Chiefs Moving To Kansas?

The Chiefs may be moving from Kansas City to Kansas City.

Today the organization agreed to move from Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas City, Kansas to build their new stadium. The Sunflower State has made the necessary legislative and financial arrangements to lure the Chiefs from the city they've called home since 1963 and their stadium since 1972.

While their current stadium, Arrowhead Stadium, is one of the best known home fields in the NFL, it is aging. The wear and tear is noticable, suites are difficult to add, and the location doesn't lend itself to further development. It still is one of the more legendary homes in the league, alongside Lambeau Field in Green Bay and Soldier Field in Chicago. But like Soldier Field, Arrowhead is nearing its end as a viable home for an NFL franchise.

Speaking of the Bears, there are also rumors that they could be making a similar move. After various options have been bandied about, a move across the line to Gary, Indiana has become the latest twist. 

The Chiefs will join the Washington Commanders, New York Jets and New York Giants as teams who don't play in the state/district they are named after. The Commanders will move into a new stadium in Washington, DC around the end of the decade. The Jets and Giants share a stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. These are the lone teams among the four major American sports leagues that don't play in their "home state".

Week 18 Flex Options Heading Into Week 17

With two weeks left, let's see what could be the game that gets flexed into the final game of the season -- the Sunday Night Football game.

NO WAY AT ALL

Let's go ahead and move these games to the side:

Saints at Falcons
Browns at Bengals
Chiefs at Raiders
Cowboys at Giants
Commanders at Eagles

Of these teams, only the Eagles are the only team making the playoffs and they already have the NFC East wrapped up. Everyone else is waiting for the draft.

SLIM CHANCE, IF AT ALL

Jets at Bills
Cardinals at Rams
Dolphins at Patriots
Titans at Jaguars

These four games need quite a bit of things to happen for them to have the kind of importance to make it a stand alone game. Bills, Rams, Patriots and Jaguars likely will have playoff spots wrapped up. It will be a matter of seed, and even then will rely on a game played elsewhere to make it interesting. So let's ditch this bunch. 

MMMMMMAYBE

Packers at Vikings
Colts at Texans

The Packers and Texans may need this game to get into the playoffs, and the Colts could find a way to make that game with Houston a very meaningful one. Packers are almost a lock to get in and the Colts barely are holding on to a chance. By the time we get to Week 18, Green Bay is in while Indy is out. Let's move on. 

HERE ARE THE REAL CONTENDERS

Lions at Bears: Right now, the Lions need a miracle to get in while the Bears could have the NFC North wrapped up. There is a chance Chicago is fighting for a top overall seed in the NFC. Still, that's not really an interesting reason to have this game last. 

Seahawks at Niners: When you include the Rams, the NFC West is a fascinating race. Seattle currently has the top seed in the NFC as they head to Charlotte to face the Panthers. The Niners have some work to do if they want to win the NFC West, but they've already clinched a spot in the postseason. If a lot of things break a certain way, this could be a huge game. 

Chargers at Broncos: Denver has already clinched a playoff spot and have a one game lead over the Chargers in the AFC West race. By the time we get here, Denver may have the top seed wrapped up and could sit their starters. The Chargers likely would have a spot clinched as well, so this would be more about seeding. Still, if both win or lose next week then this could be a game similar to the Lions-Vikings affair from last season. LA owns the tiebreaker right now, so as long as there is a one-game or less lead in the standings, this will be a big game. 

Ravens at Steelers: Sunday's results made this less likely to be an option. Pittsburgh went into Detroit and stunned the Lions while Baltimore blew a late lead to lose to New England. Right now the Steelers have a two game lead in the standings with two games remaining. The Steelers head to Cleveland to take on the rival Browns while the Ravens head to Green Bay to play a Packers team who have suffered two straight tough losses. If the Ravens win and the Steelers lose than their Week 18 showdown will be for the AFC North and it would bump the NFC South title out from the top spot. 

