Last week we pre-wrote the 2025 Chiefs’ eulogy after their loss to the Texans, but now it’s time for the real thing. After Sunday’s 16-13 loss to the Chargers, they’re officially eliminated from the playoffs, and Patrick Mahomes suffered a season-ending ACL injury. The last 3 Chiefs seasons ended in a Super Bowl appearance; this one will end with multiple weeks of Gardner Minshew at QB.

What happens now? Do we watch them on Christmas? Will Taylor Swift keep showing up? I’m not sure what to do with my hands. They MUST type about the Chiefs, but there are no Chiefs to type about.

– Rodger Sherman

As the Indianapolis Colts prepared to start un-retired 44-year-old grandfather Philip Rivers against one of the most fearsome defenses in the NFL, we all wondered one of the strangest things we’ve ever had to wonder: Would the longtime NFL starter step back into the action and instantly look like a competent player, despite his age and five years away from the game? Or would he play like a middle-aged man who audibly goes “hhhuugnf!” every time he sits down in a chair?

Somehow, we got the weirdest answer: Both?!?!?!?!

Last week, Colts starting QB Daniel Jones suffered a season-ending injury. Their backup, Anthony Richardson, has been unavailable for most of the season after breaking his eye-bones in a freak resistance band injury earlier this year. Their third-stringer, Riley Leonard, is a rookie and a late-round draft pick. The only other QB on the roster is Brent Rypien, who is Bad.

So the team reached out to its starter from the 2020 season, a man with eight Pro Bowls and 10 children. Rivers is one of the few retired QBs who would be up for the task: A bona fide ball-lover whose post-retirement plans revolved around coaching high school football, not the usual pursuits of entrepreneurship and/or TV gigs. On Wednesday, the Colts announced they’d signed Rivers to the practice squad. On Saturday, they announced he would start over Leonard.

On Sunday, Grandpa Phil was clearly one of the most physically limited quarterbacks ever to take the field in an NFL game. He moved around the pocket like QWOP. When EA Sports re-programs Rivers into Madden, they should give him an “arm strength” rating of 13. Several clips of Rivers look like an NFL team grabbed a dad off the street and asked him to play QB a few days later. Which is literally what happened.

AND IT WORKED. (I mean. Almost.)

Rivers threw a touchdown in the second quarter …

… and the Colts took the lead on a 60-yard Blake Grupe field goal with less than a minute left in the game. (Grupe was also signed by the Colts this week and appears to be a middle schooler, which is actually just as interesting as Rivers playing as a grandpa.) Unfortunately, the Seahawks completed a few passes and Jason Myers kicked a 56-yard game winner with 18 seconds left.

Honestly, I’m flabbergasted. I said earlier this week that playing Rivers was one of the worst ideas I’d ever heard from an NFL team. I wasn’t trying to diss Rivers or the Colts’ coaching staff; the mental and physical acuity required to play QB at the highest level is a lot even for young guys! NFL game speed is different. These same Seahawks ate up Max Brosmer, a successful college QB, just a few weeks ago! Players who miss time with injuries can take weeks and months to get back to normal. What chance was there for a guy who had been out of the league for years? I had concerns not only for the Colts’ offense, but for Rivers’ physical health if he got sacked and snapped in

And the Colts were facing a vicious Seahawks defense that is fourth in the NFL in sacks and fifth in takeaways. The Colts also lost starting right tackle Braden Smith last week, and starting left tackle Bernhard Raimann during Sunday’s game. Luke Tenuta, who took over for Raimann, had played just seven career NFL snaps, all in the 2022 season.

And yet, the Colts hung tough. Sure, Rivers only had 120 passing yards, the second-fewest of any NFL starter this week, and the team’s leading receiver was backup running back Ameer Abdullah. But Rivers didn’t make any mistakes, and he didn’t get blended into an Old Man smoothie.

How did Indianapolis pull it off? They took the playbook that the Colts already share with the high school team Philip Rivers coaches and threw about half the pages in the trash. Any play that asked the quarterback to move his feet, took longer than two seconds to develop, or required significant arm strength? Trash, compost, recycling.

The Colts were third in play-action rate and sixth in RPOs before Sunday, and they have one of the league’s premier deep-ball specialists in Alec Pierce, who has the second-highest depth of target in the league. But on Sunday, they ran just two play-action passes on 28 dropbacks. Sixteen of Rivers’ 18 completions were caught within five yards of the line of scrimmage. (He was 16-for-17 with a touchdown on those passes, and 2-for-9 with an interception on everything else.) Everything the Colts ran was fast-fast-fast, and the Seahawks struggled to hit Rivers all game long. (He got sacked once, but it was that play up there where he kinda fell down himself.)

