Every week this NFL season, we will break down the highs and lows—and everything in between—from the most recent slate of pro football. This week brought us an MVP-level performance from Drake Maye, a much more lackluster showing from Josh Allen, the setup for games that’ll decide division titles, and more. Welcome to Winners and Losers.
Winner: The Kyle Shanahan–Ben Johnson Scheme-Off
Bears-49ers felt like it lasted for five hours, and I don’t think anyone watching would have been upset if it went into overtime. The football was that good, thanks to the outrageous quarterback play from Brock Purdy and Caleb Williams and the play calling of Kyle Shanahan and Ben Johnson. The two teams combined for 10 touchdowns and only five punts in a 42-38 win for San Francisco.
Shanahan and Johnson went blow-for-blow in a heavyweight battle of two of the league’s top offensive minds. This round went to Shanahan in a close call. He was a step ahead of Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen with his run calls all night, spinning the heads of Chicago’s defenders with an array of motions and shifts right before the snap. Watch fullback Kyle Juszczyk’s motion create a blocking mismatch with a cornerback on the perimeter, which opens a lane for Christian McCaffrey to cruise through to the end zone:
Juszczyk’s heavier involvement in the run game this season has given it a much-needed boost, and the Niners offense is humming like it was in 2023. The fact that Purdy’s gotten back to full health after an early-season bout with turf toe has also played a big role. He’s making the layup throws that Shanahan and the run game set up for him, like we saw throughout his breakout season two years ago, while also displaying the playmaking chops he showed during a tough 2024 campaign. Sunday night’s performance wasn’t Purdy’s best from a statistical standpoint, but it may have been the most impressive game he’s put on tape in his young career. This play had nothing to do with Shanahan’s schemes or the surrounding talent; it was all Purdy.
Typically, when Shanahan and Purdy are on their respective games, opponents don’t stand a chance of keeping pace with them. But the Bears took every punch the Niners had and responded with haymakers of their own. Chicago generated nine explosive plays, including touchdowns of 35 yards, 36 yards, and 22 yards. On the first of those scores, Johnson dialed up the perfect coverage beater to pry open San Francisco’s secondary. Colston Loveland’s route drew the weakside safety, which opened up DJ Moore on the dig route.
That’s where the play was designed to go, but Luther Burden III’s clear-out route broke open, and Williams hit him with the most effortless 50-yard throw you will ever see.
Johnson got a bit too cute at the end of the game, which may have cost the Bears an extra play to win. With just 21 seconds remaining and Chicago out of timeouts, the rookie head coach called a hook-and-lateral play for D’Andre Swift. The 49ers were in zone coverage, so they had multiple defenders in position to make the tackle well short of the goal line, and that forced the Bears to scramble to the line for a spike that stopped the clock with only four seconds remaining.
On their final play of the game, the Bears couldn’t spring a receiver open, which sent Williams into scramble mode. He forced a fadeaway pass that skipped off the grass right in front of his receiver.
49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh deserves some credit there for the defensive front, which caused a protection bust by the left tackle while also dropping eight into coverage. It was one of the few defensive wins on the night for either team. The Bears couldn’t stop Christian McCaffrey or get anywhere close to Purdy for much of the game. The 49ers defense fared a little bit better against the run but looked lost in coverage on key pass downs and didn’t generate much of a rush either. Neither defense looks championship ready, but with Johnson and Shanahan calling the plays, the Bears and 49ers will be able to score against any team they might come across in the playoffs.
Loser: Mike Tomlin
You didn’t think a Mike Tomlin team would make it easy, did you? Over the years, the Steelers have mastered the art of blowing games against god-awful teams, and they did it again on Sunday. According to CBS Sports researcher Doug Clawson, Pittsburgh’s 13-6 loss in Cleveland was the fifth consecutive time they’ve failed to win a game against a team that’s at least eight games under .500.
Each time that’s happened, the Steelers have been in the thick of the playoff race. And they’ve gone on to make the playoffs every time. If Tomlin is going to pull that off again, he’ll have to beat the Ravens next week in what could be a “loser leaves town” coaching matchup between him and John Harbaugh—who’s feeling the heat for the first time since Baltimore drafted Lamar Jackson. If Tomlin coaches like he did on Sunday against the Browns, it may be his last game on the Steelers sideline. He cost his team about 14 percentage points in win probability, according to RBSDM.com’s fourth-down decision bot. Pittsburgh’s punt on fourth-and-5 near midfield, with just under 10 minutes to go and the Steelers down four, was one of the most cowardly punts of the century.
