December 1st marks the start of the most important month of the season for many NFL teams. The final month of the year either brings hope for January or brings a cold winter with an early start to the offseason. Heroes and goats are made during these crucial games on the schedule. We enter Week 13 with plenty of teams in the mix for division crowns or wild card spots. Which teams will rise up to clinch one of the coveted playoff spots and who will fade away under the pressure of the moment?
Today’s “No Huddle” will be looking at the best games of the week, previewing Thursday Night Football, and I’ll be finishing up as always with my picks against the spread. The theme for this week is taking care of business. There are several matchups that will help shape the playoff picture, so the team’s that get things done this week can set themselves up for a possible playoff run.
I talked about Detroit-New Orleans, Tampa Bay-San Diego, and Buffalo-Oakland for “Reality of Fantasy” but all three have some sort of playoff implications involved. Those aren’t the most important games of the week, which is why I saved those games for this column.
Possibly the most important game for shaping the playoff picture is the matchup between Miami and Baltimore. Miami needs this game to hold its position in the AFC wild card race while Baltimore is in a dead-heat with Pittsburgh for the AFC North crown. These conference matchups become all the more vital for tiebreakers at the end of the year. Picking up an AFC win would be huge for the Dolphins, but I argue that Baltimore will need this game more. Since Miami already defeated Pittsburgh, a Ravens victory over the Dolphins could be a key component to Baltimore taking the AFC North with a win over a common opponent.
In terms of the actual game, this has the potential to be a hard-fought slugfest. Miami’s red-hot run these past six games has been powered by the resurgent running game led by Jay Ajayi. This will be quite the test for the Fins going toe-to-toe with the best run defense in the NFL. Baltimore is tough to run against at home this season, only allowing 55 yards per game on the ground. The Dolphins are not nearly as effective running the ball on the road, averaging 80 yards per game compared to a gaudy 146 yards per game at home.
This will leave Ryan Tannehill to elevate the Miami passing game, which only ranks 28th in the NFL. He might be short a receiver in this game with DeVante Parker leaving last week’s game with a back injury. Parker was the Dolphins first-round pick in 2015 and had been starting to emerge as a deep-threat in this offense. Also nursing a back injury is Jarvis Landry, who leads the Dolphins in receptions this season and would be a key component in beating this stout Baltimore defense.
Baltimore’s offense will need to step up in what feels like a must-win game for the Ravens. Consistency is the key for the Ravens when the have the football. This offense tends to rely on big plays to score and struggle to put together long drives. A healthy Steve Smith Sr. will certainly help this offense, like he did last week against Dallas. Smith had eight catches for 99 yards and a touchdown. He is the closest thing to a reliable weapon in this offense. Quarterback Joe Flacco will need to be sharp on Sunday and take care of the football.
Another important game for the playoff race is an inter-conference matchup between the Steelers and the Giants. Pittsburgh has struggled against the NFC East this season losing two of three games so far this season. That is a key point here for the Giants who will need this game to keep Dallas in sight in the division while putting some distance between themselves and Washington.
The marquee matchup here is the wide receiver matchup between Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham Jr. Both of these players have the ability to change a game in one play and should provide plenty of fireworks on the field. They also might provide some interesting antics on the sidelines as well.
Pittsburgh has struggled to find a rhythm this year, but recent performances point to the Steelers finally looking like the offensive force we all expected to see this season. Thanksgiving was a feast for this offense, especially the Killer B’s (Big Ben, Bell, and Brown). With those three healthy, Pittsburgh is finding the form of a contender in the AFC.
The Giants come into this game on a six-game winning streak but this will be a true test for a team that has feasted on inferior competition. I’m looking to see if the Giants can finally tap into the full potential of this offense. The home/road splits of the passing game are scary though. At home the Giants average 300 passing yards per game while they only average 200 yards per game on the road.
