2) With the Chiefs resting practically everyone who mattered, the Denver Broncos stormed into the playoffs as the AFC’s seventh seed, ending the long-shot hopes of the Dolphins and Bengals. The Broncos head to Buffalo for the wild-card game, and they are a hard opponent to figure out. They have one of the top scoring defenses in the league and a red-hot, confident rookie quarterback in Bo Nix. But other than the Chiefs’ B team Sunday, the Broncos defeated just one team that finished the regular season with a winning record, the Bucs in Week 3. Still, with Nix’s emergence and constant improvement, the Broncos have the feeling of an ascending team, and the Bills will be a good test of just how far they’ve come. The Broncos’ victory also accomplished something that the rest of the AFC field was almost certainly rooting for: They kept the Cincinnati Bengals and Joe Burrow from getting in. A slow start doomed the Bengals’ season – they should spend the offseason figuring out why they start slow every season — but they won their last five games of the regular season and would have been a dangerous entrant into the field.

3) It tells you everything about how the Bucs feel about Mike Evans that his teammates celebrated him getting to 1,000 yards receiving for the season more than they celebrated winning the NFC South. On a day when plenty of players were trying to trigger contract bonuses, Evans’ accomplishment felt like the biggest. His 9-yard reception on the final play of the regular season, when the Bucs could have taken a knee, got him over 1,000 yards for the 11th straight season, every one of his career. It also earned him $3 million. His teammates were jubilant. And, oh yes, the victory gave the Bucs the NFC South for the fourth straight season and put them in the playoffs ahead of the Atlanta Falcons, who needed to beat the Panthers (they didn’t) and have the Bucs lose. Baker Mayfield all but willed the Bucs ahead in the second half after a sleepy first half – his 28-yard run on third down was the critical play on the drive that gave the Bucs the winning margin.

The Bucs are perennially doubted and this season, the predictions had them falling behind a Falcons team that was supposed to be powered by Kirk Cousins. The Falcons are heading into the offseason wondering what might have been had they gone with rookie Michael Penix Jr. following their bye week at the start of December, when Cousins’ struggles were becoming obvious. And they have a decision to make about what to do with Cousins. Meanwhile, as the third seed in the NFC, the Bucs will host the sixth seed – the Washington Commanders — next Sunday. They have also managed a rare feat. They have transitioned from the brief but successful Tom Brady era, in which they won the Super Bowl as a wild card in the 2020 season, and continued to get to the postseason while their roster got younger.