Tomlin’s issues weren’t limited to fourth-down decision-making. He had a cowardly game plan in general. Myles Garrett was one of many who suggested the Steelers were more focused on preventing him from breaking the NFL’s single-season sack record than they were on winning the game. Tomlin shot down that notion postgame, but the stats lend credence to the theory. Per Next Gen Stats, Pittsburgh chipped or double-teamed Garrett on 41 percent of his pass rush snaps. On 17 of the 23 plays that they didn’t send extra help to Garrett’s side, Aaron Rodgers threw a quick pass or ran a rollout away from the Browns superstar. Rodgers averaged just 2.3 seconds per throw, which kept Garrett out of the sack column. It didn’t lead to productive offense, though. Rodgers didn’t attempt to push the ball downfield when kept clean. His average time to throw was 2.3 seconds on unpressured dropbacks, and his average depth of target was just 5.8 yards. When he was pressured, Rodgers melted and averaged just 0.4 yards per dropback. That’s about a foot and a half more than you averaged from your couch on Sunday.
Rodgers still nearly sent the game into overtime, bringing the Steelers within 6 yards of a game-tying touchdown. Then he decided to challenge Denzel Ward (while targeting Marquez Valdes-Scantling!) on three straight plays. You won’t believe how that turned out:
The Browns cornerback was legitimately offended by Pittsburgh’s strategy, as he said after the game, and he came up with three straight stops to stymie the Steelers and set up next week’s AFC North title game between Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
The Ravens stayed in the divisional hunt Saturday night thanks to a dominant Derrick Henry game: 36 carries for 216 yards and four touchdowns. Packers tacklers were reluctant to take Henry on in the open field, and I can’t blame them on what was a blisteringly cold night at Lambeau Field. A lot of business decisions were made in Green Bay.
With Lamar Jackson out injured, the Ravens were incentivized to just keep feeding Henry. Backup quarterback Tyler Huntley attempted just 20 passes and finished with a QBR of 91.0 even though the game was surprisingly high-scoring. It’s unclear whether Jackson will recover from his back injury in time for next week’s game, and if he’s out, that’ll obviously make things more difficult for Harbaugh’s team. But with Henry showing he can still take over a game and Huntley showing he can provide a steady hand behind a strong run game, the Ravens should be confident they can outscore this Steelers team regardless. Pittsburgh will be without DK Metcalf, who is serving a two-game suspension for his altercation with a fan in Detroit, and tight end/human tank Darnell Washington left Sunday’s loss with a broken arm. That will give Tomlin and Rodgers two more reasons to take a timid approach once again.
Winner: The Week 18 Slate (Kind Of)
The NFL will have three divisional title games next week and two playoff spots up for grabs, which has to be a relief for the league office—there was a time on Sunday when we were staring down the prospect of a Week 18 with zero playoff stakes outside of seeding. We’ll now get two division deciders in the prime time slots, with Seattle and San Francisco vying for the NFC West title and the conference’s no. 1 seed on Saturday night and the Ravens and Steelers playing for the AFC North title on Sunday Night Football. Those are two of the best rivalries in recent league history and should make for compelling television. But football fans may need more convincing to tune in to the third divisional title game, featuring the 8-8 Panthers and 7-9 Buccaneers. Based on what we saw out of the NFC South teams on Sunday, that may not be a pleasant viewing experience.
It’s hard to pick which team’s loss was a bigger disappointment. Tampa Bay lost to a Miami team that hasn't had anything to play for in weeks, and they got dunked on by seventh-round rookie quarterback Quinn Ewers. A loss to Seattle isn’t embarrassing for Carolina, but the offense finished with just 10 points and 139 yards, and they failed to take advantage of several Sam Darnold mistakes. I’m not sure how high the expectations were in Charlotte, but the Panthers still failed to meet them.
An ineffective passing attack hurt both teams in their respective losses. Baker Mayfield and Bryce Young had a long-distance mid-off, though “mid” might be a generous way to describe their contributions on Sunday. Mayfield threw two picks and lost a fumble, and two of the turnovers came in the fourth quarter, halting a possible rally for Tampa Bay. He was decent outside of those three mistakes, throwing for 346 yards and two touchdowns, but the turnovers were enough to sink the Bucs—and that’s been the case far too often over the second half of the season. Only Darnold, Shedeur Sanders, and J.J. McCarthy have thrown more picks since Week 9, per TruMedia. Young has played better of late, but Sunday’s game felt like a setback for the third-year quarterback. He turned it over just once—on an underthrown pass that was intercepted—but managed just 54 yards on 31 dropbacks. That’s not a typo, and Young needed a (relatively) big fourth quarter just to get over the 50-yard mark. He went into the halftime break with just 16 yards on 16 dropbacks. That’s 3 feet per play!
