Finally a hot week: after limping along for a lot of the season and unable to really find a groove or some serious footing, I strung together a 5-0 week in Week 14 with my best bets. Hope you got to ride on the train as well. Also hope you got off and stopped listening to me on the Chiefs, a team that saw a Thursday night trend of home teams covering end in horrific fashion.

It wasn't so horrible if you're the Chargers, of course. Or any of Philip Rivers' eight (nine coming!) kids, who got to see their dad score 14 points in less than eight minutes to exorcise some Arrowhead demons, clinch a playoff berth and give his team a chance to grab home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. 

Or anyone who has been wanting to get aboard the "Philip Rivers for MVP" bandwagon this year, but just didn't have enough reason to rank him over Patrick Mahomes or Drew Brees. There is now reason to do so, or at least reason to discuss Rivers in the conversation if things break a certain way. (Full credit to NFL Media's Gregg Rosenthal; he's been sitting in the driver's seat of this bus for a few weeks, shining his crystal ball, waiting for everyone to get on board.)

So what's the case for Rivers here? For starters, there are the statistics. 


Att/Comp (%)YardsTD-INTYards/Att

Patrick Mahomes

346/516 (67.1)

4,543

45-11

8.8

Drew Brees

314/415 (75.7)

3,463

31-4

8.3

Philip Rivers

310/447 (69.4)

3,951

31-8

8.8

Mahomes has the yards and touchdowns -- he leads the NFL in both -- and those will make it difficult for him to lose this award. But the volume is also substantially different. Give Rivers the same attempts and they're even in yardage. Give Rivers four one-yard touchdown shovel passes (Mahomes has eight TD throws inside the 3-yard line, Rivers has four on the season) and his touchdown percentage would go from the 6.9 percent he currently has to 7.8 percent. Mahomes is at an unholy 8.7 percent; but the point is it's closer than you think in terms of what they've done on the field. 

The Chiefs' budding young superstar is just new and different and running an offense we've never seen before. Each week he breaks our brain. Falling in love with new is easy. 

I'm not here saying Rivers should be the favorite right now. Not by any stretch. But this hasn't only been a two-horse race all season: Rivers has been right with Brees in terms of production. 

And, because showing your value is important, Rivers did just that on Thursday night. He won that game without his top receiver (Keenan Allen) and top running back (Melvin Gordon), slinging dimes to guys who would not be top options on other teams. 

This throw in particular, on 4th-and-8 with the game on the line, was just ridiculous.

You literally cannot defend that. Rivers is out there bending footballs into the tightest windows possible. If Mahomes' signature moment was his fourth-down throw against the Ravens, then Rivers should get the same credit for this toss against the Chiefs.

The way this works is pretty easy. If the Chiefs win out, they clinch the AFC West and the No. 1 overall seed. Do that and the award is going to Mahomes. He's been too good and they'll be the top dogs.

But here's the hypothetical scenario where Rivers would be deserving: Los Angeles wins out, beating the Ravens at home next week and the Broncos on the road in Week 17. The Chiefs go up to Seattle and the offense turtles up in front of the 12th man and they lose. Mahomes goes for less than 300 yards in a confusing outing that wrecks 75 percent of fantasy seasons and moves the Chiefs into second place in the division. The Saints stumble against the Panthers on Monday night, don't look sharp in their final two games and let the Rams get the No. 1 seed in the NFC.

If Rivers drags this Chargers team, this cursed team playing with no fans in the stadium for eight home games without its top receiver and top running back against its biggest rival, into the No. 1 seed in the AFC in a year where Andy Reid is unleashing his Death Star offense, it's only right to recognize who really has been the most valuable player in the NFL all along. 

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Speaking of valuable things, let's get to the picks and win some money this weekend. If you want a great podcast breakdown of every single game against the spread, subscribe to the Pick Six Podcast and listen to me, Pete Prisco and R.J. White give you everything you need to know about the games on tap this weekend. You can also listen to the latest ep -- it's daily, folks,,, -- below.

Browns (+3) at Broncos

At one point during the week, I allowed the above-mentioned Mr. White to talk me out of taking the Browns as a road dog. There's a good argument here: the Broncos are a top-tier defense with a great pass rush that features Von Miller and Bradley Chubb, two guys who will not slow down in their attack of quarterbacks. Baker Mayfield struggled on the road in his last start against a very good defense (Houston) and this is a scary spot in primetime at altitude on a Saturday when Broncos fans will be LOUD as the team tries to make a playoff push. And I'm going to ignore all those logical reasons for taking the Broncos -- or at least not taking the Browns -- and keep riding Baker Mayfield. I like what this Browns team has going, I think they believe in themselves and believe in Gregg Williams and I think they go into Denver and keep this game close and potentially win outright. Just a feeling man. 

