The Packers won’t have running back Josh Jacobs for their home game against the Vikings on Sunday.
Jacobs was able to practice on a limited basis on Thursday and Friday, but the Packers listed him as questionable to play due to a knee injury that he suffered in last Sunday’s win over the Giants. Word that he’d be out came shortly before the Packers confirmed it with the announcement of their inactive list 90 minutes ahead of kickoff at Lambeau Field.
Emmanuel Wilson will be the lead back for Green Bay on Sunday. Chris Brooks is the other back active for the matchup of NFC North clubs.
Vikings at Packers
Vikings: EDGE Jonathan Greenard, LB Austin Keys, OL Joe Huber, OL Walter Rouse, TE Ben Yurosek, DL Elijah Williams
Packers: RB Josh Jacobs, CB Nate Hobbs, LB Quay Walker, WR Matthew Golden, K Lukas Havrisik, LB Jamon Johnson, OL Donovan Jennings
Colts at Chiefs
Colts: CB Jonathan Edwards, RB D.J. Giddens, S Reuben Lowery, TE Will Mallory, T Luke Tenuta
Chiefs: CB Josh Williams, RB Isiah Pacheco, WR Jalen Royals, TE Jared Wiley, RB Elijah Mitchell, OL Wanya Morris
Steelers at Bears
Steelers: QB Aaron Rodgers, EDGE Alex Highsmith, OL Andrus Peat, DL Brodric Martin, DL Logan Lee
Bears: QB Case Keenum, RB Travis Homer, LB T.J. Edwards, DL Jonathan Ford, WR Jahdae Walker, LB Noah Sewell, T Theo Benedet
Patriots at Bengals
Patriots: WR Efton Chism, TE C.J. Dippre, DT Joshua Farmer, G Caedan Wallace, QB Tommy DeVito, LB Jahlani Tavai
Bengals: QB Sean Clifford, WR Jermaine Burton, TE Cam Grandy, DE Cam Sample, RB Samaje Perine, DE Trey Hendrickson
Jets at Ravens
Jets: RB Khalil Herbert, WR Tyler Johnson, TE Jelani Woods, DL Mazi Smith, DL Tyler Baron
Ravens: QB Cooper Rush, RB Rasheen Ali, DT Aeneas Peebles, G Ben Cleveland, T Carson Vinson, WR Rashod Bateman, CB Keyon Martin
Giants at Lions
Giants: EDGE Kayvon Thibodeaux, QB Jaxson Dart, CB Paulson Adebo, S Tyler Nubin, CB Deonte Banks, T James Hudson
Lions: CB Terrion Arnold, S Kerby Joseph, DL Quinton Jefferson, RB Craig Reynolds, DL Mekhi Wingo, CB Nick Whiteside
Seahawks at Titans
Seahawks: LB Ernest Jones, LB Tyrice Knight, LB Connor O’Toole, OL Mason Richman, LB Jared Ivey, QB Jalen Milroe
Titans: WR Elic Ayomanor, S Xavier Woods, S Kendell Brooks, OL Drew Moss, OL Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson, DL CJ Ravenell
After the Bills capped quarterback Josh Allen’s seventh season with yet another failure to make it to the Super Bowl, Bills G.M. Brandon Beane was defiant about the challenge the team faces.
“Keep kicking the door, keep kicking the door and you’re going to knock it down,” Beane said in his 2024 season-ending press conference. “That’s my mentality.”
As the Bills sit two full games and a tiebreaker behind the Patriots in the AFC East — and as Buffalo deals with the distinct possibility of closing out its current stadium with not only no home playoff games but no playoff games at all — only one person’s mentality matters.
What does owner Terry Pegula think about the current situation? What, if anything, will he want to change for 2026?
On one hand, it’s possible that the first season of a new stadium with $245 million in PSLs already sold will be a celebration, not a fresh start. Who gets a divorce right before moving into a brand-new house?
On the other hand, Allen’s prime is being frittered away. After owning the AFC East for each of the first five post-Brady seasons, the Bills have seen the Patriots develop a new franchise quarterback in Drake Maye, and Buffalo’s stranglehold on the division has ended.
The deeper question is whether it’s an issue of talent (which points to G.M. Brandon Beane) or an issue of coaching (which points to coach Sean McDermott). The properly-functioning NFL franchises don’t treat it as an either/or proposition, because that sets the stage for finger pointing and blame shifting.
Consider the status of 2024 second-round receiver Keon Coleman. Inactive for two straight games, is his current status a product of a bad draft pick by Beane, or a failure to properly develop Coleman by McDermott?
Regardless, only Pegula knows what he’ll do after the season. And the season is far from over. The Bills can still get hot. Tyler Dunne can still post another article that lights a fire under the locker room. They can still win the division. They can still get to the Super Bowl. They can still win it.
Or they can continue to struggle. They can relinquish the AFC East to the Patriots. They can go one-and-done as a road-team wild-card. They can miss the playoffs altogether, despite having the 2024 NFL MVP as the centerpiece of the team.
These are fair questions to ask. The Bills are one of the 15 hotspots identified a week ago today. And this is the business they’ve chosen.
