Week 16 Recap: Bears stun Packers, Jaguars throttle Broncos, Panthers take NFC South lead, and more
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 102 minutes
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Summary
We're just two weeks away from the end of the regular season, and exactly one team that won its division last year is in first place this year. That would be the Philadelphia Eagles, who clinched the NFC East with a win over the Washington Commanders on Saturday. Every other division, however, is looking quite possibly at a new division winner. That includes the Chicago Bears, who took firm control of the NFC North with a win over the Green Bay Packers. It includes the Jacksonville Jaguars, who went into Denver and took down the Broncos. And it includes the Carolina Panthers, who moved into first place in the NFC South with a win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Robert Mays, Dave Helman and Derrik Klassen recap a crazy Week 16 on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
2:28 Ravens-Patariots
15:09 Jags-Broncos
33:33 Packers-Bears
54:06 Buccaneers-Panthers
1:04:57 Chargers-Cowboys
1:12:49 Steelers-Lions
1:20:56 How could you not be romantic about football?
1:37:51 What did we learn in Week 16?
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Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
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Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. |
| 0:04.6 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:06.1 | Pretty fun week 16 recap for you guys. |
| 0:08.8 | Start things off with the Sunday night football win for the Patriots. |
| 0:11.9 | A lot of stuff grabbed our attention, chatted some jags, bears, panthers, and a wonderful |
| 0:18.4 | game from Justin Herbert. |
| 0:20.1 | A lot of WTF moments in Lions Steelers, |
| 0:24.3 | and plenty more to dig into with me, Dave Hellman, and Derek Classen. |
| 0:29.6 | Let's get to it right now. |
| 0:41.4 | The Week 16 recap is here. |
| 0:45.0 | Might be my favorite week of football we've had during this NFL season. |
| 0:49.2 | I think it's the most full throttle week of football that we've had this NFL season. I mean, if we're including Thursday and Saturday night, then absolutely. |
| 0:53.1 | Well, we're going to talk about the Saturday night games today. So that absolutely |
| 0:55.7 | is included. But Derek, when you start with |
| 0:57.8 | the Thursday night game we had, you follow |
| 0:59.7 | that up with everything |
| 1:01.6 | that happened last night. We have |
| 1:03.8 | a huge game in the early window with |
| 1:05.7 | Bucks Panthers that goes down to the end. |
| 1:07.3 | We have a crazy finish in |
| 1:09.4 | Lions Steelers to take us all the way through the |
| 1:11.5 | afternoon slate. And then the Sunday night game comes down to the final few set of plays |
... |
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