The Panthers managed to not lose this week for one very important reason and it is the same reason why the other teams don't lose on a particular week: They didn't play.
It's called a "Bye week" and every team gets them. I don't know exactly why. It could be a week of rest or because of scheduling conflicts but whatever! The Panthers likely would have lost had they played anyone so instead I focused on the rest of the league to see if I noticed anything noteworthy.
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This is likely the biggest news of the week because even though KC has been having a not-so-awesome season the Houston Texans went into this with a better record than the Chiefs. Despite that, the chiefs were a 5 point favorite to win and if you look at other betting lines, they are still one of the teams favored to win the entire thing in the Super Bowl. This loss was particularly bad though, as KC appeared as though they didn't have an answer for their opponents no matter what they did.
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This one was important because Buffalo is one of these teams that it seems almost anyone is pulling for and they get up some steam and hype during the early regular season and the something nuts just tends to happen to them and they fade away. I would say the Detroit is a team that often does this as well. Buffalo has spent most of the season getting talk about how they're bound for the playoffs and look good for winning the whole dance, but when a game is this close with a team like Cincy, that the Bills should just be absolutely dismantling, it doesn't look good. When you consider the fact that Buffalo secured a win by intentionally running out the clock after a Bengals TD, it looks even worse. They were scared. Cincinati was in the lead for all of this game until the last 2 minutes of the 4th quarter. This is not a good look for a team that people are claiming are Super-Bowl bound. Either Buffalo didn't take this game seriously, or they have some serious holes in their game.
The rest of the games concluded how you would expect but I suppose Green Bay narrowly edging Chicago out of a win could be considered a surprise but despite Chicago's better record I have been saying for a while now that Chicago's record is not respected. There were too many fluke wins in there whereas Green Bay has had to scrap like crazy to get every W they have this season.
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It seems as though the bookies were those of the "ye of little faith" because putting Green Bay as a 6.5 point favorite in this game is a bigger margin than either of the two other games I talked about. People are really leaning into this notion that the record a team has doesn't really mean a lot, it depends on who they have played in the season since the talent is so widespread this season.
New Orleans pulled off a win over Tampa Bay who is likely the only team from NFC south that is going to see a post-season. Any my new favorite kicker Charlie Smyth, only the second Irish person to ever play in the NFL, made two kicks for the Saints and New Orleans who is still just 3-10 on the season and has no chance of a post-season at least has something to celebrate.
The Bucs on the other hand, only appear to be good because of their probably the weakest division in the entire NFL. They are likely going to get whalloped in the playoffs.