There are 17 games left in the NFL regular season and so much is still going on. In a season in which most of the league’s 14 playoff berths were all but decided by mid-December, Week 17 conspired to deliver a bizarre set of results.

The Bengals are still alive, despite their own best efforts. The Dolphins have a shot despite playing without Tua Tagovailoa. The Colts, who didn’t have Anthony Richardson, are out after losing to … the Giants? The Commanders and Rams clinched their playoff spots as a product of last-second comebacks coming up narrowly short. The Vikings kept the heat on the Lions, who now need to beat Minnesota next week to lock up a much-needed first-round bye.

Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’

Oh, and with one week to go, the MVP race is wide open and has a fourth candidate in the mix. I have four things on my mind after Week 17, and I’m going to start with the player who simply has to be part of the MVP conversation. If the Bengals somehow beat the Steelers next week and get other results to go their way, could a guy whose team was 4-8 a month ago really win it?

Jump to a section:
Does Joe Burrow have a legit MVP case?
Would Saquon Barkley’s record need an asterisk?
Did the Giants blow it with their win over Indy?
Who’s the team nobody wants to face in January?

Should Joe Burrow be an MVP candidate?

If there was ever a game that summed up the seemingly Sisyphean task Burrow has been handed to try to win with the Bengals this season, it was Saturday’s season-saving win over the Broncos. Burrow’s numbers were spectacular as he went 39-of-49 for 412 yards with four total touchdowns against one of the league’s best pass defenses. But even those numbers fail to tell the story of what he had to do down the stretch.

Leaving aside Ja’Marr Chase‘s atypical drop in the end zone in the first half, the 51-yard touchdown pass to Andrei Iosivas that was wiped off by a sloppy illegal shift penalty and Tee Higgins‘ fumble on a third-down conversion with five minutes to go that cost the Bengals an opportunity to try to run down the clock and kick a field goal, Burrow needed to win the game three different times for his teammates to finally seal the deal.

After a rare big play from the Cincinnati defense turned over Bo Nix late in the fourth quarter, Burrow hit Chase for 38 yards to set up the Bengals in field goal range. They should have been able to burn clock and kick a chip-shot field goal to win, but young running back Chase Brown went out of bounds on a pass to the flat and then was injured attempting to slide short of the end zone, gifting the Broncos two clock stoppages. Burrow scored on a sneak to give the Bengals a seven-point lead, but the defense allowed Nix to drive 70 yards with one timeout and hit Marvin Mims on a fourth-and-1 lob for a touchdown to tie the score at 24 and send it to overtime.

The two teams started the extra session by trading punts, at which point Burrow converted a first-and-15 to Higgins for 19 yards to get into field goal range. Cade York, in for the injured Evan McPherson, promptly booted a 33-yard kick off the left upright to extend the game. The Cincinnati defense came up with another stop of Nix, and after a Denver punt, Burrow hit Higgins for a 31-yard completion and then a 3-yard walk-off touchdown. Forget a winning drive; Burrow should get credit for three.

This isn’t anything new. Burrow has endured nightmare scenarios all season in which he has led his team to crucial scores or a potential victory, only for elements totally out of the quarterback’s control to let him down:

• In Week 1, Burrow threw a touchdown pass to Mike Gesicki, only for it to be wiped out after a review. On the next play, he hit Tanner Hudson, but as the backup tight end was running into the end zone, Hudson fumbled and the Patriots recovered, costing the Bengals seven points in what would eventually be a 16-10 Pats victory.

• The following week, a fourth-quarter drive set up a 53-yard field goal that gave the Bengals a 25-23 lead over the rival Chiefs, only for the defense to be called for pass interference on fourth-and-16 and set up Harrison Butker for a 51-yard field goal as time expired for a Kansas City victory.

• In Week 5, a 70-yard touchdown pass from Burrow to Chase gave Cincinnati a 38-28 lead over Baltimore with a 9:05 to go. Burrow then deserved some fault for an interception that helped the Ravens get back into the game. In overtime, though, McPherson missed a 53-yard field goal that would have won it, with Derrick Henry promptly running for 51 yards to set up a Justin Tucker game-winner. Burrow’s 392-yard, five-touchdown performance went for naught in a loss.

