Some NFL franchises routinely reach the playoffs and others aren’t so lucky. No NFL franchise is immune to playoff droughts, although some are longer than others.

The St. Louis Cardinals (now Arizona Cardinals) and Washington (now Washington Commanders) are tied for the dubious record of longest playoff drought in NFL history. The Cardinals (1949-1974) and Washington (1946-1971) each went 25 years without earning a playoff berth.

The Pittsburgh Steelers (1948-1972) are next on the list with 20 seasons without securing a playoff spot.

The New York Jets are the owners of the longest active playoff drought. Here’s a look at the longest active playoff droughts in the NFL (year denotes when streak started):

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New York Jets – 2011

The Jets have the longest active playoff drought in the NFL as well as North American team sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS). The Jets last made the playoffs in 2010. The Jets reached the AFC championship game in their two most recent postseason appearances (2010 playoffs and 2009 playoffs).

Denver Broncos – 2016

The Broncos last reached the postseason in 2015. Coincidentally, the Broncos also won Super Bowl 50 that same season. Denver has three Super Bowl titles in franchise history (1997, 1998, 2015).

Detroit Lions – 2017

The Lions haven’t earned a postseason berth since the 2016 season. Detroit hasn’t won a playoff game since the 1991 playoffs. The Lions hold the dubious record of the NFL’s longest active streak without a playoff win.

Carolina Panthers – 2018

The Panthers’ playoff drought streak started in 2018. The Panthers have eight playoff appearances since their inception in 1995.

Atlanta Falcons – 2018

The Falcons haven’t made the postseason since the 2017 season. The Falcons have a total of 14 playoff appearances.

Houston Texans – 2020

Houston has six postseason appearances since the franchise’s first season in 2002. The Texans last made the playoffs in 2019.

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington coach Kalen DeBoer said Wednesday he expects injured running back Dillon Johnson to play in the College Football Playoff championship game against Michigan in Houston on Monday.

Johnson aggravated an injury to his right foot during Washington’s final possession in a 37-31 win over Texas in the CFP semifinal at the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day.

Johnson, who transferred from Mississippi State after last season, has been battling a foot problem for two months. The nature of the injury was not disclosed.

“There’s nothing as far as above and beyond what’s happened in the past,” DeBoer said. “Just kind of throughout the game, he would reaggravate it and shake it off and go back out there and play. My thoughts are that he’ll be ready to go.”

Johnson has run for 1,162 yards and 16 touchdowns and has excelled in pass-protection for quarterback Michael Penix Jr. He was examined when the Huskies returned from New Orleans on Tuesday.

“Knowing when we landed, as long as everything came out all right, he was going to do everything he could to be on that football field next Monday,” DeBoer said.

Ahead of Week 18, the NFL regular season finale, 11 of the possible 16 playoff spots have been claimed.

The San Francisco 49ers were the first team to lock up a playoff spot when they did so back in Week 14. Christian McCaffrey has bolstered the multi-dimensional offense.

Despite having lower offensive production than in years past, the Kansas City Chiefs won the AFC West for the eighth straight year.

The Baltimore Ravens are the owner of the No. 1 seed in the AFC after claiming the AFC North title with their lightning offense led by Lamar Jackson.

It’s common practice in the NFL to rest starters at the end of the season to ensure they are healthy and fully energized for the playoffs.

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Here’s the NFL stars who will be sitting out Week 18 of the 2023 NFL season:

Lamar Jackson — Baltimore Ravens

Lamar Jackson told reporters on Wednesday that he will be sitting out the Ravens’ season finale with the No. 1 seed and home field advantage already clinched.

‘I’m cool with it,’ the MVP quarterback said.

Tyler Huntley will lead the Ravens against the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are hoping for a win to boost their own playoff chances.

Patrick Mahomes — Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs won the AFC West for the eighth straight season, and are locked into the No. 3 seed in the AFC playoff race.

So, starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes will have the week off in Sunday’s game on the road against the Los Angeles Chargers, head coach Andy Reid told reporters on Wednesday.

Instead, Blaine Gabbert will be the Chiefs’ starter in the final game of the season.

While the Chiefs could use some playing time to fine-tune their offensive chemistry, they’re opting to rest their best player before defending their Super Bowl title.

Christian McCaffrey — San Francisco 49ers

Christian McCaffrey will sit out the 49ers’ season finale against the Los Angeles Rams as he nurses a mild calf strain.

‘I’ve played through worse,’ he said. ‘… It was more of a precautionary situation and being smart about it than doing something stupid.’

McCaffrey leads the league with 1,459 rushing yards. Kyren Williams is a distant second by a margin of 315 yards.

Matthew Stafford — Los Angeles Rams

The Rams have clinched a playoff spot, and Sean McVay is giving Matthew Stafford the week off.

Instead, Carson Wentz will start behind center.

If the Rams win, there’s a possibility Stafford could start on the road in his old stomping grounds against the Detroit Lions in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

Other Rams players who will sit are wide receiver Cooper Kupp, running back Kyren Williams, defensive lineman Aaron Donald and linebacker Ernest Jones.

Joe Flacco — Cleveland Browns

The Cleveland Browns have secured a playoff berth, and the quarterback who helped them secure it will have the week off on Sunday.

Former Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco will not play in Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski announced Wednesday.

Instead, Jeff Driskel will start for the Browns with P.J. Walker serving as backup.

The quarterback was the only player Stefanski would name as sitting out for the Browns.

This is a story about a word. The word is a weird one: quarterbacky. It was used by a radio host to describe Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. The aftermath of using that word has lasted days and perhaps may be talked about for months or even years to come. Why? Because of what that word represents. Let me explain.

Recently Fox Sports Radio’s Monse Bolaños was discussing the NFL’s MVP race with Dan Beyer, her co-host. Bolaños began talking about Jackson’s chances versus those of San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey. She didn’t think Jackson belonged in the conversation.

‘I want my quarterbacks to be ‘quarterbacky,’’ Bolaños said. ‘And, to me, Lamar Jackson’s just a great athlete, and he’s done a really good job and he had a great game against the 49ers. Prisoners of the moment, he is not the MVP. Christian McCaffrey is the MVP, and he has been. I’ve been saying this for weeks.’

In effect, Bolaños was saying that Jackson isn’t a real quarterback. She would later say on X, formerly Twitter, that her comments had nothing to do with race. But the word was such a dog whistle, puppies from North America to Asia all twisted their heads after she used it.

Her comments caused a massive reaction among Black fans and also a number of Black journalists. And I mean massive. I haven’t seen an angrier social media reaction from Black Twitter in months. Even LeBron James chimed in because, like everyone who lives on Earth One, it was clear what Bolaños was saying. And this story was only getting started.

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This past Sunday ‘quarterbacky’ was trending on X because Jackson was playing so well against the Miami Dolphins. People were watching a talented quarterback, one of the best of his generation, play at an elite level, while mocking the notion that he wasn’t quarterbacky enough.

By Monday, the Ravens had joined in on the act. They released a social card on X which led with the phrase ‘quarterbacky’, and below it was Jackson’s stats for the day against the Dolphins: 321 passing yards, five passing touchdowns and a perfect passer rating of 158.3.

The story is still talked about and likely will be for some time. The reason is simple. To many Black football fans, and also to many Black sports media members, the treatment of Jackson by some white fans and media members is a symbol of something much larger than football.

If you’re Black, and you followed this story, you may not be able to throw a football like Jackson, but you can relate to him in another way. You can understand what it’s like to be judged unfairly, as Jackson has been for much of his NFL career. Many Black Americans are in workplaces that don’t treat us respectfully. Where there are double standards for us. Where our accomplishments are minimized, and our errors blown into something bigger than they should be.

