How often does a marquee match-up truly live up to the hype? Many of us believed, in the run up to Thanksgiving, that the NFL had put together the most compelling set of Turkey Day games in recent memory. But then the Eagles blew out the Cowboys and Seattle suffocated San Francisco. There was no jeopardy or late drama. The whole thing felt like a damp squib.  Roll on Sunday afternoon, and the Patriots visiting the Packers at Lambeau Field. For the first time in their brilliant careers, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers facing off on the field. Unless one of them changes teams, those players will not meet again in the regular season until 2018 – the next time the AFC West will be paired with the NFC North under the league’s system of rotating schedules. Given that Brady will be 41 by then, it may not happen at all.  So here was our chance, perhaps the only one we will ever get, to see two of the best in the business going at it. This time, we would not be disappointed.  On the first play of the game, Rodgers slung the ball to running back Eddie Lacy for a first down. It was an act that foreshadowed much of what was to come on offense for the Packers – who deployed a variety of personnel out of the backfield to great effect. Rodgers was on point with the throw, as he would be throughout the day – completing 24 of 38 passes for 368 yards and two touchdowns.  Brady could not move the ball quite so smoothly, managing just 245 yards through the air and allowing his frustration to boil over on more than one occasion, swearing into the CBS cameras. But his performance was hardly shabby either. Like Rodgers, he completed 63% of his passes for two scores and no interceptions.  They were not the only ones who played up to the occasion. Rob Gronkowski, on his first visit to Lambeau Field, was monstrous, crashing off defenders even while having his pants pulled down. Packers defensive lineman Mike Daniels likened the tight end to the Terminator; safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix vowed never to make the mistake of trying to hit him up high again.  On the other side of the ball, Lacy tenderised the Patriots defense – slamming into defenders on his way to a 98-yard rushing day. Rookie wide receiver Davante Adams grabbed six passes for 121 yards, as the Patriots focused their defensive attentions on Jordy Nelson (although he came up with a big touchdown grab as well).  And yet, while both offenses functioned smoothly – with neither giving up a single turnover – both defenses were also at the top of their games. The Patriots held the Packers to just one yard on 12 red-zone plays. Green Bay came up with the sack they needed just as New England were closing in on a late go-ahead touchdown. Instead, Stephen Gostkowski missed a 47-yard field goal, and the Packers held on for a 26-21 win.  It was a game played to the very highest standards – the kind that NFL executives would not doubt love to see repeated in Glendale at Super Bowl XLIX. The closing stages were reported to have drawn the biggest TV audience of the season in the United States.  Even more than Rodgers and Brady, that was a testament to the head coaches. Bill Belichick stopped to embrace and speak to Mike McCarthy on the field after the game, a courtesy he does not extend to many rivals. “He was very gracious, and that’s about as far as I’ll go,” said the Packers coach afterwards.  Journalists at the scene drew their own conclusions. “Here was Belichick, certainly the best coach in the NFL today if not ever, clueing us all on this fact: Michael John McCarthy is one of the great coaches in the NFL,” wrote Greg Bedard for MMQB. “It’s time for everyone to regard him as such.”  McCarthy already owns one Super Bowl ring. If he can keep his team playing at this level, then he will have every chance to earn a second in two months’ time. PB  The stat of the weekend comes courtesy of the Denver Post, who reported that Broncos running back CJ Anderson had received 165 texts by the time he returned to his locker after playing Kansas City. As the newspaper noted, that left him just three shy of having one message for every yard that he rushed in a 29-16 win.  This was the second week in a row in which Anderson had carried the ball for more than 160 yards – enough for some observers to draw comparisons with Terrell Davis. Such talk is grossly premature (Anderson, with three professional starts under his belt, has a little way to go to catch the team’s all-time leading rusher) but similarities do exist. Both were underrated players out of college, Davis falling to the sixth round of the draft in 1995, while Anderson was undrafted in 2013.  