The NFL has long prided itself on the parity of its league - how any team is no more than a few moves away from a Super Bowl championship. And that parity has never been more obvious than it is this year. Eighteen teams are sitting at .500 or within one game of that mark, and .500 is currently good enough to be a division leader (looking at you AFC North).

Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and since so many teams are in contention for a playoff spot, we're going to be swinging around the league and taking a look at what some of the teams in the NFL should be thankful for this Thursday.

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It's Almost Thanksgiving... What Just Happened

The Houston Texans should be thankful the Titans can't beat the Colts.

Houston has a one-game lead on the Colts and the Titans in the division despite their Monday Night loss to the Raiders, and their noticeable lack of offense. The Texans somehow lost to the Raiders despite holding Oakland to 30 yards rushing - and Latavius Murray had 33 of those. Realistically, the "somehow" is that Derek Carr is rapidly becoming one of the NFL's best young quarterbacks, and he led the Raiders to victory with two fourth-quarter touchdowns, although I much prefer thinking that Houston got beat by Carr because they ruined his older brother and decided not to draft him in 2014 when they knew damn well they needed a quarterback desperately. The universe refuses to let that much irony go by without being acted upon.

Fortunately for the Texans, even the universe's love of poetically appropriate defeat wasn't enough to unseat them from the top of the AFC South. With the Colts' defeat of the Titans, both teams are 5-5. The Titans' record against the Colts seems to indicate not that they are the Colts' divisional rivals, but more that the Colts bought them from Curly in cell block D for a carton of smokes.

The Steelers and Ravens should be thankful they don't play in another division.

The AFC North is putting up a spirited challenge against the AFC South in the "worst division in the NFL" competition this year.  Both divisions have two 5-5 teams in them, but it's only in the North where that's a good enough mark to be winning the division.  The Steelers can't decide if they're gonna be good or bad from week to week, and aside from "Elite" Joe Flacco and Steve "Methuselah" Smith, the Ravens have no one on offense whose name I can even remember.  One of these teams will make the playoffs, especially since the Bengals just lost AJ Green and the Browns are Brownsing harder than they've ever Brownsed before. But it's not looking good for them against the Patriots or Raiders.

The Cowboys should be thankful that they nailed this draft so hard, I mean goddamn...

The Ravens contained Zeke Elliott this week (he only had 127 yards of offense) so the Cowboys turned to their other rookie phenomenon, and Dak Prescott delivered, going 27-of-36 for 301 yards and three touchdowns.  It's honestly absurd that a Jerry Jones draft has turned out this well.  Someone may want to check and make sure that they didn't make some sort of weird parallel universe wormhole at CERN or something.  Just enjoy it while you can, America, because if the *Cowboys* win a Super Bowl with two rookie stars, it'll be 20 years before we stop thinking about Dallas as "that place we all want to burn to the fucking ground."

We should all be thankful that the Cowboys, Redskins, and Seahawks provided watchable football this weekend.

Dolphins 14 - Rams 10.

Bills 16 - Bengals 12.

Buccaneers 19 - Chiefs 17.

There were plenty of bad games this weekend, but the Seahawks' strangling of the Eagles, the Cowboys' Dak Attack against the Ravens, and the Redskins' detonation of the Packers all provided memorable, entertaining football this weekend while the 5-5 teams all duked it out to sort out the massive cesspit that will be the draft's 6th through 18th picks.

The Dolphins' offense was largely nonexistent until the Rams decided they didn't want to football anymore. Everyone on the field got hurt during the Bills' and Bengals' field goal-fest, and the Chiefs' offense struggled in the red zone yet again, but the evening games gave us an opportunity to wash the taste of stale offense out of our mouths.  Second half Russell Wilson struck again in the Battle of Bird-Based Supremacy.  Rob Kelley shredded the Packers for three touchdowns.  Technically, so did Kirk Cousins, but I don't know of any R&B singer named K. Cousins that provides easy material for making fun of defenses with, so Kelley gets the credit for pissing all over the Packers' hopes and dreams.