The Panthers become just the ninth team since 1966 to start a season 12-0 by edging the Saints 41-38 in a wild barnburner in New Orleans. Cam Newton strengthened his MVP case by tossing five touchdowns for the second time in three games and continually brought his team back, throwing three separate go-ahead touchdowns in the second half as the lead changed hands five times. All told, Newton threw for 331 yards while adding 49 on the ground, picking up the slack for a defense that struggled for the first time in over a month. Carolina pushed their regular season winning streak to 16 games and they still have a real shot at an undefeated season.
NFL scores and more, Week 13: What happened on Sunday
Another wild Sunday is in the books. Danny Kelly walks you through what went down.
Meanwhile, things got shaken up in the AFC playoff race as the Bengals and Broncos crushed their respective opponents (Cleveland and San Diego) by a combined score of 54-6. After New England's shocking loss at home to the Eagles, the Bengals shot up to the top spot in line for the No. 1 seed, followed closely by the Broncos, who own a tiebreaker over the Patriots. It wasn't too long ago that we were talking about a potential undefeated season for New England but things change quickly in the NFL. The Patriots have soldiered on after losing the battle of injury attrition the last month, but even a furious Tom Brady comeback attempt couldn't get them past a Philadelphia team that scored on a pick six, a blocked punt, and a punt return.
In the NFC, the Cardinals bounced back from an underwhelming win last week over the Niners by completely dominating the Rams in St. Louis. At the same time, the Seahawks strengthened their case for the playoffs with a very impressive blowout win in Minnesota. Seattle's defense has really hit its stride over the last few weeks and they limited the league's top rusher in Adrian Peterson to just 18 yards on 8 carries, the third lowest rushing total of his carer. The offense is firing on all cylinders as well and you could make the argument that no quarterback is playing better than Russell Wilson right now. Wilson has completed 76.7 percent of his passes over the last three weeks for 879 yards, 11 touchdown passes and no picks for a combined rating 148.2. He's doing most of that from the pocket too, the area in which many critics have said he needs to improve. In three games, he's 59 of 69 (85.5 percent) for 810 yards (11.7 yards per attempt) with 10 touchdowns, zero picks, and a near-perfect 155.2 rating from the pocket. Right now, Seattle looks like a dangerous team.
So do the Chiefs, who beat the Raiders 34-20 for their sixth straight victory. After falling off of most people's playoff radars with their 1-5 start, Kansas City has stormed back and look like a real dark horse in the AFC at 7-5. They're joined there by the Steelers, who got a convincing win over the Colts on Sunday Night Football, and the Jets, who beat the Giants in the battle of New York. The wild card race is wide open.
Win the water cooler:
Arm yourself with a few interesting tidbits from Sunday’s action so you can impress your coworkers around the water cooler.
DeAngelo Williams the NFL’s best offseason free agent signing?
The Steelers had the unenviable job of replacing one of the most productive players in the NFL for the first part of the season while Le’Veon Bell served his two-game suspension. Little did they know that the DeAngelo Williams signing in free agency would turn out to be much more than a two-game fill-in. When Bell went down with a season-ending injury, Williams didn’t skip a beat, and has carried the torch for Pittsburgh’s ground game. He rushed 26 times for 134 yards for the Steelers in Sunday night’s win over the Colts, moving his season total to 697 yards and 4.9 yards per carry in six starts. He’s allowed Pittsburgh to continue running their stuff for the most part and while Bell is certainly missed in that offense, Williams has eased that pain.
Cardinals off to historic start
The Cardinals' dominating win over the Rams -- their sixth straight, which is tied with the Chiefs for second-longest in the NFL behind only the undefeated Panthers -- pushed them to 10-2 on the year and in strong position for the NFC's No. 2 seed in the playoffs. It's hard to believe, considering some of the highly-talented teams they've put together over the years, but at 10-2, this is Arizona's best since the 1948 season, only back then they were based in Chicago's Comiskey Park. That's some perspective for how special this team is this year. They look like legit contenders for a Super Bowl title, even after sustaining a key injury last week.
