$.01--The Chicago Bears have all but wrapped up the NFC North with Saturday’s miraculous comeback win over the Green Bay Packers. It was the latest of several of their 11 victories that convinced me Chicago is a lot better at winning than at beating an opponent. 

The Bears had no business winning this game. Until the final five minutes of regulation, Green Bay was clearly the better team. That was true even with the Packers playing backup QB Malik Willis, who replaced a concussed Jordan Love, and rolling without top RB Josh Jacobs, too. And star pass rusher Micah Parsons, out until at least midseason next year after tearing up his knee a week ago. 

But then the Bears woke up. Fortune shone upon them once again, just as it did in epically improbable comeback wins against the Raiders (who missed a last-second GW field goal), Commanders (late fumble while trying to run out the clock), Giants (who led by 10 with 5 minutes to play), and Vikings (last-second FG after MIN botched the clock late). Chicago isn’t the better team in any of those games against non-playoff teams either, other than for a brief blip, but they won them all. There’s a very realistic alternate world of about five minutes of football time in which the Bears are 7-8 instead of 11-4. 

I’m still not sure the Bears are a good football team. They are certainly, unquestionably good winners, however. And, as Herman Edwards once famously espoused, “you play to win the game.” Chicago is quite good at that, and that makes the Bears dangerous despite their fortuitous route to the postseason. Rookie head coach Ben Johnson doesn’t know he’s not supposed to be able to do these things, and that precocious magic carries into his young but talented team. In that regard, these Bears are similar to the 2023 Lions, who were within a half of going to the Super Bowl. Johnson was Detroit’s prodigious OC that year. 

$.02--The Houston Texans get almost no mention as a Super Bowl contender outside of the massive metro Houston area, but it’s time to consider the Texans just might be the best team in the AFC. Head coach Demeco Ryans dialed up Houston’s seventh win in a row and eighth in nine weeks with an uncomfortably close victory over the lowly Raiders. 

Houston once again managed to win without earning many style points. Other than a Derek Stingley pick-six that opened the scoring in Houston’s 23-21 home win, the Texans didn’t really impress. Raiders rookie RB Ashton Jeanty sliced up the fantastic Houston defense for 128 yards, including a 51-yard TD scamper after an earlier 60-yard TD reception. 

The Texans found a way to conjure up a win over a bad team despite not playing anywhere close to their best. It might be uncomfortable to witness, but that’s a sign of a good team overcoming adversity. Previous editions of the Battle Red have not been able to do such things, going back nearly a decade. 

Once 0-3, the Texans are now 9-5. The two losses in that span are one-score decisions to Seattle and Denver, the current No. 1 seeds in the conferences entering Sunday night. They’ve got wins over the Ravens (a 44-10 blowout in Baltimore), first-place Jaguars, and 49ers in that run, plus playoff death blows to the Chiefs and Colts. And it’s largely done by the NFL’s best defense, a talented unit that doesn’t rely on gimmicks or flukes; Houston’s D simply dominates opponents by being faster, more physical and better disciplined than the opponent. 

The offense is not always effective, but it doesn’t have to be with the D playing so well. On Sunday, the run game didn’t click, and the C.J. Stroud-Nico Collins connection wasn’t firing on all cylinders. The Raiders even hit the big plays, but Houston manufactured a win. They’re getting quite good at that. 

And yet, having said all that, Houston is still looking up at Jacksonville in the AFC South. The Jaguars knocked off the Broncos in a battle of playoff teams, the exact kind of validating victory everyone wanted to see from surging Jacksonville. The Jaguars have won seven of eight to improve to 10-4, and that kicked off with a narrow victory over the Raiders of their own. Houston and Jacksonville split in the regular season, and the Jaguars win the South if they win their final two games against the Colts and Titans. They should be heavily favored in each. Good for rookie head coach Liam Coen for getting that ship in the right direction. Many laughed at Coen’s awkward “Duuu-vall” introductory press conference, but the bright young Coen has Jaguars fans laughing at the doubters now. 

$.03--Two key games with playoff implications were decided by officiating controversies this weekend. 

The first came on Thursday night when the Seahawks apparently converted a two-point conversion that sure looked like an incomplete pass somehow turned into a game-tying and overtime-forcing success for Seattle. The Seahawks went on to win in overtime in a battle for the NFC West supremacy and No. 1 seed in the conference, 38-37. 

Was it a backwards pass? Maybe, but there’s certainly cause for reasonable doubt--especially after it was ruled incomplete on the field by the one man whose vantage point was literally perfect to see it. Was it a hot mess of officiating? Absolutely. It’s admittedly a very difficult play to piece together through the eyes of several different officials, which is why the NFL has the expedited review process. 

Nothing about this was expeditious. It took minutes before the call reversal was announced. Again, they very well might have gotten the call right in the end, but the clumsy process and lengthy delay with zero transparency of what’s being discussed is a terrible look for the NFL. Can we definitively say the league didn’t put a thumb on the scale here? No. And that’s a growing problem for the NFL and it’s growing dependency on legalized sports gambling and partnerships with sportsbooks. 

The ending of Sunday’s game in Detroit between the Lions and Steelers was equally as confusing and opaque from the officials. The Lions scored what appeared to be a miracle comeback win on a play in which Amon-Ra St. Brown lateraled the ball to QB Jared Goff after a catch was stopped just outside the end zone for the game-winner. The official ruling on the field was a touchdown. 

