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The 4-10 Los Angeles Rams are playing out the string on the rest of the 2022 campaign, which means star defensive tackle Aaron Donald likely won't take the field again until 2023.

Head coach Sean McVay told reporters Donald will "probably not" be cleared to return for the final three games of this season.

There was some speculation that Donald would retire after helping the Rams win the Super Bowl last season, but he and the team reworked his deal and made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

Yet this season hasn't gone according to plan for him or the team, which is eliminated from postseason contention.

The nine-time Pro Bowler has appeared in 11 games and has a career-worst five sacks. The second-lowest mark of his career is eight, which he posted during the 2016 campaign. What's more, his streak of five straight seasons with double-digit sack totals will come to an end.

There is still no questioning Donald's place as one of the best players in the game with a resume that includes seven All-Pro selections, three Defensive Player of the Year awards and a Defensive Rookie of the Year.

He also still showed enough to be named to the Pro Bowl this season, although he may not participate in the activities if he is still dealing with the ankle injury.

It seemed as if the Rams may compete for a playoff spot following a 3-3 start, but they proceeded to lose six straight to drop out of contention. Donald isn't the only notable player dealing with injury concerns, as Matthew Stafford has been limited to nine games and Cooper Kupp hasn't played since Week 10.

Los Angeles finishes with contests against the Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers and Seattle Seahawks.

Former New England Patriots and Cleveland Browns linebacker Willie McGinest apologized for the incident in a West Hollywood, California, lounge that led to his arrest.

He posted the following message in an Instagram post:

"First and foremost, I want to offer my deepest apology for my lapse in judgment and behavior on December 9 at a restaurant in West Hollywood. To my family, community, friends, and youth I mentor, please know I feel horrible for my actions and take full responsibility.

"To my colleagues at the NFL Network and those I work closely with as an advisor to professional and community-based organizations, please know I am embarrassed and regret what occurred.

"Most of all, I am disappointed in myself, as I know this is an isolated incident and is not reflective of my faith, role as a father, life's body of work, or the role model I've worked hard to become. It is personally devastating that decades of community service, youth engagement, mentoring, and professional development would become an afterthought in a single moment that should have never happened.

"This incident has prompted me to deep self-reflection—mind, soul, and spirit. I know that violence is never the answer to such situations, no matter how intense the provocation. Rest assured, I will take whatever steps necessary to restore the public trust, mend damaged relationships, and ensure this never happens again."

Notably, McGinest's former teammate Tom Brady was among those who commented on the apology, leaving a red heart emoji.

TMZ Sports shared a video of the incident on Monday in which McGinest approached another man and exchanged words with him before striking him in the face. Others also got involved in the altercation, and McGinest can be seen hitting the man on the head with a bottle as well.

He was arrested on Monday on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon and released on $30,000 bond.

While he is best known for his time as a linebacker, McGinest currently works in the media as an analyst for NFL Network. However, the network has removed him from the air following his arrest.

"We are aware of the incident and the video, which is disturbing," an NFL Network spokesperson told Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. "Willie McGinest will not appear on NFL Network while we review the matter."

McGinest played in the NFL from 1994 through 2008 for the Patriots and Browns. He won three Super Bowls during his 12 seasons with New England.

Rather than test free agency this offseason, Jack Conklin has agreed to a new contract with the Cleveland Browns.

Conklin's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told ESPN's Adam Schefter his client will receive a four-year, $60 million extension with $31 million fully guaranteed from the Browns.

Conklin began his career with the Tennessee Titans after being drafted No. 8 overall in 2016. The Michigan State alum made an instant impact as a rookie when he made 16 starts and earned a spot on the All-Pro First Team.

After injuries limited Conklin to nine games in 2018, the Titans declined to exercise the fifth-year option on his rookie deal. He played all 16 games in 2019 and was able to cash in as a free agent.

Conklin signed with the Browns in 2020. His contract was for three years, $42 million ($30 million guaranteed) and included two void years to spread out the cap hits.