• In Week 10, Burrow faced the Ravens again and threw for 428 yards and four scores, including another 70-yard score to Chase to tie the score with 5:50 to go. Cincinnati gave up a touchdown, at which point Burrow went 70 yards in 77 seconds to respond. The Bengals went for two to take the lead with 38 seconds to go, only for a 2-pointer to go off Hudson’s fingertips.

• The next week, with the Bengals trailing 27-6 to the Chargers, Burrow led three consecutive touchdown drives to tie the score at 27 with 12:28 to go. McPherson then missed field goal attempts on consecutive drives that each would have given Cincinnati the lead, at which point the Chargers drove downfield for a winning touchdown with 26 seconds left.

When the Bengals were 4-8, Burrow appeared to be mired in a nearly unprecedented historical paradox of great quarterback play with dismal results. Even now, with the Bengals at .500, his season looks like an outlier. He went into Week 17 with a 120 era-adjusted adjusted net yards per attempt index (ANY/A+), a figure that should rise after his performance this week. Since 1970, 136 passers have thrown at least 400 passes with a 120 ANY/A+ or better. Of those 136 quarterbacks, a total of six have posted a losing record, with Deshaun Watson‘s 4-12 season with the Texans in 2020 as the worst of the bunch.

After losing to the Steelers in Week 12, though, the Bengals appear to have finally righted the ship. They’ve won four straight, and while three of those games came against a range of backup quarterbacks — Cooper Rush, Mason Rudolph and Dorian Thompson-Robinson — Saturday’s victory over Nix and the Broncos kept Cincinnati alive in the AFC playoff picture. It will need to beat a scuffling Steelers team next week and hope that the Jets and Chiefs beat the Dolphins and Broncos, respectively, to complete a miraculous run from 4-8 into the postseason.

Burrow isn’t going to win MVP if the Bengals don’t make the postseason. If they can pull off that three-game parlay and sneak in as a wild-card team with a big game from him next week, would that be enough for the 28-year-old to hold a serious case as an MVP contender? The past seven MVP winners have come from teams that were the 1-seed in their respective conferences, but the Chiefs, Lions and Vikings aren’t expected to have any meaningful representation in balloting for that award this season. Could that open the door for Burrow?

Though the Bengals star would be an unconventional pick, it’s easy to make a case that he deserves to be right alongside Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen as the top quarterback contenders. Burrow’s 76.6 Total QBR ranks third in the league, just behind Jackson and Allen. Though Allen and Jackson offer more with their legs as part of their teams’ designed run game, Burrow does make some impact as a scrambler. More notably, he throws the ball far more often and does so at an elite level.

Though Jackson is throwing the ball 27.6 times per game and Allen is slightly ahead at 30.2, Burrow has thrown the ball just under 38 times per game. Excluding QB sneaks and instead adding up everything these quarterbacks have done as passers and runners this season, Jackson has been the most efficient, but Burrow has been almost as efficient as Allen with far more volume:

The one subtle weakness for Burrow is a strength for the other two quarterbacks: sacks. He has taken sacks on 6.6% of his dropbacks, including seven Saturday. Jackson has taken sacks 4.6% of the time, and Allen has posted a league-best 2.6% sack rate. Some of those issues can be pinned on the offensive line, but we know sack rate is mostly a quarterback stat, and plenty of those takedowns have come on plays in which Burrow was trying to extend a play and create out of structure. The pros when he does that outweigh the cons, but the numbers above reflect the lost sack yardage and expected points added (EPA) from when he does take those sacks, and it drops him to third among the three passers in most rate metrics.

Burrow’s interception late in the loss to the Ravens would linger, but each of the top contenders have had missteps. Jackson threw an interception and failed on a 2-point try in the fourth quarter of a loss to the Steelers. Allen failed to score a touchdown and was eventually pulled from the game in a blowout loss to the Ravens. And if we want to bring Saquon Barkley into the mix, his drop against the Falcons forced the Eagles to kick a field goal and opened up the door for a last-minute comeback victory by Atlanta.

I’ll try to thread a needle that can be impossible in 2024: I don’t have a strong feeling in either direction. If another huge game from Burrow and some lucky results elsewhere propel the Bengals into the playoffs, I would have no qualms with any of the voters picking him for MVP. He has been that good and had to singlehandedly elevate an extremely flawed Cincinnati team (beyond Chase, Higgins, Trey Hendrickson and a couple of other contributors) to victories this season. He’s also a small step down from Allen and a bigger step down from Jackson in terms of snap-to-snap performance, which is why I would still prefer either quarterback to Burrow on my ballot.

