Winners and Losers of NFL Week 11

Every week of the 2022 NFL season, we will celebrate the electric plays, investigate the colossal blunders, and explain the inexplicable moments of the most recent slate. Welcome to Winners and Losers. Which one are you?

Winner: Travis Kelce, Charger Killer

Travis Kelce is not the only Charger killer out there. When the Chargers have a chance to win a game late, any number of things can cause them to lose—their coach’s fourth-down decisions, kickers (from either team), strange bounces, uncharacteristically great opposing performances, obscure rules, the El Niño effect, dark magic, poorly timed interceptions, moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis—at some point, the Chargers have been, or will be, thwarted by all these things and many more. The Chargers’ franchise exists to bring pain to the people who love it, and somewhere along the line they figured the way to maximize that pain was to give fans hope first.

But holy crap, Travis Kelce is up there on the list of the Chargers’ biggest nemeses. Kelce apparently didn’t have beef with the Chargers when they played in San Diego—in his first 10 career games against the Chargers, he had zero receiving touchdowns. But since the Chargers moved north and into SoFi Stadium in 2020? He has seven touchdowns, six of them to tie games or take the lead. Last year, he scored a touchdown to force OT against the Chargers, then scored a monster 34-yard walk-off game-winner. Sunday night he essentially did the same thing. He scored at the beginning of the fourth quarter to give the Chiefs a lead:

Then, after the Chargers struck back, he scored the game-winner with 30 seconds to go:

Even more frustrating for the Chargers is that Kelce keeps scoring in roughly the same way. His two go-ahead touchdowns Sunday night (as well as last year’s game-winner) were on crossing routes that gave Kelce the ball a long distance away from the end zone and asked him to pick up yards after the catch—and there was nobody to stop him. This isn’t how tight ends are supposed to work! Normally, if a TE catches a TD, they do so by catching a pass in the end zone and falling down. Not Kelce. He beats the Chargers in man coverage and rumbles to the end zone.

Kelce now leads the NFL in receiving touchdowns with 11; he’s hoping to be the first tight end to lead the NFL in that category since 2013. The good news for the Chargers is they don’t have to play Kelce again until next year. The bad news is I’m sure they’ll find other horrifying ways to lose games before then.

Loser: The Vikings’ Point Differential

I fall somewhere in between the nerds and the normies. I don’t think wins and losses are the best way to assess which teams are the best, but I couldn’t use a spreadsheet for the life of me. When I’m trying to rate teams, I tend to rely on one stat: Point differential. Call me old-fashioned, but I think “how many points has a team scored and allowed?” is a pretty good indicator of quality. Are you blowing teams out? It shows. Are you getting lucky? That shows, too. This belief system is about to make me the least popular man in Minnesota. (Luckily, they’re Minnesotans, so they’ll still pretend to like me—it’s sort of their whole deal.)

Vikings fans were complaining that they had been handicapped as 2.5-point underdogs to Dallas just a week after defeating the Bills in an overtime thriller. They were on a seven-game win streak and at home—and Vegas thought the Cowboys would win? The disrespect! The Vikings were the first 8-1 team to be home underdogs in almost 50 years. But as it turns out, Vegas was overestimating the Vikes. They lost by 37, the largest margin of defeat in the NFL this season.

It was as thorough a thumping as you’ll see in the NFL. The Cowboys scored on their first seven possessions; the Vikings only scored once all game. Last week, Vikings WR Justin Jefferson went for 193 receiving yards in a career-defining performance for the young superstar; this week, the Vikings entire offense combined for just 183 yards. Both teams were able to play their backups, allowing fans across the nation to learn that Nick Mullens is the Vikings’ no. 2 QB. CBS ended up pulling the plug and transferring the national TV audience to Steelers-Bengals—a stunning choice considering the Cowboys are a ratings juggernaut.

The Vikings now have the NFC’s second-best record—and a negative point differential. They’ve scored 229 points; their opponents have scored 231, which places them in between the Giants (+1) and the Commanders (-9). They’ve trailed in the second half in eight of their 10 games, managing to eke out seven one-possession wins. Their biggest win (a 16-point W over the Packers in Week 1) was by fewer points than their smallest loss (a 17-point L to the Eagles in Week 2.)

I don’t want to call the Vikings a fraudulent contender with a pyrite record, but the facts don’t lie. Only one team—the 2011 Giants—has…