13 weeks into the NFL season and it feels like everything we thought we knew has been turned upside down.
This weekend’s action started with a Thanksgiving Day slate where every single underdog came out on top, continued with a Black Friday beatdown in Philadelphia, and wrapped up with enough chaos to make your head spin.
The Panthers are alive in the NFC South, the Colts are suddenly vulnerable, and Shedeur Sanders is finding out that winning in the NFL is slightly harder than playing for Deion at Colorado.
It was a week that reinforced just how brutal the stretch run can be and we’ve got our five big takeaways from Week 13 below.
1 – America’s Team Might Actually Be America’s Hottest Team
The Dallas Cowboys are somehow, improbably, one of the most dangerous teams in the NFC right now.
After their 31-28 Thanksgiving victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, the Cowboys have now beaten the last two Super Bowl champions in the space of four days. They took down the defending champion Eagles 24-21 the week before, and now they’ve knocked off Patrick Mahomes and company in front of a national audience.
At 6-5-1, Dallas has won three straight and Dak Prescott is playing lights out at quarterback, making plays with his arm and his legs when the pocket collapses. The addition of George Pickens in the trade deadline deal has given him another legitimate weapon, and suddenly an offence that looked pedestrian early in the season is humming.
But here’s the thing – the Cowboys aren’t really in the Wild Card hunt despite their recent form. They’re very much alive in the NFC East, where no team has won consecutive division titles since 2004. That bonkers streak is suddenly back in play.
The Eagles’ lead over Dallas has shrunk to just 1.5 games after Philadelphia’s Black Friday disaster in their own building against the Bears. And here’s where it gets interesting – Philly faces their two toughest remaining opponents, the Chargers and Bills, on the road, while the Cowboys should be favoured in most of their remaining games outside of Thursday night’s trip to Detroit.
Eagles fans have seen this story before in 2023, when Philadelphia started 10-1 before collapsing down the stretch and getting bounced in the Wild Card round. The warning signs are there again – Philly just went five quarters against the Cowboys and Bears scoring only three points before finally remembering how to move the ball.
Is it likely Dallas catches them? Probably not. But it’s not impossible either, and that’s more than anyone could’ve said about the Cowboys’ playoff hopes a month ago when they sat at 3-5-1.
If the Eagles continue to play like they did on Black Friday, we might be talking about one of the great NFC East collapses in recent memory. And wouldn’t that just be the most Cowboys way to back into the playoffs.
2 – The Bears Are Actually Good (And The Eagles Aren’t)
Remember when people questioned whether the Bears’ 8-3 record was legit because they hadn’t beaten anyone good?
Well, they went into Philadelphia on Black Friday and absolutely battered the reigning Super Bowl champions 24-15, leaving no doubt about their credentials.
D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai became the first Bears teammates with 100-plus rushing yards each in a game since Walter Payton and Matt Suhey in Week 10 of the 1985 season. Let that sink in for a moment – the 1985 Bears are generally considered one of the greatest teams in NFL history.
Chicago rushed for 281 yards against an Eagles defence that had been stout against the run all season. The Bears recorded 91 yards before contact and 177 yards after contact, both season highs, as they physically dominated Philadelphia on both sides of the ball.
Ben Johnson’s play-calling was superb, mixing the run game with just enough from Caleb Williams to keep the Eagles honest. Williams didn’t need to do anything spectacular – he just had to be efficient and let the running backs eat.
Meanwhile, the Eagles looked lifeless for most of the contest. Philadelphia’s fans booed the unit aggressively entering halftime, and with good reason. The defending champs now sit at 8-4 and look nothing like the team that hoisted the Lombardi Trophy nine months ago.
Jalen Hurts threw a touchdown to A.J. Brown but the offence couldn’t sustain drives, and when they finally fumbled on a tush push in the fourth quarter, you knew it just wasn’t their day.
At 9-3, the Bears are for real and they’ve got the Packers twice in the next month to prove they can win the NFC North.
3 – Bryce Young Just Won’t Go Away
Every time you think Bryce Young is done, every time the hot takes start flowing about how the Panthers need to draft another quarterback, the bloke goes out and does something ridiculous.
This time it was throwing two fourth-down touchdowns to lead Carolina to a 31-28 upset of the Rams, including a 43-yard bomb to Tetairoa McMillan with 6:34 left that proved to be the game-winner.
Young completed 15 of 20 passes for 206 yards and three touchdowns with a career-high 147.1 passer rating, doing most of his damage on third and fourth downs when it mattered most.
How’s this stat!? At 24 years, 128 days old, Young became the youngest quarterback in NFL history with 11 game-winning drives, surpassing Josh Allen. Yep.
The Panthers sit at 7-6 now and are very much alive in the NFC South race. Matthew Stafford threw three turnovers including a pick-six and a late fumble that sealed the Rams’ fate, but this was Young’s day and I’m not raising alarms about the Rams who seemed to have an off game.
But Bryce? Well he’s gone from potential bust to clutch performer in the span of about two months, and if Carolina can sneak into the playoffs it’ll be one of the better redemption stories of the season.
4 – The AFC South Is Exciting?
Coming into Week 13, the Colts looked like they had the AFC South wrapped up at 8-3, holding a two-game lead over both the Texans and Jaguars.
One afternoon later and suddenly it’s a three-team race with five weeks to go.
The Colts lost 20-16 to the Houston Texans to fall to 8-4, with Daniel Jones managing just 201 yards and two touchdowns against DeMeco Ryans’ suffocating defence. The Texans moved to 7-5 and are now just one game back.
Meanwhile the Jaguars thrashed the Titans 25-3 to also improve to 7-5, meaning the top three teams in the division are separated by a single game heading into the stretch run.
For the Colts, this is a nightmare scenario. They’ve lost two of their last three and now have four divisional games in their final six contests, twice against Houston and twice against Jacksonville.
The Colts entered Week 13 with the NFL’s No. 1 offense in points per game at 31.0, while the Texans brought the No. 2 defence in points allowed per game at 16.5. On Sunday, defence won out.
Jonathan Taylor always does well against Houston but it wasn’t enough as the Colts’ offensive line struggled and Jones was operating on a fractured fibula that clearly limited his mobility.
If Indianapolis can’t beat Houston or Jacksonville in the return fixtures, they might end up watching the playoffs from home despite starting the season 7-1. That would be peak Colts.
5 – The Chiefs Might Actually Miss The Playoffs (And That’s Pretty Cool)
Let’s just say it out loud: the Kansas City Chiefs will almost certainly miss the playoffs for the first time in the Patrick Mahomes era.
After their Thanksgiving loss to the Cowboys, Kansas City sits at 6-6 and on the outside looking in at the AFC playoff picture. They’re currently the 10th seed, and playoff probability calculators have them somewhere between 25-36% to make the postseason but they need a lot of things to go their way.
This is the same franchise that went an NFL-record 10-0 in one-score games last season. This year? They’re 1-5 in those situations. The clutch gene has gone missing at the worst possible time.
Is the dynasty over? It’s fun to say but many talking heads were proven wrong by Tom Brady not once, not twice but three times. So if Pat Mahomes is the baby GOAT people say his is, then we will see a rising Chiefs next season. But for this season we can rejoice.