Man, Free Monday: The Texans finally crush someone, the Jaguars and Cowboys continue to get boatraced

Caleb Williams continues his poor-defense influenced rise (I like his fantasy prospects!), the Texans hit some big running plays, the Cowboys ... exist

Please forgive the fact that I have no Sunday Night Football recap happening, my brain is mentally in the NLCS and thus it has taken a beating.

Jaguars 13 “at” Bears 35

Even as much as I think the Jaguars defense is terrible and you can’t glean huge conclusions from Caleb Williams roasting them, you have to look at this throw to Keenan Allen for a touchdown and conclude there’s not a lot most defenders could do about it:

The Jaguars literally have a guy directly in Williams’ face unblocked at the snap, he leaps as high as his frame will allow! It did not matter.

Williams threw a real stinker of an interception, one that he floated to D.J. Moore instead of getting the correct air under it. But his other throws combined for 22-of-28, 226 yards, and four touchdowns.

I think he’s taken some real steps and I think he’s taken some steps that the competition has afforded him. I am desperately curious to see him against a good defense again, and … it’s something we have to continue to wait on. He’s got the Commanders, Cardinals, and Patriots the next three starts. The Commanders have moved up to 24th in DVOA, but that is the high-water mark of these six weeks. A month from now, they’ll play the Packers and Vikings back-to-back.

What I’ve seen has been promising, and to be honest this is mostly how I would expect things to play out based on his college career. Williams wasn’t without his warts even if he had game-changing plays, and it makes sense that he had early growing pains. The Bears … suddenly look like they’re a fantasy football dynamo for the next month? I can’t believe I’m typing those words. But that’s where we are.

As for the Jaguars, one thing that we don’t talk enough about is that they fired defensive coordinator Mike Caldwell this past offseason even though the defense made it up to 10th in DVOA. They hired Ryan Nielsen, part of a failed Atlanta Arthur Smith regime that finished 24th in defensive DVOA. The Jaguars are now last in defensive DVOA.

It’s very easy to blame a lot of the Jaguars problems on Trevor Lawrence, but this is the level of incompetence he is fighting against. This defense has Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker and it doesn’t actually matter. They got just 10 pressures and three sacks against Williams even though his offensive line is horrendous.

Texans 41 at Patriots 21

The word I had for the Texans was listless — they were mostly sitting on rookie quarterback Drake Maye’s underneath routes, and finally got burned for it at the end of the half by Kayshon Boutte. They got up 14 points and just didn’t seem super interested in doing more than running the ball. Which, for them, has generally been a bad thing. They turned it on with some turnover fuel at the beginning of the second half and eventually were able to pull the starters — hard to be upset about a game where you get to pull the starters, even if perhaps I thought they’d be more dominant on defense.

The Texans actually did find three huge runs in this game. Joe Mixon’s 59-yarder, Dameon Pierce’s 54-yard touchdown run, and Mixon’s 20-yard touchdown run. Let’s look at all three of them:

12-personnel (one back, two TE) versus a base look. This ball goes to the strong side with the tight ends. Cade Stover (87) gets an angled block on the interior line — that’s the most dangerous ask of this play. Laremy Tunsil (78) gets a good crease on the other side with the edge defender. Kenyon Green (74) climbs to the linebacker and, though he overruns the landmark a bit, is able to get a glancing blow on his side to get him out of the play. Juice Scruggs (70) climbs to the other linebacker and gets enough of a block to put him out of the play — let go right before it got in the vicinity of holding. Stefon Diggs does a nice job putting his body in the way of passive run support. Outside of Stover and Tunsil, I don’t think anybody decisively won their assignment. But everybody did enough. And then you get Mixon to the races in space and he is fast enough to force the safety to take depth to try to slow him or make the tackle.

On to the 20-yard touchdown:

Here the Texans get the benefit of both safeties playing deep. Blake Fisher is in for Tunsil. It’s 12-personnel again. The exact same sort of ask of Stover as he gets a crease for the left side while the left guard and left tackle climb. Fisher and Green are combo blocking Deatrich Wise (91) here and are able to bully him back enough that Fisher can come off for Jahlani Tavai (48). Fisher does a great job sealing Tavai off and giving Mixon a lane. Diggs has Jonathan Jones (31) in run support on the outside edge and is able to harass him a bit if not fully block him. Mixon freelances outside and gets the edge on Jones with Diggs getting a stumble back from Jones on his block. Jones honestly does an excellent job to recover — rare to see a corner fight that hard — and make the touchdown close.

Finally, Pierce’s touchdown run to close out scoring:

The No. 1 thing that pops out about this one is the corner running up too quickly from depth, and when Pierce gets by the initial line of scrimmage, there is wide-open space. This is more of a traditional block without a Stover angled block on the interior. Shaq Mason (69) and Scruggs (70) actually let Daniel Ekuale (95) through the interior. Tytus Howard (71) does a nice job placing Anfernee Jennings (33) on Stover backwards, and even though Stover’s block is hardly dominant, Jennings is spun out of the play. Howard climbs to Raekwon McMillan (50) but McMillan runs outside to set the edge and Howard winds up just being a moving pick for Pierce when he cuts. Dalton Schultz and Stefon Diggs get a good climb outside, but Schultz nearly loses, forcing the Pierce cut.

To me? This was less impressively blocked than the other two and more of a Patriots defensive bust. But at least Pierce put on tape that he could do that, I have been worried for some time.

