Category: NFL Stat Oddity

2025 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 1

~ Scott ~ 1 Comment

Earlier this week, I decided my Super Bowl LX pick is Ravens over Packers, and for about 10 hours on Sunday, that looked great. But the Ravens did what they do best by blowing their 8th multi-score lead in the second half of a game since 2022 – three more than any other team in that time.

That 41-40 finish in Buffalo will be the leading candidate for Game of the Year until something can even think of topping it. The game was also dramatically different from the rest of a Week 1 where no other team even scored 35 points until the Bills and Ravens both did it.

This was shaping up to be the lowest-scoring Week 1 in 15 years, though the 81 points here may have saved it from that claim. Still, we had a ton of low-scoring games, which meant a ton of close games as 12 of the 15 games so far (Vikings-Bears pending) had a comeback opportunity with four delivering comeback wins.

It was a fun start to the season, and we still have to see what J.J. McCarthy and Ben Johnson can bring to the NFC North race.

Ravens at Bills: Game of the Week Year with Familiar Ending

Well, I can no longer say we haven’t had a Josh Allen vs. Lamar Jackson game where both threw the ball really well. But what a massive letdown for the Ravens, who should have been able to get a tiebreaker for home-field advantage by winning this game over a Buffalo team that gets every big game at home this year.

They might get everyone at home in January too after this, and this loss could be the beginning of the end for John Harbaugh in Baltimore.

At some point, you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. That’s the definition of insanity. For whatever reason, Harbaugh’s Ravens blow leads like this more than any team in the NFL, and it wasn’t always like this.

  • The Ravens lost four games with a 15-point lead from 1996-2021, but they have done so four times since 2022 alone (twice to Buffalo).
  • From 2008-17, Harbaugh’s Ravens (Joe Flacco era) were 84-13 (.866) when leading by at least 9 points at any point in the game.
  • From 2018-25, Harbaugh’s Ravens (Lamar Jackson era) are 69-15 (.821) when leading by at least 9 points any point in the game.

That may look like a modest decline, but it’s more pronounced since 2022 when the Ravens are 33-10 (.767) in such games despite being an annual Super Bowl contender each year with great defenses and an MVP-worthy quarterback.

I don’t have the time today to go through all the losses, but I know a common theme has been bad ball security coming back to bite the Ravens. This is what I struggled with when writing the Baltimore preview for 2025. Can we conclude coaching is at fault when players fumble the ball, throw interceptions, muff kicks, drop 2-point conversions, or drop game-sealing interceptions with such frequency in big spots?

No coach, let alone Harbaugh, can grip the ball for these players. There’s only so many ways you can preach ball security in practice, but that doesn’t mean a lick on game day if someone punches the ball out.

It’s not like Harbaugh had Rashod Bateman taking a jet sweep with the Ravens clinging to a one-score lead. That was Derrick Henry, on a monster night for him, who fumbled with 3:10 left, putting the Bills 30 yards away from the end zone and making this comeback doable.

Don’t forget rookie kicker Tyler Loop missed the extra point after Henry’s last touchdown run, which would have made it a 16-point game with 11:42 left. Don’t forget when Awuzie dropped an interception with 10:48 left while the Ravens led 40-25.

Those aren’t on the coach, and things like this happen so frequently to Baltimore in big spots. But Harbaugh is the coach, the common link between these games, so he is going to take the blame.

But you should try to put the blame on spots where coaching has an impact. The Ravens had a poor end of each half, calling a terrible play to Justice Hill out of a timeout in the second quarter that short-circuited a drive where the Ravens kicked a field goal a little sooner than they needed to, leaving some seconds on the play clock.

Buffalo got the ball back and made sure every single one of those last 25 seconds counted. Baltimore played a soft prevent and Allen was able to complete a pass to Kincaid for 22 yards, getting out of bounds with a generous one second left. The Bills kicked a 43-yard field goal, so that was a bad sign of things to come.

Then you go to the last two minutes. Henry fumbled, Buffalo scored, but the Ravens stopped the 2PC to keep a 40-38 lead. The Bills kicked deep, and the Ravens took over with 1:51 left. The Bills still had all three timeouts. In 2025, you have to treat this situation with a 2-point lead as if you were facing a 2-point deficit. That doesn’t mean you’re going to throw risky passes or hurry up to the line to snap it (opponent would use timeouts anyway). But you need to approach it like you need first downs, because the truth is you do.

The Ravens took a conservative approach and it cost them. The run to Zay Flowers on second down was most egregious. Then after a short completion brought up 4th-and-3 at the Baltimore 38, many thought Harbaugh should have gone for it with 1:33 left after Buffalo used its final timeout. It’s 3 yards and you win the game. It would have been the craziest example of this since Bill Belichick did 4th-and-2 at his own 28 in 2009, but is it really that crazy anymore in 2025?

I don’t care if you have the No. 1 defense in the league, which Baltimore clearly isn’t built for right now if this game is any indication. Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, and Ed Reed aren’t in that lineup. But even if you had that defense, you can’t rely on stopping a team from getting into field goal range anymore, and these kickers can make from 60-plus yards now. The game has changed.

Put the ball in Jackson’s hands and let him have a run-pass option. I’d probably give him a 60% chance to convert there, if not higher. Game over if he comes through. But even if he fails, you still have some advantages here with all three timeouts. Maybe you stop Buffalo after 3 snaps and they kick a field goal. Maybe they miss.

Granted, the same thing could have happened. The Bills use several plays to get a couple of first downs and kick a short field goal to win the game 41-40. But at least you would have had the chance on 4th-and-3 to end things on your own terms with the player you believe was robbed of a third MVP.

They didn’t do it, and Harbaugh said he trusted the defense, and he’s going to keep trusting his defense.

If that’s the case, why would we ever trust anything to change with the Ravens? They’re just going to keep making mistakes in big spots. Buffalo has their number. Josh Allen has 5 career wins that are either divisional round playoff games or comebacks of 15+ points, and four of those games are against Baltimore.

Never mind the Kansas City hurdle the Ravens haven’t solved save for one night in 2021 when CEH fumbled in game-winning field goal range. Speaking of fumbles, by recovering Henry’s, the Bills are now +18 in lost fumble recoveries since 2024 and they haven’t lost the turnover battle in 23 games (NFL record). Unreal streak that keeps defying all odds to continue.

Alas, guess what else was different about that 2021 Kansas City win? Harbaugh went for it that night, letting Lamar run on 4th-and-1 at his own 43 with just over a minute left to ice the game.

I guess 1 yard doesn’t scare him as much as 3 yards, but if you’re still coaching scared with Lamar as your quarterback in 2025, maybe someone else needs to be his coach in 2026.

Steelers at Jets: Have a Day, Aaron Rodgers

I thought for sure this would be an ugly game to watch as Steelers openers usually are in the last decade. Then when you consider all the new players, the way Aaron Rodgers and D.K. Metcalf didn’t get any work in the preseason in this new offense, and the revenge game factor for Justin Fields and the Jets, and I was expecting a field goal fest.

Well, it ended up being the shootout of the afternoon as the Steelers’ high-priced defense with several Hall of Fame candidates had no real answers for Fields, who had one of the best games of his career.

