Sunday Slate: Eagles stave off final Panthers drive, Rams and Bills play a classic, Chiefs remain Chiefs
Also: Seattle takes control of the NFC West, The Vikings take revenge on Kirk Cousins, and I even wrote about the goddamn Titans-Jaguars game.
Big Screens
Panthers 16 at Eagles 22
Bryce Young nearly did it. He was stacked with a herculean task, needing a touchdown with three minutes left and no timeouts, backed up at his own two-yard line. After an incomplete pass and an illegal forward pass, Young hits this throw to Xavier Legette, barely escaping a safety in his own end zone, to get the Panthers out of the shadow of his own end zone:
Then, after converting a fourth down, Young finds Legette behind the defense for the game-winning score. The only person that stopped that from happening was Legette, who couldn’t complete the process of the catch:
This is not a considered point of view based on watching these guys as intently as I did in this game over the last month or anything, to caveat. But purely on who the better quarterback was in this game today? I don’t think Jalen Hurts had anything on Young.
Hurts on multiple occasions did not look like he trusted the throws the offense was delivering him. He looked tentative. He was able to run for a few first downs to save the Eagles — one because the Panthers played man-to-man and didn’t have anyone monitoring him — but outside of a third-and-13 target to A.J. Brown for a first down, nothing felt easy or particularly good. The post-game quotes from the Eagles locker room were similarly not optimistic, with Hurts leaving a word salad while Brown simply said, when asked what they needed to improve: “passing.”
Hurts took four sacks in 25 dropbacks and I would argue the Panthers didn’t look like they had a particularly good pass rush today without Jadeveon Clowney. It was a rough full-game watch. That’s the little kernel of doubt that keeps me from really joining the Eagles bandwagon, because otherwise … the defense looks good. The running game looks great. Saquon Barkley had, if you can have one, a “forgettable” 124 yards rushing while averaging 6.2 yards per tote.
The only ways you can manage to make an offense that runs from the jump for 6.8 yards per carry stop at 22 points are sacks, turnovers, and poor passing game play. What Hurts did today might be an argument for the Eagles to pass even less. Enjoy the Steelers next week, boys. Oh, and congrats on clinching your playoff berth.
Bills 42 at Rams 44 — A comparison I haven’t seen a smart football person make yet — perhaps because I go into my writing tank at about 4 ET on Sunday and don’t emerge until 10:30 AM ET on Monday — is this game to the Chiefs-Rams MNF game of 2018. The score didn’t look quite the same, but the results sure were. 8.2 yards per play (Bills) to 6.3 yards per play (Rams) versus 7.9 yards per play to 6.1 in ye olde standard of modern scoring excellence. And the Rams won both games narrowly because they simply couldn’t be stopped as a passing offense. If anything they looked better in this game than in that one.
The Rams averaged 10.7 yards per pass, converted 12-of-16 third- and fourth-down attempts, and only a furious comeback attempt from the Bills in the fourth quarter kept this game from being a complete blowout. If you didn’t watch this game, let me be clear: You should just watch it. It was that good. But I’ll pick a few highlight clips out of the Spoiled For Choice vault for you to ooh and ahh at as well.
What can you do as a defense to stop this? Well, you could get pressure. The Bills did not sack Matthew Stafford once and only got nine pressures on 30 dropbacks. But other than that, I don’t know how you can play the pass any better. Great offense will beat non-disruptive defense. The Rams have had high highs and low lows as an offense this year because of their injuries and their inability to function with a bad offensive line. If you can’t make a weakness out of their offensive line, this is a tough team to deal with.
Josh Allen would simply throw for three touchdowns and run for three more in this game in rebuttal:
It’s how effortless the throw is that makes it so galling. Not an inch of wasted motion. Just “ah, I’ll beat the safety to the sideline here with my rocket arm and solid gold house.”
So where do the Bills fall short here? Step one is giving up a blocked punt touchdown. You should — my opinion — not do that in games you want to win. Makes it hard.