I remain skeptical that Rivers is a long-term solution for the Colts, whose projected playoff odds dropped to 10 percent with the loss. I don’t see any way an offense this limited can be effective for an extended period of time. It’s a stretch to say it was effective Sunday, considering Indianapolis averaged just 3.7 yards per play and lost to a team that failed to score a touchdown. I am still pretty worried that Rivers will snap like a Pocky stick the first time he really gets hit.

But you’ve gotta tip your cap to Rivers. He had no reason to do this, financially nor professionally, and spent most of the week getting laughed at by people like me who didn’t think he could pull it off. But even in a loss, he cemented his reputation as one of the game’s purest ballers. He understood what he could and couldn’t do, and Indianapolis nearly won the game.

And hey, this was his first game back after not playing in five years! Maybe Grandpa Phil just needed to knock off some rust and get some game reps before looking like the guy we watched for 15 years.

Two NFL teams got shut out Sunday, the first NFL game day with multiple shutouts since 2018. Those two teams:

The Bengals aren’t supposed to get shut out! It was their first shutout loss since Week 1 of the 2017 season, and it eliminated them from the playoffs. It’s worth noting that Tee Higgins was out for this game … but 24 to NOTHING?!?!?!?

The Ravens were out there pitching laterals on Joe Burrow picks for touchdowns:

Burrow has been existential about football lately. When he returned from injury a few weeks ago, he said he would always play while healthy on principle: “We’re getting paid a lot of money to play a kids’ game. … I love playing. I just want to put on a show for the fans.” Last week, Burrow echoed that sentiment, but with sadness rather than excitement: "I want to keep doing this, I have to have fun doing it. … I've been through a lot and if it's not fun, then what am I doing it for?”

Sunday, he was a bit more grounded. Burrow pinned the loss on himself: "There's not a team in the NFL that would've won the game today if I was the quarterback. … I think this is one of the worst games that I've played.”

He’s right — but more specifically, this team can’t win with Burrow playing like he did. Since making the Super Bowl in 2021, Cincinnati has gone all in on the Burrow offense, spending extravagantly to give its franchise QB an elite supporting cast. Relatedly, the Bengals’ defense can’t stop anybody. Last year, they managed to miss the postseason in a year when Burrow led the league in basically every passing statistic. This year, they’re dead last in points allowed.

Both the vibes and the scoring are gone in Cincinnati. I can comprehend a Joe Burrow-led Bengals team that loses shootouts, but I’m not sure what to make of the one that loses shutouts. Hopefully Burrow recaptures the fun this offseason, because this team isn’t going anywhere if Burrow is less than perfect.

With the Chiefs eliminated from the playoffs, sports media members must find a new person to write about every week. In my case, apparently that’s J.J. McCarthy. I don’t like this for me.

McCarthy looked legitimately good Sunday night, throwing for a career-high 250 yards in a 36-24 win over the Cowboys. Ever since I said he was The Worst and that the Vikings needed to move on, he’s thrown for five touchdowns and one interception in two easy wins.

However, I stand by my take that McCarthy needed to be deemed Extremely Bad so that head coach Kevin O’Connell could do that thing where he takes Extremely Bad quarterbacks and makes them good. Honestly, Vikings fans should thank me and the rest of McCarthy’s haters.

Unfortunately, McCarthy may have a new hater. He apparently openly defied his head coach’s request to not hit the Griddy on his way into the end zone on this play:

But I’ll stand up for Nine: I have long recommended pre-end zone dance routines as a countermeasure against the scourge of players dropping the ball before reaching the end zone. I am, oddly, on J.J. McCarthy’s side. This is a very confusing time for me.

🦬 The game of the day was Bills-Pats. Buffalo rallied back from a 21-0 deficit to win 35-31, and kept New England from clinching the AFC East. New England completely failed the “built for this moment” test. No team with a record this far above .500 had ever blown a lead that big before (161-0, now 161-1.)

🎢 The Panthers’ remarkable run of alternating wins and losses entered its eighth week with a loss to the Saints. New Orleans won on a last-second kick by former Gaelic footballer Charlie Smyth:

🛩️ My Jets allowed six touchdowns (five passing, one running) to Trevor Lawrence in a 48-20 loss to the Jags … which reminded me of the way the 0-13 Jets needlessly won a Week 15 game over the playoff-bound Rams in 2020, preventing them from drafting Trevor Lawrence. I guess this is an improvement, strategically?

Here’s the latest video on our YouTube channel! It’s about how Indiana started the 2025 season as the losingest team in college football history and ended it as the #1 team in the sport.

We’ve seen a lot of really bad teams become really good recently. Hopefully someday it happens to the new losingest team in college football history! (Please.)