Let\u2019s equate the three Christmas games with the gifts you might find under the tree or in your stocking.<\/p>\n
Second on the Christmas Day slate is Broncos at Chiefs … which may have once been a matchup we’d like to see. Now, with the Chiefs eliminated and Patrick Mahomes out for the season, we’ll liken to coal in your stocking.<\/p>\n
At least the NFL saved the worst for last. The Chiefs are on prime time a lot, and love them or hate them, they usually put on a good show. That was before Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL.<\/a> Gardner Minshew II didn\u2019t even last a half in his first start last week replacing Mahomes before he suffered a season-ending knee injury.<\/p>\n Next man up is presumably Chris Oladokun, a 2022 seventh-round pick who before Minshew\u2019s injury last Sunday had only taken a few snaps in the NFL. While it\u2019s a great opportunity for a player who has spent most of his career on practice squads, it\u2019s hard to see him keeping the Chiefs competitive against a very good Broncos defense. The Chiefs are a 13-point underdog<\/a>, the largest spread they\u2019ve faced since 1977. You don\u2019t even have to feign enthusiasm for this one.<\/p>\n Of the six teams playing on Christmas, the Broncos are the one that actually has a realistic postseason goal in front of it. The Broncos can still get the No. 1 seed in the AFC despite last week\u2019s loss to the Jaguars. They still are in a race for the AFC West title with the Chargers. This game initially looked like it could be a huge one, with the Chiefs trying to extend their streak of nine straight AFC West titles against a very strong competitor. It didn\u2019t play out as expected. None of the Christmas matchups did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s equate the three Christmas games with the gifts you might find under the tree or in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,71929,1256,55563,23167,1240,593,6584,70786,85,973,187687],"class_list":["post-372054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chris-oladokun","tag-denver-broncos","tag-gardner-minshew","tag-jacksonville","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-nfl","tag-patrick-mahomes","tag-role-reversal","tag-sports","tag-tennessee","tag-the-afc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}