After Rodgers took a sack on his opening play, then watched Metcalf drop his first target, it felt like this was going to be a shit-tacular day. But Rodgers impressed me by converting multiple third-and-longs, he still showed great accuracy and arm strength, and he carried this offense on a day where the running game was marginal (54 yards) and the defense was of little help.

Metcalf finished with 83 yards, Jonnu Smith caught a touchdown on a push pass, and it ended up being Jalen Ramsey who delivered the hit stick on Garrett Wilson to secure the win after Chris Boswell drilled a 60-yard field goal that might have been good from 70. Ice cold kick, like a serial killer would make.

My two big stats on Fields have been 0-22 when the opponent scores more than 20 points and 2-18 at 4QC opportunities. Add another loss to each. In fact, I did a live bet on Steelers ML at +370 when they were down 26-17 because I saw them scoring again and keeping that streak alive. Sure enough, the Jets fumbled a kickoff and Rodgers and Boswell delivered.

Fields played very well and was about the last reason the Jets lost this game. But sure enough, when he’s got the ball in the final minute with a chance to go get a field goal to win the game, he can’t beat the pass rush and goes four-and-out. Par for the course for him.

The Jets have now blown 7 fourth-quarter leads going back to last year, the most in the NFL. The offense was far better than expected, but the defense was like nothing ever changed.

And they let Rodgers get the last laugh.

Lions at Packers: On Script

This game was more or less what I expected with Detroit trying to adjust to new coordinators and the Packers feeling hyped about the Micah Parsons trade. Still, I wouldn’t have counted on the Lions to only rush for 46 yards on 22 carries, or for Jared Goff to have one of the least effective 31-for-39 games you’ll ever see.

Jordan Love was strong early to build the lead, and the Packers basically just cruised the rest of the way. Parsons made his impact felt with a sack in the fourth quarter.

It’s a good statement win for the Packers in their quest to reclaim the NFC North. We’ll see where these teams are for the rematch on Thanksgiving (Week 13).

Bengals at Browns: Comical Regression

From my Bengals preview in July:

“However, I’m willing to bet things work out for the Bengals this year, even if it’s by pure, dumb luck. A random bounce going their way with a turnover on defense, a clutch kick going their way for a change, and maybe Burrow will even win a game or two that the Bengals trail in the closing minutes just to spite me.”

It only took one game for several of these things to happen:

  • After the Browns took a 16-14 lead in the third quarter, they were scoreless on their final six drives, never needing more than a field goal on any of them.
  • Joe Flacco’s pass to Battle was deflected off his hands into the Bengals for an interception that put Joe Burrow at the Cleveland 34 where he moved the ball 17 yards for a go-ahead field goal, after getting the offense’s only first down of the second half, and producing a precarious 17-16 lead.
  • At one point in the fourth quarter, Burrow took three consecutive sacks that each lost 6 yards.
  • That helped Cleveland start its ensuing drive at the Cincy 42 with 6:56 left, but kicker Andre Szmyt, in his NFL debut, missed a 36-yard field goal with 2:22 left. He missed the extra point in the third quarter, creating this situation.
  • The Bengals went three-and-out, then Flacco was intercepted again.
  • Flacco got one more chance from his 1-yard line with 19 seconds left, and the clock ran out on the Browns in a tough loss.

The Bengals needed a hotter September start, the defense needed to play better, but let’s hope they didn’t blow all their luck in Week 1 because what the fvck was this performance?

Burrow passed for 113 yards as the offense only finished with 141 yards. Cleveland had 327 yards but failed to score after a good start. The Bengals are the first team since the 2015 Raiders to win a game with under 150 yards of offense and not scoring more than 17 points. The day the pass rush killed Brock Osweiler in Denver.

The Jaguars played some solid defense against Carolina, so I’ll be curious to see how the Bengals fare next week after this absurd game.

49ers at Seahawks: The Catch IV?

Just think of how many great touchdown catches to win playoff games the 49ers have in their history from Dwight Clark to Terrell Owens to Vernon Davis. You’re probably not going to attach “The Catch IV” label to a Week 1 game, but what backup tight end Jake Tonges did in Seattle on Sunday was really cool and memorable.

The 49ers were hurting again. George Kittle, a Seattle serial killer, left the game after a touchdown with a hamstring injury. Jauan Jennings was injured again.  Brandon Aiyuk is still out. The 49ers needed someone to step up as kicker Jake Moody is a bum who missed more kicks in a tight game.

Insert Jake Tonges, who has been in the NFL since 2022 but never registered a receiving target before Sunday. Yet there he was on the game-winning drive, hauling in three passes for 15 yards and snagging away a touchdown with 1:34 left to take a 17-13 lead.

Sam Darnold led some nice comebacks last year for Minnesota, but he was tested here against an elite front. On the day, he managed to throw for 124 of his 150 yards to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the clear WR1 in Seattle with Tyler Lockett (Titans) and D.K. Metcalf (Steelers) gone.

But after finding JSN for 40 yards, Darnold was 9 yards away from the end zone before Nick Bosa stripped him of the ball and the 49ers recovered to seal it for new (but returning) defensive coordinator Robert Saleh. It’s exactly the kind of game the 49ers were losing last year, so it’s a positive sign they got this one in the win column.

Dolphins at Colts: Another Day Closer to Death Indeed

Yeah, Mike McDaniel isn’t seeing October at this rate. Falling behind 30-0 and allowing Daniel Jones to score on all seven of his possessions is nasty work. But it’d be different if the offense was at least competitive. Instead, Tua Tagovailoa had arguably the worst game of his career with three turnovers and a 2.7 QBR. He just had no success against a Colts defense that lacks stars.

Daniel Jones being this year’s Sam Darnold would be something, but until further notice, this probably had a lot to do with how inept the Dolphins are right now. But I did say the Colts had a solid roster, quarterback aside, and rookie tight end Tyler Warren came as advertised with 79 yards on 8 touches.

Buccaneers at Falcons: Is Michael Penix the MUPE (Most Unlucky Player Ever)?

When Bijan Robinson took that short pass 50 yards for a touchdown in the game’s opening minutes, I thought we’d be getting the shootout these teams had in Atlanta last year when Kirk Cousins threw for over 500 yards.

But this was a surprisingly defensive battle. The Atlanta pass rush showed it was improved and got after Baker Mayfield frequently, causing him to barely average over 5.0 yards per attempt. He even ended up leading the game in rushing (39 yards) after Bucky Irving (14 carries for 37 yards) and Robinson (12 for 24 yards) were contained on the ground. I’d say the Bucs missed Liam Coen calling the offense, but it’s also a tough division game.

Special teams were really feast or famine for both teams in this one. But the Falcons were down 17-13 in the fourth quarter when they went on an epic march of 91 yards in 18 plays with plenty of penalties, two replay reversals, and do-overs for an Atlanta offense that struggled to close drives. Eventually, Michal Penix showed great scrambling ability and athleticism to stretch out for a 4-yard touchdown run on 4th-and-goal with 2:17 left to take a 20-17 lead.

But Mayfield finally found a rhythm and threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Emeka Egbuka with 59 seconds left for the rookie’s second score of the game. However, kicker Chase McLaughlin missed the extra point, a huge one that kept it a 23-20 game instead of making the Falcons need a touchdown in a minute. Just huge.