Adding Conklin to the offensive line turned out to be an excellent move for Cleveland general manager Andrew Berry. He made the All-Pro First Team at right tackle in 2020.

An torn patellar tendon limited Conklin to seven games last season, but he's bounced back in 2022. The 28-year-old ranks fourth among offensive tackles in Pro Football Focus' pass-blocking efficiency metric entering Week 16.

The Browns held Conklin out for their first two games this season as he recovered from surgery to repair the patellar tendon. He has started all 12 games since making his season debut in Week 3.

The extension is fairly team-friendly for the Browns. The $60 million in total value and $31 million fully guaranteed ranks sixth among right tackles.

Cleveland is still alive in the AFC playoff race with a 6-8 record, but it needs to win each of its final three games and get a lot of help from other teams still vying for postseason positioning.

Former New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman offered a solution that would have saved Mac Jones the humiliation of being on the receiving end of Chandler Jones' stiff arm on the final play of Sunday's game against the Las Vegas Raiders.

Appearing on Inside the NFL (h/t Dakota Randall of NESN.com), Edelman said Jones should have tripped Jones to prevent him from scoring.

Even though Jones became the butt of most jokes after the play, the end result wasn't his fault. Rhamondre Stevenson took a handoff with three seconds left in regulation and the score tied at 24, he gained 23 yards before lateraling the ball to Jakobi Meyers.

Meyers decided he wanted to keep the play going, and threw a lateral that was supposed to be for Jones even though he was nowhere in the frame on the television feed until Chandler Jones grabbed the ball.

What just happened?? The @Raiders win on the final play!! #NEvsLV pic.twitter.com/cmKNUuab1k

— NFL (@NFL) December 19, 2022

Edelman's theory sounds good on paper, but tripping is a 15-yard penalty that would have given the Raiders a chance to kick a 47-yard field goal on an untimed down.

If there was an attempt to prevent Jones from scoring by blatantly tripping him, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk also noted there is a rule that allows officials to award a touchdown "to a team that has been denied one by a palpably unfair act."

Stevenson took responsibility for the play by saying he shouldn't have lateraled the ball in the first place. Meyers admitted he was "trying to do too much and trying to be a hero" when he attempted to throw the ball back to Mac Jones.

Even though the game will be remembered for that all-time blunder at the end, Mac Jones didn't do himself any favors with how he played. The second-year quarterback finished 13-of-31 for 112 yards against a Raiders defense that allows the fourth-highest completion percentage and seventh-most passing yards per game.

The Green Bay Packers reportedly made a major move as they continue a potential late-season playoff push.

NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported the NFC North team and offensive lineman Elgton Jenkins agreed to a four-year contract extension. The deal is worth $68 million in base value and could increase to as much as $74 million.

It makes him the second-highest paid guard in the league.

Indianapolis Colts guard Quenton Nelson is the only other player at the position paid more than Jenkins following this move.

Green Bay selected Jenkins out of Mississippi State with a second-round pick in 2019. He didn't miss a game in his first two years and was a Pro Bowler in his second season.

However, he was limited to just eight games in 2021 because he suffered a torn ACL in November. To his credit, he underwent a quick recovery and has appeared in 12 of the Packers' 14 games so far this season.

Jenkins, who is theoretically in the middle of his prime at 26 years old, has an impressive Pro Football Focus grade of 74.4 and was named a Pro Bowl alternate.

He is one reason the team is not out of the playoff race despite a 4-8 start to the season. They have won two straight games to improve to 6-8 and remain within striking distance of the 7-6-1 Washington Commanders for the final NFC wild-card spot.

They likely have to win out considering they are also behind the 7-7 Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions, but they are playing much better football of late. Still, games against the Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings and Lions to finish the season will be more difficult than the two straight wins over the Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams.

Chicago and Los Angeles are a combined 7-21.

If it has seemed like Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury were on different pages for most of this season, there's a reason for that.