I bring these up because: Those are the three longest runs of the Texans season. I want them to embrace the Stover angle blocks. They need more of this badly. It’s not just a Mixon and Pierce being back thing, but I can’t see Cam Akers turning the 50-plus yarders into more than 25-yarders. Running backs may be considered fungible in the NFL at large, but boy does it make a difference when you have a good one.

Lions 47 at Cowboys 9

We all knew the Dallas defense would be worse without Dan Quinn, that’s kind of inherent in regime change and Mike Zimmer and Quinn are polar opposites on the “how heavy can my personnel be?” spectrum. But you combine that with no DeMarcus Lawrence, no Micah Parsons, no Marshawn Kneeland, no Sam Williams … there was almost no pass rush and the Lions were running layup lines from the opening whistle. Everything they were doing was working. The trick plays, the runs, the passes, the screens. The Cowboys finally held on the goal line in the middle of the third quarter; up until then the only thing stopping the Lions was their own boredom.

Parsons coming back will make a big difference, but the depth at pass rusher has been so decimated that I don’t even know that it’s going to shift things enough at this point. And even if it did, this team has been worn down to the nubs. Dak Prescott is a good enough quarterback to win with. CeeDee Lamb is a No. 1 wideout. The offensive line is acceptable if not what it once was. Everything else about this team is in utter disrepair. They are their stars, and everything around those stars has crumbled to dust, from Brandin Cooks to their interior linemen to their non-Trevon Diggs secondary.

The Lions were always out to rub it in Dallas’ face, that was always going to be the case. But they didn’t have to get bored along the way — that only happened because of how bad the Cowboys are down right now.

Other games that happened

Buccaneers 51 at Saints 27 — Spencer Rattler’s first start went about how you’d expect such a fifth-round rookie’s first start to go: two picks, five sacks. The Saints actually had a halftime lead after a Rashid Shaheed kickoff return touchdown, but gave up 27 unanswered in the second half. Even with Mike Evans banged up, there was no answer for the Tampa Bay rushing attack — wait, the Tampa Bay rushing attack averaged 7.9 yards per attempt? Good lord. I don’t think Rachaad White is getting his job back.

Commanders 23 at Ravens 30 — The Commies defense kept this close early by picking off Lamar Jackson deep in Washington territory and sacking Jackson on third-and-9 at the BAL 21. After that the Ravens went: touchdown, touchdown, field goal, touchdown, field goal, end of game. Hard to do much to stop that from happening.

Browns 16 at Eagles 20 — You know it’s a great game when I want to call out things that both sides said afterwards. Kevin Stefanski offered a tepid “Yes” when asked if Deshaun Watson would keep starting after his latest five-sack disaster. Nick Sirianni openly taunted his own fanbase after this inspiring win. The good news? A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith are back and can make up for a lot of uninspiring coaching.

Cardinals 13 at Packers 34 — Marvin Harrison Jr. left with a concussion and the Cardinals had a hard time finding open receivers once he left — Greg Dortch paced all wideouts with 3/36 and he was the only wide receiver with more than two catches. On the other side, Jordan Love dunked on the beleaguered Cardinals defense and found four touchdowns. I definitely am not mad that I dropped Romeo Doubs from a lineup once Christian Watson was declared healthy, no, the most unmad writer alive.

Colts 20 at Titans 17 — Michael Pittman Jr., playing with a bad back, did this:

That’s the competitive juices, man. Inspiring stuff as the Colts hang around the bottom of the AFC playoff bracket with another Joe Flacco win.

Calvin Ridley went 0-for-8 targets, which was absurd, and Will Levis put up 3.5 yards per attempt. I guess he wasn’t sacked once, you have to give that to him. But, yeah, hard to be a game manager quarterback when you play like Will Levis.

Falcons 38 at Panthers 20 — This turned into a blowout late in the game, with the Falcons adding 16 points in the second half to Carolina’s three. It turns out that when you have two outside zone runners and a team that sucks at run defense outside, bad things happen. Tyler Allgeier and his highly-drafted fantasy football running mate Bijan Robinson combined for 200 yards on 33 carries and three touchdowns. Didn’t really need to be any more complex than that for the Falcons, who are on top of the division after their wild win over Tampa last Thursday Night.

Chargers 23 at Broncos 16 — The Bo Nix boxscore numbers look adequate enough in the end, but the Broncos were down 23-0 before he got to work in garbage time. Courtland Sutton made a hell of a touchdown catch:

Ultimately the Chargers sustained with Jim Harbaugh’s absolute perfect game plan: 17 injuries, one atrial flutter, and four receivers with between 44 and 38 yards.

Steelers 32 at Raiders 13 — When your run defense is so bad that it can’t even make Justin Fields throw the ball, that’s a problem. (Looks up and sees that Mike Caldwell, ex-Jaguars DC mentioned earlier in the post, is the Vegas run defense coordinator.) Hm, must be a talent issue. Yup.

Look at these non-Brock Bowers receivers:

D.J. Turner, ubiquitous enough to get the (wide receiver) designation on Wikipedia, Texans practice squad legend Alex Bachman, former Patriots practice-squadder Kristian Wilkerson, and Tre Tucker hanging out at the bottom here. That’s two 27-year-old wideouts and a 28-year-old wideout with almost zero professional experience. What a room that Tom Telesco has put together.

Bengals 17 at Giants 7 — I told you I didn’t have the bandwidth for this one. And judging by the box score, I’m okay with my decisions.