—The Kansas City Chiefs continue to defy the odds. They won another close one, beating the Chargers 19-17 on a field goal on the final play. Combined with Buffalo’s 44-42 loss to the Rams, they can clinch the top seed by winning three of their last four games. They are now two games ahead of the 10-3 Bills with a 12-1 mark but if the Bills tie them, they get the top seed because they handed the Chiefs their only loss. The conventional wisdom is that the Chiefs can’t keep pulling out close games but they keep doing it.
–The only other AFC team with fewer than five losses is 10-3 Pittsburgh, which beat the Browns, 27-14. The Steelers would have to win out, which means beating the Chiefs on Christmas Day, and hope the Chiefs and Bills lose one other game for them to be guaranteed the top seed.
–In the NFC, the Lions have the top seed at 12-1 after beating the Packers 34-31 as coach Dan Campbell went for it five times on fourth down and made four of them although the one time they didn’t make it on their own 30 and virtually handed the Packers a touchdown that almost cost the Lions the game. But gambling is his style.
–The Eagles and Vikings both won to go to 11-2 and remain just a game behind the Lions. The Eagles got a scare from the Panthers before winning 22-16 and the Vikings routed the Falcons 42-21. Detroit has Buffalo this week and Minnesota in the season finale plus road games at Chicago and San Francisco and while the Eagles play Pittsburgh this week, they close Washington, Dallas and the Giants so the Lions, Eagles and Vikings will likely go down to the wire in the battle for the top seed. Except for 9-4 Green Bay, no other NFC team has fewer than five losses so the NFC North could have three teams in the playoffs.
–The Dallas Cowboys need to learn the rules when a team blocks a punt. If it goes past the line of scrimmage it is like a regular punt and if a player from the receiving team touches it, it is a free ball. When the Cowboys blocked a punt late in the fourth quarter of a tie game, Amani Oruwariye tried to field it, lost it and the Bengals recovered and Joe Burrow drove them for the touchdown to win, 27-20. A win would have given the Cowboys a 6-7 record and kept them in the playoff hunt but now at 5-8 their chances are remote. Burrow, meanwhile, had his house burglarized during the game.
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