Week 15: COVID messed up this week’s schedule, and three teams might have messed up their postseason

Week 15 of the NFL season provided us a very much not needed throwback to the 2020 NFL season. Players and coaches have tested positive at times in 2021, but this past week COVID hit like a Spider-Man movie. It was everywhere and re-acquainted us with a familiar friend: Re-scheduled games.

For at least one week, the emergency scenario that we’d thought had left our lives forever has returned — Tuesday Night Football. In the NFL’s first week with no byes since mid October, there are still eight teams that have not yet played. The Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings were originally scheduled for Monday Night Football, but there’s now an opening act with Las Vegas at Cleveland, and the closing act to Week 15 is now Seattle at Los Angeles and Washington at Philadelphia on Tuesday.

All four of these games will have an impact on the playoff picture, but for now let’s focus on some teams who were healthy enough to at least play their originally scheduled Sunday games and suffered some ill-timed defeats. The Tennessee Titans, Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Cardinals are headed in the wrong direction at the worst possible time.

The Titans lost running back Derrick Henry to injury during their Halloween matchup against the Indianapolis Colts. However, they pulled out the victory in that game and were sitting pretty in a weak AFC South, after having defeated the second-best team in the conference twice.

In the Titans’ next six games they would go .500, losing three of their last four. Top wide receiver A.J. Brown has been down with injury for five weeks, including a bye, No. 2 wide receiver Julio Jones has only played in two games since Week 7, Henry isn’t expected back until the last game of the regular season at the absolute earliest, and the Titans have been dealing with injuries at other positions throughout the season.

With three games remaining they’re only one game ahead of the Colts in the AFC South after a road loss to the Steelers on Sunday, which mirrored many of their other losses in the last month of action. Turnovers destroyed the Titans. They outgained the Steelers by 150 yards, dominated on third down, and won the time of possession battle, but the Titans committed four turnovers at Heinz Field while the Steelers committed none.

The cavalry is set to return, but if the Titans can’t hold onto the football, when Henry does get his boot off, he’ll will be on the couch watching someone else play for the conference championship.

It’s not entirely the Ravens’ fault that they have tumbled in the standings in a winnable AFC North. They have been battling injuries on both sides of the ball. Just last week they lost quarterback Lamar Jackson temporarily to a knee injury and their best cornerback, Marlon Humphrey, is out for the rest of the season with a torn pectoral. He joins fellow cornerback Marcus Peters on injured reserve with a torn ACL.

As important as these players are to the Ravens, that’s still only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to injuries. In Week 15, not counting anyone on injured reserve, the Ravens had 11 players listed as out for their home game against the Packers

The Ravens still played their hearts out as they do every week, but still came up short in the end. For the second time in three weeks the game was put out of reach by the Ravens failing to convert a two-point conversion late in the fourth quarter.

After entering December with the best record in the AFC, the Ravens have lost every game they have played this month, they are in last place in the AFC North, and out of the playoffs. They won’t be anywhere near full health the rest of the season, so they had better hope that Jackson is healthy in Week 16 and the rest of the year so they can follow his lead into the postseason.

All of that winning that the Cardinals did while quarterback Kyler Murray was hurt, and they still might blow the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC.

Murray didn’t take the field for a month and the Cardinals were still able to finish that stretch with a 2-1 record. That included road wins against division rivals Los Angeles and Seattle. Murray returned for a road victory against quarterback Andy Dalton and the Bears in Week 13.

The Cardinals have lost their last two games since that win against the Bears, and that includes Sunday’s loss to the Detroit Lions. It was the Lions’ second win of the 2021 season, and unlike their first win two weeks prior — in which they defeated Minnesota on a last-second touchdown — the Lions dominated the Cardinals from start to finish.

The Lions went into halftime up 17-0 over the Cardinals, and never relinquished the lead in a game they would win 30-12. The stat sheet does not show a particular aspect of the game that the Lions dominated. Arizona simply struggled for three hours to put points on the board despite the fact that they gained nearly 400 yards of offense.

With two consecutive losses, the Cardinals have fallen from the No. 1 seed in the NFC to No. 4. The last place this team needs to be is on the road in the playoffs while they hope for recently injured DeAndre Hopkins to return by the NFC Championship Game. After not getting the respect they deserved at times this season, it’s looking like the Cardinals’ season will be over before anyone has time to give them their proper due.