OK, Jayden Daniels. We see you.

The Commanders’ rookie quarterback added to his young legend Sunday with a nearly impossible comeback victory over the Eagles, who are currently first in the NFC East. The Eagles, who’ve spent the past couple of weeks being anointed the league’s most complete and dangerous team, led 27-14 going into the fourth quarter. Yes, they lost starting quarterback Jalen Hurts to a concussion in the first quarter, but considering how this team has been playing defense of late, they appeared to be in good shape to hold the lead.

Instead, Daniels threw a pair of touchdown passes to Olamide Zaccheaus to put Washington in front by one point with 9:06 left in the game. And even then, once the Eagles kicked a field goal, intercepted a Daniels pass in Washington territory and kicked another field goal to go up 33-28 with 1:58 to go, we all figured, “Well, valiant effort, but the Eagles are going to hold on here.” But Daniels delivered a nine-play, 57-yard touchdown drive that put Washington back on top with six seconds remaining in the game. It was the kind of performance that practically demands overreaction.

We’ll begin there and judge a few more potential Week 16 takeaways as legitimate or irrational.

Jump to:
Commanders still alive in NFC East race?
Penix will lead Falcons to the playoffs?
Bengals can still be a problem in AFC field?
Steelers will lose their wild-card game?

The Commanders are still alive in the NFC East race

A victory in this game would have clinched the division for the Eagles with two weeks left. Instead, they’re 12-3 and two games ahead of 10-5 Washington. Any Eagles win or any Commanders loss in the final two weeks will hand the Eagles the division title, and with Philly set to finish against the Cowboys and the checked-out Giants, it’s hard not to like its chances.

But it’s also not over yet, and the Eagles have no reason to assume the Commanders will lose to the Falcons next week or the Cowboys the week after that. Washington announced Sunday that they’re going to make the Eagles work for this.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

At game’s end, the Eagles’ chances of winning the NFC East stood at 98%, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI). You don’t have to be a high-level mathematician to know those chances are really good. But Sunday’s result and the circumstances surrounding it led to other questions.

Will Hurts have to miss more time? If so, could that put the Eagles in jeopardy of losing out? Was this Philadelphia’s last chance to catch the Lions and grab the top seed in the NFC? Is Daniels good enough, even at this early stage of his career, that the Commanders are going to be the team nobody wants to face in the playoffs? Is this almost Chiefs-like ability to never be out of a game in the fourth quarter? And could that lead to an upset or two in January?

Those are all questions worth asking and debates worth having at this point. But it’s not at all disrespectful to the Commanders or anything they’ve accomplished to know the Eagles are still going to win at least one of these last two games.

Michael Penix Jr. is going to lead the Falcons to the playoffs

The Falcons made the decision this past week to bench high-priced veteran starter Kirk Cousins for their rookie first-round draft pick, who beat the Giants 34-7 in his first NFL start. Penix was 18-for-27 for 202 yards and an interception. He did not throw a touchdown pass. But he also did not take a sack, which seems to represent instant improvement in at least one aspect of the game over the immobile Cousins, who was sacked 18 times in his past eight starts.

The victory moved the Falcons within a half-game of first-place Tampa Bay, and if they’re able to catch the Bucs, the Falcons would own the tiebreaker because they won twice head-to-head. Atlanta plays at Washington next week before finishing the season with a Week 18 home game against Carolina. Tampa Bay plays the Cowboys on Sunday night, then finishes with home games against the Panthers and Saints.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

Full disclosure: This is being written before the Bucs’ Sunday night game against Dallas, and should they lose that game, the Falcons would technically be back in first place due to the tiebreaker. But I’m predicting the Buccaneers will win that game, probably along with those final two games against eliminated division rivals.

