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The Oakland Raiders have had quite a season, which can amazingly continue past Week 17 if a bunch of things happen.
First of all, let’s look back to the summer as they dealt with the Antonio Brown madness – from the frostbite feet to the running around his backyard celebrating his “freedom” from being released by a team that traded for him in the offseason and was willing to pay him a lot of money to play football.
Things could have gone downhill after that and we all would have made fun of them for a bit and moved on.
But Jon Gruden and his guys are still fighting and at 7-8 they still have a chance to make the playoffs, which is wild.
The Raiders entered last week needing 10 things to happen in Week 16 and Week 17 for them to claim the AFC’s last playoff spot. Then five of those things happened last Sunday – the Steelers lost, the Colts won, the Browns lost one of their last two games, the Titans lost, and the Raiders won.
Bananas.
Now in Week 17 they need four more things to happen, as one of the 10 results got wiped out – they need the Ravens to beat the Steelers, the Texans to beat the Titans, the Colts to beat the Jaguars, and the Raiders have to beat the Broncos in Denver.
Week 17 games, for a number of reasons, are hard to predict. But those four things could actually happen for Oakland. The Ravens will be starting RGIII at QB and resting a lot of their stars, but the Steelers are dreadful offensively. The Texans apparently aren’t resting any players even though they are locked in to the AFC playoffs. And the Colts should be able to beat the lowly Jaguars.
A win in Denver is attainable, though it can be hard for road teams to be there. The Raiders did beat the Broncos way back in Week 1, but now Drew Lock is the QB in Denver and he has been playing pretty well.
But still, this thing could really happen.
The Raiders have had a rough year but have never quit. They are closing in on their final days of being from Oakland, so it would be pretty cool if they went out on a bang and had nine different things go there way and punch their ticket to the playoffs.
Let’s all root for some AFC chaos!
Thursday’s biggest winner: Eli Manning.
Thanks to ESPN’s Ian O’Connor and the in-depth piece he wrote on Eli, we now know that the QB had a beer guy in every NFL stadium who would hook him up with some ice-cold beers for him to bring on the bus and share with teammates while breaking down the game. One teammate called it “unbelievable” and we agree.
Quick hits: Raiders/Roomba jokes… Rodgers on Danica’s podcast… Is Josh Allen the answer?… And more!
– Speaking of the Raiders, NFL fans had a lot of jokes of what the team’s new awesome stadium in Las Vegas looks like.
– Aaron Rodgers went on Danica Patrick’s podcast and here are 11 things we learned from his appearance.
– Steven Ruiz broke down why Bills fans shouldn’t get too excited about Josh Allen.
– Charles Barkley hilariously showed Zion Williamson how to walk and run.
– The Miami Hurricanes got roasted for being shutout in the Independence Bowl.
– Penn State’s kicker spent Christmas booting balls off the Dallas Cowboys’ huge Jumbotron.
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(Follow me on Twitter at @anezbitt. It might change your life. Just don’t tell me about your fantasy team.)