Last week with any sort of byes; the holiday schedule is about to get nuts. With a full slate of games on Christmas Eve and a triple header on Christmas Day, I’m prepping for my wife to be very mad at me already. I don’t do a Saturday newsletter (I like to not do anything one day a week), but I suppose you should expect a couple of those coming up as well with the standalone games we’re about to see. Here’s to the holidays.

Updated week 14 tiers. SF is over two points clear of the rest of the league at the moment. They’d be over a TD favorite at home for me vs the bottom 26 teams.

A few interesting power rating questions to answer this week:

The Jaguars

Maybe I’m dead wrong here, but I don’t expect Trevor Lawrence to be able to work through this injury this fast. The drop-off from him to CJ Beathard is sort of steep. Mix in the fact that WR Christian Kirk is out for an extended period and you may be down to a third-string left tackle with Walker Little’s status up in the air and we have a pretty decent downgrade here. I’m making a 4-point adjustment down just for Beathard and I’m fine with that being a little more considering the other injuries and how the defense looked on Monday. The Market has moved about six points, from Jags -3 to Browns -3.

Joe Burrow: System QB?

I’m kidding, chill out. But, Browning looked pretty decent and was able to push the ball down the field a bit. I know we see this all the time where a guy with very little tape on him has a nice game or two before falling back to earth with a vengeance, but considering the weapons he has, I don’t think it’s crazy to think we can see a few more nice starts for the fill-in here. The Defense is still hot garbage, but I did move the Bengals up a little bit based on the prospects of the offense.

Flacco, Relatively Elite

Similar to Browning, I worry that Flacco turns into a pumpkin really fast… but again, he was looking like a legitimate field general out there and made some decent throws at times. I don’t want you to misunderstand me, I don’t think 38-year-old Joe Flacco is good, I just think he’s good relative to my expectations and the Browns got a slight bump up even after a loss.

Playoff Matchups