Per ESPN's Jeremy Fowler and Josh Weinfuss, the Arizona Cardinals head coach and franchise quarterback have grown "increasingly distant" over the course of a lost year for the team.

Among the issues that have divided the two men are Murray's desire for "wanting more freedom at the line of scrimmage, particularly with running plays," but plays designed to get the ball into the hands of Arizona's playmakers didn't come to fruition "either due to miscommunication, a play breaking down or Murray improvising, and the disjointed attack created unpredictability for some of the team's pass-catchers."

Fowler and Weinfuss also noted the clashing personalities between Kingsbury and Murray trickled down to the rest of the locker room as they stumbled to the finish line last season and has continued into 2022.

The report also noted Kingsbury and Murray have both struggled with direct communication that would have helped calm the tension that had "become obvious" to people in the Cardinals locker room.

"Before Murray's injury, Kingsbury was described as 'extremely frustrated' with the quarterback per a team source, believing that his negativity, if not toxic, was 'starting to get to people' around the building," Fowler and Weinfuss wrote.

Cardinals passing game coordinator Cam Turner has been "forced to serve as a buffer" between Murray and Kingsbury this season.

It had become obvious to anyone watching Cardinals games this season that Kingsbury and Murray weren't on the same page. They were involved in a shouting match on the sidelines during an Oct. 20 win over the New Orleans Saints.

This Kyler Murray-Kliff Kingsbury exchange 👀 pic.twitter.com/ofIQbSK1xd

— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) October 21, 2022

"He's real animated over there on the sideline sometimes," Murray told reporters the day after the sideline incident. "It's … 'Calm down, we're good. We're going to make it right.' We ended up scoring, so that was good, but that's all I was saying. Just chill out."

Kingsbury said at the time the team was "working through as an offense where we want to be and what we want to do, and you have competitors that have a level of intensity like that, I think it will keep pushing us forward."

The Cardinals have completely collapsed over the past 12 months. They are 5-15 in their last 20 games, including the playoffs, after winning 10 of their first 12 games during the 2021 season.

Despite the team's rough finish last season, Arizona signed Kingsbury and general manager Steve Keim to extensions in March that run through the 2027 campaign. The Cardinals announced on Dec. 14 that Keim was taking an indefinite hiatus due to health-related reasons.

The Cardinals should have also had a celebratory moment when Murray signed a five-year extension in July, but even that was marred because of a clause that required him to do four hours of independent film study each week during the season.

Amid blowback from the clause, the Cardinals removed it from the contract.

Murray's season came to an end on Dec. 12 when he tore the ACL early in the first quarter of the Cardinals' 27-13 loss to the New England Patriots. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the 25-year-old is on track to be ready for the start of the 2023 regular season.

The Cardinals (4-10) are tied with the Los Angeles Rams for the second-worst record in the NFC with three games left to play. They have just one winning season since 2016.

The Jacksonville Jaguars control their own destiny in the AFC South and made a loud statement during Thursday's win over the New York Jets.

But it wasn't as loud as the boos the Big Apple fans greeted quarterback Zach Wilson with throughout the game.

Jets head coach Robert Saleh benched Wilson in the third quarter after he went 9-of-18 for 92 yards, zero touchdowns and one interception while being sacked three times. Yet that won't spell the end of the playing time for the No. 2 overall pick of the 2021 NFL draft.

"We haven't seen the last of him," Saleh told reporters when discussing Wilson following the ugly 19-3 loss.

Chris Streveler, who has never started a game in the NFL, came in for Wilson and proved to be more of a threat to Jacksonville's defense with 90 passing yards and 54 rushing yards. He moved New York to the Jacksonville 12-yard line on his first drive before the team turned it over on downs.

Saleh explained there was a plan in place to perhaps get Streveler in the game regardless of Wilson's performance:

Coach Saleh on looking for a spark by inserting Chris Streveler at QB. pic.twitter.com/z6G2fwTRkZ

— New York Jets (@nyjets) December 23, 2022

Surely, nobody envisioned this though when the Jets selected Wilson when they did in the 2021 NFL draft. He is supposed to be the franchise quarterback, and he is instead getting benched in a must-win game for someone who is better known for his accomplishments in the Canadian Football League.