Panthers at Buccaneers: Carolina's win over Tampa this past week gives them a one game lead in the NFC South. Carolina has Seattle this week while Tampa Bay goes to the slumping Dolphins. It is extremely likely that this Week 18 showdown will be for the NFC South title and a trip to the playoffs. The only way it wouldn't is if the Panthers beat the Seahawks and the Buccaneers lose to the Dolphins. I doubt both will happen, so this is in the lead for the final game.  

Shut Up About Tulane and James Madison Getting Blown Out

Leading up to the first round of the College Football Playoff was people upset that Tulane and James Madison earning spots while schools like Notre Dame and Texas (among others) did not. Tulane and James Madison fed into the narrative by both getting blown out in their playoff games, and even had ESPN/TNT broadcasters complain on air that Notre Dame should've been in instead. 

Cry harder.

Let me go down my laundry list of what people need to shut up about all of this:

1. GROUP OF FIVE TEAMS DESERVE A PLACE. Let me just start off here. You cannot have this 12-team system without giving a G6 team a spot in it. The power conferences needed the G6 to sign off on this or there would be no 12-team playoff. That's part of the deal to make this happen.  Please understand this. This isn't the NFL where a commissioner and a rules committee makes the rules. These are brokered deals between conference commissioners, and six of those commissioners are from non-power leagues. 

Also understand that G6 leagues are a part of the FBS. They bring key scheduling opportunities for the P4. If you don't want them part of the playoff, then stop scheduling them and move on to a P4 only schedule. In the NFL, the NFC South champion will have a place in the playoffs despite that division being less powerful than the NFC North or NFC West. 

2. NEXT YEAR'S RULES HAVE ALREADY CHANGED TO FIX SOME OF THIS. Next season, there are two major changes to how we pick the 12 playoff teams. One is that all four P4 champions will be guaranteed a playoff spot, meaning that only one G6 champ get the same guarantee. If that was implimented this season, ACC champion Duke would have be in while James Madison would have been out. 

Next, Notre Dame is guaranteed a playoff spot if they are ranked in the top 12 in the final rankings. That means Notre Dame would have been in and Miami would have been out.  Could you imagine the outrage if Notre Dame got in ahead of Miami despite the Hurricanes being ranked higher than the Irish and who had already beaten them on the field? Again, that doesn't totally fix your problem and may create a new one.

So the playoff would have looked like this:

1-Indiana vs 8-Oklahoma/9-Alabama
2-Ohio State vs 7-Texas A&M/10-Notre Dame
3-Georgia vs 6-Ole Miss/11-Tulane
4-Texas Tech vs 5-Oregon/12-Duke

So this new rule would have given us two of the same games (including one that was a blowout) and gives up Oregon-Duke which would be a blowout too. We'd also get Notre Dame instead of Miami, despite Miami beating A&M in the game we actually saw. So, is it really fixed? And is this fair to Miami? 

3. BLOWOUTS AREN'T NEW TO THE PLAYOFF. So you hate blowouts? Well, having more P4 schools don't guarantee we get better games. Here are some previous blowouts in CFP games:

2014: Oregon 59-Florida State 20
2014: Ohio State 42-Oregon 20
2015: Alabama 38-Michigan State 0
2016: Clemson 31-Ohio State 0
2018: Clemson 30-Notre Dame 3
2018: Clemson 44-Alabama 16
2019: LSU 63-Oklahoma 28
2020: Ohio State 49-Clemson 28
2020: Alabama 52-Ohio State 24
2021: Alabama 27-Cincinnati 6
2021: Georgia 34-Michigan 11
2022: Georgia 65-TCU 7
2023: Michigan 34-Washington 13
2024: Penn State 38-SMU 10
2024: Ohio State 42-Tennessee 17

All of those games were decided by 21 or more points. A few of those were national championship games. And look at those names on the losing side! Florida State. Notre Dame. Ohio State. Alabama. Oklahoma. Clemson. Michigan. These are traditional powers getting slaughtered. 