Vikings (-7) vs. Dolphins

Couple of factors go into this pick, including Ye Olde Dead Cat Bounce. I've been preaching about it all season, but teams who fire their coordinators or fire their coach tend to give you a little boost in value in the following week. For the Vikings, it's a perfect situation. They're coming off an embarrassing primetime loss on the road to a really good team (Seahawks) in a game that was much closer than the final score indicated because of some questionable shenanigans from the officials. They're headed home to play a substantially worse team (Dolphins) coming off their Super Bowl, with the wild Miami Miracle inspiring its own viral T-shirt and even a freaking hoodie. The Dolphins defense ranks 24th in DVOA and they have a below-average run defense. Expect plenty of Dalvin Cook as Mike Zimmer exerts his will on the playcalling a bit here. Minnesota is 4-1 against the spread after a loss this year and 3-2-1 as a home team this season -- their two losses qualify as a random fluke lookahead (Buffalo) and a game they should have won (New Orleans). 

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Ravens (-7.5) vs. Buccaneers

'Tis the season to lay a lot of points. In December you can't often get home favorites with short numbers, and while expecting an NFL team to beat another NFL team by a touchdown-plus is a lot, the Ravens are a good value here actually. Tampa Bay has played just two games against teams with a defensive ranked in the top 10 in DVOA. One of those games was at home, against the Browns, with Hue Jackson coaching. Tampa won that game. The other was on the road, against Chicago, and the Bucs lost 38-10. Baltimore is the No. 2 defense by DVOA -- the Ravens are a good bit back of the Bears, but they are fourth against the pass and the Bucs can't run. Jameis Winston wasn't starting against Chicago and he is playing well right now, but I don't think this is a good spot for him. Tampa is probably eliminated from the playoffs at this point after gagging away its biggest game of the year; the Bucs had the Saints right where they wanted them and collapsed. The Bucs have played just a single road game outdoors in December where the weather was below 50 degrees since 2010, which is pretty wild. They have played only six outdoor road December games since 2012 and are 1-5 in those games (3-3 against the spread). Because of their division (in the NFC South, two teams play in domes), Tampa doesn't end up in colder situations very often. It's expected to be rainy with a high of 48 in Baltimore on Sunday. Since Week 10, no one has more rushing yards than the Ravens (910). In the same time span, Tampa's allowed the seventh most rushing yards (695) and fourth most rush yards per attempt (5.4). This is a bad matchup with give-up potential for the Bucs.

Colts (-3) vs. Cowboys

This line stinks out loud. The Cowboys are the hottest team in the country right now, everyone is loving what Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper are cooking up and their defense is playing out of its mind, locking people down left and right over the last five games. But kind of secretly, the Cowboys have only played one good team in that stretch. The win over the Saints was beyond impressive, but I'm not sure they should have covered against the Redskins, they beat the Eagles twice and the Falcons might be terrible. (OK the Falcons are terrible.) A couple things I like here for the Colts: they're more desperate and need a win to stay in the wild card hunt. They have the better quarterback in Andrew Luck and the better coach in Frank Reich. And they have a secret weapon in Matt Eberflus, who left Dallas to become defensive coordinator in Indy (he was going to work for Josh McDaniels but stuck around with Reich, which is an underrated and cool story for both sides). He will know how to fluster Dak and he will have a good idea on what Jason Garrett does from a tendency perspective. Additionally, even as the Cowboys have seen a huge boost in their first downs per game and third-down efficiency, they have not seen a huge boost in scoring. That's their conservative mentality and I think it burns them here against Indy. 

Bills (-2) vs. Lions

Hold onto your butts. The Bills are coming off a bad loss to the Jets but Josh Allen is playing pretty well and no one wants to stop him from running. The Lions won last week in Arizona but it wasn't a double-digit win if you watched the game. Plus, Detroit is going to play a good defensive team on the road, for their second-straight road game of the season. So far this year, Detroit has played seven games against defenses currently ranked in the top 15 in DVOA defensive metrics. They are 1-6 in those games with a point differential of -50. Add in the fact that the weather in Buffalo looks downright miserable on Sunday -- a high of 38 degrees, with a 20 percent chance of precipitation and some sneaky snow potential -- and this is a bad spot for the Lions. I'll lay the points with Josh Allen.