The other part was: Sean McVay tactically outperformed Sean McDermott in the clutch. The Rams were up three with the ball and 4:47 left in the game when the Buffalo defense got a big third-down play, forcing a Stafford scramble and drawing a holding penalty. Had McDermott declined the penalty, he’d have brought up fourth-and-6 at the Buffalo 36. He took the penalty to push the Rams out of field-goal range. The Rams threw an 11-yard pass, and crucially, did not attempt a field goal to go up six. They went for it on fourth down, converting on a crosser to Tutu Atwell. Then they scored the touchdown to go up nine (after a missed extra point) three plays later.
The Bills quickly rushed down the field without using any timeouts — as you’d expect with Allen and the quality of the Rams defense — thanks to some slightly dubious pass interference calls. They got to the LA 1 with 1:08 left. They tried a quarterback sneak — something that usually goes well for them, so I don’t fault that — and it didn’t work.
Then McDermott called timeout.
The Bills head coach had to realize that three timeouts were the only thing keeping the Rams from running the clock out at that point. He had to have them all. And he gave one away. The Bills did get the touchdown on the next play. But the Rams were able to run the clock out on the game as their fourth-down punt hung up just long enough to take the time down to zero.
I really think McDermott has taken a step forward this year as a tactician, and he does often go for it on fourth down in situations where he wouldn’t have last year. This was a tough scene as someone who has enjoyed the shift. The Bills maintain the second seed by virtue of their head-to-head win over the Steelers. The Rams have the Seahawks on the final day of the season, down by one game in the NFC West, and are also just one back of the final wild card spot.
Chargers 17 at Chiefs 19 — As I breezed through some highlight clips of the early games with the Chiefs staked to a 13-0 lead, the Chargers started actually moving the ball on a Kansas City defense that has had its issues over the past month. A 79-yard touchdown drive to open the half, a 74-yard touchdown drive to follow, and suddenly the Chargers had a 14-13 lead. Wow, the momentum shifted in a hurry. (And let me quickly say: Great bounceback game by Quentin Johnston. He looked like a different player in this one and he needed to without Ladd McConkey.)
Except these are the Chiefs, and this is 2024, and we all know where this is going.
The Chiefs no longer play good pass offense. They aspire to it, and they have the best quarterback in the game, but they cannot protect him to save their lives. D.J. Humphries, the third left tackle of the season (non-Joe Thuney) division immediately got hurt. Mahomes took three sacks and had a 38.1 percent pressure rate. This is a good Chargers defense and they made some big plays. Cam Hart literally saved the game when a DeAndre Hopkins downfield catch that would have put the Chiefs in firm control of the game was firmly defensed:
It’s just, you know, even if the Chiefs aren’t a superpower — and every statistic we have would tell you they aren’t — they radiate extreme I'd Like to See Ol Patrick Mahomes Wriggle His Way Out of THIS Jam! Energy. And he always does. So the teams traded field goals, then Mahomes did this on third-and-7 with a first down sealing the Chargers out of ever having the ball in regulation again:
Poor zero. The Chiefs win the AFC West. The Chargers slide into a three-way 8-5 tie for the AFC Wild Card slots. A home game against the Broncos a couple weeks from now looms large in deciding the picture.
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Seahawks 30 at Cardinals 18 — Arizona started hot as Kyler Murray delivered an opening-drive touchdown deep ball to Michael Wilson. Two Murray interceptions later, the Seahawks had a 17-7 lead that they would never relinquish. No Kenneth Walker was no problem for the Seahawks, who ran for 5.7 yards per carry lead by Zach Charbonnet’s two touchdowns. One of them was a 51-yard house call:
Where has this offensive line been all season?
Did Jonathan Gannon learn from last week’s field goal to go up six and work on his situational coaching? Reader, you’ll not be surprised to learn that he did not do that. With 7:19 left in the game, down 11, the Cardinals attempted a field goal on fourth-and-2 from the Seattle 21. The ball did not lie, as Chad Ryland clanked it off the goal post. Competitive portion of game over. Seattle’s defensive resurgence continued as they held Arizona’s offense to 5.7 yards per play and Derick Hall drew three big holding penalties in key spots, including an Arizona fourth-down go.
