Say goodbye to the 2017 NFL regular season with 14 stats from Week 17

For “Auld Lang Syne” to the 2017 NFL regular season. (Is that the right use of that phrase? Eh, who cares. It’s 2018, baby!).

For better (touchdown celebrations!) and worse (omg, so many injuries), the 2017 NFL regular season is over. Now we focus on the playoffs. Well, we, the fans, and the 12 teams still remaining will, at least. The other 20 teams can work on figuring out who their next coach will be or who they’re going to draft this spring.

But before we look ahead, let’s take a peek at Week 17’s numbers and say our final goodbye to what was a strange season, in many different ways, in the NFL.

2017 was a great year for NFL parity. Eight teams that failed to make the playoffs in 2016 found their way to the postseason. That’s more than any season since 1990 — the first year with a 12-team playoff. Five of those teams won their division just one year after finishing third or worse the year prior — including worst-to-first efforts from the Eagles and Jaguars.

But while that’s good news for the Bills, Rams, Vikings, Saints, Panthers and Titans, it’s awful for last year’s holdovers. The Giants posted the league’s biggest regression after falling from 11-5 to 3-13, but at least they’ll get a premium draft pick out of the deal. The Raiders, Texans, and Dolphins both fell out of the playoffs and to six wins or fewer. The Cowboys, Seahawks, Packers, and Lions will join them as postseason spectators this January.

On a frigid day throughout most of the U.S., one of the most heart-bursting moments of the day — and really the entire season — was watching the Bills celebrate their first playoff appearance in 17 years. Their ticket was punched in one of the most dramatic ways possible, too. The Bills won their last game, but they needed the Ravens to lose to the Bengals at home to grab the final wild card spot in the AFC.

The Bengals were down three and faced fourth-and-12 from midfield with less than a minute left. Andy Dalton flung the ball to Tyler Boyd, who hauled it in and ran to the end zone, crushing the Ravens’ playoff hopes — and giving Bills fans a new hero in Dalton and 17 years’ worth of celebrating to do:

A little cold will never stop Bills fans.

Mike Zimmer was pretty clear about his New Year’s Eve plans earlier in the week:

The Vikings had an easy time with the Bears in their 23-10 win, securing a 13-3 season and the No. 2 seed in the NFC.

Hopefully Zimmer got a chance to throw some back and ring in the new year.

It’s been quite some time since a Steeler had a receiving touchdown and a kick return for a touchdown in the same game.

Unsurprisingly, JuJu Smith-Schuster was the player to break that drought and, again unsurprisingly, it came against the Browns:

Smith-Schuster, a second-round pick in 2017, has been one of the best additions to the Steelers offense this season. In his 14 games, he had 917 yards for seven touchdowns, with an average of 15.8 yards per reception. Expect him to make some noise in January.

Browns quarterback DeShone Kizer experienced a few firsts in Cleveland’s season finale against the Steelers on Sunday. He threw for more than 300 yards for the first time in his young NFL career, ending with 314 yards. He averaged 10.5 yards per pass, which is a career high for him. And he threw two passes of 50-plus yards in the first half alone.

This is more impressive because they were the very first 50-yard passes Kizer has thrown all season. Kizer also set a high mark for the franchise:

He finished with 419 rushing yards and five touchdowns this season.

Kizer’s rookie season came to an end without the Browns getting to experience another first — a win in 2017. There’s always next season, Browns fans.

The Colts didn’t end up with much to be proud of this season. But the old guys on the roster put a bunch of younger players around the league to shame in 2017.

At 34, Frank Gore is four years past the standard sell-by date for running backs. But that hasn’t stopped him from racking up the yards in Indianapolis, both on the ground and as a receiver. Gore finished this season with 1,206 rushing and receiving yards and four touchdowns. That makes him the first player in NFL history with 12 seasons of 1,200-plus yards from scrimmage.

That’s not Gore’s only accomplishment in 2017. And he’s not the only old guy on the Colts roster defying Father Time:

Adam Vinatieri, 45, is the oldest player in the league, but he’s still getting it done. He hit 85.3 percent of his field-goal attempts this season, including that 54-yarder on Sunday.

Vinatieri and Gore are both at ages where nobody would blame them for considering retirement. Both reportedly want to come back for another season, and it seems like they have plenty left in the tank.

The Bears finished 2017 with a perfect record against the AFC North, defeating the Steelers, Ravens, Bengals, and Browns to account for 80 percent of their regular-season wins. They also finished the season without a single win against opponents in their own division, going 0-6 against the Vikings, Lions, and Packers.

It was the first time the team had failed to win a game in the NFC North since the Nixon administration:

That was enough to finally seal John Fox’s fate.

