-grey uniforms, plucked every feather off the Cardinals in a 36-6 romp in Arizona. Seattle dominated all three phases of the game, including both lines of scrimmage.

An ineffective Carson Palmer sat out the second half, as the game was already over. Tyler Lockett’s breathtaking returns ensured there would be no pulse for the Cardinals. The Seahawks held the Arizona offense to under 250 total yards, while rushing for 145 of their own on a bruising 37 carries.

The last memory of the regular season for Arizona is getting humiliated on national television by the defending NFC Champs. It was so bad the network switched off it in the third quarter. No, Arizona didn’t need to win the game. Yes, they are plenty talented enough to win the Super Bowl. I’m still picking them to vanquish whichever foe they face in two weeks. But if they stumble, if they fall, point to this game and the power of entering the playoffs with a bounce to the step.

$.05--This one starts with a great factoid from Jayson Braddock, who hosts a radio show on ESPN 97.5 in Houston and is a great guy to talk football with…

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Chiefs started the year 1-5 (lone win was vs Texans)&#10;&#10;Texans started the year 2-5&#10;&#10;Now meet in the 1st round of the playoffs. Crazy</p>&mdash; Jayson Braddock (@JaysonBraddock) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaysonBraddock/status/683813147770138625">January 4, 2016</a></blockquote>

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The Chiefs are the hottest team this side of the Golden State Warriors. Since that 1-5 start, they have not lost. Andy Reid guided them to their 10th straight win in besting the game Raiders 23-17 on Sunday. They accomplished this despite losing their top offensive weapon, RB Jamaal Charles, early in the year.

How did Kansas City rise up?

- Just 7 giveaways in those 10 games, two of them on Sunday. Their defense created 23 takeaways, a difference of +16 that leads the league. Only the Panthers (+19) finished better on the season.

- Moving into the top 5 in defensive yards per play and third down conversions allowed. One hand feeds the other here; they’re great on first down and that helps their defense get off the field on third down.

- A relatively easy schedule. The run started with a win over Pittsburgh where Ben Roethlisberger didn’t play. They caught the Broncos on Brock Osweiler’s first career start. No other team they faced finished with more than 7 wins, including both Oakland and San Diego twice apiece.

It’s that last one that scares me in trying to support them in the playoffs. Their offense remains near the bottom in just about every statistical metric other than giveaways. They’ve been more explosive in the air but still lag far behind most other teams in that capacity.

Houston won the AFC South despite starting four different quarterbacks and facing a big run of injuries to key players like Arian Foster, Jadeveon Clowney and the best of those QBs, Brian Hoyer. In this game they lost stud left tackle Duane Brown, which really hurts their chances against KC next week. Befitting their 9-7 record, they’re largely average across the board on both sides of the ball, save Nuk Hopkins as a playmaking receiver and J.J. Watt as the preeminent 3-4 lineman in the league.

Next week’s meeting between these two is a testament for teams to never give up. One of these teams that started 2-5 will win a playoff game, and if they’re healthy coming out of it they could win another. 

$.06--I’ll quickly sum up the bowls from New Year’s Eve and Day…

Yawn.

The New Year’s Six, supposedly the top bowl games featuring the best matchups of the best teams, produced five unabashed blowouts. The outcome of the sixth, the BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl, was never really in doubt either.

The Big Ten was involved in three of the six, but also two others on New Year’s Day. The two teams fresh from the B1G Title game, Michigan State and Iowa, were summarily embarrassed by Alabama (38-0) and Stanford (45-16) respectively. The B1G team which beat Stanford back in September, Northwestern, lost 45-6 to Tennessee in the Outback Bowl to kick off the January 1st slate.

Ohio State and Michigan, the traditional rivals, played at the exact same time and romped over Notre Dame (44-28) and Florida (41-7) to help save the conference some face. Whoever scheduled these games clearly has no concept of the viewing habits of the hundreds of millions in flyover land.