This was the biggest game of the week from a playoff odds bit. Seattle’s win gives them a full-game lead in the NFC West over the Rams. Arizona is now stuck at 6-7, two full games behind both the Seahawks and the Commanders. But on the bright side, if you were going to create a schedule to make a last-month push with, it looks like: vs. Patriots, at Panthers, at Rams, vs. 49ers. The main problem they have is that they need Seattle to nosedive now that Seattle owns the tiebreaker on them.
Falcons 21 at Vikings 42 — Great news for the Falcons defense: They managed to cobble together four sacks on Sam Darnold. Nine sacks in two games has pushed them further and further away from the potential worst of all-time lists.
Bad news for the Falcons defense: Everything else that happened in this game, but especially the poor safety who was manually taken over by a new controller during Justin Jefferson’s deep touchdown:
The receiver being so open might not have been that special, but the amount of pocket movement Darnold had to make to get to the throw was.
Other than the sacks, the Kirk Cousins revenge game was more of a “proving the Vikings were right” game. Cousins did look much better than he did last week for most of the game, but his interceptions were both balls you simply can’t throw, and he nearly added a third on a contested catch by Drake London that was debatably picked. Darnold looked like the kind of quarterback who can make throws that Cousins simply can’t anymore. There’s no way Cousins was hitting that second Addison touchdown in a small outside window. That’s a little thing called validation for Vikings fans.
This game was tied at 21 near the start of the fourth quarter, but Darnold simply dominated the rest of the way and a kick return was fumbled over to the Vikings by Ray-Ray McCloud. The Falcons have lost four games in a row and fallen out of first place. Perhaps that’s enough to start a Michael Penix dialogue? It sure seemed to be the beat writer tenor towards the end of that game. Raheem Morris gave the “Kirk Cousins is our quarterback” line after the game, and quipped that the team did not support him today. Fair enough. But it was pretty clear who had the better quarterback. And as Jessie Bates told reporters after the game, “Ain’t nobody coming to save us.” Well, not if you don’t play Penix anyway.
Raiders 13 at Buccaneers 28 — The Buccaneers drove up and down the field for their first two drives, took a 14-0 lead, then decided “eh, it’s the Raiders” and put it in the tank for a while. OK, OK, what really happened was Baker Mayfield was picked on a screen and fumbled on a third-and-3 blitz when he couldn’t pull the trigger, then threw an interception into the end zone with 25 seconds left in the half, killing a field goal. Bucky Irving was hurt and left the field of play, and the Bucs went into halftime with a tenuous 14-10 lead despite 214 total yards.
These being the Raiders, they were due for a quarterback change and some bad quarterback play, so Aidan O’Connell threw a pick, then left with his leg in an air cast. Desmond Ridder took over and performed exactly how Desmond Ridder usually performs. Mike Evans and Sean Tucker had a 32-yard catch and a 34-yard run to set up a touchdown to make things more manageable entering the fourth quarter, and a screen to Jalen McMillan went to the house as he scored his first (and second) touchdowns since Week 1.
The Bucs haven’t exactly been blowing the doors off people, but they have won three in a row against the Giants, Panthers, and Raiders. They are a good litmus test for how good your team is, in other words.
The Raiders? A locker room full of cope at this point. As a connoisseur of the 2021 and 2022 Texans, I’m used to these quotes, but I find the pain in them. “That’s the story of our season,” safety Tre’von Moehrig said. “No matter what happens, we keep playing.” Ridder gets to play the Falcons next week in what analysts are calling “an abuse of the term Revenge Game.”
Bears 13 at 49ers 38 — In honor of the Bears, let’s make this quick: They were outgained 319-4 in total yards. At halftime. We found Pocket Presence Optional Caleb Williams as he took another seven-sack game. The 49ers are used to having their players attacked aggressively in man coverage this year — the Bears decided they were a zone team and would not adjust. And thus, the entire highlight reel of this game is Brock Purdy making throws to open zone defenders, something the 49ers have been able to do with ease for something like 10 years in a row at this point.
On the bright side for the Bears, at least they’ll have a new head coach soon. It won’t be Kyle Shanahan. But it’ll be someone else. The 49ers are set up for a Loser Leaves Playoff Picture match on TNF against the Rams. Can we make it four out of five good TNF games?
