Sunday Football Afterword: Week 17 Late Games

Adrian Peterson ran hard yesterday but came up short of the
all-time rushing record. It really puts Dickerson's season
in perspective. Photo credit to NY Times.

The later Sunday games were the exciting ones – though the Bears/Lions matchup did have some late-game excitement.

The Denver Broncos finished the season on an 11-game winning streak as Peyton Manning led Denver to an 11^th consecutive win of seven points or more. It is the second time he has had a streak of 10+ consecutive wins of seven or more points. Only two other quarterbacks have done so once. On the Chiefs’ side, an emotional year came to an end and Romeo Crennel was fired as their head coach this morning.

While Denver was romping Kansas City, New England was doing the same to a division opponent of their own in a 28-0 thrashing of the Dolphins. Miami had a decent year and will look to improve on it with a young quarterback who had enough good and bad games this season that he will learn anything he needs to in order to improve next year.

With Houston’s loss to Indianapolis earlier in the day, their wins locked up the AFC’s #1 seed for Denver and #2 seed for New England.

San Diego got off to a hot start, returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown at home against Oakland. Though the official announcement has not been made today, Norv Turner is expected to be fired, and he even said he expects that the organization will begin looking for another coach. The question is whether Turner will ever be a head coach in the NFL again.

St. Louis gave Seattle quite a scare, and gave some NFC playoff teams a little hope that they can slow a Seahawks offensive attack that had been on a tear the three previous weeks. The Seahawks won though, and are plenty hot heading into the postseason.

The 49ers locked up the NFC West with a 27-13 victory over the Cardinals. I don’t think Ken Whisenhunt will be fired, though there are plenty of opinions on both sides around the nation, but I’m sure we’ll get a more concrete answer on that front within a few days.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the Vikings played a heck of a game and knocked the Bears out of the playoffs and locked up a wild-card spot for themselves with a 37-34 win over the Packers. Poor Bears fans, who had to pull for rival Green Bay for three hours only to come up empty-handed. Adrian Peterson finished 9 yards shy of breaking Eric Dickerson’s rushing record but should end up winning MVP now that the Vikings have locked up a playoff birth.

I hadn’t been planning on it, but my afterword for the ‘NFC East Championship’ game was a little long. I will lengthen it slightly and publish it separately from this post to keep the length of this post reasonable. Come back a bit later and check that post out. Thanks for reading!

UPDATE - The firings of Norv Turner and Ken Whisenhunt were announced this afternoon. I won't begin to speculate on who will end up with either San Diego or Arizona, but I think Andy Reid would be a good fit in Arizona.

Norv Turner should not get another head coaching position. I could see him getting a coordinator position somewhere, but I wouldn't give it to him. Whisenhunt, on the other hand, absolutely deserves another head coaching opportunity. I see him in a similar light as Andy Reid. The teams need a change of pace and the coaches could use a change of scenery.