Tampa Bay has won this division three years in a row and is determined to keep it away from the team everyone crowned in the offseason after it signed Cousins and drafted Penix. The Falcons let this thing slip away with a four-game losing streak that preceded their Week 15 victory over the Raiders and Sunday’s victory over the Giants. The Buccaneers don’t intend to give it back. It’s easy to feel great about yourself after beating the Giants, but the Falcons’ game next week is by far the toughest-looking one either of these teams has left. And Atlanta can’t afford to lose another one.

The Bengals can still be a problem for the AFC playoff field

Don’t look now, but Week 16 is going pretty well for a Cincinnati team we all assumed was dead in the water a few weeks back. As recently as Thursday afternoon, the Bengals’ chances to make the playoffs stood at 3%, according to the FPI. Once the Chargers beat the Broncos on Thursday night, those chances went up to 10%. And by the time the Bengals finished beating the Browns on Sunday, they were up to 14%.

These are not huge numbers, and it’s still overwhelmingly likely that the final two AFC playoff spots go to the Chargers and Broncos. But consider that the Bengals play the Broncos in Cincinnati this Saturday. If the Bengals win that game, they’d be one game behind Denver for the final playoff spot and would own the tiebreaker. Then in Week 18, if the Bengals can beat the Steelers and the Broncos were to lose to the Chiefs, that would just about put Cincinnati in the playoffs. The only other things that would have to happen would be one Colts loss and one Dolphins loss in any of their remaining games.

It’s a long shot, but it’s not a zero-shot.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

We have said this all season, and as long as they’re mathematically alive, it’s still true: If the Bengals get into the playoffs, nobody will want to play them. Joe Burrow is having the kind of season that would make him a runaway MVP winner if his team were in first place. He has seven straight games with at least three touchdown passes, tied for the fourth-longest streak in NFL history, per ESPN Research. And then Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are still the toughest wide receiver duo in the league to handle, and second-year running back Chase Brown has ignited the run game.

The Bengals have major issues on defense, but the Bills and Ravens do, too. And Cincinnati always plays the Chiefs tough. If one of these teams runs up against the Bengals in the playoffs, it isn’t going to feel comfortable that it has them put away until the clock says 0:00. And at this point, if they manage to fight their way in, they’d be red-hot on top of everything else.

The Steelers are going to be a one-and-done wild card team again

Pittsburgh lost its second game in a row Saturday, this one to the division-rival Ravens. These two teams now have matching 10-5 records. The Steelers have to play the Chiefs this Wednesday on Christmas, then the Bengals in Week 18. The Ravens play at Houston on Christmas and then finish with Cleveland. If Pittsburgh wins out, it still holds the tiebreaker over Baltimore and would be AFC North champ. But those are two tough games to win, and the way the Steelers have played the past two weeks against the Eagles and Ravens makes them look a lot more vulnerable than they did for most of the season.

It has been eight years since the Steelers last won a playoff game, and they’ve been eliminated from the postseason in the wild-card round in three of the past four seasons. (They didn’t make the playoffs in the other.)

Verdict: OVERREACTION

It’s not looking good for the Steelers, but I still don’t love the odds of Baltimore finishing a game better than them the rest of the way. The Ravens’ defense still doesn’t feel trustworthy, and there’s a massive pile of historical data that tells us the Steelers will find a way to crush the Bengals’ dreams in Week 18 if it came to that. Plus, it sounds like they could get their best wide receiver, George Pickens, back in time for Wednesday’s game after he missed three contests in a row with a hamstring injury.

ESPN’s FPI slightly favors the Ravens to win the division (52%). But even if Baltimore does pull it off, I don’t think the Steelers are going to be the same kind of road underdog at, say, Houston as they were in last season’s first round in Buffalo. And if they hold off Baltimore to win the division and get a first-round home game against the Chargers or Broncos, I’d bet they would be favored in either one of those matchups.

This is a better team than the ones Mike Tomlin has been dragging into the playoffs in recent years, and we shouldn’t hold the Steelers’ recent postseason history against this season’s version.