The NFL Wrap: Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams topple records in instant classic

It's week 11 in the NFL, and you'll forgive us if our weekly round-up is rather heavily focused on a remarkable Monday night in Los Angeles...

Believe the hype – Los Angeles Rams 54-51 Kansas City Chiefs

So often in sport, anticipation breeds disappointment. Heavyweight bouts given top billing turn into conservative, 12-round slogs. Ashes series or Ryder Cups, arriving with talk of historic rivalry and epic battle, often end as one-sided near-whitewashes. Soccer’s World Cup finals, a few notable exceptions aside, are notoriously tight, cagey affairs.

So when the two most exciting teams in football met on Monday night, it was both exactly what was expected and a pleasant surprise, when the greatest shootout in NFL history unfolded. For the first time ever, both teams in an NFL match scored 50 points, the Chiefs becoming the unfortunate anomaly in a record that now reads 217-1, in terms of wins and losses for a team scoring 50+ in a game.

This was a game in which something had to give, and yet, besides the result, very little did. Both young quarterbacks emerged with reputations enhanced. Both offenses hit season highs for points, as the lead changed hands four times in the fourth quarter alone. Both defences, so often in the shadows of their more glamorous counterparts on the other side of the ball (and in fairness, both did concede 50 points here), came up with crucial scoring plays.

The win against a fellow Super Bowl contender will give the Rams renewed belief, just weeks after a demoralising first loss against another, the Saints. But a three-point road defeat will hardly hang heavily on this exuberant Chiefs outfit, and Patrick Mahomes’ hopes of breaking the all-time record for touchdown passes in a season are back alive, after he threw six on Monday.

As fans, we should be thankful that the quirk of the league’s complex scheduling system threw up this game, this season. The Chiefs and Rams have not met in the regular season since 2014, and are not scheduled to do so again until 2022. The NFL too, deserve praise, for their late decision to move this game back to L.A. – had it taken place in Mexico, on a pitch at the Azteca Stadium that made Wembley look like a bowling green, we would not have seen such a fluid duel.

True, this was not the Super Bowl, but few would be surprised if, in February, it is. Few outside New Orleans and New England would begrudge it either.

Smith’s cruel blow

Washington Redskins quarterback Alex Smith suffered a season-ending injury when he broke his leg in the 23-21 loss to the Houston Texans. It’s a horrible blow for both Smith and his team, who had looked perfectly poised to take advantage of a struggling division, with the Cowboys only ever one defeat from crisis, the Eagles suffering a Super Bowl hangover and the Giants’ improvement surely coming too late.

As it stands, the Redskins still top the NFC East, but will be toppled by the Cowboys if they lose when the two meet in Dallas on Thanksgiving. Without their starting QB, it’s difficult to see how they’ll come back.

Steelers steal it

The whole, ‘finding a way to win, sign of champions’ thing can be a little overblown. Is a scrappy victory by a few points really the mark of Super Bowl winners when two of the other contenders are chucking 50 points past one another?

Nonetheless, when the Pittsburgh Steelers were 6-16 down against the Jacksonville Jaguars going into the fourth quarter, and playing like dross, they’d probably have taken the W, had it been offered to them.

In the end, it was as much a Jags collapse as a miraculous Steelers comeback. Juju Smith-Schuster came up with a clutch reception, but James Conner dropped a clanger when facing a walk-in touchdown, and Ben Roethlisberger threw an interception when still trailing with 15 seconds to go, that would have ended the game, had in not been pulled back for a penalty. Big Ben then bundled himself over the goal line – just – to nick a 20-16 victory that keeps their six-game win streak alive.