Is Saquon Barkley really going to set the rushing record (and should there be an asterisk if he does)?

Though he didn’t score a touchdown Sunday, Barkley helped carry an Eagles offense without injured quarterback Jalen Hurts to the NFC East title against the Cowboys. Backup quarterback Kenny Pickett began the game under center, and after he sustained a rib injury, the Eagles finished with third-stringer Tanner McKee. Pickett and McKee threw three touchdown passes on 19 attempts, but most of the work on the day went to Barkley, who carried the ball a whopping 31 times for 167 yards. Sixteen of those carries were successful by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model, and by the end of the day, he had become the ninth back in league history to rack up 2,000 rushing yards in a season.

With one game to go against his former employer in Week 18, there are three big questions about Barkley. One is whether he should be in the MVP conversation, a topic I’ll save for my awards ballot next week. The other two:

• Should the Eagles let Barkley go for the single-season rushing record, which would require 101 yards?

• Should there be any sort of asterisk or allowance for Barkley setting the award in 17 games when the current record-holder, Eric Dickerson, did so in 16 games?

I’ll hit the last question first: No. It’s true that Barkley will have an extra game to set the record, as he has come up 100 yards short of Dickerson’s total over a 16-game span. Going back to 1984, though, there’s an even even stronger argument for an asterisk for Dickerson, who had 16 games to set a record that had previously been established in the 14-game era. O.J. Simpson became the first back in league history to run for 2,000 yards in a season, making it to 2,003 in 14 games across the 1973 campaign with the Bills.

Dickerson was more than 200 yards short of Simpson when he finished his 14th game of the 1984 season with the Rams, as he had put up 1,792 rushing yards He then set the record the following week, as he ran for 215 yards on 27 carries in a win over the Oilers. Afterward, one notable voice still proclaimed Simpson as the best back because Dickerson had required an extra game to set the mark. That voice, of course, was Dickerson himself.

Furthermore, Dickerson needed 379 carries to set his single-season record. With one game to go, Barkley is at 345 carries, so unless he’s incredibly inefficient against a porous Giants defense next week and gets the rock 34 times, he would set the single-season record while requiring fewer carries than Dickerson. While acknowledging that spreading those carries over 17 games as opposed to 16 might produce a fresher back late in games, it’s difficult to make the case that he has surpassed Dickerson strictly by amassing more opportunities.

And if Barkley’s record wouldn’t be the true record, well, what would be? Dickerson’s 16-game record? Simpson’s 14-game mark, given that his 143.1 rush yards per game average is 10 yards better than that of any other back in history? Or is it Jim Brown‘s 1,677 rush yards in a 12-game season in 1963, a figure neither Simpson nor any other back has topped over the first 12 games of their team’s season over the ensuing 60-plus years? Would we put another asterisk on the record when the NFL eventually moves to 18- and 20-game seasons in the decades to come?

No, we shouldn’t. The league has evolved in all kinds of ways, and those stretch beyond the sheer number of games. Modern backs play in an era in which it’s more difficult for elite runners to rack up the sort of workloads that seemed routine in Dickerson’s time. The quality of athlete has risen across the league at all positions, making it difficult for backs to get by on sheer physical ability. Barkley is on a Philadelphia team with a starting quarterback to be enough of a rushing threat to have 630 rushing yards and 14 rushing touchdowns. That’s both a positive (Hurts’ gravity slows down defenders who would otherwise be chasing down Barkley) and a negative (many of Hurts’ 11 1-yard rushing scores would probably be Barkley scores in a more traditional offense) that few of his predecessors encountered.

Parsing through all of that to decide whether Barkley’s numbers are more meaningful than Dickerson’s or Simpson’s with any sort of authority feels unrealistic when the alternative is simply sticking with the biggest number. If Barkley makes it to 2,106 rushing yards next week, he deserves an asterisk-free record.

Should coach Nick Sirianni and the Eagles let him get the opportunity? From a team perspective, the Eagles have no reason to play any of their starters next week. Any chance of the them jumping to the top seed in the NFC went out the window after the Vikings beat the Packers on Sunday afternoon. The Eagles are locked into the 2-seed in the NFC regardless of what happens against the Giants, leaving them with little to play for in Week 18. Though that would seemingly justify sitting stars such as A.J. Brown and Lane Johnson, Barkley is the one player in the lineup who might create a path to the Hall of Fame by virtue of what happens.