Many of us look at Jackson, see the racism and double standards he faces, and say: Hey, that’s us, too!

Black accountant … not accounty enough. Black journalist … not journalisty enough. Black pilot … not piloty. Barack Obama … hell, he wasn’t even born here, definitely not Presidenty enough.

Black fans also understand, either directly or innately, the history of Black players at the quarterback position, and how that history is pockmarked with decades of racism. Being asked to change positions, or not being drafted, or having to play quarterback in Canada because Black athletes weren’t allowed to play professional quarterback in America.

Saying Jackson should be more quarterbacky is the 21st century version of this type of history and belief system. Some people, remarkably, even now, look at Black quarterbacks and don’t see them on the same plane as their white quarterback counterparts. There’s something different, or lesser, about Black quarterbacks. This, in some ways, is the ultimate definition of quarterbacky, and it extends beyond sports.

To his critics, no matter how dominant Jackson is, he’s still not good enough. No amount of data, or even what they see with their own eyes, will change that. It’s the same in office spaces all across the country.

The bottom line with Jackson is he’s plenty quarterbacky enough. He’s MVP-y.

For NFL fans, it’s the best hour of the week. 

The term has become popularized by the NFL RedZone channel that plays up the drama as the games that kicked off at 1 p.m. ET – the busiest window of the Thursday to Monday schedule that the league plays in – conclude. 

As NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson says every week, the witching hour is when wins become losses and losses become wins. But it’s more than the flipping of outcomes. 

‘It became this total phenomenon … it’s taken on a life of its own,’ Hanson told USA TODAY Sports.

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‘You can’t think of NFL RedZone without the witching hour.’

Over the past decade, ‘witching hour’ has gone from a niche phrase for diehards to something that is firmly entrenched in the football zeitgeist, with applications outside of the football world, too. 

For example, during MSNBC’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections, political analyst and former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill referred to the time following the closure of the polls as ‘the witching hour.’ 

‘If you watch NFL RedZone,’ she said, ‘this is the witching hour … because things are going to be decided soon.’ 

Who came up with the term ‘witching hour’? 

Hanson’s famous tagline – ‘when wins become losses and losses become wins’ – existed long before he uttered the words ‘witching hour’ on air. He believes he first said it on TV by 2014 at the latest, but most likely a year or two before, he said. 

From the time RedZone went live in 2009, Hanson – along with everyone watching at home – knew the last hour of the early slate was the most exciting part of the program. 

‘I was referring to it back then as, ‘Here it comes, eight games going on, half of them in the fourth quarter, half of them coming to the end of the third quarter,’ it’s the best hour of sports television,’ Hanson said. 

As time passed, Hanson said he felt the need for something catchier. Social media users interacted with him on Twitter to let him know that they called it ‘the witching hour.’ Hanson thought it was an apropos description for the unexpected. 

‘I was like, ‘That’s kinda catchy. It’s tight. It’s concise. It has the word hour in it.” Hanson said. ‘Maybe I’ll call it that.’ 

Hanson was not the first sportscaster to disseminate the term publicly. Who exactly was remains a mystery, but there are clues. 

‘It was Brent Musburger who came up with it,’ former New York radio host Mike Francesa said on his show in 2010. 

Francesa was a researcher for CBS’ ‘The NFL Today’ in the 1980s, a show hosted by Musburger that included Jimmy ‘The Greek’ Snyder, a points spread analyst who tracked scores at the end of the third quarter by writing them down via CBS’ multiple feeds and then compared them to the final scores. 

‘We used to say, ‘Hey, witching hour, here we go,” Francesa said. ‘Then all hell was going to break loose.’ 

Through a spokesperson, however, Musburger said he does not recall the origin story of ‘the witching hour.’ Snyder died in 1996. And multiple attempts to reach Francesa for clarity were unsuccessful. 

