What’s Hot and What’s Knott in Football – Week 15

By Rhys Knott

Before we even get started on Week 15, we have to talk about Monsters Funday Night Football! 

Meanwhile, back in Week 15, forget everything you ever knew about the 2025 season. Everyone you thought was trash is, in actual fact, hot.  

J.J. McCarthy, Trevor Lawrence, the Ravens, Kyle Pitts, and even Kirk Cousins. They’re all smoking hot in Week 15. 

Hat-tricks make a comeback and, as always, being nice is so hot! 

Winning by 20 points or more is hot in Week 15, so much for the NFL’s parity. 

Week 15 also delivered funky uniforms, a very stodgy field and the return of the Buccaneers’ star wide receiver. And that was just on Thursday night! 

And we have to talk about the officials AGAIN! 

What’s Hot in Football – Week 15

First things first, Monsters Inc. is hot! So Funday Night Football with Monsters Inc. It’s flaming hot, it’s so hot that Mike Wazowski scorched the turf in SoFi as he took the fake tush push for a touchdown! 

Sully’s four-interception game is equally hot.

The big guy even recorded a sack!

Isaiah Rodgers’ Monsters Inc. inspired cleats? You know they’re hot!

Not to be outdone, CBS had some SpongeBob action. But let’s be honest, nobody knows what the hell is going on here. Why are his trousers alive? 

But enough of the serious stuff, on to the NFC South! Kyle Pitts is scorching hot (yes, THAT Kyle Pitts). The fourth overall pick in the 2021 draft finally looked worth the hype that surrounded him as he racked up a career-high 166 receiving yards.  

Pitts is still more of a slow wide receiver than a fast tight end, but nobody’s perfect. The 25-year-old former Florida Gator caught a hat-trick of touchdown passes for the first time in his career. In fact, Pitts hadn’t hauled in multiple scoring passes since the Falcons played the Bucs in Week 8 last year! 

The uniform matchups on Thursday night are so hot that they make most of the alternate uniform games look like a second-rate marketing exercise. The Falcons’ throwbacks evoke memories of Michael Turner, Michael Vick (before the criminal charges), and even a bit of Morten Andersen.

The Tampa Bay creamsicle gear is more controversial. The Buccaneers are celebrating their 50th season with three games in the throwbacks. Older fans love them (it’s like the good old days, you see), but the youngsters are going to have to learn to live with the look. Let’s not get into the “Bucco Bruce” emblem, though. Erroll Flynn has no place on an NFL helmet. 

Whooping an opponent by 20-plus points is so hot in Week 15. Da Bears beat Cleveland by 28 points, and the Ravens spanked the Bengals 24-0 in Cleveland! Jalen Hurts led the Eagles to a 31-0 thrashing of the Raiders, Liam “DUUUUVAL” Coen is a football genius again as the Jaguars beat the stuffing out of the Jets 48-20. Houston eased past the Cardinals by a score of 40-20.

TreVeyon Henderson is hot in Week 15. All of the Patriots’ run game was against a Bills defense that has had some issues in 2025; New England went at 9.8 yards per carry! Why they asked Drake Maye to throw passes on 48% of their snaps in a snowstorm will remain a mystery for a very long time. 

Obviously, Puka Nacua. Every week, the 24-year-old steps onto an NFL field, and he is smoking hot. His 181 receiving yards are a new high for him, but there’s no reason to believe he won’t set a new record before the end of the season. 

Trey McBride is the Puka Nacua of tight ends, so it’s no real surprise he’s hot in Week 15. McBride’s 134 yards on 12 catches is tied with his own record for receptions (he’s hauled in 12 balls four times now) and set a new high for receiving yards! 

In quarterback news, some unlikely candidates dusted off their best performances to become smoking hot in Week 15. Not all of them were 44 years old either! 

Anyone who saw Trevor Lawrence playing at Wembley in Week 7 can tell you how awful he looks against a strong defense. Luckily, there aren’t many defenses as strong as Chris Shula’s Rams unit. The Jaguars’ Week 15 opponents, the Jets, are one of the worst defenses of this, or any season. T-Law carved them up accordingly.

Travis Etienne hauled in three of Lawrence’s scoring passes, which is the first time he’s caught more than one touchdown in a game! If the Jags play the Jets every week, they’ll win the Super Bowl.

Back to the signal callers, and Kirk Cousins definitely falls into the same category as Lawrence; he can tear defenses to shreds. But he doesn’t do it week in and week out. The 37-year-old diced up the Buccaneers defense, completing 30 of 44 passes for 373 yards and three touchdowns. 

All three of those scoring passes were hauled in by Kyle Pitts! With no pesky Drake London to spoil his fun, Pitts set a new career high for both catches and receiving yards with 166 yards on 11 receptions. Not only is that Pitts’ most receiving yards since 2021, but it’s also his first 100-yard game since 2021 

J.J. McCarthy has had enough of copping flak in 2025. He started Week 15 just as hot as he was in Week 14.