Arizona has lost starting running back Chris Johnson to a broken tibia, but in typical Cardinals fashion, his backups stepped up and they didn't skip a beat. Arizona rushed for 175 yards on 36 attempts against a normally stout run defense in the Rams.
Rookie David Johnson got 99 yards on 21 carries while adding 21 yards and a score through the air. With this performance, he joined Gale Sayers as only rookies in NFL history with four-plus rush touchdowns, four-plus receiving touchdowns, and a kick return touchdown. Arizona got six rushes, 39 yards, and a touchdown from Kerwynn Williams as well, becoming a league-high 16th Cardinals player to score a touchdown this season. They just keep finding producers.
Speaking of that, one of the league's all-time steadiest producers, Larry Fitzgerald, recorded his 1,000th career reception, one of only 11 players in history to hit that mark.
Tom Brady sets more records
The Patriots lost their second straight and Tom Brady wasn't at his sharpest this week, but he continued to move forward in the all time NFL record book nonetheless. He threw three touchdowns to move to 30 on the season, the sixth time in his illustrious career that he's reached that benchmark. That trails only Brett Favre (9), Peyton Manning (9) and Drew Brees (7) in NFL history.
Additionally, Brady moved into third place on the all-time passing touchdowns list, now ahead of Dan Marino. He trails only Peyton Manning and Brett Favre in that statistic.
Not to be overlooked, Brady caught a pass on Sunday and rumbled for 36 yards, his first catch since 2001.
Bills get win with efficient attack
Buffalo came into this week with a big matchup against the Houston Texans, whose defense had been on a ridiculous four-week run of dominance. Undaunted, the Bills rushed for 187 yards on 36 carries (5.2 YPC) against a team that had surrendered just 70 yards per game to their last four opponents. LeSean McCoy led the way for Buffalo with 112 yards.
They didn't just do it on the ground, though -- Tyrod Taylor completed 11 of 21 passes for 211 yards and three touchdowns and kept the ball out of the hands of the Texan defenders, who had picked off five passes in their four-game winning streak. In doing so, Taylor set a Bills franchise record with 189 passes in a row with no interceptions, breaking the mark previously held by Drew Bledsoe (176). Taylor hasn't thrown a pick since Oct. 4, a stretch of nine weeks.
Alex Smith even more efficient:
While Taylor's interception-less stretch is impressive, Alex Smith is approaching record numbers. The Chiefs' signal caller, often criticized for being too conservative, pushed his streak of passes without an interception to 305 in a win over the Raiders, just 54 short of beating the all-time record set by Tom Brady in 2010-11 (358). Smith is four passes without a pick shy of passing Bernie Kosar (308) for second on that list (via Elias Sports).
Then there’s the pick-six club
Jay Cutler threw his third pick-six of the season -- second-worst in the NFL this year -- in the first quarter of Chicago's matchup with the 49ers on Sunday, but not to be outdone, Philip Rivers threw his league-leading fifth pick-six of the season in the first quarter of the Chargers' loss to the Broncos.
Neither can hold a candle to the pick-sixing prowess of Ravens quarterback Matt Schaub, who threw his third pick-six in as many games on Sunday against the Dolphins.
Incredibly, that's Matt Schaub's seventh pick-six in his last 420 pass attempts going back to the 2013 season. His career derailed that year when he threw pick-sixes in an NFL record four straight weeks before losing his job as the starting quarterback of the Texans.
In a twist that’s reaching absurd levels, Schaub is one game away from reaching his own ignominious record.
As Neil Greenberg put it for the Washington Post,
The odds of a quarterback throwing pick-sixes in four straight games is 6,830-to-1. The odds of the same quarterback throwing pick-sixes in four straight games twice in his career is that squared, almost 4,000 times worse than being struck by lightning (12,000 to 1).
I just can’t.
What’s worse is that assuming he plays, Schaub gets the Seahawks next week, also known as one of the teams that helped send his career into a tail-spin when Richard Sherman pick-sixed him to a win back in Week 4 of 2013. That was his third straight game with a pick-six, and after his fourth the next week, he’d lose his starting job.
