No Such Thing as a Meaningless Game

 

We’re in the final week of the NFL season, and we all know what that means. A huge chunk of the league is eliminated, or has locked up their playoff spot so thoroughly that nothing that happens this weekend will really change their fate. And so, on a weekend where we will see sixteen games, seven of them really don’t mean anything at all.

This has been one of the most wide open and chaotic years in recent memory, and that has translated in two ways. In the AFC it means that just about every game carries some import, whether it’s for the last couple teams scrambling for a spot in the postseason, the top teams fighting for a first-round bye, or even simply a division title that will give the opportunity for a playoff game at home. In the NFC, the opposite is the case, as almost everything is set in stone and the majority of games might as well not be played at all.

But just because these games are meaningless doesn't mean they aren't worth watching. For these seven games, I've gone through and tried to identify some reason to pay attention to them, on the off chance they end up on your TV this weekend.

Dallas Cowboys @ Philadelphia Eagles

What the hell is going on with Dallas’s offense?

Dallas feels like the team headed into the postseason with the broadest range of potential outcomes. When you put all their pieces together they look like one of the most complete teams in the league, right up there with Green Bay, Tampa Bay, and Kansas City. But so far I’m not sure there’s been a single time this season when it’s felt like all those pieces are firing at the same time. Some of this was due to injuries, particularly on the defensive side, but they are mostly healthy now and have the potential to hit their stride right as the playoff starts.

So far, however, that is not what we’ve seen from them, with particular struggles on the offensive side of the ball. Two weeks ago they put up 42 points in the first half against Washington, but that’s one of only three games over the past ten that they’ve made it to 30 points. This should be a borderline unstoppable unit, with Dak Prescott showing flashes of MVP caliber play, two good wide receivers, two elite offensive linemen, and a solid pair of running backs. But they just never seem to actually make it work.

Smarter people than me have tried and failed to figure out what is wrong with this group. It could be coaching, the same unimaginative offensive gameplans that doomed Mike McCarthy in Green Bay. It could be Prescott, still figuring out how to adapt to his game after some loss of athleticism from his leg injury a year ago. It could be penalties or bad luck or any combination of all of these things. If they can fix this, they have the potential to blast through the playoffs to a title. If they can’t, they could fall flat on their faces and be sent packing in less than a week.

 

Cincinnati Bengal @ Cleveland Browns

The Latest Cleveland Catastrophe

Even with an outside chance still at a first round bye, the Bengals will likely be resting most of their important players, so there isn’t really much to see on that side of the ball. Cleveland is surrendering their biggest source of drama as well, as it sounds like Baker Mayfield’s season ended this past Monday night, as well as potentially his time with the Browns.

About the only thing interesting that could happen is if Case Keenum comes off the bench and performs admirably where Mayfield faltered. It will raise questions not just about what the Browns should do going forward, but also about how Kevin Stefanski managed the position through his starting quarterback’s struggles this year. At the end of a season where it seemed like everything that could have gone wrong for the Browns did go wrong, this seems like an almost certain outcome.

 

Minnesota Vikings @ Chicago Bears

Do any young players see the field?

I have to be honest, I’m not really sure what the point is in watching this game, even though I will likely catch every play. Maybe it would have been interesting to see if Justin Fields could do anything to end a disappointing year on a high note, but now that he’s on the COVID list it looks like we’ll be facing an Andy Dalton vs Kirk Cousins showdown.

That’s really the biggest problem with both of these teams. In seasons that were going nowhere in a hurry, both teams saw lame duck coaches force anything close to young potential to the bench in the hopes that veterans could get them one or two extra wins so they could sneak into the playoffs. After spending multiple first round picks on Fields, the Bears let Matt Nagy waste two months waffling over whether or not he was the best option to start for the team. And after the Vikings used a third round pick on Kellen Mond, he was relegated to the bench in favor of Sean Mannion for their lifeless performance against the Packers a week ago.

It goes even past the quarterback position. Both teams used high picks on likely left tackles of the future, and both saw them miss time early in the season due to injury. Christian Darrisaw made his way into the starting role once he got healthy and has looked promising, but Teven Jenkins has been jerked around, in and out of the lineup as Jason Peters has dealt with injuries of his own. Even with nothing to play for, the Bears left Jenkins on the bench last weekend in favor of the 39 year old Peters.

Will that change this week? Probably not. But it might be fun on the off chance we do see some snaps from young Vikings like Wyatt Davis, Ihmir Smith-Marsette, and Patrick Jones. Or Bears like Thomas Graham, Trevis Gipson, and Khyris Tonga. These players may not be the future of their teams, but they’re a lot closer than the veterans who have been playing ahead of them all year.

 

Green Bay Packers @ Detroit Lions

The 2020 Backup Battle

Many eyebrows were raised when the Packers selected Jordan Love in the first round of the 2020 draft, and they remained raised as Love spent his entire rookie season not just on the sideline, but in street clothes. He didn’t get a single snap, not even in mop-up duty, and the Packers made it very clear that if anything happened to Aaron Rodgers they were going to turn to the (slightly) more experienced Tim Boyle to replace him.

Love ascended to the backup role when Boyle left as a free agent, and he got his first regular season action when Rodgers missed a game by being a selfish dumbass. Meanwhile, Boyle just hopped across Lake Michigan to the Lions and got his first serious playing time when Jared Goff went down. 