Penix, with his two timeouts, did a really nice job of getting the team in range, but the drive eventually stalled once he was out of timeouts and had to play against the clock in addition to the defense. Still, a 44-yard field goal should be very makeable for any kicker today, and Younghoe Koo has generally been a good kicker.

But to send this game to overtime, Koo was wide right with 0:02 left and that’s how the Bucs held on for this big NFC South win. Circle this one.

I’ve said for years how Tom Brady was never the GOAT but always the LOAT, the Luckiest of All Time. Well, we should try to figure out which quarterback deserves the title of the unluckiest of all time, and since UOAT is an ugly acronym, I was thinking we could use “MUPE” to stand for Most Unlucky Player Ever.

I’d also workshop these ideas:

  • DUP – Doomed Unluckiest Player
  • DUPE – Doomed Unluckiest Player Ever
  • MOAT – Misfortune of All Time

Penix has only started four games in the NFL, but he’s gone 0-3 in the last three starts with these things happening:

  • Led a game-tying touchdown drive vs. Washington before his kicker missed a 56-yard game-winning field goal and his defense allowed a game-winning touchdown drive in overtime where he never touched the ball.
  • Led two game-tying touchdown drives in fourth quarter vs. Carolina before his defense allowed game-winning touchdown in an overtime where he never saw the ball again.
  • Led a go-ahead touchdown drive with 2:17 left before the defense gave up the lead, then his kicker missed a 44-yard field goal that would have forced overtime.

This might be on brand for the Falcons as a franchise historically, but this is still a lot to take for a 3-game sample. We’ll see if Minnesota adds to Penix’s woes in prime time next week.

Texans at Rams: Puka Is Always Open

14-9? Okay, where’s the other half of scoring? That’s it?

It was a game where each team had nine possessions, but the Texans never found the end zone and the Rams had their share of struggles. But credit to the Rams for forcing some huge takeaways, including a late fumble by Houston’s Dare Ogunbowale just as he crossed into the red zone with 1:43 left.

One thing the Rams can always count on is Puka Nacua getting open and making the catch. He finished with 10 catches for 130 yards while Davante Adams had 4 catches for 51 yards in his team debut. It’s easy to see who is still clearly WR1 here.

Giants at Commanders: August Is Not Real

Yeah, I should have seen this one coming before still taking the over. The 2025 Giants had the most prolific passing offense of the 21st century in the preseason when they averaged 345.0 passing yards and 35.7 points per game.

But that’s August, that’s fool’s gold. Sure enough, in Week 1 of a game that counts, the Giants scored 6 points and had 157 net passing yards in Russell Wilson’s debut. Brian Daboll is already getting asked if he’s committing to Wilson as his starter for Week 2 after the Giants punted on six of their nine drives.

Throw in that brutal schedule and we’ll see rookie Jaxson Dart start games down the line. Maybe sooner than later.

But it could have been a little smoother for Washington, which botched the end-of-half drive where a grounding penalty ran out the clock in the red zone. Then they had to punt their first three drives in the second half. But Jayden Daniels still found his way to 21 points, keeping the scoring streak alive in Washington, after Deebo Samuel stamped off a great game with a touchdown run to give him 96 yards from scrimmage on eight touches.

We’ll get a real litmus test for Washington against the Packers this Thursday night. But clearly, the preseason is no litmus test for anything in the NFL. The Giants still stink offensively under Daboll.

Raiders at Patriots: Favored in 11 Games, Eh?

There were some bad performances in Week 1, but I think the Patriots have to rank among the worst because of what it does to expectations this season. This team was somehow favored to win 11 games when the betting lines came out in May. Their preseason win total was still O/U 8.5, but they were favored in 11 individual games, which always felt way too high for this team.

But if you can’t beat the Raiders at home, you might not be even sniffing 8 wins this year. Could anyone actually tell if Mike Vrabel was coaching the team on Sunday? Was that just Jerod Mayo with Druski’s excellent makeup team making him look like Vrabel?

This was a bad performance. The Patriots shut down Ashton Jeanty (19 carries for 38 yards and a short touchdown), but Geno Smith shredded them for 362 yards with many big completions. He converted a 3rd-and-20 late in the game while the Pats still trailed 20-10, which was a dagger.

New England’s offense put the ball in Drake Maye’s hands 54 times, but all he could produce was 13 points on 11 drives. One missed field goal isn’t doing that many favors. The Patriots are going to have to play much better than this or they won’t stray far from the 4-13 record they’ve had the last two years.

Titans at Broncos: Looked Like Two Rookie Debuts at Quarterback

It may not mean a thing, but I think Denver blew a golden opportunity to establish some fear in the AFC West that this could be the team’s year. They were an 8.5-point home favorite against a flawed Titans team starting rookie quarterback Cam Ward in his NFL debut.

But this was a dogfight for 60 minutes in large part because Bo Nix played like he was a rookie in his first game. The Nix who struggled last September showed up again as he threw a couple of picks and couldn’t sustain drives.

Fortunately, the Denver defense was legitimate. The Titans scored 12 points on four field goal drives that covered a grand total of 65 yards. That’s impressive defense. Even when Marvin Mims muffed a punt in the fourth quarter that gave the Titans a great chance to take the lead in a 13-12 game, the Denver defense sacked Ward for 27 yards on consecutive plays to knock them out of range.

That’s when the running backs took over with rookie R.J. Harvey showing off his speed on a 50-yard run, then veteran J.K. Dobbins scored from 19 yards out. I’m surprised Sean Payton later didn’t go for a 54-yard field goal to make it 23-12 and cover the spread. But he watched Nix throw incomplete on 4th-and-8 instead. Weird.

But the defense came up with one more stop, including a strip-sack on fourth down as Ward went down six times in an expectedly rough debut. Still, the scoreboard should have been much worse for the Titans.

Cardinals at Saints: Bland Jerseys Prevail Against Power Rangers

This was a bland game to look at with the Cardinals’ jerseys looking like they were waiting to be filled in with more red. I don’t know how much Kyler Murray was feeling under the weather with a reported illness, but he only threw for 163 yards and took 5 sacks as the Cardinals were never able to blow this one open against what is expected to be one of the worst teams this season.

But behind Spencer Rattler, the Saints found themselves in a 20-13 game late with a reasonable situation to tie or take the late lead on a 2-point conversion. But punching the ball in from the red zone was something Rattler struggled with on the final two drives. He ended up throwing three straight incompletions from the Arizona 18 to end the upset attempt.

The Saints actually finished with more first downs and yards than the Cardinals in a respectable debut for rookie coach Kellen Moore. But they’ll have to clean some things up after 13 penalties for 89 yards.

Panthers at Jaguars: Generational Weather Delay

You had a lot of “generational talent” on display in this game with two No. 1 picks at quarterback and Travis Hunter made his NFL debut. But Bryce Young might be in danger of getting benched after Week 2 for the second year in a row because this was bad just like much of his early career starts.

The 26-10 final doesn’t even do it justice because he tried to get the pass away on a fourth down in the fourth quarter that was returned 75 yards for a pick-six, but he got bailed out by a holding penalty and threw a touchdown on the next play. This could have easily been 30-3 with Jacksonville not even playing close to their best (or so it seems).

But the running game was strong (200 yards) for coach Liam Coen’s debut, and the defense obviously took care of business before and after the hour-long lightning delay. We’ll keep following the Travis Hunter story, but he finished playing 45 snaps (39 offense, 6 defense). That’s not a high number at all, but I guess they’re easing him in slowly.