But St. Brown was flagged for offensive pass interference. It’s a ticky-tack call, one sold very well by Steelers DB Jalen Ramsey. The larger problem is that the penalty was not announced to either side until after almost five minutes of discussions. A clearly overwhelmed Carl Cheffers did a very poor job of controlling the situation, which appeared to be resolved from over his head and outside the building. 

We’ll never know if that’s true or not, of course. The NFL’s intentional lack of transparency in such situations is infuriating and only leads to accusations of impropriety. Nothing Cheffers tells a pool reporter, or the league leaks to NFL.com or ESPN insiders to try and control the damage, will fix that. The league needs to learn from the XFL (now part of the UFL) and record those conversations between the off-field officials and the on-field ones. They don’t need to play them live as that league did, but have them available immediately after the game. And have a backup copy for each team, too, just in case the recording conveniently gets corrupted or lost somehow. Those need to be made available to reporters from both teams, as well. 

Officials are never going to get every call right. That’s inherent to the job. But the league’s corrections to them, and also the discussions amongst the on-field officials to try and get the calls right, need to be publicly transparent. The NFL would be wise to nip the growing distrust in the process in the bud. “Trust the shield” ain’t gonna cut it anymore. Sorry, Roger…

$.04--College/Draft quickies

--Congrats to the Ferris State Bulldogs, the D-II national champions. Ferris State won its fourth title in five years in convincing fashion, smoking Harding--the only other titlist in that five-year span--42-21 on Saturday. Bulldogs coach Tony Annese has created a juggernaut with players who could very easily attend MAC or CUSA schools but choose D-II for more immediate playing time and a winning culture in a great league. They are what the future of non-CFP college football looks like.

--The quarterback who led Ferris to the 2024 title was Trinidad Chambliss, a nifty, smart, dual-threat QB who was effectively a local for the Bulldogs. Chambliss transferred up to Ole Miss and kept on growing his game, showing he was ready for the SEC despite being only a little bigger than Bryce Young. He and the Rebels now have a CFP victory on the resume, too. 

Chambliss, someone whom I’ve watched since his HS days in Grand Rapids, is a Day 3 NFL Draft prospect if he doesn’t get his waiver for another college season approved; he had an injury early in his Ferris State career and has appealed for another year of eligibility. Having watched Chambliss play high school basketball as part of a great team that was better than the sum of its parts, I wouldn’t bet against him proving his size (optimistically listed at 6-1/200) isn’t a big issue. 

--I watched most of the Texas A&M/Miami CFP game on Saturday. It wasn’t easy to stay awake through a poorly executed offensive slog. Miami RB Malachi Toney turned from goat to hero, a storyline that is always fun to watch play out, scoring the only TD in the Hurricanes’ 10-3 win. The defenses were quite impressive, no doubt, but a game that saw just one drive in the first three quarters gain more than two first downs isn’t compelling football. 

--Alabama fell behind 17-0 to Oklahoma early, and everything pointed to the Sooners blowing out a tepid Crimson Tide offense. But QB Ty Simpson and Alabama didn’t get discouraged by a bad start. Simpson settled in and delivered two TD throws to Lotzeir Brooks. The Bama defense snagged a critical pick-6 off Oklahoma gunslinger John Mateer, and that early 17-0 deficit turned into a 34-24 Alabama win. That’s a gut check win for Kalen DeBoer and for Simpson, whose draft stock remains incredibly difficult to peg down. 

--If the NFL Draft were today, the New York Giants would pick first overall, followed by the Las Vegas Raiders. They are the only two teams with 2-14 records. Amazingly, these two teams play one another in Week 17 in Las Vegas. 

--Not football related, but congrats to the Texas A&M women’s volleyball team for beating SEC rival Kentucky to win the national title. The Aggies swept the Wildcats to win the crown, but it was A&M’s 5-set win in Nebraska over the Cornhuskers to get to the final four that will long be remembered in the volleyball world. Nebraska had one of the most dominant seasons of any college sports team ever, and A&M overcame. That’s mighty impressive. 

$.05--I am a proud Ohio Bobcat who happens to live in Michigan. One of the biggest banes of my existence, along with the Steve Miller Band and shoppers who put their cart on one side of the aisle and go get an item from the other side, is how frequently Michigan Wolverines fans refer to Ohio State as “Ohio”. 

We are Ohio. We are not Ohio State. I know it can be confusing with our green and white color scheme matching Michigan State, but we’re a MAC school. One that did better offensively against the Buckeyes this year than Michigan did, by the way…

Alas, my beloved alma mater has decided to emulate Michigan’s football program in all the wrong ways. 

Ohio fired head football coach Brian Smith with cause this week, not long after placing him on leave pending an investigation into school conduct violations. There were early accusations of Smith consuming and storing alcohol in his athletic department office, which is strictly prohibited and resulted in a formal reprimand. It seems minor, but it’s a definite transgression. 

The story didn’t stop there, and this is where the parallel with Michigan and the Sherrone Moore fiasco comes into play. From Yahoo Sports, 

Smith reportedly also engaged in a consensual romantic relationship with an undergraduate student, per records obtained by The Athletic on Thursday. Smith's lawyer, Rex Elliott, wrote in a statement Tuesday that Smith and his wife had already separated and were in the process of getting divorced when Smith began the relationship, which Elliott stressed was not an "extramarital affair."

Smith, who took over a year ago after highly successful predecessor, Tim Albin, left to take the Charlotte job, didn’t follow Moore’s path into stalking, threats of suicide and felony arrest. That’s about the only positive this Bobcat alum can muster from the tawdry affair. Big-school problems for a mid-major is not what Ohio bargained for, unfortunately.