How the West is Won: Previewing Week 18

The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny

ESPN

Football, Sports

4.8 • 6.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jourdan Rodrigue joins the show to preview the most important games of Week 18, with division titles and playoff positioning still up for grabs. They break down the matchups that will help decide how the postseason picture shakes out and what each team is facing heading into the final weekend of the regular season. The conversation includes a look at Panthers vs. Buccaneers, Seahawks vs. 49ers, and Steelers vs. Ravens, diving into what’s at stake in each game and how the pressure ramps up with everything on the line. To wrap things up, they hand out New Year’s resolutions for non-playoff teams, focusing on what needs to change, what can’t be repeated, and how franchises should be thinking about the offseason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Minicam Show featuring Lenny Only NFL podcast.
0:08.2	One of the host's favorite matchups of the weekend is Baltimore, Pittsburgh, because abbreviated, it's pit bull.
0:16.3	That's Lenny.
0:17.5	I mean, it's really ball pit, but whatever.
0:20.4	That gentle, generous rather laugh you heard is from the great Jordan Rodriguez.
0:26.6	My NFC West Queen is what I texted her.
0:30.4	I was so honored.
0:31.5	I sent you of the 1-800 contacts.
0:34.9	My brand!
0:36.4	I mean, I knew we would have a good NFC West game I did not know
0:42.7	well I didn't know actually you know the fighters had to win obviously did not know we'd have
0:47.1	three divisional titles on the line which is amazing honestly what a gift when the gift. When the Browns beat, I don't care.
0:56.6	You know, I'm not like I picked the, I thought pick the Steelers like most people to beat the Browns.
1:01.3	But what a gift to give us a meaningful week 18 Sunday night game, two meaningful Saturday games,
1:08.1	one of which could be undone by another NFC South hate match, which is just
1:12.5	great and so NFC South-like. So today we are going, this is a very narrowed podcast.
1:18.4	I'm not, we're not even going to pick because it's, it's just not possible to pick. I mean,
1:22.2	it's week 18, happy's games don't mean anything. We're going to talk about three games.
1:26.4	We're going to talk about Panthers bucks. We're going to talk about three games. We're going to talk about Panthers' bucks. We're going to talk about Seahawks-Niners. And then we're going to talk about
1:32.3	Ravens Steelers on Sunday night. And then instead of talking about the other largely
1:39.9	meaningless games, because it is Nears, this comes out on NIRS day. We're going to do NIRS resolutions
1:47.0	for the worst teams in the NFL, the under 500 teams, the neglected teams that rarely get
	...

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