The Buccaneers opened up as 3-point favorites at home next week, which means the oddsmakers see this as an even matchup on paper. That feels right. Neither team’s defense can be trusted, and both offenses are maddeningly inconsistent—they’ll look like powerhouses one week and bottom-five outfits the next. Despite the ugliness of the Panthers’ offensive performance against an elite Seahawks defense, they might be the more trustworthy unit in this game. Carolina didn’t generate much of a rushing attack on Sunday, but they ran over Tampa Bay’s defense a week ago, which set Young up for a productive outing. Meanwhile, the Bucs still can’t run, and Mayfield’s turnover luck has fallen off a cliff after a fortunate start to the season. Neither team is playing its best ball heading into the potential winner-takes-all game, but there will be plenty of drama regardless. That’ll be enough to get this football-crazed country to tune in.
Winner: Drake Maye
Let me get this out of the way early: Maye was playing the Jets.
That’s a perfectly good reason to scoff at a big day for a quarterback. New York’s pass defense is generationally bad, and after Maye threw for five scores in a 42-10 win on Sunday, opposing passers have combined for a 32-to-0 touchdown-to-interception ratio against the team. Even so, many quarterbacks have gotten a crack at this Jets pass defense and didn’t put up the numbers Maye did in a performance that might have wrapped up the MVP race. By total EPA (30.6), it was the best performance by any passer this season. By dropback success rate (87.5 percent), it was the best game a quarterback has played this century. Maye also posted the highest QBR (99.8) since ESPN created the metric in 2006. We have literally never seen a stat line like the one Maye posted on Sunday.
So, yeah, it was a masterful performance no matter the strength of the opposing pass defense. And that can be said about Maye’s season as a whole. New England’s weak schedule has been used as an argument against Maye’s MVP worthiness, but the guy hasn’t had a truly bad game since Week 1.
Maye has played six games against defenses ranked in the top half of the league in EPA per dropback. He’s averaged 0.17 EPA and 7.3 yards per dropback against them with a 51.6 percent success rate. Those would be top-five numbers in all three categories for the season, per TruMedia. The Patriots as a whole have averaged 24.8 points per game in those contests and gone 4-2, which includes the Week 15 loss against Buffalo when New England put up 31 points. Sure, Maye has beaten up on bad pass defenses this season, but he’s also had his way with good ones.
Maye is also the only viable MVP candidate who will win his division, assuming the Seahawks hold off the Rams in the NFC West, and that’s been a prerequisite for MVP winners in the past. The Patriots wrapped up their first division title since 2019 thanks to Sunday’s win and Buffalo’s loss. Speaking of which …
Loser: Josh Allen
It’s a bit harsh to call Allen a loser after Sunday’s performance, but the two lasting images from Buffalo’s 13-12 loss to the Eagles will be his strange fumble that set up Philly’s only touchdown of the game and his missed throw to a wide-open Khalil Shakir on the failed go-ahead two-point try at the end of the game.
That’s an inexcusable miss, and it wasted an eventful touchdown drive that featured: Buffalo extending the drive with a fourth-down lateral …
… Allen and Brandin Cooks pushing Buffalo into scoring range with a ridiculous throw and catch in the rain …
… and Buffalo getting into the end zone with a tush push, against the team that brought it to the NFL.
It was an exciting ending to an otherwise sloppy game. Both offenses had an excuse for their poor play with the weather—it was a legit downpour, which made even the most basic football actions look difficult. Allen seemed to cope with the conditions better than his counterpart, Jalen Hurts, who didn’t complete a single pass in the second half. That made some history.
But Hurts, as he’s wont to do, avoided any game-changing mistakes, while Allen committed the turnover and missed the throw that ultimately lost Buffalo the game and its chance at winning the division. With Maye lighting it up against the Jets, this may have been Allen’s last chance at keeping up in the MVP race—and he kind of blew it.
Winners: Backup Quarterbacks
It’s that time of the calendar when dudes you kind of recognize from their college football days start popping up during NFL games. Week 17 marked the unofficial start of Backup QB Season, where 12 quarterbacks who began the season on the bench—or the couch, in Philip Rivers’s case—started for their teams, including four of the six starting spots on Christmas Day. If you want to feel better about your spending habits after the holidays, just remember that Netflix paid $150 million for the rights to broadcast a doubleheader that featured Josh Johnson and Max Brosmer. The Chris Oladokun–Bo Nix nightcap wasn’t much better.
We saw some preseason-level quarterback play over the weekend, but there were also some potentially star-making performances. Saints rookie Tyler Shough continued his late-season push with an impressive showing against the Titans. Ewers led Miami to an upset of the Bucs, may have put an end to the Tua Tagovailoa era, and possibly saved Mike McDaniel’s job for 2026. Huntley had a super efficient night in Baltimore’s win, while Packers backup (and pending free agent) Malik Willis may have earned himself a big payday with yet another big game filling in for an injured Jordan Love. The 26-year-old continues to flash the arm talent and athleticism that had some wondering if a team would take a chance on him in the first round of the 2022 draft.
