Did it seem to anyone else like a lot of players were getting hurt yesterday? Lots of delays while players were down on the field for a while, gradually getting helped off. Aside from the fact it's not great seeing injuries, it really slowed the pace of the day down. Three football games felt like a lot more. Some quick thoughts on each.

Lions 23, Bears 20. First the obvious, just a brutal bit of clock management at the end of this one. I've seen passionate arguments on both sides as to whether Caleb Williams or Matt Eberflus did more to screw things up. I try and search for a middle ground and say there's blame for both. Chicago snaps the ball with 36 seconds left. Williams gets sacked. What needs to happen, because saving the timeout makes sense, is the offense quickly lines up and runs some kind of play to pick up 10-15 yards, or an incomplete pass that gets you another play, and ultimately use the last timeout and kick the tying field goal. The fact it did not happen is on Williams. But at some point the coach needs to call a timeout, certainly before his quarterback snaps the ball with just 6 seconds left, because at that point the clock will likely expire on whatever the play is before you can use the timeout (which is of course what happened). So both guys messed up, and Chicago lost. Unfortunate.

Particularly unfortunate because the Bears defense did a nice job of limiting the Lions to lots of field goals, and Williams did a nice job of bringing the offense back with 3 TD passes, and overtime would have been cool. Oh well. ... Other miscellaneous thoughts: Was nice to see Sam LaPorta stepping up with a pair of short touchdowns. Glad I gave him one more week in my lineup. Not as nice to see David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, who were effective running the ball as always, denied those short touchdown runs. Detroit admitted afterward it was glad to get the win but not their prettiest victory; it should not have come down to the last play like that. ... Couple of touchdowns for Keenan Allen, who has plenty of game left. The general idea that he'd be the team's 3rd-best wide receiver seems incorrect. ... I'm assuming this one will be discussed when Eberflus is either maybe or probably fired after the season. Hard to have confidence in this team winning close games.

Cowboys 27, Giants 20. Looking at the final score you'd almost think this was a good game. It was in fact pretty painful to watch for most of it -- food coma, take me away. There were 4 fumbles that seemed like more, in part because the Cowboys were saved from one on an ugly Cooper Rush draw near the goal line that was reversed (seemed a little dubious, honestly), enabling Rush to throw a touchdown to Brandin Cooks on the next play, making the score 20-10 and basically ending things. What was weird was Dallas calling twice as many passes as runs in the first half (Rico Dowdle wasn't even on the field for a goal-line sequence, which was annoying) against a terrible run defense, finally getting things together late and saying, hey, let's run the ball! Dowdle finished with great numbers after a rough start. CeeDee Lamb disappointed early before leaving after halftime with a shoulder injury, which maybe contributed to a couple of his drops, one near the end zone that might have gone for a touchdown. Dallas is technically alive in the playoff picture, but they're not fooling anyone.

I remember when the Giants signed Drew Lock and some thought he was going to push Daniel Jones for the starting job. I have fond memories of a couple of Lock games over the year, including an upset win for Seattle in the not too distant past, but Lock is not a good quarterback, which means a little over a week ago the Giants had three not-good quarterbacks and now they have only two. The Giants didn't take advantage of Dallas' similarly poor run defense, at least in part because of how Dallas was able to stack the line against whatever the offense hoped to do. Tyrone Tracy got you a short touchdown after a Lock rushing score was reversed. I didn't really understand the ruling, with Lock's foot striking the pylon on his run. I guess the ball needs to cross the goal line, but I thought plays like that have always been ruled TDs in the past. Anyway, good for those who used Tracy, who played three times as often as Devin Singletary although touches were similar. Malik Nabers had a decent PPR day, 13 targets will do that.

Packers 30, Dolphins 17. This game wasn't close, pretty much set off by the Dolphins muffing an early punt to give Green Bay an easy touchdown. In the Weekly it was discussed that it's been hard to get a read on the Miami defense; they played the run well in this one, but Josh Jacobs had a good game as a receiver and scored, and Miami's play against the run helped open things up for Jordan Love and the pass. Two TDs for Jayden Reed, who I benched because of all the different targets. Just 1 other catch and only 24 yards made it look reasonable, but wish I'd started him.

Green Bay opening up a lead similarly helped open things up for Tua Tagovailoa and the passing game to generate some late production, making Tyreek Hill, DeVon Achane and Jonnu Smith all look great. I guess I'm kind of an anti-Achane guy. Thought he was overdrafted this year, and I suppose I think he'll be overdrafted next year. There's no arguing the talent and the awesome receiving production, but is this really the way Miami actually wants the offense to operate each week? They don't run it very well; Achane has been at 3.2 yards per attempt or work six times in 12 games. Yeah, yards per carry, bah. No arguing with the catches and the touchdowns which I guess is what fantasy is all about, so I guess nobody has to care about my reservations. Snow in this one, that was kind of cool.

MISCELLANEOUS

So that's Thanksgiving football, and we have another game today which seems like it will be kind of an eyesore, either an easy Kansas City win or an ugly one where both they and the Raiders struggle but Kansas City wins anyway. I suppose we're not far off from getting multiple Black Friday games, maybe a Saturday night game too. I think it's all a little much -- I don't know that we even need a Thursday night game. But the leagues loves to dominate eyes and thoughts with product, even if the quality is somewhat lacking in these short-week games late in the year. Like yesterday. Hope everyone had a nice holiday regardless.