Welcome to this week's Last Place Update. At least there's no tie to break. The 1-10 Kansas City Chiefs sit alone at the bottom as this week's Kings of the Cellar. The 2-9 Jacksonville Jaguars, who had been tied with the Chiefs, played like an NFL team and beat a Tennessee Titans team who had two weeks to prepare for them. Job well done, Jags. The Chiefs have now lost eight straight since beating the New Orleans Saints in overtime in Week 3. Jacksonville is now a game behind Kansas City, with four teams trailing the Jags by a game.
This week's honorable mention, and this sounds like a broken record, goes once again to the 4-7 Arizona Cardinals and 3-8 Philadelphia Eagles. Both teams lost winnable games increasing their losing streaks to seven games. Both teams led at one point in their respective games and both teams blew those leads. Arizona goes to New York to face the Jets and Philly goes to Dallas to face the Cowboys. Once again, they face vulnerable opponents, but until they can win a game, neither is an upset special pick.
A hats off to a former honorable mention: The New Orleans Saints defense kept the San Francisco 49ers offense to 375 yards. This is the first time this season that the Saints defense kept an opponent to under 400 yards.
Next Loss...
Kansas City hosts the Carolina Panthers, who are fresh off their Monday night win over the Eagles. Upset Special? Uh, no, not until they can beat somebody. Maybe Jacksonville's win will inspire them, but probably not. The Chiefs will face a mobile quarterback who, if he throws with a decent degree of accuracy, will pick that defense apart and if Kansas City drops too many players back in coverage, then Cam Newton will run all over them. The Chiefs will make a game of it, but will get loss number 11.
Jacksonville travels to venerable Rich Stadium to take on the Buffalo Bills. Upset Special? Possibly. The Jags took Houston to overtime, but lost, and they beat Tennessee. Buffalo is vulnerable. The Bills are 2-6 since Week 2 and a candidate for the Honorable Mention. However, they are also 2-2 at home this season and four of their next five games are at home. Also, southern teams tend to struggle in the cold, so chances are this will be a solid Jaguars loss.
Here are some series trivia notes:
The Arizona Cardinals are 2-5 against the New York Jets. The Cards have not beaten the Jets since 1975, when they were the St. Louis Cardinals.
The once old NFL opponents, Indianapolis Colts and Detroit Lions, have only played each other nine times since the NFL/AFL merger. Indy is 6-3 against the Lions in that span, not losing to Detroit since 1997.
The Seattle Seahawks are 9-4 against the Chicago Bears. The Seahawks are also 5-2 at Chicago, winning their last two meetings in Soldier Field.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 2-5 against the Denver Broncos, not winning a game in the series since 1999. The Bucs lost their last two games against Denver, each by a 16-13 score.
The Cincinnati Bengals, who trail their series with the San Diego Chargers 11-19, won their last meeting in 2010. If the Bengals win this week, it will be the first time the Bengals beat the Chargers twice in a row since 1988-90. The most consecutive games Cincinnati beat San Diego was 3, from 1970-73.
The Cleveland Browns trail the Oakland Raiders in their series 8-11, but are 7-3 since 1987.
Here are some historical scores for teams playing each other this week, on November 27:
1949 New York Giants 23 - Washington 7
1966 Green Bay 28 - Minnesota 16
1966 Washington 72 - New York Giants 41
1966 Boston Patriots 20 - Miami 14
1977 Minnesota 13 - Green Bay 6
1994 New York Giants 21 - Washington 19
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