Per Sunday’s broadcast, Sirianni claimed to not be aware of how close Barkley was to the record when asked, but that feels more like coachspeak than reality. If the Eagles weren’t at least aware that he had a viable shot of setting the record, why were they feeding him carries as part of a season-high workload in the second half? It’s not a surprise he saw plenty of touches early, when the game was still in contention, but he also had five carries while up 27 points in the third quarter and five straight carries with a 34-point lead in the fourth quarter before Philadelphia went to its backups. When Barkley did make it over 2,000 yards with a 23-yard carry, Sirianni took a timeout to let his star back soak in the deserved applause and then kept him on the sidelines for the rest of the game. That certainly doesn’t align with a coaching staff that isn’t thinking about his numbers.

For what it’s worth, Barkley seemingly hasn’t been desperate to chase records this season; he encouraged the staff to let the younger backs play when he had a chance to set his single-game rushing record against the Giants earlier this season. After Sunday’s win, he said he would leave the decision about whether to play in Week 18 up to Sirianni. It’s possible Sirianni’s compromise will be Barkley making it to 2,000 yards before sitting out next Sunday.

I’d argue a middle ground seems to balance both the team’s playoff hopes and the reality that setting the single-season rushing record would be a legacy-defining moment for the league’s top back. Barkley shouldn’t get 30-plus carries in back-to-back weeks with the wild-card round to come, but he shouldn’t need that many touches to rack up 100 yards against a Giants run defense that allowed him to run for 176 yards on 17 carries earlier this season (and which is missing star nose tackle Dexter Lawrence, who is on injured reserve).

The Eagles could give Barkley a handful of carries early in the game and see if he breaks a big run or gets most of the way there. If he gets the record or looks close by carry 10, they could keep him in to set the mark. If not, they gave history a shot and can call it a day without taxing him too much before the postseason.

Did the Giants blow it with a victory on Sunday?

The guys who will be across the field from Barkley next Sunday just put together a win that might have felt like a loss to Giants fans. Right around the same time Barkley was topping the 2,000-yard mark, 2024 first-round pick Malik Nabers was taking a Drew Lock pass 59 yards to the house for a fourth-quarter touchdown to give New York a 35-26 lead. After the Colts responded with a score of their own, Lock’s 5-yard touchdown run put away the game, giving the Giants their third win of the season.

The 45-35 victory knocked the Colts out of postseason contention, but it might have been even more impactful for the Giants. Before Week 17, they only needed losses to the Colts and Eagles to confirm they would make the No. 1 pick in the draft for the first time since 1965. In need of a quarterback to replace Daniel Jones, that selection would have afforded them the option to take whoever they wanted atop the draft, with Cam Ward (Miami) and Shedeur Sanders (Colorado) as the most likely candidates.

Now, their path to a quarterback is much murkier. Per ESPN’s Football Power Index, the Giants project to land the No. 4 pick. They have a 12% chance of falling out of the top five entirely, with tiebreakers and a win against the Eagles’ backups potentially pushing them down to No. 6.

Replacing them at the top of the draft are the Patriots, who don’t need a quarterback with Drake Maye in the building and would be in position to trade the selection to a team in search of a signal-caller. The Browns and Titans, who are projected to pick Nos. 2 and 3, are both hoping to land their quarterback of the future this offseason. The Jets, Raiders and Saints could all move up in a deal with New England. If the Giants really liked Sanders or Ward, they were in position to take one of them. Now, after their win over the Colts, general manager Joe Schoen would probably need to sacrifice valuable draft capital to trade up and get his guy.

I should be clear here: This isn’t a criticism of anybody who stepped on the field for the Giants on Sunday. No player is going to or should attempt to lose a game in the hopes of improving the franchise’s chances of landing a top pick. What’s good business for the Giants isn’t the right thing for Lock, who has to be thrilled to put a productive game on film as he hopes to earn another backup job next season. It’s not even the right thing for coach Brian Daboll, whose status for 2025 is in question. Winning a game at home against a team with something to play for has to increase the embattled coach’s chances of returning.

At the same time, there’s no scenario in which an otherwise meaningless victory over the Colts is worth missing out on the top pick. Even if the Giants didn’t want to land Sanders or Ward and were hoping to use that pick on Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter or Texas offensive tackle Kelvin Banks, they’ve dropped from a 100% chance of landing the guy they wanted to something far less certain. They’ve also lost the ability to trade the top selection under those circumstances for extra capital. And if they did want Sanders or Ward, well, that win might cost Schoen his 2026 first-rounder to get back up into the top three.

