Jarrid Kosa, Lunch Beers Podcast Host – The NFL Week 12 Recap. Oh Boy. Week 12 in the NFL was truly outstanding. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and the NFL action that was spread out over the course of the week. While the three games scheduled on Thanksgiving weren’t necessarily nail biting, they provided great action with a lot of scoring. We had one dog win outright and two favorites covering the spread. Black Friday was the blowout we were all expecting, Sunday saw two instant classics and more questionable officiating. Let’s dive into the left overs.
The early window on Turkey Day was the best game of the three scheduled on Thursday depending on what side you were on. The Detroit Lions and their fans continue to suffer on Thanksgiving and watching Dan Campbell make decisions is like watching a 10-year-old call plays in Madden. Go for it on 4th down no matter what. Dan Campbell must hate Iowa football. If you are a true football fan you get that joke. The Lions came out super stale, I mean stale like the leftover’s college kids bring back to their dorm and leave in the fridge for 5 weeks. The Lions were absolutely poached from kickoff facing a 20-6 deficit in the 1st quarter that they were never able to overcome. Jordan Love tied a career high 3 touchdowns to lead the Packers to the 29-22 victory. The Cheese are becoming a frisky team and after the huge win and a Vikings loss their playoff hopes have been resuscitated.
The Dallas Cowboys munched heavy on the Turducken with an absolute beatdown of the Washington Commanders. I was cracking up when Dak pulled the bird out of the Salvation Army cauldron mid-game and started munching. The Cowboys defense posted an impressive second half shutout of the Commanders and closed out the game in strong fashion putting up 25 points in the final quarter of the game. The impressive showing notched Americas team their 13th consecutive home victory. I was really blown away by Dan Quin’s Defense in that game considering Sam Howell threw for 300 Yards and was held to 1 touchdown. The Cowboys will need to continue this play if they want to make a deep run in the playoffs, they still have a 11/1 shot at winning the NFC East and need some hiccups from the Eagles to secure a home game, which could be huge for this franchise considering they dominate at home.
The 49er’s and Christian McCaffery came into Seattle and terrorized the city worse than CHAZ in 2020. Geno Smith continues to regress week by week and he was unable to eclipse 200 passing yards against the stout San Fran defense. The Seahawks are now on the outside looking into the NFC playoff picture and their next three games are at Dallas, San Francisco and then they host the Eagles. They will most likely be 6-8 after that stretch and will need an absolute miracle to sneak into the playoffs.
The Black Friday game came in with 2 huge paydays if you had the balls to bet each team to score a defensive/special teams touchdown. I feel so bad for Jet’s fan, the defense is so good and they have the skill players on offense, but the QB and offensive line situation has completely plagued the team. The Dolphins increased their lead in the AFC East with a big divisional win and their defense is starting to come to into their own. Tyreek Hill and Raheem Mostert continue to make cases for the offensive player of the year award. If we aren’t betting Tyreek Hill props every week then we are missing out. The Dolphins will be a very tough out in the playoffs if their defense can continue to step up and create turnovers for their explosive offense. The Dolphins have the Commanders, Jets, Titans, Cowboys, Ravens, and Bills remaining on the schedule it will be interesting to see where they fall in the AFC playoff picture.
The Sunday slate had huge playoff implications, with potential playoff matchups and it absolutely entertained the masses. The Houston between the Jaguars and Texans was an instant classic. 3 yards was the difference between the Texans grasping 1st place in the AFC south as the game came down to a field goal from Matt Ammendola who went 0/2 on field goals and cost the Texans the game. C.J. Stroud continues to ball chucking for 304 yards with 2 touchdowns in the air and one on the ground. Trevor Lawrence 23/38 with 364 yards continues to impress on the road moving the Jaguars road record to 5-0. Although the game fell short of the 47.5 total set by the books it sure felt like a shoot out as both teams fought back and forth the entire game. However, there was one black stain on the game and that was the officiating. If you had the audio on during the game you would have heard the plethora of boo’s coming from the Houston faithful every time the head official jumped on the mic. The Texans were hit with 7 penalties for 48 yards while the Jags received 6 flags for 35 yards. That is 84 yards in penalties in a game where you want the officials to let the boys play, gross.
It felt like the officials were guessing and calling a lot of ticky-tacky penalties. The officiating was so bad that Houston Head Coach DeMeco Ryans said Monday, that he will be submitting some calls to the NFL to review. There was a drive where the Jags were in the redzone and failed to convert on two 3rd downs, but got bailed out twice by some question pass interference calls which lead to a touchdown later in the drive. The worst call of the game came 40 seconds before halftime when Tank Dell clearly had two feet in on a 19 yard catch, the closest judge ruled it a catch, and the line judge all the way across the field called it incomplete. After review the fans could see it was a catch, but to officials ruled it incomplete. It was one of the most inconceivable, vomit inducing, obstruction of integrity and fairness I have ever seen. Then in the second half the officials missed a blatant defensive holding on a play where a Trevor Lawrence pass was intercepted, the penalty would have seen the Jags keep possession, maybe a make up no-call for the atrocity in the 1st half? There is a lot to speculate, but the epic game was impacted by poor officiating without question. Nonetheless, the AFC has gotten spicey and the Jags and Texans split their two matchups this season and will be continuing their fight for a playoff birth.