On the defensive side of the ball, I’m keeping an eye on Giants safety Landon Collins and you should too. He’s the biggest defensive playmaker on either team in this game. The second-year safety out of Alabama is in the midst of a huge breakout season, and was just named the NFC Defensive Player of the Month for November. Collins is playing himself into Defensive Player of the Year consideration with 87 tackles, three sacks, and five interceptions.
The game of the day is an early afternoon matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Atlanta Falcons. They say that styles make fights, and these two teams couldn’t be any different stylistically. On one side you have a prolific offense with a mediocre defense and a scrappy offense with a dominant defense on the other side.
We all know that the Falcons can put up points seemingly at will with a wide array of weapons all over the field but the Chiefs may have finally discovered a dynamic playmaker of its own. If you missed the Kansas City-Denver game last week then you missed one hell of a breakout performance by Tyreek Hill. He had his fingerprints all over the Chiefs’ victory over the Broncos. Hill was easily the most important player on the field for Kansas City that night, scoring a rushing, receiving, and return touchdown during the game. Spencer Ware and Travis Kelce might be the bread and butter of this offense, but the emergence of Hill gives Kansas City a dimension that this offense has been missing during the Andy Reid era.
Atlanta’s offense against Kansas City’s defense is worth the price of admission. It’s a shame we won’t get to see Marcus Peters matchup with Julio Jones all game though, that would have been awesome to see. Kansas City doesn’t have its corners switch sides, so Peters will be on the defensive left side all day long. That will likely mean Jones will be all over the formations for Atlanta to avoid Peters on key downs.
Keep an eye out for a big day from Tevin Coleman, reports from practice this week seems to indicate that he finally has his “step back.” Atlanta is preparing for him to have an increased role in his second game since returning from a hamstring injury.
This has the makings to be a very intense game between two of the top teams in the NFL. Shockingly this game has flown under the radar on the national scale.
Before I get to my picks for the week, let’s take a quick look at tonight’s game between Dallas and Minnesota. The big storyline with this game will be the absence of Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, who had an emergency eye surgery last night, leaving special teams coach Mike Priefer with head coaching duties tonight.
This is massive for this game because Zimmer runs the defense for the Vikings. This is probably the most talented defense the Cowboys will see all season and a really good test for an offense that has been running rough-shod over the NFL, literally. Without the mastermind behind this defense running the show though, I’m very worried about any chance the Vikings have to upset the Cowboys tonight. Minnesota will need its best game of the season to shut down the league’s most efficient offense.
From Dallas’s perspective, it’s a race to 21 points tonight because Minnesota’s offense struggles mightily to put points on the board. A clean game from Dak Prescott is the key tonight, because Minnesota lives off of turning turnovers into points. Before the Zimmer news broke, I was ready to ride or die with a Minnesota upset pick but I’m going to play it safe and take Dallas (-3) tonight.
Now let’s get to the rest of my picks for this week. I barely made it out of the week alive last week, miraculously finishing 8-8. I’ll chalk that up to picking the games on Tuesday though. I’m still 14 games above .500 for the year though so let’s get back on the right track in Week 13. Here are my picks for this week (Winners in Bold).
Last Week: 8-8 2016 Season: 95-81-1
1:00 PM
Philadelphia (+1.5) vs. Cincinnati
Kansas City (+4.5) vs. Atlanta
Detroit (+6) vs. New Orleans
Los Angeles vs. New England (-13)
Jacksonville vs. Denver (-3.5)
Houston vs. Green Bay (-6.5)
Miami (+3.5) vs. Baltimore
San Francisco vs. Chicago (-1)
4:05/4:25 PM
Buffalo vs. Oakland (-3)
NY Giants (+6.5) vs. Pittsburgh
Washington (+2) vs. Arizona
Tampa Bay (+4) vs. San Diego
Sunday Night Football
Carolina vs. Seattle (-7)
That’s it for me today, enjoy all of the games tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow to preview and pick the conference championship games this weekend. Follow me on Twitter @thereal_jmooney and go like the Shooting the Moon page on Facebook.
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