Week 15 Thursday Night Football puts together the St. Louis Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both with still some mathematical chance of making the NFL playoffs, but realistically, it’s not going to happen.
The Rams are out because of the four game losing streak they only managed to stop last week. They’re out because Nick Foles turned out to be someone who can’t be trusted to carry a team’s offense without making a lot of mistakes. Because Jeff Fisher proves once again to be a bad head coach when it comes to calling plays. And it happened because Todd Gurley, as good as he can be, can’t carry a team’s offense on his own, even if his rookie season is a huge success.
The Buccaneers have an excellent rookie of their own, but Jameis Winston is just getting started, although for someone who was so used to winning in college, he’ll have to settle for simply the franchise feeling it’s going somewhere with him instead of actually playing for a championship. At 6-7, the Bucs can still make it, but they need both the Seattle Seahawks and Minnesota Vikings to lose a lot of games, and it’s not going to happen in the remaining three weeks.
The same goes for the Rams, who at 5-8 need too many teams to keep on losing while they win three in a row. Frankly, they’re not good enough to go on such a winning streak, and the biggest question regarding this game is whether or not this is their final home game in St. Louis, with the Los Angeles lure affecting them as well. It seems the NFL isn’t as aggressive about moving them as it is about the Chargers and Raiders, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, especially when money is the deciding factor, not doing what’s right by the fans and the community that’s been a part of this team for so many years.