Texans fans might tell the Giants there’s nothing to be worried about. In 2022, a Houston team with lame-duck coach Lovie Smith pulled out a 32-31 victory over the Colts in Week 18, costing it the top spot in the draft. The Bears, who ended up with that top pick, extracted a haul from the Panthers as part of the Bryce Young deal, but as you can probably remember, the Texans did just fine: They stayed put, drafted C.J. Stroud at No. 2 and traded up for the third selection to draft Will Anderson, and have won two consecutive AFC South titles since.

The Giants dropped to fourth in the draft order, so it’s not a straight comparison, but you get the idea. What happens when a team that would have landed the No. 1 pick wins their way out of the top spot? Over the past 20 years, there have been a handful of cases in which history swung on what would have been a meaningless victory in late December:

In 2021, the 2-13-1 Lions entered Week 18 a half-game behind the 2-14 Jaguars for the top pick. Both teams played at 1 p.m. ET, with the Jaguars facing a Colts team attempting to make the playoffs, while the Lions were up against a Packers team that was expected to sit its starters at some point during the game.

The Jaguars blew out the Colts. The Lions would have clinched the No. 1 pick with a loss, but Dan Campbell’s team scored 10 points in the final two minutes to beat Green Bay 37-30. The Jags used the top selection on edge rusher Travon Walker, while the Lions used the No. 2 pick on Aidan Hutchinson. While Hutchinson is currently sidelined by a serious leg injury, he has been a more productive pro than Walker.

In 2011, the Colts nearly played their way out of a franchise quarterback. After starting 0-13, they won two straight, opening up the possibility they could miss out on the top pick by beating the Jaguars in Week 17. A 4-11 Jags team under interim coach Mel Tucker pulled out a 19-13 victory, however, and their divisional rivals were given a direct path to Andrew Luck. Had the Colts won, the Rams would have moved up to No. 1; they traded their No. 2 selection to Washington, who drafted Robert Griffin.

Two years earlier, the Rams were in a dead heat with the Buccaneers for the top pick in the 2010 draft, with both teams sitting at 1-12. Tampa played its way out of that discussion, beating the Seahawks in Week 15 and the Saints (who would eventually go on to win the Super Bowl) in Week 16. The move cleared a path to the top spot for the Rams, who took Sam Bradford. The Bucs picked third and drafted future franchise stalwart Gerald McCoy. While the Bucs landed the better player, they might have been able to trade that top pick to a quarterback-needy team (albeit at a time when it was harder to extract significant returns for highly paid quarterbacks at the top of the draft).

In 2006, the 2-13 Lions entered Week 17 knowing a loss would lock up the top spot in the draft. Facing a Cowboys team competing for the NFC East title, Detroit had nothing to play for, but Jon Kitna didn’t care. The journeyman quarterback outdueled Tony Romo, going 28-of-42 for 306 yards with four touchdowns in a 39-31 victory. The win, coupled with a Raiders loss, put Oakland in the top spot in the 2007 draft.

This worked out just fine for the Lions. The Raiders took quarterback JaMarcus Russell. With the No. 2 pick, Detroit was forced to settle for future Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson.

One of the more dramatic endings came in 2003, when a 3-12 Cardinals team took on the 9-6 Vikings in what should have been an open-and-shut case. The Cardinals, who would have locked up the top pick with a loss, were looking at a stacked quarterback class. A win for the Vikings would have sent them to the playoffs.

So naturally, trailing 17-6 with seven minutes to go, the Cardinals went on a long touchdown drive, recovered an onside kick and then converted a fourth-and-25 with four seconds to go with a Josh McCown touchdown pass to Nate Poole. The Cardinals knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs and dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 in the 2004 draft.

I could write an entire what-if article about this entire scenario in 2004, but I’ll keep it brief. The Chargers instead landed the top pick and used it to draft Eli Manning, who was then immediately shipped to the Giants for Philip Rivers and several picks, one of which became edge rusher Shawne Merriman. The Raiders drafted offensive tackle Robert Gallery at No. 2, while the Cardinals used the No. 3 selection on franchise legend Larry Fitzgerald.

