Sorting five overreactions to Week 13: NFC South battle? Cowboys to the playoffs?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The beautiful thing about Week 13 is that you can do the bulk of your overreacting before the weekend. Three games Thursday. One more Friday. All won by underdogs, with major impact on the standings and the playoff races. First-place teams wobbling, upstarts … uh … upstarting? Plenty of overreaction fodder on the plate before Sunday even got here.

We will have five weeks left in the 2025 NFL regular season after Monday night’s game, and some of the races that didn’t look like they were going to be races have tightened up. Some teams we take for granted as playoff teams are going to have to fight their way in. Fact is, some of the things we thought were overreactions a month or so ago are turning out not to be.

Yeah, this is the good time of year, when the weather starts to get colder and every turnover seems like it can swing a team’s entire season. As we try to figure out which overreactions might hold up and which ones are mirages, they carry a little more weight at this time of year because, again … we’re at the point where they might not be overreactions.

Jump to:
Panthers, Bucs set for Week 18 showdown?
Could AFC North winner finish below .500?
Neither Super Bowl LIX team will make it this year?
Ravens should hold off on new Jackson extension?
Cowboys are going to make the playoffs?
Fantasy-related overreactions

The first-place Buccaneers got a much-needed victory over Arizona to stop a three-game losing streak and improve to 7-5. This was important, because in Charlotte, the second-place Panthers pulled one of the biggest upsets of the season, knocking off the red-hot Rams in a game that saw Carolina run the ball 40 times and force three Matthew Stafford turnovers.

The Rams should be fine — everybody is entitled to a tough day. But this was a massive win for the Panthers heading into their very late bye week. They improved to 7-6, which means they’re only a half game behind the four-time defending division champion Bucs with five weeks left.

Carolina is the definition of an up-and-down team. It hasn’t won or lost two games in a row since mid-October. But the Panthers were ready for the Rams, who came in on a six-game winning streak with Stafford pulling away in the MVP race, and that’s enough to make you believe they’ll be ready for the Bucs.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

The Panthers and the Bucs play twice in the final three weeks. Tampa Bay gets home games against the Saints and the Falcons in the next two weeks, which it will surely be favored to win, then plays at Carolina in Week 16, at Miami in Week 17 and home against Carolina in Week 18. The Panthers are off next week, then play the last-place Saints in Week 15 before finishing with a tough Bucs-Seahawks-Bucs stretch.

Let’s say for the sake of this argument that the Bucs go into the Week 16 matchup at 9-5 and the Panthers are 8-6. If the Panthers win that game at home, the division race will be tied with two weeks to go, which means Week 18 will almost certainly settle things. The Buccaneers are starting to get healthier, and once they do, they should be scary. But no team looked scarier than the Rams did coming into Week 13, and the Panthers knocked them off with a tough, physical run game and an undermanned but opportunistic defense. There’s no reason to think they’re going away.

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The AFC North champion will have a losing record

Currently, no team in the AFC North is above .500. Week 13 in the black-and-blue division began with Cincinnati upsetting the Ravens in Baltimore to improve to 4-8 in Joe Burrow‘s first game back from injury. That dropped the Ravens to 6-6 and left the Steelers alone in first place until they laid an absolute egg in Sunday’s home loss to the Bills and fell to 6-6 themselves.

Pittsburgh has lost five of its past seven games after a 4-1 start and looked hopeless on both sides of the ball throughout the entire second half Sunday. So the Steelers and Ravens, who play each other next week in Baltimore and again in Week 18 in Pittsburgh, are tied for first place at 6-6 with the Bengals only two games behind at 4-8.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

We all know Mike Tomlin’s Steelers have never finished a season with a losing record, so this is a tough call to make. But my goodness, did they stink Sunday. They had 90 total yards of offense through three quarters. They ran for only 58 yards against a Bills team that was allowing 148.9 rushing yards per game (third worst in the league) going into Sunday. The Steelers’ defense allowed Buffalo, which was playing without its two starting offensive tackles, to rush for 249 yards. Down by 16 points, Pittsburgh turned the ball over on downs at the Buffalo 9-yard line with 10:11 left in the game and didn’t get it back until it was down by 19 with 1:03 left. So the Steelers are playing extremely poorly.