Despite needing an epidural for an “aggravated disc” back in August, Matt Stafford appears to be getting better. Unsurprisingly, the 37-year-old is hot once again in Week 15.

The Ravens are hot, too. They actually weren’t physically hot as the temperature plummeted to –12 degrees Celsius in Paycor Stadium! But a seventh win in the season means Baltimore is now poised to overtake the Steelers atop the AFC North table. 

The Ravens’ defense shut out a Bengals offense missing Tee Higgins, intercepting Joe Burrow twice and starting a lateraling craze in the process. Kudos to Kyle van Noy; showboating on defense is absolutely hot. 

But the hottest thing in a Ravens uniform this week is Lamar Jackson. The quarterback might not be 100% or at his devastating best, but deciding to share his insulated cape with the excellent Aditi Kinkhabwala i’s some superstar behaviour right there.

Then the Giants joined in with the whole “passing to a different guy on your defense” thing, but with even more razmataz and ultimately less success. 

Charlie Smyth, you say? Yep, he’s still hot.

But back to those elite defenders, get a load of Quinyon Mitchell’s season! Now that’s hot. 

Pass rushers are hot in Week 15, too. 11 different players recorded multiple sacks! Matt Milano, Demetrius Knight Jr., D.J. Wonnum, Odafe Oweh, Tuli Tuipolotu, Austin Booker, rookie James Pearce Jr., veteran Brandon Graham and Myles Murphy all recorded two sacks!

If defenses really do win championships, plenty of teams are putting their hands up late in the season. 

The Broncos’ pass rush really got after poor old Jordan Love.

And Da Bears’ defense was electric against the Browns. Oh yeah, and Chicago plays Green Bay again next week. Pray for Jordan Love!

Fake field goals are hot, too. Unfortunately, it was all downhill for both Brandon Aubrey and the Cowboys after this. Maybe he should have run the ball more? 

That’s not even the best trick play in Week 15. 305 pounds of Jeffery Simmons playing fullback/ wide receiver on a scramble drill is so hot!

But, most importantly, the Texans are hot. They’re pretty hot on the field, but in Week 15, they’re hot for hosting Kids Day at NRG Stadium.

Promoting the game to the next generation is vitally important, but to do it for a game where you run out 40-20 is smoking hot. These kids are going to be talking about the game for a while.

What’s Knott in Football – Week 15

The Eagles turning the ball over so many times that the Monsters on Funday Night Football couldn’t keep up is pretty Knott.

And the fake rumour of a Monsters Inc. player failing a PED test? You better believe that’s Knott, too.

Roz is always Knott. Come on, Roz, cheer up.

On a far more serious note, Bijan Robinson’s homophobic remarks are so offensive they are absolutely Knott.

The Falcons as a whole are Knott. There is no conceivable reason that a team with so much talent should have lost nine games by week 15! Despite winning a divisional game on the road in a short week, they are still Knott. 

Jeff Ulbrich’s defense conceded seven first downs on penalties! Tampa Bay only picked up five first downs by running the ball! Atlanta conceded a team-record 19 penalties in total for 125 yards! 

But that wasn’t even the worst part. Raheem Morris’ rabble also fumbled the ball three times. Luckily, they recovered from two of their mishaps. 
If the winning team is Knott, it stands to reason that the losing team are even more Knott. The Buccaneers’ injuries are the Knott thing in Tampa Bay, though. Three offensive linemen on IR, along with right end Ko Kieft, plus no Cade Otton this week, really affected their ability to run the ball.  

Not all quarterbacks are hot in Week 15, and in a week when people are going to rave about the ageless Phillip Rivers, someone must point out that he is only human. When he has thrown the ball more than 10 yards through the air, he is incredibly Knott! 

You know what else Knott is? The officiating (again). After 13 games of the season, Carl Cheffers and his crew have awarded 203 accepted penalties! In total, they have thrown 238 flags, that’s very Knott, but Alex Moore’s crew have thrown 269! Obviously, some offenses deserve to be penalised, but not every incident of physical contact is illegal.

Calling soft pass interference penalties means that fans become even more irate when clear offenses are not flagged. It’s not just penalty calls, though, what happened here, guys? There’s no way that’s a catch, let alone a touchdown!

And Patriots fans have some questions for John Hussey.

In other Patriots news, remember that stress dream you have about presenting some work in front of a group of people, and then you realise that you forgot to put clothes on? Well, that happened to Mack Hollins for real this week.

But it gets worse, as if that isn’t embarrassing enough, have you seen him dance? 

Not clearing the snow off the seats at your stadium? You know that’s Knott, the NFL knows that’s Knott, too, and they’re going to fine the Bengals for making their fans’ lives as miserable as possible. Do better losers, no wonder Joe Burrow is so miserable in Cincinatti.

RHYS KNOTT

NFL/FANTASY FOOTBALL ANALYST

Rhys has been watching the NFL for 30 something years and still hasn’t managed to pick a team to support. When he’s not fixatED on pass rushers you can find him blithering on about most sports on Twitter @wrhys_writes

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