The Washington Redskins just did the Patriots a huge favor, beat Baltimore 31-28
The Washington Redskins just helped the Patriots out tremendously in the AFC playoff seeding.
Trailing by eight with under a minute left, an injured Robert Griffin III led his team down near the Ravens goal line. With Griffin virtually unable to move, he was taken out for backup quarterback Kirk Cousins for the second time in the game. Cousins tossed the game winning touchdown and then ran a quarterback draw for the two points that tied the game.
In overtime, the Ravens went three and out and punted to Washington cornerback Richard Crawford. Crawford returned the punt 64 yards setting up the game winning 34 yard field goal for Washington.
It was an amazing game, but more importantly, it's even better for Patriots fans.
The Ravens hold a tiebreaker over the Patriots due to their win earlier in the year. Therefore, the worse the Ravens do the better off the Patriots are.
The Ravens are now 9-4, while the Patriots are 9-3 with a game tomorrow against the Texans. Now that the Ravens have lost two in a row they face an uphill climb to keeping pace with them.
It's still as important as ever for the Patriots to beat the Texans tomorrow night. With a loss, it's very likely that they will miss out on the second seed and first round bye to the Denver Broncos - who have a mostly easy stretch of games remaining.
The Ravens loss puts them in a deeper hole. They still have the Broncos, Giants and Bengals remaining on their schedule. With all three competing for playoff spots or seeding.
It'd be reasonable to expect the Ravens to perhaps go 2-1 at best in that stretch. Which if everything else goes as you would expect, would put them as the fourth seed.
However, nothing ever seems to go as you would expect in the NFL, as today's final minutes in the Redskins-Ravens game showed. Still, things are looking better for the Patriots than you would've thought a few weeks ago.
