Week 15 of the NFL season was a banger, with close, high-profile matchups across the board. The Atlanta Falcons got things started on Thursday night with an incredible comeback to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and shake up the NFC South race.
On Sunday, the Bills staged an epic comeback to beat the Patriots while the Chargers officially extinguished the Chiefs' playoff hopes. In the afternoon, the Saints upset the Panthers to continue the carnage in the NFC South while the Rams made a statement against the Lions, the Broncos established themselves as contenders with a win over the Packers, and Philip Rivers played football for the first time in five years.
In prime time, the Cowboys and Dolphins both suffered disastrous losses that all but ended their respective playoff hopes, so there was a lot to digest from Week 15. Who came out of the wreckage as winners and losers?
Winner: Bo Nix, JJ McCarthy, and the much-maligned segment of the 2024 QB class
The quarterback class from the 2024 NFL Draft has been a bit of a mixed bag to this point in their first two seasons. Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye are established as franchise quarterbacks, with Maye emerging as an MVP candidate in 2025. Caleb Williams has also cemented himself as a franchise QB under Ben Johnson after a rocky rookie year.
Outside of that, Michael Penix Jr. had an up-and-down season before a knee injury ended his second season prematurely. JJ McCarthy has struggled with injuries, and Bo Nix has struggled with inconsistency even while playing with a very good Broncos roster.
On Sunday, both Nix and McCarthy played the best games of their young careers. Nix led the Broncos to a big win over the Packers with a stellar day, finishing 23-for-34 for 302 yards and four touchdowns. His red-zone playmaking was the difference in the game for a Denver team that has now won 11 games in a row and is in the driver's seat for the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
Later that night, McCarthy carved up the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, rebounding from an early interception to put up 250 yards and three total touchdowns on just 24 attempts.
If both Nix and McCarthy can keep playing this way, the 2024 class could end up being one of those legendary draft classes that defines the league for years to come.
Loser: Injuries
An epic Sunday slate was unfortunately marred by injuries to star players all across the league.
First, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes went down with a devastating torn ACL near the end of Kansas City's loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. The star signal-caller had already been playing through a left knee injury for a while, and Sunday proved to be too much for the three-time Super Bowl champion's body. He already had successful surgery and has started rehab, but this injury will likely keep him out of the offseason program and could bleed into next season.
During the afternoon slate, the Packers lost Micah Parsons to a torn ACL on a non-contact injury in Denver. Parsons is one of the very best players in football and is the sole reason this Packers team took the jump from a playoff team to a Super Bowl contender in 2025, but Green Bay is now looking at a very grim fate without its superstar that it traded so much for just before the season started.
Minutes later (and on a less serious note), Rams wideout Davante Adams re-injured his bad hamstring running a route against the Lions. Adams doesn't sound like he will be out long, but he could miss a massive showdown with the Seahawks on Thursday night.
Winner: Philip Rivers
Raise tour hand if you had Philip Rivers starting an NFL game in 2025. Nobody? Me neither.
To be honest, I feared for Rivers coming into Sunday's game against the Seahawks. This is a guy who hadn't played in five years and clearly came back into the league with a lot of extra pounds. His arm was already losing steam back in 2020 when he retired; how in the world would he manage to play on Sunday?
As it turns out, Rivers was actually competent as the living experiment of a human brain against an elite NFL defense. Rivers didn't have any mobility (he never really did) and his arm is completely shot as soon as he has to throw the ball 15 yards down the field. However, his mental edge was on full display, as he was able to constantly play on time and change the pass protection to protect himself in order to not get completely crushed.
Rivers' first start back even ended in perfect Philip Rivers fashion. The potential Hall-of-Famer led the Colts down the field for a go-ahead field goal with less than a minute remaining, only for the Seahawks to match with a field goal drive of their own with 11 seconds to go. Then, as it seemed happened so many times before, it was on Rivers to come back out there with virtually no time left or any chance of winning. He threw the inevitable interception on the first play of the series.
The Colts did not win, and their playoff hopes are now hanging by a thread heading into a prime time game against the 49ers. But Rivers coming back and looking like a real NFL quarterback is a win in itself.
Loser: Pour one out for the Chiefs dynasty
The Kansas City Chiefs have essentially run the NFL since 2019. In that six-year span, the Chiefs have been to the AFC Championship all six times, won five of them, and won three of those five Super Bowls.
Things haven't been as smooth for the 2025 Chiefs, as the late-game heroics and disciplined dominance we have gotten used to from them hasn't been there. A mix of offensive line injuries, defensive attrition and decline from some of the older stars, namely Travis Kelce and Chris Jones, left the Chiefs battling for their playoff lives deep into December.
The battle ended on Sunday in resounding fashion. The Los Angeles Chargers knocked off the Chiefs 16-13 at Arrowhead, eliminating Kansas City from the playoffs and becoming the first AFC West opponent to sweep them since 2014 (the Broncos can do the same on Christmas Day).
Patrick Mahomes' season-ending injury near the end of the game was sort of a poetic way for 2025 to end for the Chiefs, a true season from hell where anything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Now, there are plenty of questions to ask about what the Chiefs will look like moving forward. Will Kelce retire? Is defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo going to finally take a head coaching job? How many years does Andy Reid, who will turn 68 in March, have left?
Mahomes is too good a player to be on a bad team for long. But chances are that the next time he is in a big game in January, things will look a whole lot different around him.
Winner: The Trevor Lawrence resurgence
For years, the Trevor Lawrence truthers have been waiting for his big breakout. Lawrence was touted as a generational prospect coming out of Clemson, but he has not quite reached those heights.
Lawrence has still been a good quarterback, but one who has some flaws and some really bad days at times. However, he may be starting to put things together.
In the first season with Liam Coen as head coach, Lawrence is starting to find his groove and is playing the best football of his career. On Sunday, Lawrence finished 20-for-32 with 330 yards and six total touchdowns in a 48-20 win over the New York Jets.
The recent schedule hasn't been the toughest, but Jacksonville has now won five games in a row and will almost surely be a playoff team when January rolls around. If Lawrence can keep this hot streak going on Sunday against the Broncos and their elite defense, the hype train will really start to take off.
Loser: The NFC South race
When the ACC was floundering all college football season, I used to call Saturdays a weekly episode of Who wants to win the ACC? Now that the regular season in college is all over, the tomfoolery has shifted up to the NFC South.
On last week's edition of Who wants to win the NFC South?, the Buccaneers suffered a terrible home loss to the dismal Saints, one that kept the Panthers in the mix for the division crown. This week, both the Bucs and the Panthers took things to new heights.
On Thursday night, the Buccaneers blew a 14-point lead at hime to the Atlanta Falcons, the other bottom-dweller of the division, in a 29-28 loss that dropped them to 7-7 on the season and had everybody cussing out of their mind postgame.
On Sunday, the Panthers had the division lead in sight for the first time all season. In fact, a win over those lowly Saints followed by a win over Tampa Bay in Week 16 would have clinched the division for Carolina. So, naturally, the Panthers blew a 10-point lead against the Saints in a 20-17 lead to drop to 7-7.
Finally, after 15 weeks, the Panthers and Bucs will play their first of two games in Week 16. Somebody has to win… Right?