Both quarterbacks have been pretty terrible when they’ve been on the field this year. Love has completed less than 60% of his passes. Boyle is averaging less than 6 yards per attempt. Love at least wins in touchdown to interception ratio, where his 1:1 is less ugly than Boyle’s 3:6. Love may not even see the field this weekend, as Rodgers has stated his desire to play. But if he does get pulled early in a meaningless game, we could finally witness the battle two years in the making as these former teammates fight for who deserved to be second on the depth chart a year ago.

 

Washington Football Team @ New York Giants

Do the Giants even want to be here?

I’ve watched a lot of football in my life and seen a lot of things, and even I was stunned by what the Giants did last weekend. Facing off against the Bears, they did everything short of issuing a press release saying, “We are contractually obligated to take the field for this game, but we will endeavor to make it as short and as meaningless as possible."

In a game where they trailed by 19 at halftime and ended up losing by 26, they somehow called only 16 pass plays versus 39 run attempts. That’s a ratio that would have been absurd for a team on the winning side of a blowout in the 1970s, and in the modern era it seems almost like a typo. Trailing by 14 after the first quarter, they did not call a single pass play in the second quarter.

This is somewhat understandable given what they were working with at quarterback, where Mike Glennon managed to turn the ball over four times on his sixteen dropbacks and their net passing yards for the game were actually negative. Putting the ball in his hands didn’t really gain them anything.

Except that it would have made it look like they were at least trying, that they had some pride and cared somewhat about winning this football game. There are dozens of completely meaningless games in the NFL every year, and I can’t recall ever seeing a team collectively shrug its shoulders like the Giants did a week ago. Maybe a matchup with a division rival will get them going this weekend. Or maybe they will find a new low, and will simply punt the ball away every time they’re on offense to avoid accidentally stumbling into points that could make this a competitive game.

 

Pittsburgh Steelers @ Baltimore Ravens

Records to be Broken

I’m breaking the rules here a little. Both of these teams are technically still alive for the playoffs, needing a win and a bit of extra help to make it. 538 gives Pittsburgh a 7% chance of making the postseason and Baltimore a 2% chance, meaning there’s almost a one in ten chance the winner of this game gets to play another week after. The odds are long, but not impossible.

But I mainly want to use this as an opportunity to talk about statistical records. The one on everyone’s mind for this game is the single-season sack record, currently held by Michael Strahan at 22.5. TJ Watt enters this game with 21.5 sacks on the season, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities going against the team that has given up more sacks than any other in the league.

Of course, this comes with the very significant caveat that we are in the first year in which the NFL is playing a 17 game schedule. In most past years the season would be done by now, and Watt wouldn’t have a chance to go for that record. The same can be said of Cooper Kupp taking a run at Calvin Johnson’s receiving yardage record. They only have a chance because of the extra game each team has.

But if you dive a big deeper, things get even more complicated. Watt has missed two full games this season and had to leave early in a couple others, meaning he is going to finish with fewer games played than Strahan had when he set the mark. And while Kupp will have played in a full 17 games this year, he’s on a team that has only thrown the ball 575 times this year, well short of the 740 pass attempts the Lions had in 2012 when Johnson set the record. Why is an additional game played an obstacle to taking the record seriously, and an extra 165 opportunities to get open and catch the football are not?

The truth is these records are all going to be broken sooner or later. This isn’t the first time the NFL has increased the number of games in its schedule, and it won’t be the last. Does it make it a little awkward to compare current seasons to past? Yeah, it does. But it doesn’t mean we should start putting asterisks on every achievement. If Watt or Kupp break these records, it’s because they put up the most production they could in the opportunities they were given, just as Strahan and Johnson did before them.

 

Carolina Panthers @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Gunning for Volume

The MVP race seems more or less decided at this point, with Aaron Rodgers as the heavy favorite to win for the second year in a row. He’s had a very efficient performance for the team with the best record in the league, and the game he cost his team with his buffoonery ended up not meaning anything in the end. He wouldn’t get my vote, but unfortunately I don’t actually have a vote.

The one potential challenger that could pop up is Tom Brady. He hasn’t been as efficient as Rodgers, throwing 12 interceptions to Rodgers’s four and sitting comfortably behind him in both passer rating and ANY/A. Both had disastrous games against the Saints, but Brady’s came more recently and in primetime, which for a lot of people seems to have knocked him out of the running.

The one clear edge he has on Rodgers is sheer volume. Efficiency is wonderful, but at a certain point more is simply more. And Brady sure has more. Right now he has five more touchdowns than Rodgers and 1013 more yards. This is largely a product of having 169 more pass attempts, but almost definitionally that means his team relies on him more. That’s 169 more opportunities to add value, 169 more opportunities to help his team.

Brady will probably spend a big chunk of this game on the sideline as well, but what if he doesn’t? What if the Buccaneers decide to simply go for it, to let him air things out and blow Rodgers’s numbers out of the water? With 488 yards he could break the single-season mark for passing, and put himself almost a full mile ahead of Rodgers. It won’t happen, and it wouldn’t matter if it did. But it’s fun to imagine the Buccaneers taking a shot at it.