Still, I would have thought him being a full-time corner and a part-time receiver in certain packages (hurry up, end of halves, third downs) made the most sense. Reportedly this is a fluid situation they’ll adjust for opponent. Guess we’ll just have to see what they’re cooking here for the coach I picked to win the AFC South and Coach of the Year award.

Next week: Really solid TNF with Commanders-Packers, but we’ll see Monday night how exciting Vikings-Falcons might be on SNF. Don’t like the MNF double-header happening (TB-HOU, LV-LAC), but at least it looks like the games aren’t overlapping this time. Sunday afternoon is really all about the Super Bowl rematch as Patrick Mahomes tries to avoid the first 3-game losing streak of his career.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Super Bowl LIX

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

Fool me twice, shame on me.

While I undoubtedly picked the Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl LIX, I said clear as day in my final preview “But I think the No. 1 issue to watch for the Chiefs is the offensive line.”

I also made this foreboding note:

But you never want to feel too confident about a Super Bowl, because I think the last time I did that, Tampa Bay beat the Chiefs 31-9. Sure, there was the LOAT factor, but I misjudged the OL shuffle the Chiefs did that night.

I won’t make that mistake a third time going forward. The Chiefs have lost the benefit of doubt again, because this was a pathetic performance in every way on a night where they could have made important history. They built the three-peat up for 52 weeks and it came crashing down in about 1.5 quarters. You could even just take what I tweeted after the first quarter ended and it summed up the rest of the game too:

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1888745031625851109

Couldn’t block them. Couldn’t get to Jalen Hurts without blitzing, and even then, the game’s MVP did what he wanted with his arm and legs as he improved to 10-0 this season when passing for over 200 yards.

But make no mistakes about it. The Chiefs lost this game in the trenches, and that area is the driving force behind these three Philadelphia Super Bowl teams since 2017. They’ve built great offensive lines, they replaced Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox without losing a step on either side of the ball, and they just outworked and outsmarted the Chiefs for four quarters (or 3.5 before some garbage time) in a way we haven’t seen any team do.

Blowouts in Super Bowls used to be common, then it became an outlier in the 21st century. But it’s not a good look that the Chiefs are on the losing end of two of the four Super Bowl blowouts in the last 24 years as this game was most comparable to the 2013 Broncos against the Seahawks.

Defense wins championships. Football games are decided in the trenches. Overhyped quarterback matchups tend to disappoint.

That all applies again as that’s the way I started my Super Bowl 55 recap after the Chiefs lost 31-9 to the Buccaneers. Same shit, different year. Who knew the 2024 Chiefs would become a carbon copy of the 2020 Chiefs?

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1888823897044210169

That’s eerie. Mahomes was 25-1 in his previous 26 starts going into Super Bowl LV with a chance to repeat. He was 22-1 in his last 23 starts going into Sunday night with a chance to three-peat. The Chiefs were playing offensive linemen out of position in both games and were blown out by 18-to-22 points with Mahomes running for his life.

You can’t say there wasn’t precedent for this happening to Kansas City. But it’s hard to believe the Chiefs played the 2024 Eagles far worse than the Deshaun Watson-led Browns, the Jaguars despite trailing 22-0, and the Bryce Young-led Panthers did. Hell, they played them worse than anybody, because even Cooper Rush was only down 7-6 and 14-7 after the two-minute warning for Dallas in two games.

Also, can we put the Chiefs’ referee conspiracy bullshit to bed? After the first call of the night went Kansas City’s way, almost everything else was pro-Eagles, so enough about the NFL rigging things for one team. The whole thing was an overreaction by the collective fanbases whining about the Chiefs winning close games that a ton of people watched. No one cares about officiating in blowouts or calls that go against the Chiefs when that doesn’t fit the narrative. Let’s hope that bullshit quiets down in 2025, but you know how people are.

Anyways, the nicest thing about a Super Bowl rout is I don’t need to stay up until 8 AM recapping it. There’s only so much you can say about one team kicking another team’s ass on the biggest stage.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

The First Quarter Tea Leaves

We’ll see how long I get through the game in sequential order before I start going off on tangents about how bad the Chiefs played. But you could see in the first quarter that this was shaping up to be a bad night for Kansas City.

Let’s start with the lone thing the Chiefs did well. On the first play from scrimmage, Saquon Barkley had a nice run where he looked hard to tackle, yet it only produced a 4-yard gain. That would be one consistent theme for the night. The Chiefs actually shut Barkley down cold as a runner, holding him to 57 yards on 25 carries (2.3 YPC) with a long of 10 yards.

According to Next Gen Stats, Barkley’s minus-48 rushing yards over expected was the lowest game of his career. Great. You sold out to stop the run, and what did that really get you? It reminds me of the Super Bowl 48 blowout where the Broncos only did one thing very well, and that was run defense. The Broncos held Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch to 39 yards on 15 carries. They just did everything else poorly and lost 43-8.

The Eagles ended up punting on their opening drive after a 4th-and-2 conversion to A.J. Brown for 32 yards was negated by an offensive pass interference penalty for Brown pushing off. I didn’t like the call for OPI, but he clearly did push the defender’s face before making the catch, so something was worth a flag there to negate that pay. But you already opened a can of worms with the officiating conspiracy on the first drive.

However, that would be short-lived. The Chiefs gained 11 yards on their first play with a quick pass to JuJu Smith-Schuster, but the Chiefs wouldn’t gain another first down until the first minute of the third quarter if you can believe that.

On a 2nd-and-9, Mahomes threw what looked to be a fine pass to Travis Kelce for a first-down gain, but the tight end dropped it. That brought up 3rd-and-9, and the pursuit of Mahomes was on in the first big test of the game, and he held the ball for a long time before nearly throwing a pick, a sign of things to come.

The officiating battle evened out quickly when the Eagles’ second drive was extended by a weak call for a late hit by Trent McDuffie on a high throw to Dallas Goedert, who didn’t even need to break 30 yards for the Eagles to have a big night. That could have led to a punt or maybe the Eagles go for it, but they ended up beating the blitz with a 27-yard throw to Jahan Dotson down to the 1 where Hurts carried it in for the Tush Push touchdown.

I think that was the only Tush Push of the night too, and he showed up Josh Allen how to run his play against the Chiefs. With the Eagles up 7-0, the Chiefs went three-and-out with edge pressure by Nolan Smith getting to Mahomes to affect a throw to Hollywood Brown, who came running back to the quarterback and may have even given up the first down had he caught the ball. I thought if Brown sat in the zone he’d be an easy target for a first, but the play didn’t work out and again it was quick edge pressure.

The Super Bowl 48 comp. intensifies.

The Chiefs added to their legacy of being the worst team at lining up properly on crucial downs as Charles Omenihu was lined up offsides (Dee Ford special) on a 3rd-and-4 play where they sacked Hurts out of field goal range. Alas, that play didn’t count, and the drive continued, ending a pretty bad first quarter for the Chiefs.

The Second Quarter Faceplant

The defense had its best moment of the night when Steve Spagnuolo’s blitz on 3rd-and-10 worked as Hurts made a poor decision on a deep ball that was intercepted, making sure the Chiefs wouldn’t go four games without a takeaway for the first time in franchise history. They also wouldn’t join those 2013 Broncos as the only Super Bowl participant to go an entire postseason without a takeaway.