Willis has also shown signs of real development as a pocket passer, which had been the weakest part of his game as a prospect.
And he’s been so good in relief of Love that Packers coach Matt LaFleur had to “pump the brakes” on questions about a potential quarterback controversy over the weekend. The idea that Willis gives Green Bay a better chance to win than Love is absurd, of course, but the fourth-year quarterback does look capable of starting for another team.
Even with Brosmer, who netted 9 feet of passing in a win over Detroit, and Oladukon, who averaged 2.8 yards per dropback, dragging down the numbers, the backup brigade wasn’t too bad in Week 17. The 12 quarterbacks who didn’t start in Week 1 averaged –0.01 EPA per dropback with a 39.9 percent success rate, per TruMedia. The Week 1 starters who also started in Week 17 were only slightly more efficient, with a 0.01 EPA average and a 41.1 percent success rate. It was a valiant effort for the fill-ins, who did their part in making a thin slate of games a little more watchable. And with the playoff field mostly set, and more teams incentivized to rest their starters, the horde of backups will only grow larger next week.
Winner: DeMeco Ryans
If it wasn’t already clear after DeMeco Ryans turned around the Texans in his first two seasons and led them to two playoff appearances in as many years, it is undeniable now: He is one of the elite coaches in the sport and the best defensive-minded head coach in the NFL.
Ryans and the Texans booked another trip to the playoffs this weekend with their typical formula. The pass rush overwhelmed a Chargers offensive line that was fielding its 23rd lineup combination of the season, pressuring Justin Herbert on 47.6 percent of his dropbacks and sacking him five times. Every clean Herbert dropback felt like a holiday miracle—but with Houston’s secondary enveloping L.A. receivers downfield, nothing about those plays was easy. The Texans made Herbert earn every positive gain.
Ryans’s defense turned Saturday’s game into a Sisyphean exercise for the Chargers quarterback.
Los Angeles didn’t fare any better when it kept the ball on the ground. Only three of its 17 designed rush attempts gained enough yards to be deemed successful, per TruMedia: a 7-yard run in the first quarter, a 3-yard run near the goal line at the end of the third quarter, and Omarion Hampton’s 5-yard touchdown in the fourth. The other 14 runs gained an average of 1.4 yards per pop and lost 8.4 expected points.
Houston’s defensive dominance covered for the offense once again. After a hot start for C.J. Stroud, whose first four dropbacks produced 142 yards and two touchdowns, things fizzled out on that side of the ball. Stroud threw for just 93 yards over the final three quarters and finished the game with an ugly stat line, including two picks that kept the Chargers in the game. While Houston’s run game was a bit more useful than L.A.’s, it wasn’t much better, generating just 3.5 yards per attempt with a 37.5 percent success rate. In most cases, an offensive performance like that would result in a big loss. Instead, it was a fairly comfortable win thanks to Houston’s all-powerful defense.
We’re watching one of the best defenses of the past 10 years, and it’s been built in Ryans’s image. Plenty of stars and elite role players line up for the Texans, but they all buy into an “unbelievable culture,” in the words of superstar Will Anderson Jr., that’s allowed them to jell. Houston’s defensive success isn’t built on deception or next-level scheming. The Texans don’t blitz a lot, they don’t disguise coverages too often, and most of the time, the opponents know what they’re getting. But as was the case with the great defenses throughout the modern history of the sport—like the “Legion of Boom” Seahawks of the 2010s and the Buccaneers of the early 2000s—it doesn’t really matter whether the offense can anticipate what’s coming. The defense lines up and dominates anyway. Talent is a prerequisite to get to that level, but so is elite coaching. The Texans have both. In a wide-open AFC, that could be enough.
Winner: Maxx Crosby
I consider Crosby a winner for not having to participate in the shameless tank-off between the Raiders and Giants on Sunday, though he probably wouldn’t agree with me. The star pass rusher stated his desire to play in the game, but the team shut him down for the season citing a knee injury that Crosby had been playing through. After he was informed of the decision, he reportedly stormed out of the Raiders facility.
Crosby was still clearly upset with the choice on Saturday and decided to make the situation even messier by posting clips of himself playing basketball and a photo of him playing with his daughter on a trampoline to Instagram.
That may have been the most impressive display of athleticism by a Raider this weekend, as the team got run off its home field by the Giants in a 34-10 loss. But losing seemed to be the goal, with Las Vegas shutting down its best players on both sides of the ball. Tight end Brock Bowers was also shelved for the loss, which pushed the Raiders to the top of the draft board and dropped New York into the second slot with one week to go.