Thing is, the Ravens kind of are, too. Yeah, they had won five in a row before Thursday night, but Lamar Jackson hasn’t thrown a touchdown pass in three games, and Baltimore’s offense looks out of sync. In addition to their Ravens games, the Steelers have road games in Detroit and Cleveland and a home game against a suddenly tough-looking Miami team remaining. In addition to their Steelers games, the Ravens have trips to Cincinnati and Green Bay and a home game against the 10-2 Patriots.

Cincinnati must go to Buffalo next week, then plays at home against the Ravens in Week 15 before heading to Miami in Week 16 and finishing with home games against the Cardinals and Browns. The 4-8 Bengals are in this thing, folks, and looking at those schedules and the way these teams are playing, don’t tell me they can’t win the division at 8-9.

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Neither of last season’s Super Bowl teams is going back this season

Week 13 was a rough one for the Chiefs, who lost to the Cowboys on Thursday to drop to 6-6 for the season, and the Eagles, who got manhandled by the Bears on Friday and dropped to 8-4. Philadelphia is still in first place, a game and a half ahead of Dallas with five games to play, and looks like a solid bet to make the playoffs if not end the 20-year streak without a repeat NFC East champion.

The Chiefs are in the extremely unfamiliar position of being on the outside of the AFC playoff picture looking in. Their nine-year division title streak is all but officially over, and they might need to win out and get some help just to get into the postseason, much less extend their seven-year string of AFC Championship Game appearances and become only the second team ever to appear in four straight Super Bowls.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

I’ll never count the Chiefs out until I see that little “e-” next to them on the standings page, but I can understand why others would feel differently. Not only are the Chiefs looking up at the entire AFC playoff field, but the three teams that entered the weekend in the conference’s wild-card spots (Chargers, Jaguars and Bills) have beaten Kansas City head-to-head. So the Chiefs won’t even get tiebreaker help if it comes to that.

After going 12-0 in one-score games in 2024, the Chiefs are 1-6 in one-score games this season. The metrics say this is a good team — even better than last year’s. But for whatever reason, Patrick Mahomes & Co. aren’t making those game-winning miracle plays we’re so accustomed to seeing from them. They can absolutely turn it around and go on a run, and it would surprise no one. But it’s getting late.

As for the Eagles, it’s not the fact that they lost to the Cowboys and Bears in a five-day stretch as much as the way they looked in those losses. The offense has been dreadful, and a defense that was on the field for 68 plays last Sunday in Dallas looked absolutely gassed while the Bears ran 85 plays and piled up 281 rushing yards against them Friday in Philly. This is starting to seem a lot more like the 2023 Eagles, who started 10-1 but never could get the offense on track, than the 2024 Eagles, who solved their issues early in the season and went all the way.

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The Ravens shouldn’t give Lamar Jackson a big contract extension this offseason

After this season, Jackson will have two years left on the extension he signed in the 2023 offseason. He’s scheduled to earn $52 million in each of those two remaining seasons, though only $29 million of that is currently guaranteed. Jackson’s deal averaged $52 million per year, which made him the highest-paid quarterback in the league when he signed it. But since then, nine others have passed him in terms of average annual salary, and there has been an expectation that the Ravens will work to extend Jackson again this coming offseason.

Baltimore started this season 1-5 and Jackson missed three games with a hamstring injury, but the Ravens rebounded to win five in a row to climb into first place in the AFC North prior to Thursday night’s loss to the Bengals. Even during that win streak, though, the Ravens’ offense has looked off, and Jackson isn’t performing at his customary high level. He has been on the injury report with three different lower-body ailments the past three weeks. He’s averaging 29.3 rushing yards per game, and the only game in which he has reached 50 this season was the Week 1 loss to Buffalo, when he ran for 70. Jackson’s career average for rushing yards is 57.5 per game. His QBR this year is 57.4, which would be his lowest since 2021, the last season the Ravens missed the playoffs. He has zero touchdown passes and three interceptions in his past three games and hasn’t run for a touchdown since Week 1.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

Jackson will turn 29 in January, and as banged up as he appears to be, there’s no real reason to think he doesn’t have high-level seasons still ahead of him. Whenever he has been healthy and played a full season, he has been an MVP contender (he has won it twice) and the Ravens have been one of the best teams in the league. There are five games left for Baltimore to show it can still be the team so many of us expected it to be when the season began, and a Jackson turnaround is certainly not out of the question.