But they had the 2013 Broncos’ back in other ways. The only thing bad about the pick of Hurts is it was caught at the Kansas City 2, so the offense was 98 yards away from the end zone, meaning the Eagles were still more likely to get the game’s next score.

Sure enough, the Chiefs went three-and-out after Mahomes’ pass on 3rd-and-3 was low and away from Kelce on a throw they usually connect with. I don’t call that a drop and that’s more on Mahomes. The Eagles ended up getting good field position (own 43) and did indeed get the game’s next score with a 48-yard field goal by Jake Elliott, who redeemed himself with a fine night.

The Chiefs were down 10-0 for the fifth Super Bowl in a row, but we’ve seen them crawl out of holes like this before. Things were looking poor, but to this point, it was only a few pressures on third downs and Mahomes trying to compensate with a quick throw on the third drive. They can get things moving, right?

Nope. The fourth possession moved this one into blowout territory.

On first down, I’m not sure what the Chiefs were trying to do with a play-action pass, but the Eagles blew it up immediately with Josh Sweat going right past Kelce (whiffed) and getting the first sack of the night. On 2nd-and-14, Mahomes has Xavier Worthy near the right sideline for a gain of 5-6 yards if he wants it, but he’d need to take it immediately. Instead, he tried to climb the pocket and was sacked again by a pair of Eagles despite the Chiefs having 7 blockers against 4 rushers.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1888873409846616449

Then on 3rd-and-16, the gamebreaker, Mahomes threw his worst interception since…ever? At least since the play he accidentally injured Rashee Rice on in Week 4. I don’t know if he just never saw Cooper DeJean jumping the route, but the worst thing about this is it wasn’t even high reward enough. On 3rd-and-16, I’d much rather see him throw a 40-yard bomb and if it gets picked, then that’s the definition of an arm punt – not the fixed CBS version they use for Josh Allen.

https://twitter.com/LordSnowXRP/status/1888834469131608537

All the hype for Saquon Barkley’s birthday and not enough for Cooper DeJean turning 22 and turning in his first NFL interception for a huge 38-yard touchdown and 17-0 lead. It was the first time all year the Chiefs’ starters trailed by more than 11 points. It’s the first time Mahomes trailed by 17 points since a 2022 game against the Raiders that they came back to win 30-29 on a Monday night.

But this was going to be a daunting task. To this point, the Chiefs had 12 passes and 1 run (that gained 2 yards). Somewhere, Donovan McNabb is saying, “See, it’s not easy to win like that, is it?” in reference to Andy Reid’s career-long criticism of not running the ball in big games. Where were the screens and moving pockets to get away from that pressure?

The Chiefs then picked a curious time to call consecutive runs for the first time all night, down 17-0, and all it did was lead to 3rd-and-9. Mahomes tried to make something happen, but after running into the waiting arms of left guard Mike Caliendo (The Weakest Link), he took his third sack in his last four dropbacks.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1888878242330775557

The left side of the line was the problematic side, and at that point, I would have made the switch. I tweeted this during the game at this time too. Put Joe Thuney back at left guard where he belongs, and bring in veteran left tackle D.J. Humphries, who was active, to play tackle like he knows how to do.

This Thuney-Caliendo thing was cute for the last month, but the Eagles are embarrassing you without even sending heat. But the change never came. On defense, the Eagles got lucky when they avoided a 3rd-and-26 situation after a horribly soft penalty call on the Chiefs for a late hit.

https://twitter.com/Rate_the_Refs/status/1888754342053978506

We can say that didn’t end up mattering since the Eagles punted 36 seconds later, but it did likely change field position. The Chiefs took over at their own 6 with 1:49 and two timeouts left. If they could get a field goal, they’d get the ball first in the third quarter, so getting back into a 17-10 game actually wasn’t out of the realm of possibility if they could get something going in a hurry-up situation.

But any shot at a competitive game ended when Josh Sweat pushed Thuney right into Mahomes as he was throwing the ball on the first play of the drive, and Zack Baun made this diving interception to set the Eagles up at the Kansas City 14. Two plays later, A.J. Brown walked into the end zone on a touchdown catch to make it 24-0. Game over.

https://twitter.com/ShaneHaffNFL/status/1888756766151749843
Mahomes’ second interception in the second quarter.

Now we absolutely had the Super Bowl 48 comparison. A quick edge pressure is sometimes all it takes, and this is why I think Sweat (2.5 sacks) had a real argument for Super Bowl MVP as he won’t get credit for a sack there, but that pressure of pushing Thuney into Mahomes created that big interception.

And again, the Chiefs deserve what they got for sticking with their best guard at tackle instead of trying to work in a real tackle with plenty of experience. In a span of 5 dropbacks in the second quarter, Mahomes took three sacks and threw two picks and there’s your ballgame.

Any shot for a score before halftime basically ended with a holding penalty on first down to negate a good scramble by Mahomes, something that he should have been doing earlier too. Actually, I take that back. They had the 3rd-and-11 on this last drive converted, but DeAndre Hopkins decided to do this with his big opportunity in a Super Bowl:

https://twitter.com/NFL_DF/status/1888758885403546070

The Chiefs had 23 yards of offense and 1 first down on 7 drives in the first half. They usually surpass those numbers by the first or second drive of a game.

The Second Half Just Delays the Inevitable

If you thought the Chiefs had any answers for a competitive second half, you’d be wrong. No offensive line changes. Even with trying to chip with a running back, the Chiefs continued giving up sacks to 4-man rushes. Back-to-back sacks led to a 3rd-and-17 for Mahomes where he was only able to scramble for half of it before the Chiefs punted.

Hurts made a few key scrambles, Barkley made his most impactful play on a bobbled 22-yard catch, but the Eagles were held to a field goal. Still, it was 27-0 and that drive consumed 6:42, which is exactly what you want if you’re the Eagles.

Like I said, Andy Reid had no answers before or during the game. After a Jawaan Taylor holding penalty (redundant) wiped out a first-down scramble by Mahomes, you knew the Chiefs were cooked when they’re trying to run for 1 yard with Kareem Hunt on 2nd-and-14. Mahomes ended up leading the team with 25 rushing yards as his backs had 7 carries for 24 yards.

Going for it on 4th-and-4, I thought Mahomes made his 2nd-biggest mistake of the night when he didn’t see Justin Watson open over the  middle and seemed to predetermined a throw to the right to Hopkins, which wasn’t close. The Chefs turned it over on downs, and the Eagles went for the kill shot immediately with a 46-yard touchdown strike to DeVonta Smith, which probably clinched the MVP for Hurts since you can’t give it to the whole defense.

Just like that, Mahomes was down 34-0 for the first time in his career. The team’s previous biggest deficit with him was 27-0 in a 27-3 loss in Tennessee in 2021.

At 34-0, we knew it was all over. Mahomes and Worthy (the only Kansas City player who showed up) connected a couple of times to quickly lead a 90-yard touchdown drive so there wouldn’t be a shutout. But the Eagles had another time-consuming field goal drive (5:43) to make it 37-6, then with just under 10:00 left, Mahomes was sacked for a career-high sixth time and fumbled. The officials didn’t even bother flagging the hit to Mahomes’ face on the play, and no one cared because it was a blowout and the missed call didn’t help the Chiefs.

https://twitter.com/TSN_Sports/status/1888781212736483455

By taking a sixth sack, that ends Mahomes’ streak of 132 games to start his career without taking more than 5 sacks in any game. Only Peyton Manning (293), Dan Marino (260), and Joe Flacco (180) had longer streaks to begin their careers.