If you’re a Giants fan upset about the victory, this probably cheers you up at least a little bit, right? There are multiple examples of teams that won meaningless games to miss out on the top pick and instead landed on a much better player. Plus, we’re often overconfident about our ability to project who will go where in the draft and how much better the No. 1 selection will be than the players taken later in the first round.

Winning and falling out of the top spot isn’t the end of the world. At the same time, it cost the Giants the latitude to do what they want at the top of the draft.

Who’s the team nobody will want to play in January?

It’s one of my favorite stories. Each year, sometime around Week 17, we seem to collectively elect the vaunted team nobody wants to play in the postseason. (Of course, the team nobody really wants to play every year is the Chiefs, given that Patrick Mahomes is 15-3 in the playoffs, but they don’t meet the criteria for this label.)

As far as I can tell, “the team nobody wants to play” fits into a few categories:

They’re not one of the league’s best teams. This is usually a wild-card team or a team that has had too many weird losses to compete for the 1-seed. They’re always playing in the wild-card round.

They’ve gotten hot late in the season. I’m not sure “peaking at the right time” is a real thing. When I looked at the idea back in 2012, I didn’t find any evidence that teams that got hot late in the season were any better than similarly successful teams that played their best football early in the regular season. I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with playing well late in the season, but great teams are great all the way through.

That said, I’m well aware I’m in the minority on this topic. And when I hear about the team nobody wants to play, it’s almost always in regard to a team that has figured things out and has strung together a December winning streak. The 2023 Bills are a great example, even though they eventually won the AFC East title in Week 18.

They’re usually either extremely inexperienced or extremely experienced. This usually focuses only on the quarterback and a couple of other players, but the team nobody wants to play has a defined story. If it’s a young team without much playoff experience, like the 2021 Bengals, nobody wants to play it because it’s playing with nothing to lose. And if it’s a veteran team with lots of successful playoff experience, like the 2023 Rams, nobody wants to play it because it knows what it takes to win come the postseason.

They’re really good at one thing that can win them a playoff game almost singlehandedly. The team nobody wants to play is not a balanced unit. It has one dominant element to its game — usually the passing attack, but sometimes the running game or a great pass rush — that can be the best in football on any given Sunday.

Laying out that criteria, we’re only left with a handful of teams. The Broncos, Chargers, Steelers and Texans have had losing streaks in December. The Dolphins are down to their backup quarterback with Tua Tagovailoa hurt, and the Falcons are still figuring out what they have with Michael Penix Jr. The Ravens have had too many postseason failures in recent years. The Chiefs, Bills, Eagles, Vikings and Lions are too good to qualify for this title. The Packers are young and obviously talented, but they’re well-rounded and might not be great enough at any one particular thing to fit this definition.

That leaves five teams as potential candidates. I’ll sort through them from No. 5 to No. 1 in terms of how likely they are to fit the definition:

5. Washington Commanders

Having clinched a playoff berth with Sunday’s win over the Falcons, the Commanders head into the postseason with a mix of experience and inexperience. They might feel like a young team with quarterback Jayden Daniels leading the way and a core of holdovers who weren’t making the playoffs often, but imports such as coach Dan Quinn and linebacker Bobby Wagner have Super Bowl experience. This is actually the league’s eighth-oldest team on a snap-weighted basis.

While I’d have my reservations about the defense, the brief midseason concerns about Kliff Kingsbury’s offense were allayed by a 42-point outburst against the Titans and a 36-point effort against the Eagles. We’ve seen Daniels drag the Commanders back into games that seemed hopelessly lost multiple times this season; would you want to see him on the other side of a two-minute drill two weeks from now?

4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

While the Bucs lost to Cooper Rush and the Cowboys in primetime in Week 16, Todd Bowles’ team has otherwise gone 5-1 over its last six games. Since their Week 11 bye, the Bucs rank fourth in the league in points per drive and fifth in EPA per play on offense. And while that’s one thing when they’re blowing out Carolina, as they did on Sunday, they racked up 506 yards and 40 points in a comfortable victory over the Chargers earlier this month.

That win was impressive, but I’d also gently point out the other victories in this winning streak came over the Giants, Raiders and a home-and-home over the Panthers, which isn’t exactly playoff-caliber competition. Then again, this Tampa Bay team beat the Lions and Eagles in September, took the Chiefs to overtime and has a quarterback in Baker Mayfield who has thrown for 260-plus yards and three touchdown passes in three of his four playoff starts. Ask the Eagles if they want to see the Bucs again after what has happened the last two times they’ve played them.

