December 06, 2022
Week 13 of the NFL season is in the books, and a major injury to a contender has potentially altered the landscape of the NFC playoffs. Also, we almost eulogized one team this week, but opted against it. Let's just get right to the Hierarchy.
9) Falcons (5-8): There's pretty good reason to kill off the Falcons after losing at home to the Steelers, but I just can't bring myself to do it after watching how bad the Bucs looked for most of the game against the Saints on Monday Night Football. The Falcons are currently 1.5 games behind the Bucs in the NFC South, with a late-season bye this week. If the Bucs win in San Francisco Week 14, Atlanta is done. But for now they're still kinda hanging on by a thread, so we'll wait one more week before we bury them.
8) Giants (7-4-1): The Giants got kinda screwed by a weird scheduling quirk in which the Commanders have two consecutive games against them, while the Giants have a play another game in between:
| Week | Giants | Commanders |
| 13 | Commanders | At Giants |
| 14 | Eagles | BYE |
| 15 | At Commanders | Giants |
Oh, and, oof, the game in between also happens to be against the best team in the league.
Last week: 8
7) Commanders (7-5-1): It's pretty much a certainty now that the Commanders won't have to fork over a second-round pick in 2023 to the Colts for Carson Wentz. As a reminder, here's the trade the Commanders made for Wentz back in March:
| Commanders got | Colts got |
| Carson Wentz | 2022 second round pick (42nd overall) |
| 2022 second-round pick (47th overall) | 2022 third-round pick (73rd overall) |
| 2023 conditional second- or third-round pick |
The 2023 conditional pick was a third-round pick that could become a second-round pick if Wentz played at least 70 percent of the Commanders' offensive snaps in 2022. He played 100 percent of the snaps in each of the Commanders' first six games, before heading to IR with a broken finger. He has not played since. Let's go ahead and dust off the old Wentz snap count tracker:
| Game | Snaps played | Possible snaps | % of snaps played |
| 1 | 77 | 77 | 100.0% |
| 2 | 74 | 74 | 100.0% |
| 3 | 77 | 77 | 100.0% |
| 4 | 74 | 74 | 100.0% |
| 5 | 63 | 63 | 100.0% |
| 6 | 57 | 57 | 100.0% |
| 7 | 0 | 74 | 0% |
| 8 | 0 | 61 | 0% |
| 9 | 0 | 64 | 0% |
| 10 | 0 | 83 | 0% |
| 11 | 0 | 68 | 0% |
| 12 | 0 | 62 | 0% |
| 13 | 0 | 85 | 0% |
| TOTAL | 422 | 919 | 45.9% |
The Commanders have averaged 70.7 snaps per game through their first 13 games. They're on pace to play 1,202 offensive snaps this season. If the Commanders continue at 70.7 snaps per game, Wentz would need to play around 420 snaps (105 snaps per game) over the next four games to reach the 70 percent threshold. I don't think he's going to make it.
While googling "Carson Wentz trade" to recall the details of the deal, the second thing that came up in the search was a four-week old article by a Commanders blog called "Riggo's Rag" that proclaimed that the Colts LOST (!) the Wentz trade.
Oh, how the tables have turned. It wasn’t long ago (just seven months) that the Washington Commanders were taken to the woodshed by the general media for saving the Indianapolis Colts from their Carson Wentz headache.
While the trade hasn’t necessarily panned out for Washington — Wentz is on injured reserve after hand surgery, and the offense has had more juice with Taylor Heinicke pulling the strings — the Colts officially lost the blockbuster after they benched Matt Ryan, Wentz’s successor, for the rest of the season.
Lol, what? Good Lord, that's a Hall of Fame homer take. I guess that means that when the Eagles traded a washed Donovan McNabb to Washington, they also lost because Kevin Kolb wasn't what they hoped he'd be? Anyway, the article goes on to crap all over the Colts, noting that they have become a laughingstock, which is certainly true after the firing of Frank Reich and the hiring of the owner's "drinking buddy."
Of course, the Colts were able to offload a garbage player and his massive salary on the Commanders, and somehow also landed some very nice draft pick compensation in return. It's funny to me that this guy's takeaway was "Haha screw you Colts," and not, "Holy crap the Commanders got owned by this dysfunctional dumpster fire of an organization, which makes their already idiotic trade for Wentz even worse."
Last week: 6
6) Seahawks (7-5): The Seahawks narrowly escaped with a win over the John Wolford-led Rams on Sunday. There's a good chance that they'll face four backup quarterbacks in their last five games:
• Week 14: Sam Darnold, Panthers
• Week 15: Brock Purdy, 49ers
• Week 16: Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs
• Week 17: Mike White, Jets
• Week 18: John Wolford, Rams
Oh and all four of those games against backups will be at home, too.