4. EXPANSION MOVES THE PROBLEM. So now people are bitching about expansion. Having 16 teams doesn't make this go away -- it just moves the needle. Just go check out the NCAA Tournament. There are 68 teams in every year and people still whine about "the bubble" and who got in over who got out. Seth Greenberg has made an entire career about his Virginia Tech getting "snubbed". 

This year, Notre Dame got "snubbed" so the cries are really loud. If it was ... say ... Utah, would it be as loud of a problem? 

Well, that's what would have happened if this was a 16-team playoff. We would have 11-Notre Dame, 12-BYU, 13-Texas and 14-Vanderbilt included in the playoff. The "snubs" and cries would now come from 15-Utah and 16-USC. So the Utes would be the ones crying about getting excluded while two G6 teams get in. Would you care as much? Probably not. You've probable haven't watched one Utah game all season nor miss them being in. Maybe you dismiss this as "well, Utah isn't good enough to actually win the whole thing like Notre Dame can" ... but then why bother expanding the playoff to teams who can't win it? I mean, do you think Vanderbilt can actually win the national championship? So adding four teams just to appease Notre Dame in 2025 is your solution? 

Which brings me to ...

5. WHY DO YOU THINK NOTRE DAME GOT SNUBBED?  Let's look at Notre Dame's resume. Sure, they are 10-2. Yes, they've won 10 straight games. And, okay, they are ranked No. 11. Yet they didn't earn a spot ... so they aren't in.

Notre Dame lost to Miami on the field. So Miami was ranked higher. Notre Dame's best win a home win over No. 16 USC. They beat no other team ranked in the final rankings. None. 

In fact, Notre Dame's wins aren't that impressive. Among the games they played against P4 schools, they beat the last place team in the SEC (Arkansas), the last place team in the Big Ten (Purdue) and the two last place teams in the ACC (Syracuse, Boston College). So they feasted on the worst P4 had to offer and beat just one ranked team. The only P4 teams that Notre Dame beat who had a winning record was USC, NC State and Pitt. That is who you are whining about being snubbed? That's why you want to blow up this whole thing? Again, if Utah walked in here with that argument, you wouldn't care one bit. 

6. FIXING TIEBREAKERS WOULD HELP MORE. A little bit why we got here was the ACC's tie-breaking procedures gave us Virginia-Duke for their conference championship game instead of Virginia-Miami. With the ACC at 17 football members, a lot of their head-to-head tiebreakers didn't work so it rolled down to an arbitrary tiebreaker of what their ACC opponents combined records were. 

That's a poor way to truly determine who the best teams in the league are, and that showed here. This isn't just an ACC decision -- all P4 leagues have similar tie-breaker procedures. In fact, the SEC had it's fourth highest ranked team play in their championship game, but because Alabama's name holds weight and a playoff-worthy ranking, no one really cared. Yet Ole Miss and Texas A&M were deemed better teams according to the CFP committee. 

If the P4 leagues -- and especially the ACC -- amend their tiebreakers to have highest ranked CFP teams before any combined record nonsense, then we get a bit of a fix. We would have had Virginia-Miami and the winner of that game would have earned an automatic bid under the 2025 rules. If it was Miami, then they would have taken JMU's auto-bid and Notre Dame would have been in. If it was Virginia, they would have taken JMU's auto-bid and Miami likely drops below Notre Dame in the rankings and the Irish get it. 

This honestly is a development that makes sense and likely to happen. The ACC would surely look at doing this just to not have 8-5 Duke as their conference champion, and even the SEC would have benefitted from this. There was some sweating about where Alabama would be ranked after they were blown out by Georgia in the SEC title game. But if Ole Miss (the highest ranked team among the tied bunch) lost that same game, there would be little worry that they'd fall five or more spots and out of the rankings. 

Expect all of the P4 leagues to make this change. 

