In a pure box score sense, the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens are winners on Christmas Day, while the Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Texans are losers. But after the league’s first Wednesday afternoon slate of games, we also want to take a look at some of the bigger-picture winners and losers.
Winner: Kansas City’s offense
Just like last year, the Chiefs appear to be kicking into gear at just the right time. Just like last year, they have a rookie wide receiver (Xavier Worthy) coming into his own and becoming a major part of the offense as we head into the stretch run of the season. Just like last year, Travis Kelce is not showing any signs of slowing down any time soon. Just like last year, the rest of the league should be very, very worried about what this means for a potential playoff push. With their third win in 11 days, they have now clinched the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. It will be 24 days until they play another meaningful game, so they’ll have plenty of time to get Kelce and Patrick Mahomes and Chris Jones, among others, healthy enough for a run at a third consecutive Super Bowl. That is very bad news for anybody else hoping to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February.
In Pittsburgh’s previous few games, Wilson’s backslide in performance could at least somewhat be attributed to the absence of George Pickens, the team’s primary (and often only) deep threat. But Wilson had Pickens back on the field Wednesday, and had one of his worst games of the season, continuing his recent trend of poor games. He went just 23 of 37 for 205 yards (5.5 per attempt) and an interception, while also taking five sacks. And much of that production also came in garbage time. He ran for 55 yards and a score, but we continued to see the limitations of Pittsburgh’s offense when he isn’t running hot on the moon ball completions to Pickens. Pittsburgh is just 26th in the league in offensive success rate — tied with the lowly Giants.
Winner: Travis Kelce
We already covered Kansas City’s offense as a whole, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Kelce specifically, because he became the Chiefs’ all-time leader in touchdown catches, breaking a tie with Hall-of-Famer Tony Gonzalez.
That was the 77th regular-season touchdown grab of Kelce’s spectacular career, and his 54th from Patrick Mahomes.
Loser: Steelers pass rush
Mahomes was sacked exactly zero times in this game, and barely seemed to feel the pressure the Steelers did get in his face. He was totally unbothered by T.J. Watt and Co., who need to be dominating games if the Steelers want to make a real playoff run.
A couple weeks ago, here’s what we wrote about the potential for Lamar to come from behind (in the odds) and win his second straight Most Valuable Player trophy:
Jackson is the player best positioned to snatch the award out of Allen’s grasp. It helps that his numbers are already better than Allen’s. He has more passing yards and touchdowns, fewer interceptions and more rushing yards, and he leads the NFL in EPA per play, according to Tru Media. But Allen is winning the perception game thanks to his alien-esque talent, Buffalo’s record and his recent national TV heroics.
Here, the schedule actually works in Jackson’s favor. He has two pretty tough opponents over the next two weeks — and both games are island games on days where the NFL doesn’t usually play. He gets the Steelers this coming Saturday, then the Texans in a Wednesday afternoon Christmas game. Those two teams also happen to have good defenses, especially Pittsburgh. If Jackson balls out and leads the Ravens to a pair of wins, then closes in spectacular form against the Browns, he could definitely still win.
Mission accomplished. In those two games, Jackson went 25 of 38 for 375 yards, 5 touchdowns and an interception, while adding 109 yards and and a touchdown on his 13 carries. In between, Allen had a more muted performance in Buffalo’s Week 16 win over the Patriots. He’s obviously got two more chances to light it up, but Jackson has probably closed the gap.
Loser: Texans offense
We knew this could be a struggle after Houston lost Tank Dell to a brutal injury last week. We especially knew it could be a struggle due to the way Baltimore’s defense has been playing of late. But man, this was ugly for the Texans. C.J. Stroud had no chance for most of this game, as he went just 17 of 31 for 185 yards and an interception, while taking five sacks. Joe Mixon was running in mud all night. This was not an encouraging performance a couple weeks before Houston will have to face another tough defense (Pittsburgh, Denver or L.A., most likely) in the first round of the playoffs.
Loser: Bengals/Dolphins/Colts
With Kansas City having clinched the No. 1 seed, the Chiefs are likely to sit their starters for their Week 18 game against the Broncos. If Denver wins that game, that ends these three teams’ slim playoff hopes.