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Patrick Mahomes passed for 320 yards and three touchdowns and the Kansas City Chiefs locked up the top seed in the AFC for the fourth time in seven seasons with a 29-10 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Wednesday.
The two-time defending Super Bowl champions raced to an early 13-point lead and were never really threatened by the Steelers (10-6), who have dropped three straight as their chances of capturing the AFC North took another hit.
Mahomes connected on first-half scoring tosses to Xavier Worthy and Justin Watson and Kansas City’s defense did most of the rest even with perennial All-Pro defensive end Chris Jones sitting out while nursing a calf injury. The Chiefs sacked Russell Wilson five times, forced two turnovers and hardly looked gassed while playing for the third time in 11 days.
Travis Kelce caught eight passes for 84 yards while becoming the third tight end in NFL history to reach 1,000 receptions, joining Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez and Jason Witten. Kelce sealed Kansas City’s fifth straight victory with a 12-yard touchdown grab early in the fourth quarter.
The 35-year-old celebrated by dunking the ball over the goal post, which drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and groans from a capacity crowd at Acrisure Stadium that has grown used to seeing Mahomes toy with the hometown team. Mahomes is now 4-0 against the Steelers in his career, with 17 touchdowns against one interception.
Russell Wilson threw for 205 yards for Pittsburgh. George Pickens finished with three receptions for 50 yards after missing three games with a hamstring injury. It wasn’t nearly enough for the Steelers, who went 0-3 during a brutal three-game stretch against Super Bowl contenders Philadelphia, Baltimore and Kansas City.
Lamar Jackson broke the NFL career rushing record for quarterbacks in Baltimore’s 31-2 victory over Houston on Wednesday, bolstering his case for MVP as the Ravens moved closer to the AFC North title.
Jackson threw for 168 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 87 yards and another score. He pushed his career rushing total to 6,110 to move past Michael Vick, who had 6,109 in his 13-year career.
The Ravens (11-5) have already wrapped up their third straight playoff berth and need a victory over Cleveland next week to win the division over Pittsburgh.
Jackson, the MVP last season and in 2019, put on a show rivaled only by the spectacular Super Bowl-caliber halftime performance by Beyoncé to give Baltimore their third straight win. And he needed just more than three quarters to do it, giving way to Josh Johnson with about 10 minutes left and the game long decided.
Jackson threw nine- and one-yard TD passes and was not touched on a 48-yard scoring scamper that made it 24-2 in the third quarter.
Derrick Henry ran for 147 yards and set the Ravens season record with his 16th touchdown on a two-yard run in the first quarter. He eclipsed Ray Rice (2011) and Mark Ingram (2019).
Baltimore dominated a Houston team reeling after losing dynamic receiver Tank Dell to a season-ending knee injury Saturday.
The AFC South champs struggled to finish drives and got their only points on a safety in the second quarter. CJ Stroud threw for 185 yards, but was sacked five times and threw an interception and Joe Mixon managed just 26 yards rushing as the Texans (9-7) lost a second straight.
Beyoncé provided more excitement than either game during Netflix’s NFL debut on Christmas.
Riding into her halftime appearance on a white horse, the 32-time Grammy winner rocked her hometown Houston crowd with a nearly 13-minute performance on Wednesday.
She surprised fans by bringing along Shaboozey to perform Sweet Honey Buckiin and Post Malone joined her for Levii’s Jeans.
The action on the field didn’t live up to expectations as the NFL showcased four of the AFC’s top five teams.
Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce exposed a glitch in Pittsburgh’s defense during Kansas City’s 29-10 rout in the first game.
The broadcast itself went off just fine, quickly becoming the second-most popular live title on Netflix to date, according to NFL Media.
Lamar Jackson and the Ravens led CJ Stroud and the Texans to 17-2 at halftime before Beyoncé stole the show.
Mariah Carey opened Wednesday’s doubleheader with a taped performance of All I Want for Christmas is You and then the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs trounced the Steelers to clinch the No 1 seed in the AFC.
There were no signs of any major streaming issues during the game after Netflix experienced minor blunders at the start of the pregame show. The broadcast opened with roughly 10 seconds of silence because it appeared studio host Kay Adams’ microphone wasn’t turned on.
Beyoncé’s live performance at NRG Stadium was supposed to be the biggest test for the streaming giant and it seemed to go off without a hitch.
Netflix agreed to a three-year contract in May to broadcast Christmas Day games. The NFL is expected to give the streaming service one of its biggest days since the site launched in 1998.
Netflix’s 282.3m subscribers in more than 190 countries could stream the games, marking the first time one outlet distributed an NFL game globally. Netflix had the games available in five languages – English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.
Netflix had problems streaming the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight on 14 November. The bout peaked at 65m concurrent streams, including 38m concurrent streams in the United States. According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to and during the fight.
According to NFL Media, viewers in all 50 states tuned in within minutes of the pregame show going live and viewers from nearly 200 countries watched the first game. Before the Ravens-Texans kicked off, Netflix reported that it eclipsed its peak concurrent viewers of any Christmas in the past four years.
The NFL was playing its first games on a Wednesday since the Steelers and Ravens were forced to play on 2 December 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The only other time the league played on a Wednesday since 1948 was in 2012 when the Giants and Cowboys met in the season opener.
Netflix promoted its own programming in addition to the usual slew of advertisements. The first teaser trailer for Happy Gilmore 2 was released before kickoff. Adam Sandler is back as Happy Gilmore for the sports comedy that hits the streaming service in 2025. Travis Kelce also was featured in a trailer filled with cameos by celebrities, including Bad Bunny and Kid Cudi.
This wasn’t the first time NFL games aired exclusively on a streaming service. The league’s Thursday night games are in their third season on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock streamed the Packers-Eagles game in São Paulo, Brazil, in Week 1 and Prime Video will stream a wild-card game. Also, the Sunday Ticket package moved to YouTube TV last year.
The largest audience for a streamed-exclusive NFL game was 23m on Peacock for last season’s AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins and the Chiefs.
Surging Chiefs clinch AFC’s top seed as Beyoncé highlights Netflix’s NFL debut