Browns 14 at Steelers 27 — Jameis Winston briefly tried to make this game fun, with a highlight reel touchdown to Jerry Jeudy on the run to take an early 7-3 lead. Then Jameis Winston did make this game fun, the usual way he makes things fun, by throwing hilarious interceptions. And finally, Jameis Winston made this game fun by being part of a read-option game? It was weird. Anyway, here’s the Jeudy touchdown catch on the run:
The Browns missed two field goals and turned it over on downs at midfield, so you can say the game was closer than the final score looked on a play-by-play basis. But Pittsburgh slowly leaned on the Browns and watched them fall apart. It was impressive that Russell Wilson played as well as he did with no George Pickens. And he stuck the 27-7 dagger in with this tight-window touchdown to Pat Freiermuth:
Pittsburgh now holds a two-game lead in the AFC North and, thanks to Buffalo’s loss, has a real chance at the No. 2 seed. While I won’t say I think Wilson is making throws like the above regularly, this does not feel like a smoke and mirrors squad. They’ve got a real shot.
Jets 26 at Dolphins 32 (overtime) — The Dolphins staved off de jure elimination by cutting a three-point deficit with 52 seconds to play for the tie on a Jason Sanders 57-yarder, then winning the game on the first possession of overtime. Despite Aaron Rodgers throwing for 300 yards for the first time in almost three full years. Despite outgaining the Dolphins 6.4 yards per play to 5.7. Despite going 2-for-2 on fourth downs.
The Jets had (staring at screen in amazement) one quarterback hit and 10 pressures on Tua Tagovailoa on 47 dropbacks. Zero sacks. Garrett Wilson told reporters that “It starts to feel like we have a losing problem, like a gene or some shit.” The Jets, indeed, have not won since Halloween. Please don’t think about who they played because it hurts.
The Dolphins, now 6-7 and winners of four of five, tied the Colts for eighth place two games back of the AFC’s other wild card contenders. They face a must-win next week against, well, please don’t think about who they’re playing. I’m so paranoid that the team they’re playing, whoever they are, are going to blow this.
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Jaguars 10 at Titans 6 — Will Levis had a pair of goal-to-go tosses in the second quarter that went 1) throwaway and 2) easily contested pass that was closer to a pick than a completion. The Jaguars finished off a terrific Pyrrhic Victory to raise their draft position behind a big Tank Bigsby second half after they made it to halftime with 11 total carries for 13 total yards. The NFL’s in-house highlights of this game refuses to even acknowledge Tennessee’s last drive into the red zone. It skips right past it. So why would I bother discussing it? Let me let Titans correspondent Jeffrey Simmons break down the game for you:
“It’s still frustrating. We talk about it all week that we’ve got to play complementary football. Two turnovers, and you win the turnover margin, there’s no way you shouldn’t win the game,” defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons said. “At the end of the day – I really get tired of saying the same (expletive). This sucks. Apparently, we’re not in position and we don’t do enough to win games.
“All the way around, (expletive), I’m tired of seeing our quarterback on the ground, tired of seeing him squirreling on the damn ground, actually, getting his block knocked off by edge guys. I don’t know, man. It’s frustrating to see that, and especially right before the half, we know we’re throwing the ball, knowing they’re fixing to rush. It’s frustrating, but at the end of the day, I’m tired of saying we’ve got to do better, play better. I don’t know. I don’t have no answers. Complementary football wasn’t there.”
Saints 14 at Giants 11 — A walkoff blocked kick by Bryan Bresee obscured the fact that the Saints played with their food rather than taking the easy win. Let’s take a look at those All-22 Big Guy Hops:
Interim coach Darren Rizzi was so mad at the Saints punter that Alvin Kamara needed to break it up. Glad there’s at least one adult on the Saints. One thing I’ll say about Drew Lock is that at least he manages to create a lot of rushing yards as he holds the ball forever. Meanwhile, Derek Carr fractured his hand in what should likely be a season-ending injury. The Saints are back to being unwatch— the Saints are back to never scor— things probably don’t change much for the Saints, do they?
The most notable thing the Giants did all day was have Malik Nabers tell reporters he didn’t pay for a plane going over Metlife with a banner that called this organization a dumpster fire. Which, you know, means he did. That’s analytics.