Week 16 observations you can steal to sound smart at Christmas

The NFL season is almost over, but there are plenty of things left to unpack if you want to sound smart around your family at Christmas.

We’ve reached the end of the long wonderful and often terrifying ride that was this NFL season. As expected, the Patriots and Chiefs are among the best teams in the league. Less expected was the meteoric rise of soon-to-be MVP Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens, who own the best record in football. The San Francisco 49ers finally arrived and with them one of the most brooding defenses we’ve seen this side of the Legion of Boom.

Only one week remains, but a lot can still happen in that time. The Green Bay Packers can still win the top seed in the NFC, as can the New Orleans, and the Oakland Raiders can still make the playoffs.

Buckle up folks, Con Air had a smoother landing than what the last week of the season will bring.

So here’s a special Christmas edition of Observations You Can Steal, this time so you can sound like the smartest NFL expert around your family.

Raiders should be your favorite team in Week 17

No less than four months ago, the Oakland Raiders were the butt of everyone’s bad Twitter jokes. In true Raiders fashion, Oakland overdrafted a prospect rather than trading down to get him (or just taking the better player), struck out on top free agents, Jon Gruden was feuding with his General Manager (again), and the Antonio Brown clown show wasn’t yet as problematic as it became.

That team, which has lost five of its last six games and until Week 16 hadn’t beaten a team since the beginning of November, has a clear path to the playoffs.

As improbable as it seems Jon Gruden could begin the next decade by coaching a game in January.

Oakland doesn’t control it’s own destiny and needs a fair amount of help but this is what needs to happen:

• Pittsburgh loses to Baltimore
• Tennessee loses to Houston
• Indianapolis beats Jacksonville (this helps strength of schedule for Oakland)
• Cleveland beats Cincinnati (which also helps strength of schedule)h
• And, of course, the Raiders need to win

That’s all extremely possible. Oakland is essentially the La Croix Girl meme if it was a football team looking at its playoff chances.

Baltimore isn’t playing any of its starters, but Pittsburgh is playing its third-string quarterback. Houston isn’t playing for anything but the Titans have a history of blowing it. The Colts should beat Jacksonville since they’re the better team and Frank Reich’s team ending the season with a win is critical to carrying over to next season on a high note.

Basically, the Raiders playoff hopes are in the hands of Baker Mayfield and Freddie Kitchens, which is the most unpredictable game of the bunch.

No one thinks the Raiders can or will win the Super Bowl this year. But for a team that was an afterthought before the season even started, you have to hand it to Oakland for being nothing short of entertaining.

Titans need to ride or die with Ryan Tannehill

The Ryan Tannehill shine has worn off rather significantly since he replaced Marcus Mariota and rattled off six wins in seven games. But the Titans have now lost two games in a row, which is amplified by the fact that they can now miss the playoffs after their improbable run over the last month.

All of this begins and ends with Tannehill.

He was praised for his play when the Titans were winning, so much so that it was reported that Tennessee was looking to not extend him but give Tannehill a brand new contract to be their quarterback.

Now that Tannehill has come back to earth, we can assess his situation with a little more levelheadedness. The question still remains the same: Is Ryan Tannehill the best option for the Titans moving forward?

Tennessee won’t have a high enough draft pick this year to replace Tannehill with a future franchise quarterback. Even if it did, whoever was drafted would need to win within the next two years to seize upon the window that opened this year thanks to Mike Vrabel’s defense finally coming into its own.

That leads to the next place to look, which is free agency. Veteran quarterbacks like Philip Rivers, Eli Manning will likely be available, but do either make the Titans better than they are with Tannehill? There were Rivers rumors a few years ago, but there’s a definitive end date to winning with Rivers, one that would mean repeating this process in a few years. With Tannehill, at the very least, he has years beyond 2022 to do something — Rivers and Manning do not. Of the three, Tannehill would likely be the cheapest and most efficient contract.

Windows don’t stay open very long in the NFL, and the Titans can’t allow another snafu at quarterback to hold them back. Recency bias is starting to subside, and Ryan Tannehill still seems like the best option moving forward.

Redskins need to hire Jim Caldwell

When something extraordinary happens in sports, the common refrain is to say this couldn’t be scripted. The Washington Redskins are that if the script was Cats, where nothing that happens makes any sense and the only reason this thing exists is that people once liked it.

There could be as many as six head coach openings this offseason, but there’s only one that nobody will want. Spoiler alert: It’s Washington.

It’s no secret that the culture in Washington is beyond toxic, something demonstrated on a number of occasions this season. Whether it was firing Jay Gruden, openly feuding with their best player after reportedly giving him the runaround when he had cancer, or continuing to allow Bruce Allen to do anything, Washington is a dartboard of things that you don’t want to have happen to a football team.

For as bad as things are, there’s one coach out there who makes too much sense to not hire. Jim Caldwell isn’t the sexiest name in the coaching pool, but he’s the right one for Washington. Here’s a guy who in four seasons with the Detroit Lions went to the playoffs twice and had one losing season. He was fired after coaching the Lions to a 9-7 record and a second-place finish in 2017. Look no further than where the Lions were when Caldwell was fired to where they are now with Matt Patricia to see just how under-appreciated and good Caldwell is.

Washington might want a hot name like Robert Saleh or Greg Roman, but having a fun offense or defense doesn’t make you a good head coach. What does make you a good head coach is being the winningest coach in Lions history since Buddy Parker left in 1956.

That’s over a half-century of misery that Caldwell undid and replaced with respectability. If there’s a perfect coach to try and turn the Redskins around, it’s him.