The ACC saw Clemson blow out Oklahoma in one of the Playoff semifinals, but had Oklahoma State get bombarded by Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech and Duke squeaked out wins in perhaps the most entertaining bowl games, but North Carolina couldn’t keep up with Baylor and both Pittsburgh and Florida State got roundly whipped by AAC teams. While the SEC had some notable romps, they also had Texas A&M lose to a weak Louisville team and aforementioned Florida, a division champ which got run out of the stadium by the Big Ten’s 5^th-best team.

There are two points here:

1. The new schedule failed miserably and desperately needs to be changed.

2. Be careful to put too much into conference success; individual teams are what it’s all about. 

$.07--Time to put the scouting hat on and quickly break down the Fiesta Bowl between Ohio State and Notre Dame. I actually have about 3 pages of notes in my scouting journal so I’ll very briefly give you a glimpse into what I saw in a game that featured four players who are widely projected as Top 10 overall picks.

Joey Bosa--made a very big impact on the first two drives before being ejected with a targeting call. Notre Dame has a very well-coached OL with good skill and Bosa bested them on just about every snap. The play where he kept the blocker at bay with powerful shoulders and hands, then chucked him aside to notch a tackle for loss, is scouting crack for defensive linemen.

The ejection was justified as the rules of the game dictate, and it shows Bosa still has some work to do on the mental side of his game. He has to know he cannot drop his head and lead with it. The junior DE has earned some other preventable personal foul penalties in his career, too. It won’t stop him from being one of the first five players drafted, but it’s a concern.

Ronnie Stanley--Notre Dame’s left tackle gets widely praised by the major draft analysts, but this game highlighted some very real flaws that lead me to have real questions about his NFL future. Even in the brief mano-a-mano with Bosa, it was readily evident Stanley does not have the strength to handle powerful players lined up in close proximity. He’s a finesse tackle. It works great when the pass rusher is lined up wide and/or off the ball; Stanley is damn near perfect in those situations and was in this game as well.

Then there is the holding. It’s endemic and it comes from Stanley not having a strong enough punch to keep defenders from getting into his pads. Because he doesn’t have the brute power to push them away, he opts to cling. Add in yet another false start, and I’m just not sold he’s the top-shelf tackle prospect everyone seems to think he is. Also factor in a recurring ankle injury which flared up once again late in this game.

Stanley is definitely a fine prospect for his ability to protect the QB and get away with holding (function over form), but be real careful in projecting him to instant NFL success. He’s not nearly as good of a prospect as his Irish predecessor, Zack Martin, in my eyes. I actually prefer Stanley’s Ohio State counterpart, Taylor Decker, as an NFL left tackle. Decker isn’t as polished now but has higher potential in my eyes.

Jaylon Smith--the star Notre Dame linebacker suffered a nasty knee injury early in the loss. For a player whose entire game is predicated on being the best athlete on the field, this type of gruesome, multi-ligament injury is truly devastating. While there is no official confirmation on the details, it appears similar to the injury Georgia RB Nick Chubb suffered early in the season. If so, Smith will not play in 2016, period. He may never be more than 90% of his old self, either.

That makes his draft stock tough to project. He was a top-10 overall pick. Now? Too early to tell, but he’s not the most instinctive LB and depended so heavily on his speed to compensate. With no guarantee he’ll get that back and almost assuredly missing his rookie season, I don’t see him being a top 25 pick. But that’s subject to further injury details.

Ezekiel Elliott--there is no doubt Ohio State’s running back will be the first RB off the board. This game was a great summation of his considerable skills: power, vision, balance, toughness, acceleration through the gaps, even blocking. He’s not quite Todd Gurley from last year but he’s close enough as a prospect that he will be a Top 10 consideration. I’d be very surprised if he’s not taken in the top 20, which is still remarkably high for a RB these days.

I’ll have much more on the draft, and Irish and Buckeyes players, in the coming weeks.

$.08--NFL Quickies

--two former Browns QBs guided the Texans to the AFC South title. Brian Hoyer and Brandon Weeden have strong troll game…

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Browns?src=hash">#Browns</a> <a href="https://t.co/48zm9VImOm">pic.twitter.com/48zm9VImOm</a></p>&mdash; robert smith (@ESPNRobertSmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNRobertSmith/status/683829748334645248">January 4, 2016</a></blockquote>

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--great quote in defeat from Bill Belichick, “I don’t think we did anything well today. That includes everything.” New England has lost four of six, including Sunday’s lifeless 20-10 loss to the undead zombies wearing Dolphins uniforms.

