GEORGE: 11 NFL Thoughts Through Week 17:

Some thoughts coming off the Patriots’ 13th victory of this 2025 NFL season.

1) Okay, Patriots, one more game to go. Win it.

Don’t mess around. Don’t look ahead to the playoffs. Don’t concern yourself with how Denver is doing. Don’t worry about how Jacksonville is doing. Win it. Beat Miami.

You have the Fish at home in December. You beat them on the road in September. You won’t likely have to worry about Tua Tagavailoa. Win it.

Take the same approach as you did against the Jets. You have them by a mile on paper. Pretend that they are the Seattle Seahawks or the San Francisco 49ers. Treat them like they are the 1972 Dolphins. Win it.

Any other mindset and you wind up like the Buffalo Bills. Or the Los Angeles Chargers. Or the Los Angeles Rams. Or the Pittsburgh Steelers. Or the Chicago Bears. Win it.

Who’s MVP? Drake Maye? Matthew Stafford? Not important. Win it.

Justin Herbert is not playing this Sunday at Denver. You can’t control that. Win it.

The road to Santa Clara, California will likely go through the Mile High City. Don’t talk to Tom Brady or Rob Gronkowski or Bill Belichick as to what they think of postseason games in Denver. Win it.

You have a head coach who won’t lose the game for you on questionable coaching decisions. Win it.

Your goal Sunday is to keep at least the two seed and stay healthy. You can’t really worry about the second one, injuries sometimes just happen. It’s the first one. The two seed. Win it.

One last time in case I wasn’t clear: Win. It.

2) Geeks of the week: The end of the Buffalo-Philadelphia game was real nice for Patriot fans to watch. This game actually pitted two head coaches who should be fired. Sean McDermott actually should have kicked the extra point to tie the game, it’s just that Patriot Nation wanted them to go for two in high hopes that it would fail. Meanwhile, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni has been skating on thin ice for several years. But his team won the Super Bowl last year in spite of him.

On Sunday, his team did nothing on offense in the second half, and his defense basically quit playing in the fourth quarter. Also, there was a play in the fourth quarter which had McDermott throwing the red challenge flag. Smart coaches would have snapped the ball quickly to negate a challenge, but the Eagles just took their time, and the play (a great catch by Davonte Smith) got overturned. That’s on Sirianni.

3) Next weekend, here’s what really matters to all AFC playoff wannabes:

Denver has the easiest chore. Beat the Chargers at home, and they clinch the one seed. That chore was made easier with the announcement that Jim Harbaugh will not play Justin Herbert on Sunday. Trey Lance, the former number three pick by San Francisco, will start at quarterback for the Chargers. The way some of these games have been going, you still have to believe that the Chargers have a chance. But Denver at home, as we have said many times, is the team with the best home-field advantage in the playoffs. The altitude and the home crowd make for a sometimes unbeatable combination.

New England needs a Denver loss and a win over Miami at home to clinch the one seed. Both Denver and New England are prohibitive favorites at home. Miami figures to play the Patriots tough, but the Patriots will have home field and the weather in their favor. A Patriots loss opens the door for Jacksonville to leapfrog over them.

Jacksonville finishes at home with an easier layup game than either Denver or New England. The Jaguars are 12-4, one game behind the Patriots and the Broncos. The Jags need to win to clinch the AFC South, as they have not yet eliminated Houston from the division title. If the Jags win and the Patriots and Broncos both lose, Jacksonville gets the one seed.

Houston wins the AFC South if they win and Jacksonville loses. The Texans finish at home versus the Colts.

And if you care, the winner of the Baltimore-Pittsburgh game wins the AFC North, the loser is eliminated.

Prediction? Denver, New England and Jacksonville all win. Don’t care about the AFC North, but I would probably go with Pittsburgh being at home.

4) Back to school: I like the field of eight going into New Year’s Day. I look for Ohio State to beat Miami, Oregon to beat Texas Tech, and Georgia to beat Mississippi. As for Indiana and Alabama, this game (the Rose Bowl) will be the most intriguing. The Hoosiers are favored by 7 and haven’t played in Pasadena on January 1st since 1968.

Alabama fell behind Oklahoma in Norman before coming back in the second half. Alabama was here two years ago and lost a tough overtime game to Michigan in the CFP semifinals. This game could go either way. Indiana does not have this kind of tradition in football like they do in basketball even though they do have the Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Fernando Mendoza. Indiana was one-and-done last year, being whipped by Notre Dame in the first round.

