Snap reactions to every Week 17 game: Broncos stay in control of AFC destiny; Cowboys, Vikings win

Week 17 of the 2025 NFL season began on Christmas Day with an NFC East showdown between the Cowboys and Commanders. Dallas jumped all over Washington early but had to hold on after allowing several big plays . Later in the day, the Vikings crushed the Lions' playoff hopes. Minnesota came out swinging and held on to beat Detroit at home. The Broncos closed things out with a tight win over the Chiefs, keeping their hopes of earning the AFC's top seed alive. Our NFL Nation reporters reacted to all the action, answering lingering questions coming out of each game and detailing everything you need to know for every team. Let's get to it. Jump to: DAL-WSH | DET-MIN | DEN-KC Denver 20, Kansas City 13 Catch up on the action: Box score | Recap Broncos Is the Broncos' grind-it-out offense playoff ready? The Broncos took care of what they needed to Thursday to stay in the driver's seat for the AFC West title and the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. But there were good news/bad news vibes from the Denver offense. The good news was that the Broncos had three scoring drives of eight or more minutes. The bad? Only one of those resulted in a touchdown. They will need to close the deal with more authority (and touchdowns) in the postseason because when they don't, they leave themselves open to what happened against the Chiefs -- where they're in a down-to-the-wire scrap despite giving up only 95 yards of total offense prior to Kansas City's final drive. What to make of the QB performance: Bo Nix guided another fourth-quarter, game-winning drive, finishing with a 1-yard TD pass to RJ Harvey with 1:45 to play, so he got the big-picture job done once again. But the Broncos didn't have a play of more than nine yards until Nix scrambled for 14 yards with 5:35 left in the second quarter and didn't have a pass play of more than nine yards until the two-minute warning in the first half. Nix, who finished 26-for-38 for 182 yards, also had some accuracy issues crop up again, helping result in a deflected-ball interception in the first half. -- Jeff Legwold Next game: vs. Chargers (TBD) Chiefs What did we learn about Chris Oladokun? Well, the Chiefs possessed the ball for fewer than 21 minutes Thursday night, which wasn't great for Oladokun, Kansas City's third-string quarterback. But when he had limited opportunities, Oladokun showed he is capable of being a quality game manager. In just 16 attempts prior to the final drive, Oladokun never put the ball in danger. Instead, he had some nice moments scrambling and improvising to create yards. Even in suboptimal circumstances late -- less than two minutes left and only one timeout -- Oladokun was able to get the ball to the Broncos' 21-yard line. But his final pass of the game, a deep pass into the end zone on fourth-and-8, was too high for receiver Hollywood Brown ....

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