Bell Tolls: Separation desperately needed in this wild playoff scramble
This might be the wildest stretch run yet in the NFL.
With a quarter of the season to play, 12 teams are in the running for six AFC playoff spots. In the NFC, essentially there are nine teams are in the running.
No doubt, it's time for some separation.
This weekend's slate will provide some critical answers. The defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, on the heels of the slumping Arizona Cardinals in the NFC West, are challenged to knock off the surging Eagles in Philadelphia.
The Cardinals host the Kansas City Chiefs. The Baltimore Ravens are at the Miami Dolphins. The Cincinnati Bengals will try to hold off the Pittsburgh Steelers.
And the San Diego Chargers, with arguably the toughest schedule of any playoff hopeful, will host a New England Patriots team trying to hang on to the AFC pole position.
By Sunday night, the musical chairs snapshot of the NFL playoff picture could look a bit different than it does now, with the Chargers and Dolphins, for example, holding the final two AFC playoff spots.
Or maybe not.
Regardless, there will be more make-or-break matchups next week, and the week after that.
What gives?
Health is always an obvious factor. The Eagles have stayed afloat with Mark Sanchez subbing for the injured Nick Foles, while the battered Cardinals may have suffered one injury too many with Carson Palmer giving way to Drew Stanton.
Scheduling will surely matter if the Detroit Lions head into Green Bay in Week 17 with a very possible scenario of needing a victory to seize the NFC North crown. The Packers have the NFL's longest winning streak, four games, and are even more imposing than that implies at Lambeau Field.
But I'm not sure that home-field advantage will be the difference-maker next weekend when the Seahawks host the offensively-slumped 49ers and Dallas, undefeated on the road, visits Philadelphia. Those games will more likely be determined by whether the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys can correct the ills that contributed to both of them getting smashed on Thanksgiving.
In a nutshell, though, the word for December is momentum.
For the Packers, that means adding more layers of consistency on top of Aaron Rodgers' brilliance.
For the 49ers, on the flip side, the challenge is to finally put it all together as more layers of anticipation for Jim Harbaugh's departure are added to the drama. Or else.
You hear it all the time. Teams try to build to be at their best in December. Well, it's time to prove that now.
"We have to win out," Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs declared.
Suggs said that after Baltimore blew a 10-point lead in the final five minutes at home against the Chargers last weekend, during which Philip Rivers exposed a shaky pass defense.
So much for the one-game-at-a-time rhetoric.
Yet Suggs knows. The margin of error is gone.
But before scoffing at the wishful thinking of a linebacker from a 7-5 team that lost its boulder in the middle of the defense with Haloti Ngata's suspension, remember that this is the NFL.
Two years ago, the Ravens got into the playoffs as a 10-6 wild card entrant and won the Super Bowl. They fixed the offense, got key pieces back in Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, and made a run.
The season before that, the Giants made the playoffs as a 9-7 wild-card…and won the Super Bowl.
Green Bay has felt it both ways. In 2010, the Packers got in as the sixth seed that won it all. The next year, they were 15-1…and the top seed that fell to New York.
So there's the hope for the collection 7-5 teams out there. There's time to make that run.
Which reminds me of 2005. The Steelers were 7-5 in early December, but Jerome Bettis kept clinging to the image from a dream he swore he had during the offseason – that he would end his career by winning the Super Bowl in his hometown of Detroit.
The moral for now: Dream on.
Other items of interest as Week 14 rolls on…
Who's hot: LeSean McCoy. The NFL's reigning rushing champ heads into Sunday's showdown against Seattle on the heels of his first back-to-back 100-yard rushing games of the season. During a five-day window against Tennessee and Dallas, "Shady" rushed for a combined 289 yards and averaged a whopping 6.3 yards per carry. This is just what the Eagles need for the stretch, which reduces pressure on quarterback Mark Sanchez. Yet after slashing the suspect Titans and Cowboys defenses, a tougher test comes against a No. 1-ranked Seahawks D that allows just 3.5 yards per carry and has benefitted greatly from middle linebacker Bobby Wagner's return from a five-game injury layoff. In two divisional battles since Wagner came back, Seattle limited Frank Gore to 28 yards (2.8 per carry) and Andre Ellington to 24 yards (2.4 per rush).
Key matchup:Ike Taylor vs. A.J. Green. The Steelers' crafty corner, Taylor, came back last week after missing eight games due to a shoulder injury. Now let's see if he's able to do what he's done so capably in the past – handle Green in a one-on-one assignment. The Bengals offense often runs through Green, whose had 19 career 100-yard games, but just two in December and none in the cases where he was shadowed by Taylor. If Taylor holds up, it will allow D-coordinator Dick LeBeau – who has called the third-most blitzes in the NFL this season, according to ESPN – to aggressively pressure Andy Dalton. And with a high rate of Dalton's picks tied to blitzes, this might be the ultimate swing factor in the AFC North showdown.
Pressure's on:Drew Stanton. Brian Hoyer, on a short leash in Cleveland with Johnny Football waiting in the wings, isn't the only former Michigan State quarterback facing extreme heat these days. Stanton, the fill-in for injured starter Carson Palmer, heads into a critical game against the Chiefs with the serious need for a momentum switch. The Cardinals (9-3) are on their first two-game losing streak of the season, and their once-secure hold on first place has vanished. Stanton has a 1-to-3 TD-to-INT ratio during a losing streak that coincided with Larry Fitzgerald's absence, due to a knee injury. Fitzgerald seems poised to return Sunday, but starting running back Andre Ellington is out (hip pointer) to further weaken an already-ailing 31st-ranked rushing attack…which only heaps more pressure on the quarterback.
Next man up:Timmy Jernigan. The Ravens suffered a huge blow with the suspension that knocks Pro Bowl D-tackle Haloti Ngata out of commission for four games on a performance-enhancing drug violation, which puts the second-round pick from Florida State on the spot. Jernigan has played about 15 snaps per game and demonstrated promise coming off the bench. Now he'll likely make his first NFL start on Sunday at Miami, where the temperature is projected to be 80 degrees. So his endurance will be tested. It's ironic that Ngata's suspension is such a factor in the need for Jernigan to step up. A projected first-rounder, his draft stock slipped last spring amid reports that he failed a combine drug test due to a diluted sample.
Rookie watch:Jarvis Landry. Another example of this year's extraordinary rookie receivers crop -- at least a dozen have had significant impact in Year 1, bucking the typical learning curve – can be found in Miami's second-round pick. Landry, a toughie whom coach Joe Philbin describes as "fearless" because he isn't shy about going over the middle, has grown into Ryan Tannehill's go-to target. After leading the team in receptions in each of the past four games, Landry, an LSU teammate of Giants rookie phenom, Odell Beckham, Jr., has surpassed Mike Wallace to become the team's leading receptor for the season with 57 catches.
Stat's the fact: When Ryan Fitzpatrick scorched the Titans last weekend, he notched the fourth six-touchdown game this season for a quarterback, following Aaron Rodgers and the back-to-back jobs by Ben Roethlisberger. You'd have go back to 1969 to find the only other case with four six-TD games by passers – Billy Kilmer, Charley Johnson, Daryle Lamonica and Joe Kapp. Also striking when comparing the feats: Interceptions. None of the quarterbacks threw a pick in their six-TD games this season, while the 1969 quartet combined for five interceptions in their big games. Also notable is that the four games in 1969 all came before Week 8, while all of the games this season came after Week 7.