Wilson was already benched earlier this season for Mike White, although he was back under center the past two games because the latter suffered a rib injury.

The second-year signal-caller appeared to take a step back after throwing for 317 yards, two touchdowns and one interception in a loss to the Detroit Lions last week. The weather played something of a role, but Trevor Lawrence tallied 280 total yards and a touchdown for the Jaguars in that same weather.

Now the Jets are 7-8 and in last place in the AFC East.

The playoffs likely aren't going to happen, but the organization has bigger questions after a lackluster showing from the supposed franchise quarterback.

The playoffs are quickly approaching as the NFL turns the page to Week 16 of the 2022 season.

The Jacksonville Jaguars kicked things off with a 19-3 win over the New York Jets on Thursday Night Football. With the win, the Jags kept their playoff hopes alive by improving to 7-8.

There's a lot on the line for multiple teams in Week 16, so let's take a look at the current playoff picture along with this week's clinching scenarios:

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AFC Playoff Picture

1. Buffalo Bills: 11-3 (clinched playoff berth)
2. Kansas City Chiefs: 11-3 (clinched AFC West)
3. Cincinnati Bengals: 10-4 (clinched playoff berth)
4. Tennessee Titans: 7-7
5. Baltimore Ravens: 9-5
6. Los Angeles Chargers: 8-6
7. Miami Dolphins: 8-6
8. New England Patriots: 7-7
9. Jacksonville Jaguars: 7-8
10. New York Jets: 7-8
11. Las Vegas Raiders: 6-8
12. Cleveland Browns: 6-8
13. Pittsburgh Steelers: 6-8
14. Indianapolis Colts: 4-9-1 (eliminated)
15. Denver Broncos: 4-10 (eliminated)
16. Houston Texans: 1-12-1 (eliminated)

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NFC Playoff Picture

1. Philadelphia Eagles: 13-1 (clinched playoff berth)
2. Minnesota Vikings: 11-3 (clinched NFC North)
3. San Francisco 49ers: 10-4 (clinched NFC West)
4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 6-8
5. Dallas Cowboys: 10-4 (clinched playoff berth)
6. New York Giants: 8-5-1
7. Washington Commanders: 7-6-1
8. Seattle Seahawks: 7-7
9. Detroit Lions: 7-7
10. Green Bay Packers: 6-8
11. Carolina Panthers: 5-9
12. New Orleans Saints: 5-9
13. Atlanta Falcons: 5-9
14. Arizona Cardinals: 4-10 (eliminated)
15. Los Angeles Rams: 4-10 (eliminated)
16. Chicago Bears: 3-11 (eliminated)

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Week 16 Clinching Scenarios

Opportunity abounds in the AFC this weekend.

The conference-leading Buffalo Bills can clinch the AFC East for the third straight year with a win in Week 16. They will face the team with the worst record in the NFC, the Chicago Bears, in a game that will feature some incredibly harsh weather conditions at Soldier Field on Christmas Eve.

If the Bills somehow slip up against the Bears, they could still clinch the division crown with a loss by the Miami Dolphins, who host the Green Bay Packers on Christmas Day. Miami will face a motivated Aaron Rodgers as he tries to keep Green Bay's unlikely playoff hopes alive, which should make for an entertaining game.

The defending AFC champions didn't even need to take the field to punch their ticket back to the postseason, as the Cincinnati Bengals clinched a playoff berth after Thursday night's loss by the New York Jets. Cincinnati overtook the Baltimore Ravens for the AFC North lead with last week's win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Speaking of the Ravens, they can also clinch a playoff berth, but they'd need a ton of help. In fact, there are several different scenarios in which Baltimore can reach the postseason this week.