--in Miami’s win, Ndamukong Suh hit Tom Brady low and sent him limping off. Brady returned on the next series but the Patriots fans went hard after Suh, who has earned his reputation as one of the league’s dirtiest players. This play appeared clean, however.

--San Francisco beat St. Louis in overtime. Their reward? They are freed from the truly incompetent coaching of Jim Tomsula after one miserable season. The Rams reward? A possible move to Los Angeles and maybe a coaching change of their own.

--I don’t know which is more annoying, the dabbing celebration or the crying Michael Jordan meme. Here’s hoping both die with the end of the regular season.

--Raiders safety Charles Woodson played his final game Sunday. He’s one of the greatest defensive backs in NFL history, an easy first-ballot Hall of Famer. But I will still contend he’s not even the best defensive back named Woodson. It’s a fun fight between Charles and Rod, who though both from relatively close proximity (Fremont OH is about 2.5 hours from Ft. Wayne IN) are not related. What a fantastic career for Charles Woodson, he was fun to watch.

$.09--College/Draft quickies

--Notre Dame’s last five appearances in major bowl games have not gone well. They’ve been outscored by an aggregate 186-64, going back to a 41-7 thumping by Oregon State in the 2000 Fiesta Bowl. That’s an average of 37-13. I know, I know, every year is different and injuries were rampant this season. But that’s a lot of similarity over a lot of years. They just don’t have the depth of athletes to compete with the major conference powers at the pinnacle.

--TCU QB Trevone Boykin all but kissed his NFL career goodbye by being arrested for assaulting a police officer and getting suspended for the Alamo Bowl. He was already a 6th-7th round pick at best, with some teams projecting him at wide receiver--where he played some during his Horned Frogs career. Now? It’s a real tough sell for his agent to promote a lower-tier project prospect with a serious character flag.

--Boykin’s absence didn’t stop the Frogs from pulling off the best comeback of the bowl season in what was the only really entertaining college game played in 2016 so far. Oregon raced out to a 31-0 lead, and most of the already bowl-fatigued Americans sought alternate programming. Backup Bram Kohlhausen led TCU to scores on every drive of the second half, and the Ducks went 3-and-out on all but one drive after starting QB Vernon Adams got knocked out of the game with a 28-0 lead. It’s tied for the biggest comeback in bowl history and the second-biggest comeback in any FBS game ever.

--Cal QB Jared Goff and Memphis QB Paxton Lynch both declared early for the draft. They will be the top two QBs off the board. I prefer Lynch, though Goff is more NFL-ready. I’ll say this now with zero hesitation: neither quarterback should play a down in the NFL before next December, nor are they among the ten best overall prospects in this class. I do think both can become very good NFL starters in time.

$.10--Over the next few days you will hear about many coaches and GMs who lose their jobs. It’s part of my job to report on them, as I did above. The overwhelming fan reaction to this news will be joyous celebration.

Yet there are larger ramifications to the changes at the top. Assistant coaches will lose their jobs as well. In some cases teams will clean out positions like strength coach, scouting director, travel secretary, video coordinator, even locker room attendants.

Those are not the glamour positions. These are middle-class or even entry-level jobs filled by folks with families dependent on them to bring home the bacon. Some will have newborn children, others just moved to a new city six months ago for the very job they’re losing.

A friend of mine is in real danger of losing his $35K-a-year job for the second time in three years. He’s in his early 30s and has three kids under five years old and has already moved over 1,000 miles at his own expense for the latest job. His wife stays home with the kids and has over $30K in student loans.

His fate is out of his control. His job is in peril because his team did not perform anywhere near expectation, though his role in the process had nothing to do with it. The person who hired him for the first job is no longer in football, so his connections in staying in the NFL rat race aren’t optimal.

Try and think of people like this when you call into the local radio yakfest and dance on the grave of the fallen head coach. While these folks understand from the get-go it’s a professional life fraught with insecurity, it’s still their dream and they’re trying to make a living doing it. Those dreams die hard and have very real consequences for lots of families.