No team gave up fewer points in 2017 than the Vikings, and their dominant defense was on full display over the final three weeks of the season. Minnesota allowed just 17 points to their opponents over that span — the Bengals, Packers, and Bears — who combined for a lengthy scoreless streak:

It was against underwhelming competition, but it was a showcase of why the Vikings are the betting favorite to escape the NFC and enjoy a Super Bowl on their home field.

Alvin Kamara may have wrapped up the league’s offensive rookie of the year award Sunday when he joined Gale Sayers as the only first-year player in NFL history to record five rushing touchdowns, five receiving touchdowns, and a kickoff return for a touchdown in the same season. The icing on the cake was a 106-yard return that left the Buccaneers in his wake and stood as the longest kick return in franchise history:

Even more impressive? Kamara overcame his own doubts to rumble out of the end zone and rip through Tampa Bay’s kick coverage. Less than seven minutes later, he’d score on a 7-yard carry and make it 14 total touchdowns on the season — more than anyone else on his roster.

In the Buccaneers’ first tilt with the Saints in Week 9, Jameis Winston tried an unorthodox method of firing his team up for the NFC South matchup. He wanted to get everyone hungry for a win:

It didn’t work. The Bucs lost 30-10, and Winston was sidelined with a shoulder injury for the next three games. Ryan Fitzgerald led the Buccaneers to wins in Weeks 10 and 11, but after Winston was healthy enough to return, the Bucs lost their next four straight.

The rematch with the Saints was the last game on the schedule, and Winston and his squad won 31-24. Congratulations to Winston, who finally got to eat a W.

The Panthers couldn’t get in an offensive rhythm against the Falcons on Sunday. It showed in Cam Newton’s quarterback rating:

Newton finished with 180 passing yards, one touchdown, and three interceptions in Carolina’s Week 17 loss to the Falcons.

Newton bounced back from last year’s career-low completion percentage of 52.9 this season with a respectable 59.1 percent overall. But it’s been an up-and-down year for him. His quarterback rating has ranged from Sunday’s low mark to a 141.8 back in Week 5 against the Lions.

Newton’s previous low rating this season of 48.8 came two weeks before he completed 78.8 percent of his passes for 355 yards, three touchdowns, and no picks against Detroit to earn that 141.8 rating. Unfortunately for Newton, that 48.8 rating came against the Panthers’ opponent in the Wild Card round: the Saints.

The Rams emptied their bench Sunday, resting a litany of starters in a meaningless loss to the 49ers. Despite that Sean Mannion-led 13-point performance, Los Angeles still finished the 2017 season as the NFL’s highest-scoring team.

The Rams’ 29.9 points per game was a testament to the running power of Todd Gurley and the development of Jared Goff, but it’s even more impressive when viewed through the lens of an awful 2016. No team scored fewer points in 2016 than Los Angeles, which struggled to a 4-12 record. Not only was 2017 a seven-game improvement in the standings, but it also marked the first time in more than 50 years that a team went from worst to first in total points.

The last team to do so? The 1965 San Francisco 49ers, which did it in a 14-team league in a time before the Super Bowl.

The Rams sat Todd Gurley for their final game against the 49ers, which opened the door for Chiefs rookie Kareem Hunt to take over as the NFL’s rushing leader for the 2017 season. Hunt finished the year with 1,327 yards on the ground, plus 455 receiving yards and 11 total touchdowns.

It took Hunt just one carry to get to the top of the rushing rankings. He took his single handoff for 35 yards and a touchdown against the Broncos. Here’s what really makes his rushing title this season stand out:

Hunt was an under-the-radar prospect, picked by the Chiefs in the third round of the 2017 draft out of the University of Toledo. Now he’s the reigning rushing champ in the NFL.

Blake Bortles got the Jaguars to the playoffs this year, but if you asked people to rank the starting quarterbacks in the NFL, he’d be in the bottom 10 for most. No player has thrown more interceptions since 2014 than Bortles, who has 64 in 62 career games.

That’s why it’s hilarious that Bortles passed Andrew Luck on Sunday for fourth on the list of quarterbacks with the most passing yards in the first four years of their NFL career.

The list now goes:

Peyton Manning? Yep, that makes sense. Dan Marino? Absolutely. Ryan Tannehill? Well that’s weird, but OK. Blake Bortles? HOW.

The truth is that there just aren’t many quarterbacks who had 60 starts in their four seasons like Bortles did. Matthew Stafford racked up 12,807 yards in his first four seasons and had only 45 games to get there with injuries cutting his first two seasons short.

For all his struggles, Bortles has been on the field nearly every Sunday, and that put him in some good company.