The NFL Wrap: Rams seal NFC West title with games to spare as Packers part ways with Mike McCarthy

Rams clinched the NFC West title during gameweek 13.
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Malik Ouzia @MalikOuzia_4 December 2018

Week 13 saw the Rams become the first team to qualify for the playoffs with a major departure at the Green Bay Packers.

McCarthy – Rodgers split

After 13 seasons, the Green Bay Packers have parted company with head coach Mike McCarthy.

Sunday’s embarrassing 20-17 loss to the hapless Arizona Cardinals, a team who only had two wins over the equally hapless San Francisco 49ers to show for their efforts this year, proved to be the final straw in a frankly disastrous season.

The return of Aaron Rodgers was supposed to spark a return to playoff contention for a head coach/quarterback partnership that reached the postseason a franchise record eight times in a row between 2009 and 2016, and won the Super Bowl in 2010.

McCarthy gone after 13 seasons.
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Instead, the pair have been at loggerheads over offensive play calling all year, as Green Bay have stumbled to a 4-7-1 abomination, including six defeats out of six on the road.

Rodgers turned 35 on Sunday, and it seems the Packers have decided to act now, and get ahead in the inevitable off-season head coach scramble, rather than risk wasting the final years of one of the greatest players of all time.

Rams clinch title

The Los Angeles Rams have become the first team to qualify for the playoffs after wrapping up the NFC West title with four games to spare.

A dominant force since week one (and this column’s pre-season Super Bowl pick), it’s worth reminding yourself of the remarkable transformation this franchise has undergone in the past two years.

The Rams clinch title with games to spare.
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When head coach Sean McVay, the youngest in the NFL, arrived at the start of last year, the Rams were coming off the back of 10 consecutive losing seasons, and hadn’t reached the playoffs since 2004.

A remarkable 11-5 season followed, and that is going to be bettered by some distance this year (11-1, as it stands) by a team that has looked the most complete in football.

Texans rampant

The Houston Texans 29-13 win over the Cleveland Browns was a ninth win in a row since losing the first three games of the year.

Nine wins a row for the Texans.
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Many expected the slow start – their leaders on both sides of the ball, quarterback Deshaun Watson and defensive end JJ Watt, were coming off serious injuries.

Many expected that when things clicked, they’d be good. But longest winning streak in franchise history good? Perhaps not. And as the man on ESPN pointed out on Monday, in a hypothetical world where Tom Brady had turned the Patriots from an 0-3 team to a 9-3 one, we’d be handing out Super Bowl rings already.

Bad week for the NFC wildcard contenders

It’s looking increasingly like some pretty poor teams are going to make the playoffs with bang average records. In the NFC last season, the two wildcard spots were taken by teams with double figures in the win column.

This time out, in the same conference, only one current second placed team, the Seattle Seahawks, could reach ten wins without needing to sweep their four remaining games. None of them look capable of doing so.

Panthers on a four-game losing streak.
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Of the other contenders, the Panthers are on a four-game losing streak, the Redskins a three-gamer, while the Vikings took a pasting from the Patriots this weekend. The Eagles finally put together back-to-back victories for the first time this season to go 6-6, but they have a horrible run of fixtures to come, and it’s hard to see them reaching more than eight wins.

There are some elite level teams in the conference this year, the Rams and Saints in particular. But until their expected meeting in the NFC Championship game, there may not be too much in the postseason to trouble them.

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