Yes, the job is in many ways easier with a franchise quarterback. It’s also in many ways harder, because the bar is always higher. So far this season, after starting 4-0 and slumping to 3-4 since then, the Bills are falling short of the bar that having Josh Allen sets.
Bill Belichick will not go bowling.
North Carolina lost 32-25 to Duke today, falling to 4-7 on the season and clinching a losing record in the Tar Heels’ first season under head coach Bill Belichick.
That means North Carolina can’t be bowl eligible. The Tar Heels had gone to six straight bowl games under Belichick’s predecessor, Mack Brown, but this season they struggled to compete with major-conference opponents.
And they struggled today against their biggest rival — a rival so big that when Belichick was introduced as North Carolina’s head coach, he claimed his first words were “Beat Duke” because his father had been a North Carolina assistant coach when he was a young child.
In his first year as head coach at North Carolina, Belichick didn’t beat Duke, and he hasn’t won enough. His program has a lot of work to do, and after back-to-back losing seasons to end his tenure as head coach of the Patriots, Belichick now has three straight losing seasons on his record.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow returned this week to 11-on-11 drills at practice. He won’t be returning to 11-on-11 game action on Sunday.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, the Bengals won’t activate Burrow from injured reserve before Saturday’s 4:00 p.m. ET deadline for making pre-game roster moves.
Burrow suffered a toe injury in Week 2. Reports at the time indicated he would be out until the middle of December, at the earliest.
Currently, Burrow seems to be on track to play on Thursday night, when the Bengals visit the Ravens to cap the trio of Thanksgiving games.
Joe Flacco, who continues to play through an injury to his throwing shoulder will get the start against New England. A loss would drop the Bengals to 3-8, making it even harder to pull an inside straight on a division title.
Even if the Bengals can upend the Pats on Sunday, Cincinnati faces a stiff challenge. But with a 2-1 record in the division, two games to be played against Baltimore, and two Ravens-Steelers games still on the docket, the Bengals could finagle a two- or three-way tie atop the AFC North when the dust settles on Week 18. And a potential 5-1 record in division games could be the thing that ultimately makes the difference.
Step one is to beat the Patriots on Sunday. That’s the toughest test left on the Cincinnati schedule, given that the Pats have won eight in a row — and that they had three extra days to rest and prepare. Throw in the fact that Burrow won’t be back and receiver Ja’Marr Chase’s spit-fueled suspension, Cincinnati beating New England on Sunday would be every bit as stunning as New England’s win over Cincinnati in Week 1 a year ago.
We’ve tried in recent weeks to ignore much of the noise surrounding North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, especially when its comes to his personal life. (Even though he has deliberately intermingled his personal life with his professional life.)
We didn’t post about Belichick’s disrespectful (even by his usual standards) post-game diss of Wake Forest coach Jeff Dickert. We didn’t post about former Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel calling Belichick a “hypocrite” for allowing himself to become a distraction to his team. We took a pass on this week’s Onion-esque account of Belichick showing up as a spectator at his girlfriend’s adult cheer competition. (Did anyone even know adult cheer competitions were a thing?)
The New York Post ignored none of those. The New York Post has been relentless in its coverage of Belichick and Jordon Hudson. And while the Post is far from alone (for example, VICE TV announced this week a two-hour deep dive into the duo, which will debut next month), the New York Post has been at the leading edge of all things Belichick and Hudson.
On Friday, for instance, the New York Post reported (as an “exclusive”) that Belichick’s daughter-in-law “unleashed a nearly hour-long profanity-laced tirade” two weeks ago against Hudson, in Belichick’s office after the Tar Heels beat Stanford. Jen Belichick, the wife of defensive coordinator (and Bill’s son) Steve Belichick, reportedly said (among other things) that all Hudson “does is control shit.” Jen Belichick also reportedly called Hudson “batshit crazy,” and Jen Belichick reportedly accused Hudson of “fucking twisting” Bill’s brain.
Here’s the point, as someone in a position to understand the dynamics explained it to PFT a week ago. The ongoing coverage of Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson by the New York Post is one of the many reasons for the Giants’ complete lack of interest in the possibility of hiring Bill Belichick to coach the team. While the Giants hiring Belichick likely wouldn’t have happened anyway, the Giants have no interest in hiring a coach who has become a lightning rod for relentless coverage due to his relationship with Hudson.
Some will continue to insist that nothing related to Belichick and Hudson is worthy of coverage, especially since Belichick isn’t (and probably will never be) an NFL coach again. But everything about this situation is unprecedented. One of the greatest coaches of all times obliterated the lines between business and personal, and the person with whom the lines has been blurred has been, by all appearances, attempting to parlay the situation into a vehicle for advancing her own short- and long-term professional objectives, whatever they may be.
Starting with the reports regarding her role in derailing the Hard Knocks series and culminating in the disastrous CBS interview from early May, a pot that had been simmering for months (we heard as early as October 2024 murmurs of Hudson asserting herself aggressively within the offices of NFL Films) went straight to a boil that has been continuing to bubble over. Beyond every other factor that would make any NFL team disinclined to consider hiring Belichick, the Hudson angle clinches it.
Especially for a team in the market the New York Post primarily serves.
