Welcome to the Week 17 grades!
After starting Week 17 off with a Christmas doubleheader on Wednesday, the NFL added another full day of drama with a Saturday tripleheader where all three games had major playoff implications.
In the first game of the day, the Los Angeles Chargers clinched a playoff berth by beating the New England Patriots, 40-7. The Chargers are now headed to the postseason for just the third time in 11 years.
With the Chargers’ win, there’s now just one AFC playoff spot up for grabs and the Broncos had a chance to clinch that in Saturday’s second game, but they came up short in a wild 30-24 overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. The win by the Bengals means that the AFC’s final playoff berth can’t be clinched until Week 18.
In the late game on Saturday, the Los Angeles Rams won a low-scoring 13-9 battle over the Arizona Cardinals. With the win, the Rams can now clinch the NFC West title in a crazy scenario that you can read about here (The short version is that the Rams would need three of the following five teams to win in Week 17 to clinch the NFC West: Bills, Browns, Vikings, Commanders, 49ers).
With that in mind, here are our Week 17 grades for every game that has been played so far:
L.A. Rams 13-9 over Arizona
Cincinnati 30-24 in OT over Denver
L.A. Chargers 40-7 over New England
Seattle 6-3 over Chicago
Kansas City 29-10 over Pittsburgh (Wednesday)
Baltimore 31-2 over Houston (Wednesday)
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