The bye weeks are finished after a truncated Week 14 with six teams finally getting the chance to put their feet up.
What the weekend was lacking in volume it made up for in notable results that shifted the direction of several playoff races in both conferences.
With just four weeks to go there is still plenty to unfold in the NFL so read on and find our five big takeaways below.
1 – Home Cooking
It was a good week to be playing in familiar surroundings with the home teams going 9-3 on the week, prior to the kickoff of Monday Night Football.
One of the few home teams to lose was Tennessee, who got knocked off by the Jacksonville Jaguars in what might have been the worst imaginable result for the visitors.
Lead by former 15th overall pick Mac Jones, who is deputising again for the injured Trevor Lawrence, the quarterback did his former team New England a big favour with this win.
The Jags dropped from first to fifth in the projected draft order and they might have just cost themselves a shot at Travis Hunter.
A couple of teams that benefitted from home wins were Philadelphia, who survived a late scare from Carolina to lock up a playoff berth.
In Miami the Dolphins kept their slim playoff hopes with a closer than necessary overtime victory against the Jets.
Playing at home is not always an advantage but when you need the win, it always helps to be playing in front of your fans.
2 – Dan Campbell is Committed to the Bit
There are only so many mea culpas you can offer on Lions coach Dan Campbell, whose hire looked to be ill informed at best early on.
There is no need to run through his history, but after an 0-10-1 start under the former tight end, the Lions have gone to another level thanks in large part to his all or nothing coaching style.
His commitment to playing with an aggressive mentality, going for it on fourth down at every opportunity, even when logic would suggest otherwise set the tone for this team and the players have bought in.
Even the specialists who are left spending a lot of time just standing there watching the offence try to convert.
On Friday, Campbell was faced with a tough call with the scores tied at 31-31, there were 43 seconds on the clock on fourth and inches, in range for a go-ahead field goal.
Most coaches would have kicked the field goal, gone up by three and trusted the defence to see out the final 30 odd seconds given the Packers had no timeouts.
It was a tough call for most coaches, but not for Campbell, he went for the kill shot, and it almost backfired spectacularly, but it didn’t.
Say what you want about his style and how it is normally reserved for video games, but Campbell is determined to do it his way, for better or worse.
It backfired in last season’s NFC Championship Game, but that aggressiveness put them one step closer to home field advantage this time around and no team is going to have a good time going into Ford Field.
Moments like this one are why the Lions are quite literally willing to spill their guts for Campbell and what he has built in Detroit.
3 – Minnesota Finds Their Groove
At this point, there are only two teams that could properly ruin the Lions quest for the NFC’s top seed and one of them made a statement with a big win.
Minnesota finished with a flourish, putting on three fourth quarter touchdowns to run away with a comfortable victory over Atlanta.
Sam Darnold is well and truly back on track after a bit of a blip midseason, posting season best numbers on this Falcons secondary.
Jordan Addison was the main beneficiary of Darnold going off with a trio of touchdowns as he stepped up in a big way as well.
If that wasn’t enough, Justin Jefferson found the end zone for the first time since October, putting up 132 yards and two touchdowns.
Minnesota’s defence came to play as well intercepting Kirk Cousins four times, with the pick of the bunch this one from Byron Murphy.
At 11-2 Minnesota is hoping for Detroit to slip up, but as it stands the two teams are on a collision course for a phenomenal Week 18 showdown with the division and possibly home field advantage on the line.
4 – Special Teams Deciding Games
Often forgotten, or at least sent to the sidelines, special teams came up in a big way for several teams in close games.
Kansas City is almost obligated to keep things close in their games at this point and they clinched their ninth straight AFC West title with this ricochet.
If you didn’t know any better, you would have almost assumed he decided to up the degree of difficulty by drilling it in off the post.
The Rams set the platform for their win over Buffalo with this blocked punt that opened up a ten-point lead.
In the early window of games, the Steelers closed out their much needed win over Pittsburgh by recovering a muffed punt.
But the biggest special teams play was made by the New Orleans Saints in a game where special teams did far more than either offence.
The Giants were lining up for a game tying field goal as time was running out, with everyone still watching hoping that they would not have to endure an overtime period.
Saints defensive lineman Bryan Breese burst through the line and got a thumb on Graham Gano’s attempt.
When games go down to the wire, often times they are decided in the fine margins and special teams can break them open, for better or worse.
5 – Buffalo Gets Tripped Up
The slip up was almost inevitable and they very nearly survived it, but the Bills paid the price for a couple of big wins in prior weeks.
Buffalo managed to avoid slipping up from their nine point win over Kansas City in Week 11 through a bye week, but after clinching the division in the snow over the 49ers last week, the cross country flight and taking on a good Rams team was too much for their defence.
Josh Allen showed up to play, but as Joe Burrow has found out many times this season no matter how good your quarterback stat line is, it doesn’t mean a lot when the defence can’t get the job done.
There was just no answer for the Rams passing game as Matthew Stafford went off, slicing and dicing them with his favourite targets Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp.
For the visitors, this game was lost in many ways, but the biggest blow came in the fourth quarter when they need one more stop on the Rams and instead gave up this play.
At worst the Bills are going to finish with the AFC’s third seed but this was a huge blow to their hopes of sending the playoffs through Highmark Stadium.
Now they need to win out and hope the Chiefs go 2-2 or worse down the stretch, something that is not looking overly likely based on the luck the reigning champions are having.