Has Trevor Lawrence leveled up? Are Packers doomed? Lets overreact to Week 15

DENVER — For the first time since we’ve been writing this weekly column, it is not an overreaction to say that the Chiefs are going to miss the playoffs.

Sunday’s loss to the Chargers — complete with quarterback Patrick Mahomes tearing his ACL in the final minutes — combined with early-window victories by the Bills, Jaguars and Texans, means the AFC playoffs will be Chiefs-free for the first time in 11 years. It means the AFC Championship Game will be contested without the Chiefs for the first time in eight years. It means the Super Bowl will be contested without Kansas City for the first time in four years. It means the end, at least for now, of one of the great runs in sports history, as Andy Reid, Mahomes & Co. will now look to regroup and get things headed back in the right direction in 2026.

It also means opportunity for … well, pretty much everybody else. The Chiefs have been such a presence in our collective NFL consciousness for so long that the playoffs are going to feel weird without them. But there was nothing particularly fluky about this. There are plenty of teams this season that are better than the Chiefs, and this week was consequential for many of them.

So with that finalized, we present five Chiefs-free items for the Week 15 Overreactions column, where we try to figure out which overreactions might hold up and which are mirages.

Jump to:
Bills, Patriots to have playoff rubber match?
Packers doomed in playoffs due to injuries?
Liam Coen has fixed Lawrence?
Steelers, Ravens set for showdown?
Pitts to get big money this offseason?
Fantasy-related overreactions

The Patriots and Bills will meet again this season

Sunday was epic in Foxborough. Drake Maye and the upstart Patriots raced out to a 21-0 lead, but Josh Allen led the Bills back — twice — to win 35-31 and stay alive in the race for their sixth straight AFC East title. New England still has a one-game lead with three to play and is in decent shape in the tiebreakers, but the race is not over.

Buffalo has come from behind to win in the past two weeks, and Allen’s excellence and the team’s collective experience in big, late-season games makes the Bills look like one of the league’s most dangerous teams, even if they have to take the wild-card path through the postseason.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

They split the season series. The game that announced the Patriots as a true contender was a 23-20 victory in Buffalo in Week 5. The Bills returned the favor Sunday by ending New England’s 10-game win streak. As things currently look, the Bills have a chance to be by far the most playoff-tested team in the AFC field — which gives them confidence to go into someone else’s building in January and win a playoff game.

Depending on the outcome of Sunday’s Packers-Broncos game, the Patriots certainly remain in position to potentially get the 1-seed in the AFC playoffs. They’ve been dinged for their soft schedule, but they’ve won every big game they’ve needed to win until Sunday, and the way they’ve competed in two games against the Bills offers strong evidence that they are for real. Whether Buffalo can run New England down for the division title, as it did Miami two years ago, will determine where the playoff rematch will be. Regardless, this is a rematch that can absolutely happen, and it would be awesome if it did.

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The Packers’ injuries Sunday ended their chance at a Super Bowl run

Green Bay’s 34-26 loss to the Broncos is going to hurt a lot more than your typical late-season loss. During the second half, superstar edge rusher Micah Parsons went down with a serious knee injury that sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter is feared to be a torn ACL. Star wideout Christian Watson also left the game because of a chest injury that required him to be taken to the hospital by ambulance for further testing. Those were the two biggest among a slew of serious injuries Sunday, and the whole situation cast a postgame pall over the Green Bay locker room.

Head coach Matt LaFleur would only say, “It doesn’t look good” when asked about Parsons’ injury, and offered no updates on any of the others. But he also spoke a lot about how to hold a team together during adversity, and the players in the locker room talked about having to step up in Parsons’ absence over the remaining weeks. It certainly felt like a group that was preparing to play without its best player for the rest of the season.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

No offense to the remaining players on this roster, or its extremely talented coaching staff, but these losses are too tough to overcome when you’re trying to accomplish what the Packers are trying to accomplish. The loss, combined with the Bears’ victory over the Browns, knocked the Packers back out of first place in their division. They can get back into first place by beating the Bears on Saturday night, but that underscores the significance of the challenge in front of them. There are just too many good teams in the NFC this season.

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Lawrence and the Jaguars destroyed the undermanned Jets 48-20 on Sunday to win their fifth game in a row and hold onto first place in the AFC South. In what might have been the best game of his NFL career, Lawrence was 20-for-32 for 330 yards and five touchdown passes, plus five carries for 51 yards and a rushing touchdown. In Week 15 of his fifth pro season, Lawrence is out there winning streamers their fantasy playoff matchups and looking like the player the Jags thought they were getting when they drafted him No. 1 three coaching staffs ago in 2021.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

The 10-4 Jaguars are having quite a season under Coen, a first-year head coach. But their franchise quarterback has been somewhat erratic and inconsistent for most of it. Early in the season, the Jags were winning largely thanks to an opportunistic defense that was forcing a ton of turnovers. The run game got going around midseason with Travis Etienne Jr. and Bhayshul Tuten.

Meanwhile, Lawrence threw three interceptions in a game as recently as Week 12, when the Jaguars needed overtime to hold off the Cardinals. But Lawrence posted his second-best single-game QBR of the season in a Week 13 win over the Titans. He then posted his best single-game QBR in Week 14 against the Colts. I assume Sunday’s performance topped it, but you get the idea — Lawrence is heating up at just the right time.