The Eagles won the turnover battle 3-1 and finished the postseason +12 in turnover margin, including an absurd +7 in fumbles.

They added a field goal after the Mahomes fumble to get to 40 points, and then Mahomes threw two touchdowns to Hopkins and Worthy down the stretch to get some garbage-time stats for the 40-22 final with Kenny Pickett (oh, for fuck’s sake) kneeling it out for the Philadelphia win.

With the way people are reacting to those late touchdowns, it just proves I was right that Mahomes would get killed for “garbage-time stat padding” in Super Bowl 55 had he thrown a late touchdown to make it 31-16 and get a touchdown on the board instead of throwing his second interception in a 31-9 game that was long decided. Can’t win either way with the cult out there.

The Chiefs gained 11 yards on their first play of the night and didn’t have a longer gain until 2:33 remained in the third quarter with Worthy making a pair of 50-yard catches in this game.

For the reputation Andy Reid has as a great coach following bye weeks, he is 1-2 after a bye against Nick Sirianni, who I struggle to give credit to as it feels like he goes as his coordinators go.

Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio won his first Super Bowl and his first game against Mahomes, who he was 0-8 against. But Fangio had the right idea all night. He didn’t blitz once and still generated 16 pressures and 6 sacks. Reportedly that’s just the fourth time since 2018 that a defense didn’t blitz in a game, and I believe one of those games was Buffalo in 2020 against the Chiefs.

The Eagles played Cover 4 at the third-highest rate (59.5%) of any game since 2018.

https://twitter.com/NextGenStats/status/1888791032118030640

I don’t think that becomes the new “blueprint” to beat the Chiefs, because not everyone can get pressure like this just by rushing four. Compare how the Eagles looked and how the Bills looked two weeks ago, and it’s like night and day.

But Kansas City’s offense has had major struggles in what I would say is four of their five Super Bowls against these NFC teams. They found a way to come back and finish strong in three of those games for rings, but they’re always playing an elite unit, and they just never seem to struggle this much in big games when they play those AFC rivals like the Ravens and Bills.

It’s definitely an interesting dynamic, but it’s why you can’t give this team the benefit of the doubt anymore. Nineteen of the last 21 Super Bowls had been within one score in the fourth quarter, but this is now the second time the Chiefs lost by three scores, and this one wasn’t even that close if we’re just keeping it real.

The Chiefs got their asses kicked, something only a handful of teams can say they’ve done to them over the last seven seasons. Hats off to the Eagles for coming back strong after last year’s collapse and getting their revenge for Super Bowl 57.

I know which game I enjoyed more of the two, but sometimes you need a good ass kicking to get your priorities right. I still have to write two articles tomorrow about where the Chiefs and Eagles go from here, so I’m not going to get into that here.

But it’s pretty clear the Chiefs need to find a real left tackle who can stick around for the next decade with Mahomes. Starting five Super Bowls with five different left tackles is a cool footnote but not ideal at all. It reminds me of Peyton Manning going to four Super Bowls with four different head coaches.

They’re the only two quarterbacks who can do these things, but it’s not likely going to lead to great results when you’re going up against more complete teams.

Conclusion: The GOAT Case Is Closed

Many are using this game to say the GOAT case is closed, and I have to say I agree with that. Obviously, I was never on board with it anyway.

I mean, Andy Reid is simply not the greatest coach of his era, let alone all time. Now his 3-3 Super Bowl record with his team getting dominated twice largely because he didn’t have a real plan for the offensive line is an eyesore.

Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if they started D.J. Humphries or gave Donovan Smith a call in December – the Eagles played that well. But I can’t see someone like Bill Belichick ever watch his team get crushed in all phases like this with so much on the line.

Sure, the 2007 Patriots blew the perfect season to the Giants, but it was a 17-14 game they led late in. This was another rout for Reid, and that’s very disappointing. Almost like the Chiefs don’t do well in the role of a favorite and villain. Just showing up as the defending champs doesn’t mean you’re supposed to win. The Eagles kicked their ass.

But yeah, people are going to use this game against Mahomes, and I get it. He’ll need some big Super Bowl moments in the future to offset the sting of these losses. It would be a really tough look if he never made it back as Brady is the only quarterback to start more than five Super Bowls. But I’d also be utterly shocked if Mahomes doesn’t get back.

And I still believe his best and most complete rosters can be in his future. The success he’s already created after starting for seven seasons is historically unmatched.

How quickly people forget Brady was 3-2 in Super Bowls, and a yard away from going 3-3 in Year 15 before Malcolm Butler happened. I don’t expect Mahomes to do what Brady did in his 40s, and I think this was his only good shot at the three-peat, and it hurts to not make that happen.

But no one knows where things go from here. Mahomes is only going into Year 9 and he’s already 3-2 in Super Bowls. He has time on his side, and the dynasty isn’t over until someone actually dethrones them with their own 3+ ring run. But they are going to have to play better when they get this far again. This was unacceptable, and it’s not about any one person.

The Chiefs will take a breather and start the process all over again for the 2025 season. I’ll do the same, and I have to admit I’ve been looking forward to the offseason and a little more down time as this has been a year from hell. The three-peat was actually a great source of escapism for me and something to follow along with throughout this season.

Going back to last April:

  • I’ve lost one of my oldest friends to suicide after an online mob used cancel culture against him much like one tried to do to me, so that made it hit even harder.
  • My neighbor was murdered (along with her friend) in her house by her own son after weeks of shooting incidents and threats from him that the police knew and did nothing about.
  • I lost my only uncle to cancer in December.
  • Just this week, my mom’s best friend and someone I always imagined would be there for me was found dead in her apartment from a very sudden illness.
  • I don’t expect my two oldest cats to see 2026 (maybe not even the spring) as they’re both struggling with their health.

There’s something else I never got closure from that happened in 2023, but I’ve probably overshared enough as is.

I just feel like I’m stuck in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, and my world keeps getting smaller, darker, and has been surrounded by death for the last year. Throw in Trump and President Elon trying to destroy the country right in front of our eyes on a daily basis, and I don’t see much reason for optimism or hope about the future.

But I got a 15th season in me, and who knows, maybe there’s a Malcolm Butler out there who will save it in the end. I’ll have some offseason projects, basketball coverage, and will be catching up on movies.

This might even be the week for me to watch Emilia Perez, because it’d only be the second-shittiest thing I’ve watched this week after last night’s game.

Until next time, enjoy your loved ones while you still can.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Conference Championship Games

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

I said Sunday was going to be a history-making day in the NFL and it absolutely was. We’re already seeing history in the Super Bowl as Chiefs vs. Eagles will be the first ever AFC vs. NFC matchup to happen in four consecutive seasons (2021-24) thanks to two Super Bowl matchups.

But how about the other history we were tracking?

