We have reached the week of Thanksgiving which means it is the best time of the year.
Food is all over the place, we will be seeing family and the football is starting to really heat up. This past Sunday’s early slate looked bleak and meager on paper, but it delivered with all kinds of chaos, fun and anarchy.
With all of the dust settled the time has now come for us, Michael Peterson and RJ Ochoa, to put it through the lens of The Skinny Post and offer our most important takes, thoughts and aggressive ideas.
Let’s begin.
Where are the Philadelphia Eagles among the best teams in the NFL?
RJ:
I’ve been apprehensive to buy all the way in on the Detroit Lions from the moment that people started to act like they were the first person to say that they were good. More than anything it was this exact thing that drove me away. Maybe I am a hipster.
Whatever the case I just don’t know that I can say that I would pick Detroit, as amazing as they look, in a hypothetical game against the Philadelphia Eagles. It pains me greatly to admit, but Philly is a freaking machine. They are relentless and seem more sustainable than any of the previous versions of themselves and obviously Saquon Barkley is the reason why. With San Francisco flailing and the rest of the conference in general disarray (I suppose you can toss the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings in the conversation) I can’t pick against Philly in the NFC.
Thankfully they play the Baltimore Ravens next week which will let us see how they stack up against one of the AFC’s best.
Michael:
I’m going to be the hipster to your opinion and say that I disagree about the Eagles. They’re a good team, but to go as far as saying they’re the top team in the NFL, I don’t think so.
Philadelphia has a 9-2 record but only two of their wins have come from beating another team with a winning record. Also, those games were still just one-score decisions. On top of that, I don’t like the way they ended up beating some of the lowly squads on their schedule either.
They beat the Jaguars by five points. The Lions beat that same team by over five TOUCHDOWNS. Let’s add in a four-point win over the Browns and a three-point win over the Saints while we’re at it. The record looks good, but I’d only go as far as saying the Eagles are in the same tier as the Vikings. They’ve won close games over bad teams and have one or two good wins on the year out of their nine victories this season, but they still have a toe dipped into the “fraud watch” pond and that keeps them a step behind a team like the Lions.
Will Antonio Pierce be one and done following his first full season as head coach of the Raiders?
Michael:
The Raiders head coach position has long been a place where hopes go to die, similar to the Jets, Commanders (before this season), and Bears in recent years. Antonio Pierce got the vote of confidence from his players for the job he did to finish the year as the interim head coach but things have seemingly only changed for the worse this season.
Instead of drafting a quarterback for the future early in this year’s draft, the Raiders went with tight end Brock Bowers. Bowers has been incredible as a rookie as he currently leads ALL rookies in receiving yards. However, that hasn’t translated into wins with the Raiders sitting with only 2 hashes in the win column.
Oh, and the team traded away receiver Davante Adams which really may as well have been the nail in the coffin for any sort of competitive viability this year.
So I ask: Is this going to be Pierce’s only year as head coach of the Raiders? Part of me says no as I don’t truly understand how you could fire a head coach after making move after move that showed you did NOT plan to compete in 2024, but we’ve also seen plenty of examples of one-and-done coaches unfairly blamed for the team’s struggles.
My brain says it would not make sense to move on after the season, but my gut says otherwise.
RJ:
Personally speaking, I put a lot of stock into what players want with things like how the Raiders wanted to bring Pierce back. It is logical to take their word as something very serious.
While that is the case, players can also, like all of us, become emotionally compromised. Remember when the Indianapolis Colts petitioned to bring Chuck Pagano back and got their wish and it was all horrible? This sort of feels like that.
Obviously the Shedeur and Deion Sanders combination is one to watch here so I think a lot of the answer depends on the availability of different candidates. To get personal again though, I am not sure how you can feel like anything Antonio Pierce is doing is working out and as an Arizona State Sun Devil, he helped turn the program into a huge mess when he was involved… only for it to thrive after he departed and proper leadership joined.
I think that I think it may be one and done.
Are the Dolphins making their way back into the AFC playoff picture?
RJ:
A few weeks back I started the conversation around here that Mike McDaniel was sort of skating by, void of any real criticism. I stand by that, for what it is worth.
Maybe Mike heard that. Or maybe the Dolphins started playing some lower-quality teams. Either way, Miami has won three games in a row against the Los Angeles Rams, Las Vegas Raiders and New England Patriots to get to 5-6 on the season. Thankfully for all of us they will visit Lambeau Field on Thanksgiving night which will allow us to sit back and judge with full bellies.
I’m going to say that I am still unwilling to act like Miami is a legit contender, by the way. Talk to me on Black Friday if and when they win in professional football’s holiest cathedral.
Michael:
Yeah I’m not sold on the Dolphins as anything other than a middling team that’s currently on the upwards trajectory of their 2024 roller coaster in anticipation of the inevitable drop that tends to follow.
In my eyes, all McDaniel has done in recent weeks is beat bad-to-decent teams while still possessing one of the best offenses in the NFL on paper. If anything, these wins only stopped him from feeling the temperature of his seat increase as opposed to solidifying his status as a great coach.
This was a really cool play, though!
Which team currently with a losing record do you think has the best chance of making the playoffs this year?
Michael:
I can’t help but think the Buccaneers are primed to finish this season strong with a really easy remaining schedule.
They’re currently 5-6 and coming off a dominant 30-7 win over the Giants behind the return of wide receiver Mike Evans. Through the next six games, they face the Raiders, Chargers, Saints, Cowboys, and Panthers twice. There’s a legitimate chance they could win all six with an upset over the Chargers on the road but I’d say going 5-1 is very realistic. That would mean they’d finish with a 10-7 record and in first place of the NFC South.
The Falcons currently lead the division but with games against the Chargers, Vikings, and Commanders left, I think they falter just enough to let the Bucs leapfrog them at the top.
Baker Mayfield is playing some of the best ball of his career in Tampa Bay and I wouldn’t want to be the one to bet against him down the stretch.
RJ:
It is important for people who don’t know to be educated… Michael looks A LOT like Baker Mayfield so I would offer that he is a bit biased here. But moving on.
I like the Bucs as an answer but want to throw out the Indianapolis Colts, as well. Since 2008, we have seen five teams who were 4-7 (or worse) through 11 games go on to reach the playoffs. They all had one thing in common in that they each won a subpar division. It will not shock you to learn/remember that the Buccaneers were one of those five… last year.
In that spirit… tell me that the Colts can’t catch the Houston Texans. Indy is 5-7 at the moment where Houston is 7-5, but it feels like the Texans are taking on serious water inside of Fraud Watch Pond. The Colts visit New England this week before going on their bye, but after that they have games against the Denver Broncos, Tennessee Titans, New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars. Counting the Patriots we could be talking about 5 wins here.
