Who is heading in the right direction, and who is trending in the wrong way entering Week 15? There are just four weeks left in the NFL season and Week 14 marked the final byes of the year, so all 32 teams will be taking the field from here on out. The playoff picture is starting to take shape as three teams (New England, Denver and the Los Angeles Rams) can clinch their spots by simply winning this week, but there is a lot of football left between now and Wild Card Weekend.
Let's take a look at the latest NFL playoff stock watch, with a look at how Christian Watson has helped save Green Bay's passing game.
NFL Playoff Stock Watch: Risers
Christian Watson
Things looked dicey for Jordan Love after his favorite target, tight end Tucker Kraft, went down with a season-ending torn ACL last month. The Packers have a lot of options to use in their passing game but the unit has gone up a level since Watson, the team's best deep threat, returned from his own ACL injury and got up to speed.
Watson caught two touchdowns in Green Bay's key win over Chicago on Sunday and is now on a certified heater with five scores in the Packers' last four games. The ability of Watson to stretch the field has put fear into opposing defenses, opening things up for Love's underneath receivers and the running game, which could be key to Green Bay's chances of winning the NFC North for the first time in four years.
Miami Dolphins
Don't look now, but the Dolphins are back from the dead. A very slow start to the season led Miami to fire GM Chris Grier prior to the trade deadline, but Mike McDaniel's team has rallied to win five of six after a 1-6 start, putting themselves back in the conversation for a wild card berth.
It will still be an uphill climb for the Dolphins, who presumably need to run the table and get significant help to get Houston down to a 10-7 record, but the fact Miami has a chance to finish with a winning record is a positive sign. McDaniel has certainly earned his job for next season but will need to get off to a stronger start to keep it past 2026, when the Dolphins can move on from Tua Tagovailoa without serious cap issues.
Detroit Lions
One of the biggest winners of Week 14 was the Detroit Lions, who picked up an impressive win against the red-hot Cowboys on Thursday night and saw another avenue to a potential playoff berth open up with Chicago's loss to Green Bay on Sunday. The Lions already beat Chicago back in Week 2 so if they can get to Week 18 within a game of the Bears they would be able to win their way into the playoffs via a head-to-head sweep of one of their biggest rivals.
It hasn't always been easy this year but Dan Campbell needs to keep feeding Jahmyr Gibbs the football if the Lions hope to go on a run beginning Sunday against the Rams. Detroit's trend of alternating wins and losses has coincided with Gibbs' best and worst games, so finding as many ways to help spring their best playmaker could be the different as the Lions fight to reach the postseason for a third straight year.
The Schedule
The NFL made a conscious decision not to schedule a double doubleheader, where both CBS and FOX have doubleheader windows, in Week 1 due in part to have it pop up in a more meaningful portion of the schedule. That decision paid off with the double twin bill on tap for Week 15, which looks like an outstanding slate of games once you get past Thursday night's Atlanta-Tampa mismatch.
Key divisional matchups are all over the early window as Ravens-Bengals, Bills-Patriots and Chargers-Chiefs all have huge meaning at this juncture of the campaign. The 4:25 window has a bonanza game on both networks as well with FOX getting Lions-Rams and CBS relying on Packers-Broncos, making the Week 15 slate an early Christmas gift for football fans.
NFL Playoff Stock Watch: Fallers
The NFC East
The division currently getting the Hard Knocks: In Season spotlight isn't providing a ton of wins right now. While the Giants were on bye, the other three NFC East teams all lost in Week 14, with Washington being eliminated from the postseason while Dallas delivered a stinker in Detroit that caused some to question George Pickens' motivation level.
Philadelphia also continued its late-season swoon with an overtime defeat in Los Angeles where Jalen Hurts turned the ball over five times, including twice on one play as he was picked and then fumbled after an Eagles' player stripped the Chargers' intercepting player of the football. The Hard Knocks: In Season series runs as long as one of the NFC East teams is in the postseason so HBO should expect to get only one extra episode of the show if Philadelphia or Dallas can't clean things up.
Travis Kelce
The Kansas City Chiefs' reign of terror over the AFC West is over as Sunday night's loss to Houston, combined with Denver's win to go to 11-2, officially eliminated them from division contention. The odds of Kansas City making the postseason are also down to about 15 percent thanks in part to another sluggish effort from tight end Travis Kelce, who has been a shell of himself in what could be his final season.
Kelce was front and center in the loss on Sunday night, registering two key drops, including a ball that went off his hands and was intercepted late in the fourth quarter to set up an icing field goal for the Texans. There is a good chance that Kelce, who is set to get married to Taylor Swift in June, simply decides to hang it up at that point and this game could be a key factor in that decision.
The Colts' Future
Colts' GM Chris Ballard felt so confident in his team's future that he traded away his next two first round picks to the New York Jets for cornerback Sauce Gardner at the deadline. While Gardner has been hurt, the blow of trading away two premium draft picks was made easier by the fact that Daniel Jones was playing at an MVP level and gave Indianapolis some level of comfort that their franchise quarterback was in the building.
A lot has changed over the course of the Colts' four-game losing streak, including the loss of Jones to a torn Achilles' tendon in their perennial house of horrors, Jacksonville's EverBank Stadium. That injury could significantly impact the Colts' offseason planning at quarterback and if they slide out of the postseason entirely, which is possible with a brutal schedule remaining, they likely gave the Jets a Top 15 draft pick as well with 2027's pick out of their control. Yikes.
Atlanta Falcons
When Atlanta beat Buffalo on Monday night in Week 5 behind a massive game from Bijan Robinson the world looked to be the Falcons' oyster. Handling prosperity has never been a strong suit for this group of Falcons and they have gone just 1-7 since, securing another January at home with a loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
That contest was actually 6-6 at halftime but Seattle outscored Atlanta 31-3 after the break, which is a very bad look for second year coach Raheem Morris. Owner Arthur Blank will likely want to make changes after his talented team underwhelmed yet again so a coaching change appears to be on the table, which isn't necessarily a good thing in a year where there aren't a ton of outstanding candidates waiting to be hired.