3. Los Angeles Rams

Few teams are hotter than the Rams, who have gone 9-2 since a 1-4 start to lock up the NFC West. Sean McVay’s team is on a five-game winning streak, and while it needed a perfectly timed interception by Ahkello Witherspoon inside his own end zone with 42 seconds to go to seal a 13-9 victory over the Cardinals on Saturday night, this is the same offense that dropped 44 points on the Bills earlier this month. We know how devastating Matthew Stafford & Co. can be at their best.

I could absolutely see people talking themselves into this one. Stafford and McVay give the Rams a credibility and a ceiling that other teams will struggle to match with their reputations, and it’s easy to write off the early-season struggles as a product of injuries to the offense. The offensive line is almost back to 100%, and the Rams have gone 8-3 while averaging 0.11 EPA per play with Puka Nacua on the field. The latter mark would be the league’s fifth-best this season.

2. Cincinnati Bengals

While the chances the Bengals actually make it to the postseason are still perilously slim, it would be easy to make their case as the team nobody wants to play. They will have made it to the postseason by winning five straight. They’ll have a quarterback who is capable of dropping 400 passing yards and four touchdowns on any defense and a pair of receivers who can be absolutely uncoverable on their day. And as bad as their defense has been, they at least have one player who can ruin a quarterback’s day in Trey Hendrickson, and one strip-sack or pressure-induced interception can swing a playoff game.

The Bengals also have the postseason résumé that would make this even more appealing. Joe Burrow is the only active quarterback to beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in a playoff game at Arrowhead. He blew out Josh Allen and the Bills in the snow in Western New York. Playoff games aren’t quarterback vs. quarterback, but many of the core players (and the coaching staff) who won those games alongside Burrow are still around in Cincinnati.

The Broncos have a great defense, but if you asked the other playoff teams whether they would rather face Burrow and the Bengals defense or Bo Nix and the Broncos defense in January, I suspect would most would rather see the rookie.

1. Minnesota Vikings

Assuming the Vikings don’t end up as the top seed in the NFC by virtue of beating the Lions next week, No. 1 has to be Minnesota, right? At 14-3, they would be one of the more accomplished wild-card teams in history. While we’re in a 17-game era, since the league moved to the 32-team format in 2002, there hasn’t been a single 13-win team to make the playoffs as a wild card, let alone a 14-win squad. Just five teams in league history have posted a better winning percentage without winning their division, and the last of those teams was the 1999 Titans, who made it to the Super Bowl.

The Vikings have won nine straight, so even if they lost to the Lions in Week 18, they would still likely be regarded as a hot team heading into the postseason. They feel like an inexperienced team, but they are actually the oldest team in the league on a snap-weighted basis. In addition to stalwart safety Harrison Smith, imported veterans Aaron Jones, Stephon Gilmore and Harrison Phillips have significant playoff experience. Coach Kevin O’Connell won a Super Bowl as the Rams’ offensive coordinator.

The defense is capable of taking over games. It leads the league in EPA per play after Burrow’s big game against the Broncos this week. There’s been no sign of the late-season collapse Brian Flores’ unit experienced in December a year ago. The Vikings are also one of the league’s healthiest defenses, as the only defender they have on injured reserve is cornerback Mekhi Blackmon. With multiple impact pass rushers, a veteran secondary and a crafty architect in Flores, they can build game plans that attack the injury-induced weaknesses along offensive lines and within schemes on a week-to-week basis.

And then there’s the guy under center. I’ve written plenty about Sam Darnold this season, but it’s clear what he’s capable of on his best days. Facing one of the league’s best defenses on Sunday, he was 33-of-43 for 377 yards with three touchdowns and a pick. Crucially, the Packers weren’t able to exploit his biggest weakness, as he was only sacked once all game. If the Vikings stay ahead of schedule and aren’t throwing to catch up, Darnold has been more than good enough to make opposing teams pay. He ranks 10th in the league in Total QBR during this winning streak.

Great defense, excellent coaching, a wide receiver who can catch everything and a quarterback who has been white-hot for stretches over the past two months? That’s a team nobody wants to play. The only thing that might keep the Vikings from earning this nod would be beating the Lions. And if they do win next week, would any team want to play a wounded, pissed-off, can-score-on-anybody Lions team in the postseason? I don’t think so.