Oct 26, 2025; Foxborough, Massachusetts, USA; New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs (8) celebrates scoring a touchdown with head coach Mike Vrabel during the third quarter against the Cleveland Browns at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

(PHOTO: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images)

5) The Patriots have a bit more to deal with than the Broncos or Jaguars. Stefon Diggs is facing charges of strangulation and assault. Diggs denies these charges, and the Patriots issued a statement in support of Diggs. Despite a scheduled arraignment, Diggs, according to a news report, is trying to negotiate a monetary settlement. Guess that things were going way too smoothly for the Patriots, injuries notwithstanding. That’s the last thing you want to see on the verge of your first postseason in four years. When you sign players with a history of high maintenance, it’s a case of caveat emptor, loosely translated as “let the buyer beware”.

6) Oh, and then there’s this from Ben Volin of the Globe on Tuesday morning: “The Chargers look like the team everyone should want to play in the first round of the playoffs.” He should amend that with this sentence: “They also look like the team that everyone should want to play on the final week whereby a victory gets you the playoff seeding you desire.”

So, more than ever, the Patriots should just focus on beating Miami and nothing else.

7) This has been quite the year for prime-time games. On Monday night, Atlanta held off the Rams in a very exciting game where they trailed at one time 21-0. Then you had a crazy Sunday night game where San Francisco held off Chicago 42-38 in a game that went down to the last seconds. And a week ago Thursday, both Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit called that 38-37 win by Seattle over the Rams as “the best Thursday night game we’ve ever had.” It’s been like this all season long, it seems. Sometimes, NFL parity is the butt of many football jokes, but overall, it’s not a bad thing.

Which leads us to this prediction: Hang on to your hats, football fans. You’re going to enjoy this year’s postseason. If you can see your way clear of two four seeds, this is a loaded bracket on both sides with lots of very talented teams vying to get into the 60th Super Bowl.

8) Remember him: The Miami Dolphins played their first ever game on September 2, 1966 in the old AFL. Their first game was at home in the old Orange Bowl against the Oakland Raiders (now Las Vegas). Mike Mercer kicked off to begin the game and the Dolphins franchise in pro football. Joe Auer fielded the ball at the five-yard line, ran straight and then cut to the left. He found lots of open real estate in front of him.

Auer went 95 yards to the house on the first play of the game, giving Miami a 7-0 lead. Mike Vrabel has nothing on Danny Thomas, by the way. Marlo’s dad booked it down the sideline as Auer headed towards the end zone. He easily ran faster than Vrabel despite being more well-known for Make Room For Daddy and St. Jude’s Hospital. Auer played two years for the Bills, two years for the expansion Dolphins, and one year for the Falcons before retiring from pro football. Auer passed away at age 77 in 2019.

9) Monday night’s game exposed the Atlanta Falcons as perhaps a bit undercoached. Much was made about Bijan Robinson being as good as he is, but not having yet gotten a whiff of the playoffs. They got lucky having Kirk Cousins as a backup behind Michael Penix, Jr., who once again got hurt and missed significant playing time. They were able to hang with the far superior Rams and held them off just long enough. Head coach Raheem Morris is a guy you root for, but in the NFL, you get only so many chances as a head coach to show everyone that you can do the job.

10) Darn that replay team for overturning that sick catch by Puka Nacua. It seems that any wide receiver trying to become an NFL wide receiver has to make one-handed catches. Wonder if that skill is looked at at the NFL Combine.

11) Whatever happens to the Patriots as to how this season ends, you can bet that come next July, Vrabel will have a talk with the Patriots and title it “Next time, beat the Raiders! You never know that a game against the flotsam and jetsam of the NFL can decide your season!” If the Patriots manage to play in Denver in the AFC Championship, they are there because of the Raiders.

Denver beat them twice. Patriots lost once, their season opener. Broncos get to stay home. Common games. Every game matters.

No more right now than the game with Miami. Win it.

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About Bob George

Covering Boston Sports since 1997. Native of Worcester, Mass. Attended UMass and Univ of Michigan. Lives in California. Just recently retired after 40 years of public school teaching. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@thepic4139" rel="nofollow noopener"><strong>Podcasts on YouTube at @thepic4139</strong></a>

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