  • The Chiefs are the first team to reach the Super Bowl after repeating, replacing the 1990 49ers as the closest to ever complete a Super Bowl three-peat.
  • After an early fumble, the Chiefs’ record streak of games without a turnover was snapped at eight.
  • The Chiefs have won 17 straight one-score games now (NFL record).
  • Even though the Bills started the game with two near interceptions and fumbled the ball four times, they finished with no giveaways, meaning they had just 8 turnovers in a 20-game season (NFL record for any season and any 20-game span).
  • The Bills now hold the NFL record for 22 straight games without losing the turnover battle. They were previously tied with the 1950s Rams at 21 games.
  • The Five-Year Rule lives on as Sean McDermott and Josh Allen will not be winning a Super Bowl in Year 7 together, and now Allen will have to try matching Peyton Manning as the only Super Bowl-winning quarterback who needed more than five postseasons to reach a Super Bowl.
  • Jayden Daniels did not become the first rookie quarterback to reach the Super Bowl, but the 2024 Commanders are the only team to ever score at least 18 points in 20 consecutive games in one season.

I would have loved a Daniels vs. Mahomes Super Bowl, but all things considered, Chiefs vs. Eagles is the best possible matchup this season could have produced in Super Bowl LIX. You get the three-peat against the team the title reign started against two years ago in Super Bowl LVII. These have been the best teams in their respective conference over the last three years, and there’s the added twist of Saquon Barkley, who will have his 28th birthday on Super Bowl Sunday.

I’m pleased with the outcome, but I sure as hell wanted a better game early in Philly. At least we got a classic in Kansas City again.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Bills at Chiefs: Four Falls of Buffalo Gets a Sequel

It has to be frustrating to have a great team and still come up short because there’s always someone that is a little better. This happened to the Buffalo Bills when they lost four straight Super Bowls in 1990-93 with the NFC teams easily getting the best of them in the last three games before the salary cap was implemented in 1994.

They did a documentary on those losses called Four Falls of Buffalo for 30 for 30. But we might actually need a sequel as Buffalo’s 0-4 mark in the playoffs against the Kansas City Chiefs is arguably more infuriating since the games were usually closer than those Super Bowl losses. Sure, they haven’t been Super Bowls, but Buffalo damn well may have gone the distance in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024 had it not been for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

How do you top a team that’s won 17 straight one-score games? How do you overcome a quarterback who is 17-3 in the playoffs and always seems to shred your defense no matter how well you do in the regular season? Remember, the Bills have won four years in a row in the regular season against the Chiefs, including multiple games in Arrowhead.

Yet, here we are again with the Bills coming up short in a 32-29 classic that again went down to the wire. I think I’ll jump around some different storylines instead of doing a sequential recap.

Chiefs Save Their Best for the Playoffs Again

The Chiefs hadn’t scored 21 points in any half all season, and yet they did it in this game. The Chiefs hadn’t scored more than 30 points in any of their last 28 games. They hadn’t topped 31 points in their last 36 games, and yet they scored 32 in this game on just nine drives, and they ran out the clock on that final possession.

It just seems like no matter what the Chiefs do against Buffalo in the regular season, they’re able to turn it on in the playoffs against Sean McDermott’s defense.

The versatility of this team is key. In Week 11 in Buffalo, Mahomes never ran the ball once. In this game, his mobility was apparent from the opening drive, and the Chiefs had great success with RPOs – save for one fumbled exchange between Mahomes and Pacheco that broke the team’s record streak without a giveaway – as Mahomes read the field well the whole game with quick decisions.

But his legs were key again with over 40 rushing yards, two touchdowns scored, and he made it look effortless. Kansas City was all in on Travis Kelce against Houston, but he only had 2 catches for 19 yards in this game, shades of what the Bills did to him in Week 11. Instead, Mahomes found JuJu for 60  yards on the offense’s two longest plays that were both quick decisions over the middle. Even Samaje Perine had the game’s fifth-longest gain (17 yards) to put the game away on third-and-long in the 4-minute offense.

The Chiefs just do whatever is necessary to win the style of game they find themselves in. The people who said this team couldn’t win a shootout with Buffalo this year were wrong again. The Chiefs tend to dictate how these games go. Not Buffalo.

Can’t Ever Have Enough Good Corners

Injuries will probably come up as an excuse again for why McDermott’s defense failed and made the Chiefs look greater than usual. They were without safety Taylor Rapp, but I don’t remember when he turned into Ed Reed incarnate.

Then there’s the case of corner Christian Benford. He was carted off with a concussion in last week’s game. You know what the NFL is like in the post-2022 Tua Tagovailoa concussion protocol era. If you see a player that bad off after a concussion on a Sunday, he shouldn’t be playing the next Sunday.

But the Bills somehow got him on the field for this game, and they may have jeopardized his chances to get back on one any time soon. He took a hit to the head (friendly fire) early in the game and had to be carted off again, even strapped down with the seatbelt in the cart. It was a scary sight and something that should get a third-party investigation into the handling of clearing him.

With Benford out early, the Bills were stuck playing Kaiir Elam for more snaps, and the Chiefs attacked him frequently as teams often do when this happens to a secondary.

But I’m not going to feel bad for Buffalo here, because it’s a lesson that you can never have enough good corners. Elam is not a street free agent they signed a week ago for depth either. They used a 2022 first-round pick on this guy just two picks after the Chiefs drafted Trent McDuffie. Advantage Chiefs. Elam hasn’t been good and he didn’t help this game when they needed him to come up big.

Xavier Worthy: My Bad

Speaking of Kansas City draft wins over Buffalo, I have to eat some crow on Xavier Worthy. While I still believe Ladd McConkey would have been more unstoppable in this offense, Worthy has developed into a solid player who is more than just a gimmicky speed and gadget player. He attacks the ball down the field now, and he showed his skills on a 26-yard grab in the second quarter to prevent an interception and he also scored a touchdown on a very fine night where the veterans (Kelce, Hopkins, Hollywood) didn’t do much.

Of course, people called the 26-yard catch a controversial call for the Chiefs. First, there was a holding penalty on the Bills, so it would have been a first down anyway. Second, I think they got the call right with the rule change years ago that the ball is allowed to touch the ground as long as you maintain control. I don’t see where Worthy ever lost control of it as he gained possession from the DB, and in that situation, the offense gets the catch. Legit call.

But let’s say they called it incomplete. Then the Chiefs still have a first down at the Buffalo 24 with under 3:00 left in the half. Who’s to say they still don’t score a touchdown on that drive with the way they were going up and down the field all night? They may have even scored it with less than 1:55 left like they did, and that would leave less time for the touchdown that the Bills got to make it 21-16 going into halftime.

That sequence was also amusing as the Bills took the extra point off the board to go for a 2-point conversion from the 1-yard line. I don’t mind the decision to go after the penalty. But the Chiefs plugged the gap on the left where they knew Allen was going to run, and they stopped the play.

Erratic Allen Not So Automatic on the Sneak

I don’t think the game does much of anything to change the legacy for Josh Allen. He came in winless against the Chiefs in the playoffs with some close calls, and he went out winless with another close call in a game he briefly had a fourth-quarter lead in.

There were enough good plays to say he battled and gave them a chance, and he didn’t make a huge mistake with the game on the line. But it was far from his best game against the Chiefs, and he started it poorly with two throws that could have been intercepted on the opening drive alone.