7. UNDERSTAND THIS HAPPENS IN ALL SPORTS. One of the important things to learn about life ... and sports ... is that it isn't always fair. College football is by far the most flawed of them all and has been for decades. I'm absolutely sure our list of national champions would look different had we had a playoff instead of the bowl system, the Alliance, or BCS. I mean, Ohio State was an 8-seed last year and won the first 12-team playoff, so you can't tell me that our list of champs wouldn't be vastly different had we had this format for 100 years. 

We already know that the best team doesn't win all of the time. We certainly know that in college basketball. We also have Super Bowl champions that get hot at the right time and make a run. 

As of right now, the Detroit Lions will likely miss the NFL playoffs while the Carolina Panthers could get in. We've had teams who missed the playoffs have better records than ones who did. The NBA has lessened the importance of divisions so we rarely get any issues. MLB has expanded the wildcard teams to fix this. None of them ... including the NCAA tournament ... uses rankings to determine who is in their playoff and what the bracket looks like. Only college football does this. 

College football is a great sport, but it has a ton of problems that it isn't really willing to figure out. Until they do ... and make massive changes ... we won't get to a place where we have a great system. So enjoy what we have. 

NFL Week 18 Flex Options

With three weeks left, let's see what could be the game that gets flexed into the final game of the season -- the Sunday Night Football game.

NO WAY AT ALL

Let's go ahead and move these games to the side:

Saints at Falcons
Browns at Bengals
Chiefs at Raiders
Cowboys at Giants
Commanders at Eagles

Of these teams, only the Eagles have a real chance at making the playoffs and by this time they will already have the NFC East wrapped up. Everyone else is waiting for the draft.

SLIM CHANCE, IF AT ALL

Jets at Bills
Cardinals at Rams
Dolphins at Patriots
Titans at Jaguars

These four games need quite a bit of things to happen for them to have the kind of importance to make it a stand alone game. Bills, Rams, Patriots and Jaguars likely will have playoff spots wrapped up. It will be a matter of seed, and even then will rely on a game played elsewhere to make it interesting. So let's ditch this bunch. 

MMMMMMAYBE

Packers at Vikings
Colts at Texans

The Packers and Texans may need this game to get into the playoffs, and the Colts could find a way to make that game with Houston a very meaningful one. Neither probably will be worthy of the SNF spot, but there is a world where both could. 

HERE ARE THE REAL CONTENDERS

Lions at Bears: Right now, the Bears lead the NFC North while the Lions are right at the cut line. There will be a lot of things that need to happen to make this the most important game of the week. 

Chargers at Broncos: Denver has already clinched a playoff spot and have a two game lead over the Chargers in the AFC West race. By the time we get here, Denver may have the top seed wrapped up and could sit their starters. The Chargers likely would have a spot clinched as well, so this would be more about seeding.

Seahawks at Niners: When you include the Rams, the NFC West is a fascinating race. The Rams and Seahawks play on Thursday night with the winner taking the division lead and the loser moving back to the 49ers. All three should be locked in on a playoff spot by then (the Rams have already clinched; the Seahawks and Niners are a win away from clinching). This could be a situation like last year's Lions-Vikings game where the game is for a division championship and possibly the top seed in the NFC. Barring that, this won't be flexed to SNF. 

Panthers at Buccaneers: The two teams are tied at 7-7 and play each other this week as well as Week 18. If the Panthers win the Week 16 showdown, we could see this game be for the NFC South title and a playoff spot in Week 18. We know that right now Tampa Bay owns the tiebreakers, which means that even if the Bucs were a game behing Carolina in the standings in the final week a win would tie them and then the tiebreaker goes their way. 

Ravens at Steelers: This could be a matchup where the winner is the AFC North champion and earns the division their lone playoff spot. The NFL would absolutely love to have this rivalry as their final game of the regular season. You have Lamar Jackson vs Aaron Rodgers. Two coaches who won their lone Super Bowl titles a long time ago.