"Playing for pride" is a phrase you hear a lot -- enough to kind of lose sight of what it means. Fortunately, the Cleveland Browns delivered a real-life example on Saturday.
Look, a lot of things had to happen for the Browns to finally win a game. They had to be at home against a team in the San Diego Chargers that had to take a long trip to get there, had a ton of injuries to key players and had nothing to play for. That opponent also had to miss a makeable game-tying field goal attempt in the final seconds. It wasn't easy, and it surely could have gone the other way for Cleveland.
But the Browns also had to play as if it mattered. And this time of year, the plain fact is that not every team does. Just look at what the New York Jets did at New England for an example of what it looks like when a team has no reason to get up for a game and therefore doesn't. It's ugly to say and uglier to watch, but it does happen.
So don't overlook the significance of Cleveland's first -- and potentially only -- win of the season. It says something about Browns coach Hue Jackson that he found a way to motivate his players when very little about this season had shown them they were capable of winning or that it would matter if they did.
Yeah, the Browns were in a few games early in the season, but prior to Saturday, they had lost their past six games by an average of 18 points. They still have no idea who their quarterback is, nor do they appear to have many building-block players on their roster. This is a team built on draft picks it hasn't made yet, and most of the players on the roster won't be there by the time the team is any good. If ever there was a group that had reason to fold up the tent, this was it.
But the Browns didn't, and so they were in a position to take advantage when an opportunity presented itself. It's easy to get on teams that don't look like they're trying at this point in the season. And you might say there's no glory in the opposite, because these guys are professionals and playing hard is what they're supposed to do. But given who the Browns are and what they've been through this season, it's worth a tip of the cap in their direction over a game that most of us probably looked at as totally meaningless. It's clear they didn't.
Here are some other things we learned in Week 16:
The Pittsburgh Steelers are going to be scary in the playoffs
The Steelers were a chic preseason Super Bowl pick whose season hasn't gone as smoothly as they hoped it would. Their defense took a while to come together. Injuries have left them woefully short on offensive playmakers beyond Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell. Terry Bradshaw doesn't think Mike Tomlin is a real coach. It hasn't been easy in Pittsburgh. But now that the Steelers are in the playoff field, look at it this way: The AFC playoff quarterbacks are going to be Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Alex Smith, Matt McGloin, Tom Savage and either Matt Moore or Ryan Tannehill. Other than Brady, who from that group do you trust to put his team on his back and win a playoff game in the final minutes? Yeah, Large Ben is just about it.
The Kansas City Chiefs will be too, if they can get their pass rush together
Justin Houston's absence from Sunday's victory over the Denver Broncos was alarming, because it reminded us that Kansas City's star pass-rusher is no sure thing to answer the bell in a playoff game. The emergence of Tyreek Hill on offense makes the Chiefs more dangerous than ever on that side of the ball. And with Houston -- who has played in only five games this season because of a knee injury -- they have the ability to consistently get the opponent off the field on third down. Kansas City is 27th in the league in sacks (28).
While Brady and Roethlisberger stand out on that AFC playoff quarterback list as guys who have delivered multiple championships, Smith has had his share of postseason success as well. Smith doesn't fire you up the way those guys do, but it's not crazy to think he can get it done.
There's no simple way to protect your quarterback from injury
I did NFL Insiders with Louis Riddick on Monday, and he cited one of his favorite Bill Belichick sayings: "If you can tell me which play the player is going to get injured on, I'll take him out of the game right before it." With all of this talk swirling about whether the Dallas Cowboys should or shouldn't rest Dak Prescott and other guys in advance of the playoffs now that they have everything clinched, the Derek Carr and Marcus Mariota injuries from Saturday serve as a reminder that there's no way to know when the injury bug is coming. Carr's and Mariota's injuries weren't from overuse or overexposure. They were freak things that could literally have happened on either player's first NFL snap.
The only way to protect a player from that kind of injury is to have him not play football, ever. The Cowboys could sit Prescott in Week 17 for safety's sake, and he could get hurt on the first play of their playoff game. Fear of injury risk isn't sufficient reason to hold out a guy. (Though there are cases, such as that of oft-injured Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee, in which it might make more sense than others.) Players need to play, and if the Cowboys' studs get hurt in regular-season games that didn't matter in the standings, it's not negligence. Getting to the divisional playoff round without your quarterback having played in a month would be pretty damaging to your playoff chances as well.
We've not been giving the Atlanta Falcons enough credit
No, I don't like their defense either. But Matt Ryan is having an MVP-caliber year, no one can cover Julio Jones and the Falcons can run the ball. They're in a position to outscore teams come playoff time, and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan could be someone else's head coach a month and a half from now.