There is also a shared physicality and aggression to their game. Anderson, just like Davis before him, is certainly not afraid of contact.  But the Broncos will care less about style than substance. Davis was a hit in Denver because he provided a perfect foil to John Elway, granting the Broncos more than one way to wound their opponents. The same may now be the case with Anderson and Peyton Manning.  For most of this season, the Broncos have gone as far on offense as their quarterback would carry them. On Sunday, that was emphatically not the case. In temperatures of around 20F (-6.7C) Manning played down to his reputation as a player who struggles in the cold, completing 17 of 34 passes for 179 yards.  Instead Denver were dragged to victory by a combination of Anderson’s running and a dominant defense. The Chiefs finished the game with just 151 yards of total offense, and even that required a big fourth quarter push. By the end of the third they had managed just 66.  To an extent, this is nothing new. Denver’s defense ranks third in the league for yards surrendered, and their improvement on that side of the ball has been cited before in these pages as a major factor in the Broncos’ hopes of making another run to the Super Bowl. But Anderson’s emergence has added another string to their bow after erratic performances from Montee Ball and Ronnie Hillman earlier in the year.  If Manning does indeed continue to struggle as the temperatures dip – and even after Sunday night’s victory, his career record in temperatures below 40F (4.4C) remains an unimpressive 10-12 – then the Broncos will need to find other ways to win games. Running the ball consistently would be a pretty good place to start. PB  When the Cleveland Browns selected Johnny Manziel in the draft, they did it with a view to starting him. Next week against Indianapolis, it would be no surprise to see him take every snap for the first time after Brian Hoyer was finally removed from his duties early in the fourth quarter Sunday in the 26-10 loss at Buffalo.  Hoyer was pulled after throwing a pick to Da’Norris Searcy with 12:59 remaining - his second such error of the game and sixth in his last four, which includes just one touchdown. Those sort of stats are enough to incur the wrath of any coach, but Mike Pettine’s decision was made harder because of Hoyer’s stellar work this season which sees Cleveland at 7-5 and right in the playoff mix.  If Manziel gets the job from here on in, it’s tough on Hoyer, despite completing just 50.8% of his passes the last three weeks. Respect is owed to Hoyer having played with the knowledge one mistake or bad game could make way for Johnny Football in any given week. But after this recent stretch it looks as if Hoyer may have taken Cleveland as far as he can, or at least that’s what the coaching staff are thinking. With four games to go, the Browns are in must-win mode and may feel the change comes at the right time.  Manziel instantly provided a spark, opening up with an eight play, 80 yard drive that he capped with a 10-yard rushing touchdown. His second drive saw a dropped shotgun snap and a sack from Kyle Williams on an initial fumble call that was overturned.  Hoyer said afterward that this was “his team, and I’ve always felt that way”, and this is still a genuine competition between two inexperienced quarterbacks at the professional level. Manziel has yet to shed his reputation for making or being a part of negative headlines, while Hoyer has shown promise but not the talent of an elite player.  Manziel, now known as ‘John Football’ because he is all business, shouldn’t assume he has a secure status, especially with the NFL alternatively standing for Not For Long. That being said, going forward the odds are stacked against Hoyer, no matter how well he has carried the 2014 Browns. MW  Two reports surfaced last weekend regarding the New Orleans Saints that stirred plenty of interest. NFL Network reported that the team were preparing to take a quarterback high in the 2015 draft, while CBS believe head coach Sean Payton and defensive coordinator Rob Ryan are sick to death of each other.  The quarterback rumour translated into motivation for Drew Brees on Sunday, who threw five touchdowns, no picks and left Heinz Field with a 140.0 passer rating and a crucial 35-32 win against Pittsburgh. Conspiracy theorists may suggest Brees floated the report himself.  Anything to get these Saints going, who kept pace with Atlanta – surprising winners over Arizona on Sunday – in the NFC South, with a 7-9 record likely securing a home playoff game in a division that has called into question the current playoff system.  