Because of, or rather in honor of the holiday weekend, this week’s $.10 is cut in half. Family time was more important than football, as it should be… 

$.01-- Congrats to the Houston Texans, who captured the AFC South title in an eventful day for what is consistently the NFL’s weakest division.

Houston won in befitting fashion. Locked in a quagmire of a game where the 12-10 final score was far more indicative of bad offense than dominant defense, the Texans held on as Cincinnati kicker Randy Bullock missed the potential game-winner as time expired. Bullock, of course, is a former Texans draft pick who flopped with his hometown team. He’s in Cincinnati because former Bengals draft pick Mike Nugent fizzled with his hometown team.

The Saturday night win clinched the division a week early. Tom Savage started at quarterback in place of Brock Osweiler, who is already perilously close to being the biggest free-agent flop in NFL history after just 14 games. Savage proceeded to produce negative net passing yardage in the first half thanks to sacks. Houston had just 2 first downs at the break…and they still won.

This eliminated any drama, as it also eliminated the Tennessee Titans before the two teams square off in Week 17. The Titans' season was effectively ended a few hour earlier when steadily improving young QB Marcus Mariota broke his leg. That was one of many negatives in a crushing 38-17 loss to AFC South cellar dwellers in Jacksonville.

The Jaguars finally roared to life after 10 straight losses, the last of which got coach Gus Bradley fired. Blake Bortles finally looked like a legit starting quarterback, and just to add insult to Tennessee’s injury he even caught a touchdown pass. Bortles topped a QB Rating of 100 for the first time all season, the last full-time starter not named Osweiler to achieve that mark.

Indianapolis still had some playoff life entering the weekend. The Colts also had momentum after slaughtering Minnesota in the best all-around performance of the Chuck Pagano era. That fizzled quickly in Oakland, where the Raiders raced out to a 33-7 lead before the Colts dominated garbage time to close to 33-25. The loss drops Indy to 7-8 as they waste what was arguably Andrew Luck’s most impressive season. Colts fans are hopeful that will be enough to pull the plug on the Pagano/Ryan Grigson combo as coach and GM. Take Luck off the roster and the Colts wouldn’t be near as good as the Jaguars. 

$.02--Green Bay beat Minnesota 38-25, continuing the Vikings trip over the cliff after the fast start to the season.

Folks, that’s mutiny on the Viking longboat. As if that isn’t crazy enough, Head Coach Mike Zimmer admitted it was true after the game. So did Xavier Rhodes, who was the primary piece in the defiant puzzle.

Rhodes was supposed to shadow Jordy Nelson all over the formation, but he and his defensive back mates decided that was a bad idea. The corners stayed on their sides all of the first half. Rhodes fessed up after the game,

“We felt as a team, as players, we came together and we felt like we’d never done that when we played against the Packers. Us as DBs felt like we could handle him. That’s how we felt as DBs that we could stay on our side and cover him. In the beginning, we’d always played against them and played our sides, we never followed, so that’s what we felt as DBs. That’s what we went with.”

Nelson torched the improvised coverage for 154 yards and two TDs, both of which came in the first half. On a deeper level, it allowed Aaron Rodgers to get awfully comfortable and in rhythm quickly. Minnesota’s offense had its best game in months (their first with multiple offensive touchdowns since Week 5) but they couldn’t keep up.

The circumstances here are extraordinary. Players openly defying a coach, let alone copping to it after their improvisation blew up in their faces, is a mind-blowing level of defiance and insubordination. Given the context in Minnesota, it is grounds for major and radical change.

The Vikings started 5-0 with a smothering defense. Rhodes was a big part of that, emerging as one of the better man coverage corners in the league. Since then, they’ve lost 8 of 11 and have seen the points per game allowed almost double.

Rhodes has still played pretty well, but the defense around him has not. Zimmer is a defensive-oriented head coach who is also known from his days as an assistant in Dallas and Cincinnati as very likable and player-friendly, though in a no-nonsense manner. His defense has collapsed and now openly disrespects his authority.

In the NFL it’s a lot easier to get rid of a coach than multiple players. While the Vikings do have several defensive vets who might be moving on either way, Rhodes is a key cog for the future. Even if the young corner isn’t the progenitor of the discord, he was the featured participant in it and had the power to shut the mutiny down. Makes me wonder if Zimmer will return…and how the players will react if he does. Divided locker rooms cannot win. 

$.03--The most significant thing emanating from Indy’s loss is an unfortunate one. Derek Carr suffered a broken leg early in the fourth quarter and will miss the rest of the season. The MVP candidate fractured his right fibula as he was torqued to the ground on a sack. At the time, Oakland led by 19 in a game they didn’t need to win, having already clinched a playoff berth.

Now the Raiders turn to little-used Matt McGloin. The Penn State product started six games as a rookie in 2013, going 1-5 while completing 55% of his passes and throwing as many INTs as TDs. He might be a serviceable backup, but that’s extremely unlikely to win in the postseason in an offense built around having a dynamic force at quarterback.