Hanson said he didn’t know of that history until recently. But the term evidently lasted from the airwaves of the ’80s to the social media days of the 2010s to the streaming options of the 2020s. 

Something everybody can agree on, though? 

‘If you watch how dramatically those scores twist and turn and change … it’s the best time,’ Francesa said 13 years ago. 

Popularity throughout the world

By this point, NFL Media has fully leaned into the ‘witching hour.’ RedZone coordinating producer Alan Flowers surprised Hanson one day with a graphic – the orange-blur clock and the Undertaker-esque gong – to signal the time frame. To the best of the RedZone crew’s knowledge, that was Oct. 4, 2020. 

‘They wanted to catch me off-guard with it, and it made me really smile,’ Hanson said.

There is no specific time they call the ‘witching hour,’ Hanson said. The football decides that. 

McEnroe Francis, the early-window producer, is the one in Hanson’s ear when it’s time. As soon as they have resolutions for any outstanding updates, Francis will remind Hanson that they must call the witching hour as some games have already begun the fourth quarter. Once they’re on the same page, Francis calls it out in the control room, the graphics and sound-effects people coordinate, and then it is time. 

‘People have a Pavlovian response to me calling the witching hour,’ Hanson said.

‘If for some silly reason we forgot to do it, there would be people with torches and pitchforks outside of NFL Media headquarters,’ he added. 

People have started dressing up as the witching hour for Halloween. A couples costume could be some variation of one person being a witch, and another being Hanson or a clock. 

‘That’s a ‘You know you’ve arrived when…” Hanson said. 

Hanson is on the celebrity shoutout website Cameo and often receives requests to include the witching hour tagline in his messages. Some examples: 

At a bachelor party: ‘When fiancés become spouses, and bachelors become grooms.’One couple about to have a child: ‘When pregnancy becomes labor, and labor becomes parenthood.’ 

For most NFL fans, though, it’s just the most exciting part of Sundays in the fall. 

‘It’s wild how it has become this visceral reaction from people,’ Hanson said, ‘in a positive way.’

The All-Pro receiver had high praise on Wednesday for Las Vegas Raiders interim head coach Antonio Pierce and said that he should be given the full-time job.

‘It’s obviously who I want. That’s my vote and I’ve been vocal about that. That’s basically how the whole locker room feels and with good reason,’ Adams told reporters ahead of the season finale against the Denver Broncos. ‘He’s come in and done a great job. He’s continued to win us over. It’s not just the comfortable thing. I think having AP here will be good for this organization.’

Pierce stepped up from his position as linebackers coach in November when Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler were fired after back-to-back losses, including a meltdown on Monday Night Football against the Detroit Lions.

Pierce is 4-4 as interim head coach and got an upset victory over AFC West champions the Kansas City Chiefs. He was visibly emotional after the win.

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‘He kind of embodies what it means to be a Raider, that mentality, that swag. All the things that he endorses is the things that I believe in,’ Adams, who notched 1,000 receiving yards for the fourth straight season this year, said. It’s his second year on the Raiders after being traded from the Green Bay Packers. ‘It’s easy for a guy like me, especially having dealt with him a little bit this year now and gotten to know him and see his evolution in front of the team, all those things, all the different fields of being a head coach, so definitely rooting for him.’

Pierce spent nine seasons as a linebacker in the NFL and won Super Bowl 42 with the New York Giants before taking on coaching. After Las Vegas’ win over the Chiefs, he spoke on the potential of getting the full-time head coaching job.

‘My resume is on the grass. What do you want?’ he said. ‘I can put up a fancy presentation, I’ve seen that before. I can put up stats, I can put up my resume, but the best thing that happened for me was an opportunity.’

The Toronto Raptors and New York Knicks kicked off the NBA’s trade deadline season with a deal on Dec. 30.

The Raptors sent OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn to the Knicks for RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and a second-round draft pick.

