Your Very Last Monday Nighter Open Thread

Cin @ Den: What to make of Denver? They’re the first team in a few years to not score any points at all in the second half of three straight games. They’ve lost their last two, they’ve beaten San Diego (like everyone else), they beat the P*ts in OT (did NE win the toss in that one?), and they lost 17-15 to the Bears. A devout Broncs fan “says” (meaning he mumbles through tears), It’s not a slow fade, honest!  Let’s math it up for a bit, shall we? If the Broncs win tonight the chances of a first-round bye rise to 72%, yet if they lose the odds of them missing the playoffs altogether increase to 23%. Isn’t football fandom fun in a severe chest-pain kind of way? But there is some good news… HERE COMES CINCY! [camera pans to a lone figure limping over the horizon, backlit by a setting sun] That illustration is, like, way metaphorical, right? QB Dalton and TE Ifart are out so the Bengals won’t be looking like a 3-loss team. My prediction is that each squad has the exact same game plan-pack the box and make the QB win it with his arm/smarts. This means the game is determined by which team has the better secondary/pass rush. Denver? Denver.