With Week 14 of the NFL season concluding only three weeks remain in the 2020 NFL season. The Last Word on Pro Football will only feature takeaways from teams currently in the playoffs or in the playoff hunt.
With Week 14 of the NFL season coming to a close, three weeks remain in the season as the path towards the playoffs begins. Teams such as the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs have clinched their respective divisions while teams such as the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills look to fend off teams in the hunt.
As the season reaches its end, how many more teams will punch their ticket to the postseason? And how many will fall just short?
Without further ado, here are our NFL Week 14 takeaways from the week that was.
NFL Week 14 Takeaways
An MVP Performance in Detroit
The Green Bay Packers have captured their second consecutive NFC North crown under Matt LaFleur after an MVP-performance from Aaron Rodgers in Detroit. For all the criticism this team faced during the off-season and at the NFL Draft, Green Bay now sits atop the NFC North and in the NFC as the number one seed after New Orleans’ loss on Sunday. Rodgers put in another strong game accounting for four total touchdowns in their milestone win. At times throughout the season, Green Bay has looked nearly unstoppable on offense. Should Rodgers continue to play at a high level in these final three weeks, the 37-year-old could haul in his third MVP award while having home-field advantage in the playoffs.
Bills Mafia Runs Wild
Surely the addition of one player on offense hasn’t been the main reason for Josh Allen and company to look drastically improved, has it? Whether it has or not, the addition of Stefon Diggs to the Buffalo Bills has been a match made in heaven. Diggs, who was unhappy with the Minnesota Vikings last season, has embraced the city of Buffalo like he had been there for 10 years. The rapport between Diggs and Allen has created one hell of an offense. And it was on full display on Sunday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Facing a premier defense on Sunday night, Allen and Diggs torched Pittsburgh’s secondary time and time again. Buffalo has not won the AFC East in over 20 seasons and with their dominant performance, Buffalo has the looks of the same team Jim Kelly led in the 1990s.
Washington Closing on the NFC East
The Washington Football Team continues to impress on Sundays as the once dumpster fire known as the NFC East is starting to have a clear-cut division leader. Sure, it may have taken 14 weeks, and they could still end up with a losing record, but Washington has a lot of sexy pieces on display. First, they get Alex Smith back from the brink of death, feature a stout running back corp led by Antonio Gibson, and a young, hard-hitting defense led by Chase Young, and this might be a team no one wants to play in the first round. Washington has a lot of feel-good stories going for them but making a playoff run that no one saw coming could be their biggest story yet.
NFL Game of the Year in Week 14
The Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns gave us a strong contender for Game of the Year to close out Week 14. With Baltimore needing a win to stay in the hunt for a Wild Card spot, they got one of the most heroic performances from Lamar Jackson to stay alive. With Jackson leaving the second-half due to cramping, Baker Mayfield caught on fire leading his team from down to multiple scores to a tie the game two times in the fourth quarter. But not to be outdone by his AFC North rival, Jackson returned to the game — on a fourth-and-five no less — and found a wide-open Marquise Brown while scrambling down the sideline. Mayfield responded with a beautiful two-minute drive of his own, but, perhaps scoring too quickly to tie it, gave Jackson a chance to win it. And he delivered. Jackson, with his arm instead of his legs, drove down the field in a blink to set up Justin Tucker‘s game-winning field goal with seven seconds left. Jackson’s Superman heroics just might’ve kept his team’s season alive.
With the room for error becoming increasingly thin with only three games remaining this season, one win could be a huge boost while one loss could be devastating. Week 14 of the NFL season and Week 15 looks to be just as chaotic.