Given the quality of teams going for a title, the quality of players (possibly) available and the draft capital teams have to sweeten trades, there should be several more deals before the Feb. 8 trade deadline.

While we wait for those moves to happen, here’s a look at players who could be dealt to another team move before the trade deadline:

Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine

Teams looking for offense, and that includes the Los Angeles Lakers, are interested in Zach LaVine and his availability. LaVine averages 21 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.4 assists and shoots 44.3% from the field, 33.6% on 3-pointers and 86.6% on free throws. A talented scorer, he has played in just 18 games this season – out since Nov. 28 with right foot inflammation. LaVine is in the second year of a five-year $215.1 million contract.

Chicago Bulls guard DeMar DeRozan

At 34, DeMar DeRozan can still score, posting 22.2 points per game on 45.6% shooting from the field and 33.3% on 3s. Add his 5.4 assists, 3.8 rebounds, 1.1 steal and nearly 1.0 block per game and DeRozan has value. He had 27 points on 12-for-16 shooting, nine assists and seven rebounds in Chicago’s Dec. 20 victory against the Los Angeles Lakers. He is in the final season of a three-year, $81 million contract and is a free agent in the summer.

Chicago Bulls guard Alex Caruso

Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic

The Bulls signed Nikola Vucevic to a three-year, $60 million in the offseason, so it’s not an onerous deal and a team would have Vucevic for two more seasons after this one. Though this isn’t his best scoring season (16.7 points per game on 45.2% shooting from the field, 28.1% on 3s), Vucevic provides offense.

Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell

If the Cavaliers decide to trade All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell, it will be a major move for the Cavs and the team acquiring him – perhaps Brooklyn, New York or Miami (the Heat have been looking for a combo guard and have long had their eyes on Mitchell). The Cavaliers traded for Mitchell with the hopes he would re-sign with them. But he has not signed an extension. He is under contract for 2024-25 at $34.8 million and has a player option 2025-26, allowing him to become a free agent in the summer of 2025 if he chooses.

Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma

The Wizards are in the initial stages of what looks like a long but deliberate rebuild. It’s unlikely many players on the roster now will be on the roster in two, three seasons. Kyle Kuzma has championship with 2010 Lakers and is averaging a career-high 23.1 points and shooting a career-best 46.6% from the field while getting 6.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game. He is in the first season of a four-year, $90 million contract.

Washington Wizards guard Jordan Poole

For the right team in the right situation, Jordan Poole can be a valuable contributor. His 41.4% shooting from the field, 31.2% on 3s and uninspired play is not compelling teams to call the Wizards give up significant assets.

Washington Wizards guard Tyus Jones

In the final year of a two-year, $29 million contract, Tyus Jones is putting together a solid season: 12.6 points and 5.5 assists per game and shooting 53.7% from the field and 42.5% on 3s. A team looking for depth a point guard will do well by acquiring Jones.

Charlotte Hornets forward Gordon Hayward

Atlanta Hawks guard Dejounte Murray

Dejounte Murray has a four-year, $114 million extension that begins next season, and while Atlanta thought Murray and Trae Young could be its backcourt for years to come, it may be willing to listen to offers for Murray. He averages 20.5 points and is shooting 38.3% on 3s – his highest percentage since shooting 39.1% on just 0.6 attempts per game his rookie season in 2016-17.

Detroit Pistons forward Bojan Bogdanovic

Portland Trail Blazers forward Jerami Grant

Toronto Raptors forward Pascal Siakam

Utah Jazz forward-center Lauri Markkanen

Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris

This isn’t the first time Tobias Harris’ name has popped up in trade deadline chatter, and the strong veteran is having another solid season: 17.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.0 steal per game and shooting a career-best 51.3% from the field. In the end, it may just make sense for the Sixers to keep Harris, whose contract expires after this season.

Charlotte Hornets guard Terry Rozier

Charlotte Hornets forward Miles Bridges