No one had a better Week 9 that the promotion department at the Park Avenue location of the National Football League. After a week of blowout games the prior Sunday, Monday and Thursday night, last Sunday returned nailbiters to the NFL schedule and tightend the division races while the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Kansas City Chiefs and Indianapolis Colts all lost.
Winners included the Minnesota Vikings, Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams. The Steelers win took down the first place Colts and the Vikings victory coupled with the Packers upset loss at home to the Carolina Panthers, tightens those division races.
The NFL loves competition and strives to prevent runaway division races.
One thing became clearer in this week of upsets and intrigue … the Los Angeles Rams may just be the best team in football.
Sean McVay’s team lost four of their first five games in 2024 while nursing a series of injuries that had them buried in the NFC West race after a month of play. Then, they got healthy, and good. In fact, they won nine of their final 12 games to become the first team in NFL history to win a division title after losing four of their first five regular season games.
Once in the playoffs, they throttled the Minnesota Vikings on a neutral field, having to play in Arizona due to the fires in Southern California. The Vikings had the best won/loss record ever for a fifth seed, 14 victories, and were rolled by the Rams like they were a second-tier scrub. In the NFC Divisional round, the Rams gave the eventual Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles all they could handle before surrendering a six-point loss. The Eagles won their other three postseason games by double-digits, 22-10 over the Green Bay Packers, 55-23 against the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game and a 40-22 Super Bowl triumph over the Kansas City Chiefs in a game not nearly as close as the final score.