This article is part of our NFL Observations series.
What a house of horrors Week 15 was. I was already on the ropes against the spread when the Eagles got their cover-sealing 47-yard fumble-return TD with six seconds left to crush one of my few winners. And my NFFC team was already drawing dead, but now the corpse has been burned beyond the possibility of recognition, let alone resurrection. My other playoff team scored nearly its season-high in points, but ran into a juggernaut that had Lamar Jackson, Jameis Winston and Saquon Barkley, among others. The only thing I got right was informing people to fade whatever side I took with the Chargers (I was on them, obviously.)
• The Steelers-Bills was a coin flip for me, and had the one-point line at kick-off been there mid-week, I would actually have been on Buffalo. Instead, I watched an over-matched Devlin Hodges toss ducks into the Bills secondary.
• The Steelers are uncannily good at discovering wideouts in the draft -- after a terrible rookie year, James Washington looks like a player, Diontae Johnson like a young Antonio Brown, and they've been without Juju Smith-Schuster for much of the year. Before JSS, they found Brown (sixth rounder), Emmanuel Sanders (third), Martavis Bryant (fourth) and Mike Wallace (third) in the last decade. Maybe Bill Belichick should set up cameras in their draft room.
• It boggles the mind a playoff team like the Bills is still giving meaningful carries to the 2019 incarnation of Frank Gore. I realize Devin Singletary fumbled twice, losing one, but ball security is necessary but insufficient for NFL utility. Speaking of whom, is Singletary a top-24 PPR fantasy pick next year?
• So much for my rehabilitation of Sean McVay and Jared Goff. (I foolishly made the Rams my best bet.)
• Todd Gurley's performance illustrated the difference between fantasy and reality about as clearly as possible.
• It's too bad the Cowboys were able to pull Ezekiel Elliott because he could have had a game for the ages against a defeated Rams defense -- Tony Pollard got 131 yards and a TD on 12 carries.
• Kyle Shanahan erred by kicking a field goal up two on fourth-and-two from the 26-yard line with 1:48 left. Yes, he made it so that a field goal didn't beat them, but just win the damn game on one 50/50 play. Even if you fail, Atlanta still has to drive into field-goal range and then make the field goal. If it's 50/50 they get into range, they're down to 25 percent. And if it's 80 percent the FG is good, now it's 20 percent. That's lower than the odds of a drive resulting in a TD. No big deal, though -- it might only cost them home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
• The Falcons TD on the lateral play probably hurt someone, somewhere.
• Odd fact about this game: Both Julio Jones and George Kittle had exactly 13 catches for 134 yards, and no one else on either team had even 30 receiving yards. Kittle got his on 17 targets, while Jones needed 20, but Jones scored twice including on the game-winning play.
• I wanted to take the Raiders for their last game at the Oakland Coliseum, so I made the line an unreasonably high six. Luckily for me the market wanted it even more, made it 6.5 and pushed me to the Jaguars. Bet the number, not the team. (That comeback was pretty much the only thing that went right for me all day.)
• Kenyan Drake is one of the smoothest, most elusive backs in the league. Odd two different Dolphins coaches didn't see fit to give him more work. Drake almost had a fifth TD, too.
• The Browns laying wood on the road is amusing. Apparently they're the only team this decade not to have a season with a winning record.
• Nick Chubb is an elite runner and monster tackle breaker. But he's too game-flow dependent with Kareem Hunt around catching all the passes in garbage time.
• Dalvin Cook got a lot of people to the semi-finals, but left early with a shoulder injury. If you stashed Alexander Mattison all year, congratulations, he's hurt too.
• What's the point of benching Melvin Gordon for fumbling twice? As though he'll learn some lesson in Week 15 that the entire team hasn't learned hundreds of times over the last 20 years, something along the lines of: "Lapses in attention cost us games?"
• Certainly Philip Rivers (four turnovers) hasn't learned it. It's time for the Chargers to find his successor.
• The Bengals were taking it to the Patriots in the first half, running the ball effectively with Joe Mixon, and I was getting excited about the possibility that once you took away the spying, New England couldn't even beat the league's worst team. But Alex Erickson muffed a punt at the end of the first half, giving the Patriots a 13-10 lead, and the Bengals, for God knows what reason, decided they had to throw to get back into the game. One Andy Dalton pick later, the Patriots scored a rare offensive TD on a non-trick play, and then the wheels came off with Dalton throwing a cover-sealing pick six. At least they've locked up the No. 1 overall pick.
• Tom Brady managed 4.4. YPA against the Bengals, though Sony Michel had one of his better games of the year. And N'Keal Harry looks like a player to me -- he scored for the second straight week (only this one counted) -- and had two rushes for 22 yards.
• The verdict is in: I should have paired my Chris Godwin/Mike Evans NFFC team with Jameis Winston in Round 12, rather than getting greedy and taking Alexander Mattison with that pick. Winston is on pace for 5,226 yards, which would be good for fourth all time.
• Breshad Perriman owes me big time for all the years I drafted the 6-2, 212-pound 4.28 40 time physical freak. Unfortunately, I didn't pick him up anywhere for this week.
• I don't have much to say about the Packers-Bears game, except that the Bears tree is exceptionally narrow with Anthony Miller (15 targets), Allen Robinson (14), Tarik Cohen (10, eight carries) and David Montgomery (14, carries, one target.). That's basically it.
• A.J. Brown was on a run-first team, with a bad QB and buried behind Corey Davis, Delanie Walker and Adam Humphries in the passing game. Now he's the clear No. 1 on a decent passing team and probably will be a top-four-round pick next year. Jonnu Smith (who also has a future) did his best Ben Watson impression, running down a defender to the other side of the field on a long interception return.
• The Chiefs beat the Broncos easily in snowy conditions, but I can't take much away from that. I'm still not sure who the Chiefs are for postseason purposes.
• Eli Manning threw three picks, two of which were horrific, got one of his TDs on a 51-yard deflected ball to Golden Tate, but otherwise was decent against the Dolphins. Saquon Barkley had his first monster game in a while -- the Giants just need him to come out of the season healthy.
• Ryan Fitzpatrick did his job in your QB-flex playoffs, as did DeVante Parker, despite getting concussed last week.
• As I mentioned, I had the Redskins plus 4.5.
• Carson Wentz made some nice throws after escaping the rush, but it's hard to see any upside for this Eagles team even if they somehow beat the Cowboys next week.
• Dwayne Haskins had his best game, though I'm just looking at the numbers and saw the two TD passes, but not much else.
• Terry McLaurin would be a monster in a real passing game. It's amazing how many good rookie receivers came out of this class: McLaurin, A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf, Marquise Brown, Darius Slayton, Diontae Johnson, Deebo Samuel and Mecole Hardman, and we still don't know about Parris Campbell and N'Keal Harry.
• Christian McCaffrey had another 175 yards from scrimmage and is now only 388 away with two games to play from breaking Chris Johnson's all-time record. He also caught eight passes and scored twice. There's nothing left to say about his 2019 season.
• I had the Seahawks minus six, but given the way the game went, I should probably be happy with the backdoor push rather than an outright loss.