Overreacting to an injury-plagued season when he has shown an ability to bounce back from those and still perform at a high level would be a mistake, especially since the Ravens really don’t have any kind of succession plan in place. Jackson can be inconsistent, but he also can be brilliant in ways that other quarterbacks cannot, and he clearly gives the Ravens their best chance to continue winning at a high level, even if this season doesn’t turn out the way they expected.

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The Cowboys are going to make the playoffs

This would have sounded ridiculous four weeks ago, after Dallas lost that Monday night game to Arizona and headed into its bye with a 3-5-1 record. But the Cowboys have won three games in a row since, including beating the Eagles and Chiefs in a five-day stretch this past week. Dallas departed Sunday’s action 1.5 games behind the NFC East-leading Eagles, who lost to the Bears on Friday afternoon, and two games behind the 49ers, who hold the final NFC wild-card spot.

Dallas has a huge matchup Thursday night in Detroit, where the Lions are also trying to fight their way into the playoffs. After that, the Cowboys get home games against the Vikings and Chargers and finish with a pair of road division games against the Commanders and Giants.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

Dallas’ defense, one of the worst in the league over the first half of the season, looks completely different since the bye. Linebacker DeMarvion Overshown has returned from the injury that kept him from making his season debut until a few weeks ago, and he’s making a difference. So has rookie cornerback Shavon Revel Jr., who also didn’t play in the first half of the season due to injury. Add in defensive tackle Quinnen Williams and linebacker Logan Wilson, both of whom Dallas acquired in trade-deadline deals, and Matt Eberflus’ defense has taken on an entirely different look and played much more competently. The offense, with quarterback Dak Prescott playing as well as he ever has and the unstoppable wide receiver duo of CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens, is one of the best in the league.

Our discussion regarding the Cowboys’ defense all season was that it didn’t have to be great, it just had to stop being absolutely terrible to support the high-octane offense. That appears to be what has happened, and Dallas suddenly looks dangerous. A win Thursday in Detroit would put the Cowboys in an excellent position to run down those back-end NFC wild-card teams. And with the Eagles’ offense suddenly in a ditch, I know I don’t have to remind anyone that the NFC East hasn’t had a repeat champion in 21 years …

Quick-hitter fantasy overreactions

• Jakobi Meyers is a must-start WR the rest of the way. NOT AN OVERREACTION. Remember why the Jaguars traded for Meyers. They were leading the league in drops, and he’s a guy who never drops passes. He had a big game Sunday even with Brian Thomas Jr. back, and Trevor Lawrence seems to really trust Meyers.

• Both Bears RBs are startable in fantasy. OVERREACTION. Yeah, you did well if you started either D’Andre Swift or Kyle Monangai on Friday. And the opponent was no pushover. The Eagles hadn’t allowed a back to rush for 100 yards all season, and both of these dudes did it in the same game. Still … Packers-Browns-Packers the next three weeks? Are fantasy managers trusting their seasons to that schedule?

• Chuba Hubbard is the top Panthers RB once again. OVERREACTION. Hubbard’s on a heater, and he made your day if you started him Sunday thanks to a 35-yard screen-pass touchdown reception. But he still had one fewer carry than Rico Dowdle. The Panthers believe Hubbard is healthier than he has been in a while, and he has played well enough the past two weeks to stay in the mix and muddy things, but I think Dowdle is still the one to count on if you have to pick.

• Jets receiver Adonai Mitchell is a high priority on waivers this week. NOT AN OVERREACTION. Talent has never been in question with Mitchell, and the Jets need to get a look at him, John Metchie III and tight end Mason Taylor the rest of the way. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor seems to like throwing it to Mitchell, and Sunday showed what can happen when they connect.

• No Colts receiver is a reliable fantasy starter. NOT AN OVERREACTION. One week it could be Michael Pittman Jr., one week Alec Pierce, the next Josh Downs, and good luck figuring out which one. Plus, quarterback Daniel Jones is playing hurt, and that’s affecting things if the defense can force him to move. This passing attack might have carried you through the first half of the season, but it’s going to be tough to rely on it the rest of the way.