With Carr down and Miami’s Ryan Tannehill also out for the season, the AFC playoff will be missing two of the starting six quarterbacks. Given the QB quagmire in Houston, it sure seems like a 3-team race between New England, Pittsburgh and Kansas City.

Then again, the backup quarterback in Dallas has done pretty well despite intense pressure and relatively low expectations. Dak Prescott would run away and hide with the Offensive Rookie of the Year in most seasons, and the fourth-round pick has guided the Cowboys to the No. 1 seed in the NFC. He’s only playing because Tony Romo got hurt--again--playing behind the league’s best offensive line. Mariota and Carr both play behind top-5 offensive lines, too. So much for the old adage of building up the offensive line to protect the quarterback…

In fact, every team in the AFC playoffs except the Chiefs will start multiple quarterbacks this season. Contrast that with the NFC, where Dallas, Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, New York, Green Bay and Washington all had one iron man taking the snaps. That is the current playoff seeding and picture heading into Monday night’s game between the Lions and Cowboys, where the Lions can clinch a berth with a win. 

$.04--There will be no winless teams in 2016 after the Cleveland Browns finally won a game. Hue Jackson’s team broke into the win column with a thrilling 20-17 win over visiting San Diego when Chargers kicker Josh Lambo missed his second field goal of the final five minutes.

It took a special kind of day for the Browns to win. They gained 33 yards on their final 23 offensive plays after going ahead 20-10 on the first drive of the second half. In that death spiral of ineptitude, quarterback Robert Griffin left with yet another injury, this time a concussion.

Yet that was still enough to hold off the Chargers. San Diego couldn’t get out of its own way. From holding penalties to short-yardage calls everyone in the Dawg Pound could tell from the formation, they were a little too easy to defend. When Jamie Meder blocked Lambo’s 32-yard field goal attempt with just under four minutes left, the crowd’s relieved roar came ringing through the speakers on the radio call.

When Lambo just missed the final kick after hastily rushing onto the field and try, FirstEnergy Stadium erupted. I was listening to Jim Donovan and Doug Dieken on the Browns radio call, and you can hear the ecstasy and relief in Donovan’s excitable voice:

I’m from Cleveland but I’ve been a Lions fan since the early 1980s. And the Lions fan in me was oddly but fiercely proud of being the only team to ever go 0-16. I was as happy for remaining the sole occupant of that football abyss as I was for the throngs of Browns fans in my family and my home city escaping the depths of winless despair. That’s our pain, our shared collective struggle, and Detroit fans embrace that with a determined grimace. Nobody else needs to go through that.

Some gravy on the tasty biscuit for Cleveland: San Francisco also won, which means the Browns still hold the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. The 49ers are 2-0 against the Rams, 0-13 against everyone else. With Griffin’s latest injury and Cody Kessler’s continued ineffectiveness, it sure seems like a good year for Cleveland to use the top pick on a quarterback. 

$.05--A Big Batch of Quickies

--New England 41, New York Jets 3. I don’t care about the talent disparity between these two AFC East rivals; that score is indicative of a Jets team that is collecting paychecks instead of playing competitive football. They have four quarterbacks on the roster and not one of them should ever see meaningful action in any future NFL season.

--Bad Saturday for Seattle. The Seahawks lost 34-31 to Arizona on a last-second field goal after a furious comeback. They also lost dangerous return man and receiver Tyler Lockett to a broken leg. After already losing Earl Thomas, the spiritual heart of the defense, losing the special teams dynamo is a huge loss heading into the playoffs. On a broader level, the Seahawks lost a chance to secure the No. 2 seed in the NFC as well. They could fall as far as the fourth seed, and that would mean going on the road after the Wild Card round.

--Even in a rare victory, the 49ers suffered a big loss. RB Carlos Hyde tore his MCL and will miss the rest of this season. The timing of the injury is such that the starter will likely miss at least some part of the 2017 season as well. For a team whose leading receiver this year will be Jeremy Kerley, who was the fourth-best slot receiver in Lions camp last summer, they cannot afford any talent drain.

--Philadelphia stunned the rival Giants in the Thursday night game, though the Giants strung up much of their own rope in the losing noose. New York largely dominated the action but three turnovers and scoring just one TD in five red zone incursions ruined their chance to clinch a playoff berth early.

--Miami showed a lot in a gut-check win over Buffalo in overtime. Backup QB Matt Moore looked adequate once again, but it was RB Jay Ajayi who bodied Rex Ryan’s defense. Again…

That could be the final nail in Rex Ryan’s coaching coffin in Buffalo. His defense wasted a great performance from QB Tyrod Taylor. Again…

--New Orleans knocked off Tampa Bay and in the process dealt a huge blow to the Buccaneers playoff chances. Tampa Bay now needs Detroit to beat Green Bay, Washington to lose to the Giants and also take care of their own business in the finale against Carolina. Long odds but not impossible.

--Nice win by Atlanta to capture the NFC South title, and beating the reigning champs in Carolina to seize the crown. Winning on the road on natural grass is a nice statement of playoff readiness for the Falcons.

--College and Draft will get much more prominence next week. The initial Top 125 prospects is shortly forthcoming, and the bowls promise too much intrigue to ignore.