It’s entirely possible and completely understandable if it took him this long to master what Coen has been teaching him since the spring. It’s also possible Lawrence was this great because he was playing the Jets. The point is, he’s playing great, and if the rest of the team can keep playing the way it was before Lawrence started playing great, this is a team to watch in January.

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The Week 18 Steelers-Ravens game is going to decide the AFC North

Baltimore ended Cincinnati’s season Sunday with a dominant 24-0 road victory, which means the North is a two-team race. (The margin of victory also finally gives an AFC North team a positive point differential, as the Ravens sit at plus-15.) Baltimore is 7-7 and only a half-game behind Pittsburgh, which is playing the Dolphins on “Monday Night Football” without T.J. Watt. The Ravens’ final three games of the season are home against the Patriots, at Green Bay and at Pittsburgh. The Steelers’ final three games — after Monday night — are at Detroit, at Cleveland and home against Baltimore.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

With those remaining schedules, and the way these teams have played this season, it remains possible that the winner of this division will have a losing record. The Steelers remain in the driver’s seat, having beaten the Ravens last week in their first head-to-head matchup. And if Pittsburgh can beat Miami and Cleveland in Week 17, it should be OK in the tiebreakers.

But Baltimore looked as good Sunday as it has all season. If Lamar Jackson is healthy and the defense is playing well, the Ravens become very dangerous regardless of matchup. I like their chances to stay within striking distance and go into that Week 18 game at least tied for the division lead, which would make it a division title game.

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Kyle Pitts Sr. is going to get big money in free agency

The Falcons’ season is going nowhere, but Atlanta opened Week 15 with an impressive Thursday night victory that did some serious harm to the Buccaneers’ aspirations. In that game, backup quarterback Kirk Cousins locked in on Pitts, the uber-talented tight end who hasn’t lived up to the expectations that came with being the No. 4 pick in the 2021 NFL draft.

But Pitts is playing out a contract year and caught 11 passes for 166 yards and three touchdowns Thursday, looking like the unstoppable force he was at the University of Florida. With only three games left before he’s eligible for unrestricted free agency, the timing could not have been better.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

I guess it’s always possible some team decides it must have Pitts and throws him top tight end money. At the moment, the highest-paid tight ends are the 49ers’ George Kittle and the Cardinals’ Trey McBride, each around $19 million per year. Even at his best, Pitts has never been that kind of player. He has never been consistently reliable as a blocker, and he hasn’t produced enough as a receiver to justify a huge-money free agent contract.

Again, he might be the apple of some GM’s eye, and maybe I’ll look silly. But even if he finishes with a monster final month, I think the first 4½ seasons will play some role in keeping him away from the very top of the tight end market.

Quick-hitter fantasy overreactions

• You need to pick up Jawhar Jordan and start him over Woody Marks. OVERREACTION. The Texans’ practice squad running back did an awesome job in relief of Marks on Sunday, but this is a very unpredictable situation moving forward. The Texans also claimed Cody Schrader off waivers earlier in the week and then waived him Saturday when they elevated Jordan. Houston has been looking for an answer at running back, and sure, Jordan could be it. But this was the easiest matchup the Texans had left on their schedule and there’s no way to know which Texans RB is going to get the ball from one week to the next.

• TreVeyon Henderson is going to be a first-round pick in fantasy drafts next year. OVERREACTION, as long as Rhamondre Stevenson is still on the Patriots’ roster. We know the coaching staff likes Stevenson for a significant role and that he’s signed through 2028. The success they’ve had with both backs this season makes it likely that Stevenson’s continued presence will dampen the enthusiasm for Henderson, pushing him down into the second round next year. But that’s OK. That also used to happen to Jahmyr Gibbs.

• Every Chiefs player should be on the bench next week since Mahomes isn’t playing. NOT AN OVERREACTION. How many of them were viable when Mahomes was starting? This isn’t an offense that’s going to get you anywhere in the playoffs. Maybe Rashee Rice could start because you know the Chiefs will scheme stuff for him specifically (and you might not have a better option), but I wouldn’t feel great about starting any Chiefs skill-position player, even against the Titans. And Kansas City plays Denver the following week.

• Brian Thomas Jr. is back and you can start him with confidence in the playoffs. OVERREACTION. Look, if you’ve been starting Thomas all season, there’s a good chance you’ve been eliminated from fantasy playoff consideration already. But let’s entertain this for the sake of argument. What did Thomas have Sunday? Sixteen points in a game in which his quarterback threw five touchdown passes? Jakobi Meyers is the go-to guy right now, and yes, he’s opening things up for Thomas down the field. I still think Thomas is a risk, but I get the upside.

• Quinshon Judkins needs to be on fantasy benches the rest of the way. NOT AN OVERREACTION. And it’s a shame, because Judkins’ fantasy playoff matchups looked particularly juicy at one point. The problem is, this isn’t a reliable-enough offense to rely on any Browns player, and Judkins isn’t productive right now. He does nothing in the passing game to begin with, which means you need rushing volume and touchdowns, and the Browns just don’t offer much of either.