Last week: 7
5) Buccaneers (6-6): Yes, Tom Brady and the Bucs had a "minor miracle" comeback win over the Saints on Monday night, but the reality is that their offense sucks. There are only five teams that are scoring fewer points per game than Tampa this season:
• Buccaneers: 18.1
• Steelers: 17.8
• Rams: 16.8
• Colts: 16.1
• Texans: 15.7
• Broncos: 13.8
We're taking about a group of teams that have started guys like Mitch Trubisky, John Wolford, Sam Ehlinger, Kyle Allen, and, uh... Russell Wilson.
Assuming the Cowboys can't catch the Eagles for the NFC East title, the Bucs should be easy pickings for Dallas in the wildcard round.
Last week: 5
4) 49ers (8-4): In case you missed it, the Niners suffered a devastating loss on Sunday when Jimmy Garoppolo's season ended with a broken foot. This isn't the quite same as the Chiefs losing Patrick Mahomes or the Bills losing Josh Allen, since Garoppolo is an average starting quarterback, at best, but the Niners have gotten close with Garoppolo at the helm.
Brock Purdy stepped in against the Dolphins down 7-3, and the Niners proceeded to smash them by a final score of 33-17, with Purdy showing pretty impressive poise along the way.
Brock Purdy uncorked this throw on 3rd and 10 in a two minute drill to keep the drive going at the end of the first half. They capped off the drive with a TD to take the lead, and never gave it back.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) December 5, 2022
Easy to see why Kyle likes him so much. Remarkable poise here. pic.twitter.com/RlDJuHrdZu
Last week: 3
3) Vikings (10-2): Love this stat that Sheil Kapadia dug up:
In the past 20 years, there have been 53 teams with 10 wins or more through 13 weeks of the NFL season.
— Sheil Kapadia (@SheilKapadia) December 5, 2022
Among that group, the Vikings' +10 point differential ranks 53rd - by a wide margin.
No other team was worse than a +36.
I think that the very uncontroversial point being made by Sheil here is that the Vikings may not be as good as their record would indicate.
Nine of the Vikings' 10 wins have been by one score, and their two losses — to the two teams ahead of them in the Hierarchy here, no less — were by a combined -54. If they're going to get to the Super Bowl, they're going to have to get through the two teams that absolutely wrecked them.
Last week: 3
2) Cowboys (9-3): It's time to move the Cowboys up ahead of the Vikings (and the 49ers, for that matter). I had previously let the Vikings hold onto the No. 2 spot in the Hierarchy because, well, they are going to cruise to the 2 seed in the NFC. I've come to realize that even then, home field advantage in at least the first two rounds of the playoffs does not make Minnesota more likely to get to the Super than this Cowboys team that will almost certainly have to play on the road all the way throughout the playoffs if they can't overtake the Eagles in the NFC East.
After smashing the Colts on Sunday night, the Cowboys actually now have the best point differential in the NFL:
• Cowboys: +127
• Bills: +124
• Eagles: +112
• 49ers: +92
• Chiefs: +80
And yet, they're probably going to be the 5 seed.
It's worth noting Dallas did suffer a troublesome injury on Sunday, when they lost CB Anthony Brown for the season with a torn Achilles. Brown is far from a star player, but he is a starter at one of the Cowboys' thinnest positional groups.
Last week: 4
1) Eagles (11-1): The DraftKings NFL MVP odds, via SB Nation:
Let's compare Mahomes and Hurts, shall we?
| MVP candidate | Comp/Att (Comp %) | Yards (YPA) | TD-INT | Rating |
| Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs | 308/469 (65.7%) | 3808 (8.1) | 30-8 | 104.9 |
| Jalen Hurts, Eagles | 243/357 (68.1%) | 2940 (8.2) | 20-3 | 108.3 |
As passers, Hurts is arguably more efficient this season, as he has a better completion percentage, better yards per attempt, a better TD-INT ratio, and a better QB rating. Mahomes has more yards and TD throws, because, well, the Chiefs are one of the most pass-heavy teams in the NFL and Mahomes is on pace for 664 pass attempts, which would be the tenth-most in NFL history.
Normally, you might ding a quarterback because his team is run-heavy, like the Eagles are under Hurts, on the premise that the quarterback is a game manager. But that's not the case here, as the Eagles are run-heavy because Jalen Hurts is an elite running quarterback.
| MVP candidate | Rushes | Yards | TD |
| Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs | 44 | 283 | 2 |
| Jalen Hurts, Eagles | 132 | 602 | 9 |
Hurts is 11-1, while Mahomes is 9-3. I'm not a big "QB wins as a stat" guy, but Hurts only has one loss this season because he has not yet played a bad game, while every other quarterback in the NFL has played several.
The idea that Hurts isn't the MVP favorite right now is just nuts to me.
Last week: 1
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