After watching the Jag and Texans game I didn’t think the officiating could get any worse in the 4pm window. However, I forgot the Eagles and the referees were hosting the Buffalo Bills. I mentioned in last week that this game would be epic and I will toot my own horn for being right. The weather, the mucky field, the cold, the fan bases, the high score, that game had everything. Unfortunately, everything includes terrible officiating. As a community, how can we continue to stand for the one sided officiating the Eagles have benefited from all season!?!? Something needs to be done about this! I have made constant mention week by week on how officiating has helped the Eagles limp towards many of their victories. That now makes it 3 extremely questionable victories the Eagles received the first was the Dolphins game where they called 1 penalty on the Eagles and 11 on the Dolphins, second being the Cowboys game at home where the referees awarded soft penalties to the Eagles and kept the flag in their pocket on blatant penalties the Eagles committed and now the Bills have also fallen victim to whatever this is. I challenge anyone to go back an watch the tapes from those three games and not question the integrity of the NFL officials.
The worst of it all though is their ignorant fan base pretending that the elephant is not in the room! To say that the Eagles did not get spoon fed the cranberry sauce last week is blasphemy. What other team gets an intentional grounding call when their defense tackles a quarter back via horse collar and throws the ball within the vicinity of an eligible receiver? No one, only the Eagles. That call lead to a Buffalo field goal attempt which they missed. Understandable, considering the conditions, but the fact is that game ended with a 3 point score differential. Although it is speculation, if the referees did their job and called the horse collar tackle that would have given Buffalo 1st and goal and likely have lead to a touchdown. It was a major reason why the Eagles were able to win.
After Jake “cold as ice” Elliott slapped an absolute banger of a field goal to send the game to over time the Bills were once again destroyed by the officials. Eagle corner Darius Slay committed a egregious pass interference penalty where he was all over Bill receiver Stefan Diggs before the ball arrived. You think the Bills got the call? LOL joke. Of course not. The video replay shows the official not ever looking at the play. The worst part was in the 2nd quarter of the game Slay committed another P.I. where the official had a clear look and didn’t throw the flag. When is the league going to implement replay as an outlet to challenge missed calls? When Buffalo is getting penalized 11 times for 80 yards and the Eagles received just 4 for 30 yards when committing about a total of 8 (4 not called) something needs to change. For some reason Sean McDermott did not comment on the officiating after the game. Maybe it was because if Gabe Davis ran the right route they would have won, but I know I would be losing my mind if I was him. I can’t say the Bills blew a 10 point lead to lose that game, it was stolen from them and I hope the league fixes the issue.
The officiating in the Sunday night game was not as bad as earlier in the day, but it was still terrible and since I am not a deranged fan boy I won’t sit here and say the Ravens did not get blessed by the whistle. The officials missed a unnecessary roughness on Geno Stone when he smoked Justin Herbert while he was out of bounds. That call would have given the Chargers a 1st down, but they had to settle for a field goal. In a game that was 13-10 late into the 4th quarter that no call had a huge impact on the game. The Ravens also got away with hitting the Charger punt return man on a fair catch that would have provided 15 more yards to the Chargers to start the drive. The Ravens fell to 9-3 ATS in the first quarter so we missed a play last week, and Lamar was under pressure all game and was unable to eclipse his 233.5 yard passing prop. The Ravens were very lucky to win that game and incredible defense bailed them out, so we were able to cash our Dolphins/Ravens ML parlay.
Another bail out the Ravens received was on a questionable Keenan Allen fumble. A play similar to one in the Eagles and Bills game where it was unclear if the receiver had possession. AJ Brown got blessed with an incompletion of course so no turnover there because the officials must be betting on the Eagles, but Keenan Allen did not receive the same luck and the Ravens got the ball on another questionable call. Make it make sense if you can. On a positive note for the Ravens, Isaiah Likely stepped up big in absence of Mark Andres scooping up 40 yards on 4 catches and Keaton Mitchell continues to blossom rushing for 64 yards on 9 carries tacking on 25 yards on two receptions. Zay Flowers also went off, but in my opinion the Ravens offense was very underwhelming against the worst secondary in the NFL. They have a bye in week 13 before facing an absolute grind to end the season. We will see if they are truly worthy of the top seed as they close out with the Rams, Jaguars, 49er’s, Dolphins, and Steelers.
If you watched Monday night football, kudo’s to you. Josh Dobbs no longer the guy throwing 4 picks in a brutal loss to the Bears. Monday Night Football under keep coming in so remember to keep betting them for free money. It is a low one on Monday between the Jags and Bengals set at 39, but we will ride the wave until it buries us. For our play of the week we are gong to Pittsburg where the Steelers host the Cardinals where the total is set at 40.5. We will go Under. The Steelers offense continues to struggle and I don’t see the Cards moving the ball much on the incredible Steelers defense. Our other play will be a two team teaser with the Cowboys -3/Dolphins -3 -120. Good luck out there.
Blog Plays: 11-8