This weekend's playoff clinching scenarios: pic.twitter.com/fXCgUCNBlO

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) December 21, 2022

The Los Angeles Chargers also have the chance to clinch a playoff berth with some help, but they're one step closer after Thursday's loss by the Jets. In addition to a win over the Indianapolis Colts, the Chargers also need losses by the Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders.

Over in the NFC, a pair of NFC East rivals take center stage, as the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants have a lot on the line this week.

The first-place Eagles can clinch not only the division with a win against the Dallas Cowboys but also home-field advantage and the NFC's lone first-round bye. Philadelphia hasn't won an NFC East title since 2019, but it will be playing without star quarterback and MVP candidate Jalen Hurts because of a shoulder injury.

The Giants first need to defeat the NFC North-champion Minnesota Vikings to earn a spot in the playoffs, which seemed out of the realm of possibility for New York entering the 2022 season. However, the Giants also need some combination of losses by the Washington Commanders, Detroit Lions or Seattle Seahawks to reach the postseason this week.

In a shocking move, the New York Jets benched quarterback Zach Wilson in the third quarter of their Thursday Night Football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

At the time of his exit, Wilson had completed nine of 18 passes for 92 yards and an interception. Chris Streveler, who was elevated from the practice squad prior to Thursday's game, took over at quarterback for New York.

The Jets struggled to move the ball with Wilson under center, and it was clear that a change was needed as the fans grew restless. In the middle of a chorus of boos, the home crowd at MetLife Stadium chanted "We want Streveler."

This benching is the latest low point in a disappointing season for the 2021 No. 2 overall pick. Wilson has failed to live up to his draft status and looks to have stagnated in his development.

Things got off to a rocky start early, as Wilson suffered a knee injury in the first preseason game of the year that caused him to miss the first three weeks of the season. Upon his return in Week 4 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Jets embarked on a four-game winning streak, largely due to their strong defense and rushing attack.

However, rookie running back Breece Hall suffered a season-ending torn ACL in Week 7 against the Denver Broncos, leading to more of a reliance on the passing game. Wilson failed to demonstrate an ability to lead the offense, going 1-2 in the next three games. An abysmal performance in a 10-3 loss to the New England Patriots was the breaking point, as he was benched in favor of backup quarterback Mike White.

The Jets offense looked more efficient with White running the show, but the team suffered close losses to the Minnesota Vikings and Buffalo Bills. White injured his ribs against Buffalo, forcing the Jets to turn back to Wilson.

After last Sunday's loss against the Detroit Lions and Thursday night's benching, it's fair to wonder if Wilson's career in New York will come to an end sooner than expected.

Dallas Cowboys defensive end Sam Williams was released from the hospital after he was involved in a vehicle collision in Plano, Texas at 2:15 local time Thursday.

Williams was initially transported to the hospital for precautionary reasons.

According to the Dallas Morning News' Michael Gehlken, "Williams was transported to a local hospital today for precautionary reasons after he was involved in a vehicle collision around 2:15 p.m. in Plano, a police spokesperson said. He collided with a vehicle attempting to turn in front of him."

"The other vehicle's driver was also transported to hospital as a precaution," Gehlken added. "Police are investigating whether the speed at which Sam Williams was traveling on Preston Road was factor. Police have determined that neither drugs nor alcohol a factor."

I’m okay everyone so is the other person that was involved 🙏🏽💙

— SAM WILLIAMS SR (@DegarrickSamuel) December 23, 2022

Williams' status for Saturday's game against the Philadelphia Eagles has yet to be determined.

The Cowboys selected Williams with the No. 56 overall pick in this year's NFL draft. In 13 games, Williams has amassed 20 tackles (13 solo), three sacks and three fumble recoveries. Two of those sacks occurred in a 24-6 home win over the Detroit Lions on Oct. 23.

The 23-year-old starred at Ole Miss before entering the NFL. He notably set a school single-season record with 12.5 sacks in 2021 alongside 57 tackles. Thanks in part to his efforts, the Rebels finished 10-3 and ended the year No. 11 in the Associated Press poll.