Well the Vikings folding is as surprising as ever. I thought the Patriots' offense was worrying at points, at least we never failed to score a single point in the second half...at home, no less.
Speaking of those Patriots, as it turns out, the sky isn't totally falling after all. As before, I still won't claim that I'm especially enthusiastic about the offense, but they're starting to look a little more cohesive (almost as if having a bunch of young/new players coming in takes time for them to gel). Hopefully we can stop having drives stall inside the 30 and figure out how to get Sanu involved...at all...but our offense line didn't look like wet paper against a very good Buffalo d-line and Brady's finally looking kind of comfortable in the pocket for once.
Assuming we can beat the Dolphins, we'd have a very likely rematch against the Chiefs in Foxborough, which is doable, I think. Game could have easily gone either way last time. It'll be really good to give everyone a week off to rest; that really helped playing the Chargers last year. A win there would mean probably going to Baltimore, which...I'm less enthusiastic about, but hey, if they could go into Kansas City and win last year, I'll keep believing until they're eliminated.
Anyway, tonight's results means that Minnesota is locked in as the 6 seed and will get obliterated by either New Orleans, Green Bay (again), or Seattle in the wild card. The loser of the NFC West title game is guaranteed the 5 seed, which means that, hey, at least whoever loses can take comfort in knowing they have as close as you can get to free pass to the divisional round for a wild card team.
Also, if anyone's interested, standings are updated through Week 15 on the google sheet. I'll have them updated through this week before predictions.