Sticking with eyebrow-raising news, the winning Saints punted on their first three drives and their last two, while Brees failed to target Jimmy Graham once. But during six drives in the middle portion of the game, Brees led the Saints to five TDs, hooking up with second year wideout Kenny Stills (five catches for 162 yards) with some success.  Brees has taken heat for the Saints’ form while Payton came out after the victory to quell any talk of a relationship with Ryan that was described as “rapidly deteriorating”. Both coaches have a tendency to get fiery and animated during games, but that says absolutely nothing about their relationship because the same happens with Payton and Brees after a failed drive. To be highly competitive is to win, and not much of the latter has transpired in the NFC South so far. Three straight home defeats coupled with two straight road wins is unusual for this team, but with Carolina and Atlanta still to visit the Superdome, wins there should be enough for a playoff berth in what has been a very strange season for the black and gold. MW  • Ryan Fitzpatrick throws six touchdowns on his return to the Texans’ starting line-up, and still gets upstaged by his own son during the post-game press conference. He seemed pretty proud about that, though, to be fair.  • Almost inevitably, one of those Fitzpatrick touchdown passes went to JJ Watt. He had earned it, forcing and then recovering the fumble that gave Houston the ball in the first place.  • How about those Chargers, battling to a hugely impressive 34-33 win in Baltimore? It has been tough to know where we are with San Diego, who started the season brilliantly, only to suffer a midseason three-game losing streak that culminated in a 37-0 pounding by Miami. Three wins later, have they now turned a corner? And even if they have, are they good enough to survive a final month of the season featuring home games against the Patriots and Broncos, followed by road trips to San Francisco and Kansas City?  • The Rams stomped the Raiders 52-0 in St Louis, but the big talking point from that game related to an incident while the team was being introduced. Jared Cook, Kenny Britt, Stedman Bailey, Chris Givens and Tavon Austin joined together to make a ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture as they emerged from the tunnel – an act of solidarity with the recent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. This drew a furious response from the St Louis Police Officers Association, who accused the players of siding with “violent thugs” and demanded an apology from the Rams – which they claimed to have received from the team’s chief operating officer, Kevin Demoff, on Monday night. But Demoff himself later insisted that he had done so such thing, instead telling ESPN he had only: “expressed regret that players’ actions were construed negatively against law enforcement.” Britt himself had said after the game that the players had no intention to take sides one way or the other, adding: “We just wanted to let the [Ferguson] community know that we support them.”  • The AFC North wins together, and now it seems that the AFC North loses together as well. Baltimore and Pittsburgh were both clear favourites for the Las Vegas oddsmakers this weekend, but both lost, joining Cleveland at 7-5. That allowed Cincinnati to extend their lead at the top of the division – but only just. The Bengals were pretty lucky to scrape past Tampa Bay, who seemed to have moved into range for a game-winning field goal, only to get pulled back for having 12 men on the field.  • Colt McCoy was pretty good in his second start for Washington, completing 31 of 47 passes for 392 yards and three touchdowns against the Colts. But his team still lost, 49-27.  • Rex Ryan might soon lose his job with the Jets, but he will go out doing things his way. Against Miami on Monday night, he reduced Geno Smith’s role to the absolute minimum. The quarterback was not even introduced with the offense by the public announcer before kickoff, and it quickly became apparent that his main role on the field was to serve as a conduit between center and running backs. The Jets ran the ball 49 times and passed it just 13. For a while it appeared the strategy might just work, but 10 unanswered points in the fourth quarter nudged the Dolphins to a 16-13 win.  • Nice of Travis Kelce to explain this little hand gesture on Sunday night.  • Odell Beckham Jr: so much more than just a receiver. PB
Paolo Bandini and Max Whittle: Belichick greets an equal; Broncos get help in the running game; Manziel makes strides; and Fitzpatrick’s genius son