The “one-year wonder”
Antonio Cromartie raised some eyebrows back in October when he called Odell Beckham Jr. a "one-year wonder," though in Cromartie's defense he did acknowledge that Beckham's 115 catches for 1,612 yards and 14 touchdowns over one full season was the best "of any receiver I've seen in 16 games since Randy Moss."
Beckham added to his resume of greatness with a six-catch, 149-yard performance against Cro's Jets on Sunday, his 11th game (in 24 career appearances) with 120+ yards receiving. That's the most by any player in his first two seasons in NFL history, passing Marques Colston on that list.
One of the weirdest careers ever
Meanwhile, on the other side, Brandon Marshall had a game as well, catching 12 passes for 121 yards and a touchdown, moving to 1,062 yards on the season. In doing so, he became the first and only player in NFL history to go over 1,000 receiving yards for four different teams (Broncos, Dolphins, Bears, Jets). Teams have seen fit to trade this guy three separate times.
Mariota runs into rare air
Titans rookie Marcus Mariota torched the Jaguars for 87 yards on a scramble on Sunday, secured the record for the third-longest touchdown run by a quarterback in league history -- behind only Terrelle Pryor (93 yards in 2013) and Colin Kaepernick (90 yards in 2014).
On the back of that run, he also became one of just four quarterbacks in league history to pass for more than 250 yards and rush for more than 100 yards in a game (the others being Cam Newton, Russell Wilson and Michael Vick).
SB Nation presents: Marcus Mariota shows his speed on ridiculous TD run
A.J. Green is really good:
I might be off on this but it still feels somehow like A.J. Green is underrated. He caught five passes for 128 yards and a touchdown on Sunday in the Bengals win over the Browns, moving to 1,037 yards on the season. That's his fifth straight 1,000 yard season -- rather, he's hit 1,000 yards in each of his first five seasons -- and only one player had previously done that in the league's history: Randy Moss.
Final Scores for Week 13:
Packers 27, Lions 23 (Thursday)
Buffalo Bills 30, Houston Texans 21
San Francisco 49ers 26, Chicago Bears 20 (OT)
Cincinnati Bengals 37, Cleveland Browns 3
Miami Dolphins 15, Baltimore Ravens 13
Seattle Seahawks 38, Minnesota Vikings 7
New York Jets 23, New York Giants 20 (OT)
Arizona Cardinals 27, St. Louis Rams 3
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23, Atlanta Falcons 19
Tennessee Titans 42, Jacksonville Jaguars 39
Kansas City Chiefs 34, Oakland Raiders 20
Denver Broncos 17, San Diego Chargers 3
Carolina Panthers 41, New Orleans Saints 38
Philadelphia Eagles 35, New England Patriots 28
Pittsburgh Steelers 45, Indianapolis Colts 10
Biggest Moments:
Another one-handed catch from Odell Beckham Jr. is ho-hum at this point, so now he's hurdling in the end zone.
The start of the Jags-Titans game was as bad as you'd imagine. It got even worse when the Jags snapped the ball over Blake Bortles head, leading to an easy TD.
The Rams used trickery to run their favorite play: a punt.
Russell Wilson hit the B button and then later scored after a Vikings defender tried to lift him by the leg.
Just a suggestion, Bills: You might want to cover someone. Anyone.
You'd think the 49ers would be able to fall correctly, but nope.
Marcus Mariota found Dorial Green-Beckham for a nice 47-yard TD and then showed off his wheels with an 87-yard TD run, the third-longest by a quarterback in NFL history.
A Bucs coach and Patrick Peterson need to wash their mouths out with soap, according to their mothers.
Jameis Winston's first-down run was more entertaining than it had any right to be.
Blaze it! Tom Brady no longer has 420 career passing touchdowns. With his 421st, he passed Dan Marino for third all-time.
The Saints stole the ball and scored a touchdown before the Panthers even knew what happened.
Later, the Saints made NFL history when they scored the first defensive two-point conversion ever.
It's not unusual for Mike Tolbert to break out the Carlton dance.
Bill Belichick's not touching you, ref. He's not touching you. He's not touching you ...
What is a catch, Week 13 version: Did Greg Olsen establish himself as a runner?
The Patriots are big on trick plays, especially ones where Tom Brady catches a pass. He's not very good at tackling, though.
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