Five Wide: 2024 Week Eighteen

By Thomas Willoughby

Well, there goes the 2024 NFL regular season. And what a season it was. Thrills, spills, utter ineptitude from teams that you’d think would know better. A big tank you for choosing to spend every Wednesday with us here, it truly is appreciated.

As is tradition, Five Wide will be going into hibernation for a little while. I’m not going anywhere, but this column needs a nap. 

And, to celebrate, we’ve got a bit of a bonus for you on this final week of the NFL regular season. Due to the goodness of my heart, and absolutely not because I managed to repeatedly miscount, we’re adding an eligible reciever to the play. FIve Wide now has 6 targets.

Now Hiring

Black Monday kicked off about 30 seconds after the NFL season regular season ended, with Jerrod Mayo being shown the door shortly after defeating the Buffalo Bills. We’ll discuss the ramifications of that result shortly, but a 3-14 season was enough for the New England Patriots to choose to look elsewhere, despite my prediction last week. 

The Jaguars put an end to the madness, with Doug Pederson fired on Monday morning. Pederson leaves Jacksonville with a 22-29 record, one playoff win, and a severely underwhelming scrapbook of memories to look back over. Curiously, Trent Baalke has managed to keep hold of his job. He’s overseen both the Urban Meyer and Doug Pederson eras, and it’s not overly clear how or why he’s being given the opportunity to hire another head coach.

I expect there to be a smattering of executive firings in the coming days (Titans moving on from their GM feels weird?) which we’ll cover in depth I’m sure. For now, two more teams have thrown their name into the Ben Johnson derby.

Mike Mulholland-Getty Images

Now on the clock

The top 18 of the draft is now locked in and, despite all reasonable logic, we’ve seen a 3rd change in as many weeks at the top. Yes, congratulations to the Tennessee Titans, who get their pick of the class.

New England fans can thank Joe Milton III’s frankly absurd performance for them dropping down pecking order. The Patriots 23-14 victory vs Buffalo has robbed them of a 1st overall pick (or the riches it could bring) now has them 4th overall. Not terrible, but certainly not the moneymaker they might have dreamt of otherwise.

We have Cleveland 2nd and New York 3rd, with Jacksonville rounding out the top 5. You can make a case for all 3 sides at the top requiring help at quarterback, which is where these premium picks are often spent. Is this draft class solid enough to find your franchise man, however? Dunno mate. But I know The Touchdown’s NFL writers will be able to tell me, so keep your eyes peeled here over the next few weeks and months to find out.

City Break

Can I just say, I find it incredibly funny that Kansas City chose to rest literally everyone on Sunday evening? Second stringers in every department, they might as well have had Matt Nagy as the head coach.

This was a game that meant something to three other teams. The Broncos, who they played, needed to win in order the punch their ticket to the post-season for the first time in nearly a decade. The Dolphins, who would leapfrog Denver in the event Kansas City pulled off a win. And the Bengals, who would land a wildcard spot if both other sides were defeated. It wasn’t even a contest, Kansas City rolled over to the tune of 38-0, and Bo Nix is now a playoff quarterback.

I’m interested to see what this does for the Chiefs, though. Having won 1st seed in the AFC, they get a bye week. So their guys are going into their playoff game having not played for a fortnight. They’ll be fresh, yes, but I’ve got them playing either the Texans or the Chargers, and you just know both of those will feel better about playing them with some potential rust to be kicked off.

Geneva Heffernan-AP

Traaa lalala

Cairo Santos is 33 years old. He grew up watching football, our football, at the same time I did. So he would have been around 15 or 16 when THE BARCLAYS was THE BARCLAYS. Which explains why Cairo Santos, having just kicked the game winner vs Green Bay, chose to dig into the annals of history to pull this celebration out of the bag.

That’s Cairo Santos, Chicago Bears kicker, pulling out the Didier Drogba. Santos is a known Chelsea fan, which fully explains why he’s done it. And also why some American pundits are so bemused by what they’ve seen.

In 2007 I played under 16s for a team called the Kidlington Exiles. We won one game all season, we were terrible. I scored once, and wheeled away doing the Drogba. I am not a Chelsea fan, but jabbing your hands out in celebration is a level of catharsis you’ll never know. I understand how Cairo felt in this moment. Do it yourselves, at home, and you’ll understand too. The Drogba crosses allegiances, sports, and now borders. The world would be a better place if we all did it every now and then.

He's got one more in him

There’s saving the best ‘til last, and then there’s this. Aaron Rodgers, in what’s likely to be his last game with the Jets, possibly in the NFL, putting on comfortably his best performance with New York, and plummeting the Jets’ draft positioning in the process. The Jets ended the season winning 32-20, ending the year 5-11, and are in a bit of a no-mans land. But Rodgers dealt.

23-36, 274 yards, 4 touchdowns. A clinic against a Dolphins side trying to hold up their end of the bargain in sneaking into the post-season. Rodgers found his best mate 6 times for 88 yards and a touchdown. Him and Davante Adams made good on the promise of Green Bay football in New Jersey. Just a few weeks too late.

I don’t know what happens next with Rodgers, though I think this sort of performance will convince a GM trying to convince his boss he should remain employed that Rodgers has enough juice to get a good year from him. Probably Vegas.

Above Face Value

The regular season concluded with the battle for the NFC’s 1st seed. Detroit, of course, absolute battered the Vikings, putting them top of the tree in the conference, and condemning Minnesota to life as (the first ever?) 14 win wild-card.

What I found funny, though, was the Vikings organisation trying to level the playing field somewhat. The Detroit crowd are rabid for success, and would show up in their numbers. For the travelling Viking, it would be a very expensive endeavour getting into Ford Field on Sunday night. So the team bought nearly 2000 tickets to the sum of $2 million to get some of their own in the stands.

It would have been a small fee to pay if it’d worked. Instead, 2000 fans got to pay a slightly lower amount than they might otherwise had done to see their side slapped. Let this be a lesson for the rest of the league: you can’t put a price on wins. Or, if you can, it’s a bit higher than $2 million.

Features Image Credit: Andrew Nelles -The Tennessean

Thomas Willoughby

NFL ANALYST

THOMAS IS A WRITER, AND REGULAR GUEST ON THE TOUCHDOWN REVIEW SHOW PODCAST, FOR THE TOUCHDOWN. YOU CAN FIND HIM @WILLO290592 ON TWITTER

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