Allen also fumbled 3 times on the night, but somehow the Bills recovered all 5 fumbles in this game (4 of their own, one unforced error by the Chiefs on the RPO). They’ll finish the season +17 in fumbles, an absurd number that has to regress next year.

But I did get the sense early that Allen was nervous in the biggest game of his career. There was a three-and-out in the second quarter before the big Worthy catch where Allen threw a poor 2nd-and-10 pass to Curis Samuel, which was dropped as he had to reach down to get it. He should have caught it, but if Allen threw it in stride, that’s a huge gain. Big miss there.

But Allen’s bread and butter on the short-yardage run was gone in this game. In fact, he was stuffed 3 times on crucial sneak plays, the most in any game since 2016.

Remember, the Ravens stuffed him last week on a big third down when he considered pitching the ball back on the play. Buffalo fans assured me Allen was automatic in these spots, but this postseason paints a different story. Incredible job by the Chiefs on defense on those plays.

The big one came on 4th-and-1 at the Kansas City 41 with the Bills up 22-21 with 13:01 left to play. Allen tried to go left on the Tush Push, but the Chiefs stood him up and it was ruled short on the field. The ruling on the field stood after video review with a turnover on downs.

I think what happened here is the Chiefs were saved by Chris Jones obstructing the view of the ball by standing right down the camera line from the key angle. You might be able to reasonably conclude that Allen probably had the ball to the 40, but there’s no visual evidence that he had the ball break that line. You see Allen but not the ball on the most shared shot of this.

Tough break for the Bills, but they were terrible on those short-yardage runs all night. I’m also not sure if James Cook was injured or what, but he deserved more than 13 carries after looking good in the second half.

The Chiefs Are Closers

After taking over on the 4th-and-1 stop, the Chiefs were surgical on another touchdown drive to regain a 29-22 lead after converting their first 2-point conversion of the season if I heard correctly.

But the Chiefs had some defensive lapses in this one despite playing well at times. They let Mack Hollins beat them deep a few times, and that led to another touchdown on a 4th-down play where Samuel was left wide open in the end zone to tie the game at 29.

The Chiefs were marching right into a first-and-goal, and just when you thought we’d see a flurry of a finish like the 13 Second Game, the Bills sacked Mahomes immediately on a first-and-goal, causing a failure on that revamped left side of the line.

Was that finally going to catch up to the Chiefs? Then with Harrison Butker coming out for a 35-yard field goal with 3:37 left, I jokingly predicted the other day he’d miss a 35-yard field goal. That was in my head for sure at the time as I could see him missing and the Bills making on the other end with 0:00 left to win 32-29.

But Butker was perfect on the kick, right down the middle. While this would have been a great time for the Chiefs to force the first non-QB fumble of the season for Buffalo (or any turnover), they instead cranked up the heat on 4th-and-5. Spagnuolo brought a blitz and Allen did his best to throw up a pass for Dalton Kincaid. He absolutely had a shot at a diving catch that could have lived in playoff lore, but instead he couldn’t make this play:

There was still 1:54 left, and Pacheco ran out of bounds to stop the clock on a nice 2nd-down pass from the Chiefs for a first down. But it got to 3rd-and-9 at the Buffalo 35, which is no man’s land in this situation with 1:35 left. Do you risk an incompletion to stop the clock? Risk a sack to lose the FG opportunity? Do you even want to kick the FG and go up 6 with that much time left?

Tough call, but the Chiefs made the right call, and Mahomes found Samaje Perine for a 17-yard gain out in the flat to send the Chiefs right back to the Super Bowl for an unprecedented three-peat opportunity.

That whole drive I was waiting for a running back to fumble to recreate the 1990 Roger Craig fumble moment in San Francisco that led to New York’s upset win. With the way Buffalo’s fumble luck was in 2024, you never know. But the Chiefs didn’t stumble, and they again put a team away in a one-score game for the 17th time in a row.

Unbelievable stuff from a historic team that is one win away from the ultimate history. Season on the line, there’s no quarterback you want more than Mahomes.

Final Thoughts

We’ve reached the end of our show where I guess I’m supposed to jump into my Bill Maher-style monologue (less smarmy about it) where I pat myself on the back for being right about Buffalo still not having what it takes to get over the Kansas City hump in the AFC.

And you’re probably wondering how I could say that when I picked the Bills to win 27-24 the night before. Yeah, but if you look closely, I also spelled out “THREEPEAT” with the first letter of each paragraph.

I did a reverse jinx on Buffalo, something I’ve been doing for 18 years (ever since it worked for the 2006 AFC Championship Game) because I grew tired of picking the team I wanted to win and seeing them lose the game. So, I get to either enjoy a correct prediction or enjoy the actual outcome to games like this.

I also said this was a coin-flip game, and it basically was – tied  at 29 with 6:15 left. As usual, the Chiefs closed, and the Bills didn’t make the plays to win the game or force overtime.

Buffalo had a very good year, but I trust my eyes, and I trust my numbers. Earlier this week, I introduced some numbers on my Fraud Alert metric, which I’ll be sharing more of before the Super Bowl. It had the Bills as by far the No. 1 misleading team this year based on turnover margin, field position, and strength of schedule. The Chiefs were only 17th, producing one of the biggest mismatches in my Fraud Alert Rating (FAR) system since 2002.

Well, I can tell you now that the teams with the higher FAR in the 11 biggest mismatches since 2002 are now 2-9 in the playoff meetings. Even better, I can tell you that in the 21 playoff games since 2002 with a spread of 0-to-2 points, the team with the higher FAR is now 6-15 (.286). That’s right. The team with the higher fraud alert won just 28.6% of the playoff games with the tiniest spreads, and you better believe this applies to Super Bowl LIX too.

When Bills fans tried to pump up Josh Allen by telling me that Mack Hollins is his WR1 (he wasn’t but he was better than Amari Cooper and Keon Coleman on Sunday)), I laughed it off, thinking maybe that’s a bad thing if you’re relying on Mack Hollins to be a big producer in your offense. Maybe it’s a bad thing that Dalton Kincaid’s numbers regressed so badly in his second year, or that Cooper hasn’t really done much since the trade.

Maybe “beating both No. 1 seeds” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’re only 2-3 against playoff teams in the regular season.

Maybe “scoring 30 in regulation” as they liked to bring up as a shot at the Chiefs doesn’t mean much if you can’t keep most good teams under 30 points. Maybe it doesn’t mean much if you’re scoring 30+ against the likes of the Titans, Jaguars, Jets, Colts, and Dolphins.

Maybe it’s not a good thing if your team doesn’t have a single fourth-quarter comeback win this season, nor is it a bad thing that the Chiefs now have six of them as Mahomes tied the single-season record with his eighth game-winning drive Sunday. Still think they’re the 2022 Vikings?

Your quarterback didn’t win MVP, your team didn’t get the top seed, and you didn’t beat the Chiefs again in the playoffs. Close but no cigar. Only Brady and Burrow have smoked that one for getting past the Chiefs in the playoffs.

I’ve said it would be statistically improbable for the likes of Allen and Lamar to never at least reach a Super Bowl. I stand by that. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Allen and McDermott blew their best shot in 2021 because of 13 Seconds, and that should have been their Super Bowl year.

Instead, it’s set the AFC on this butterfly effect where we pretend the Bengals are the team to beat only to see them be irrelevant unless Lamar gets hurt, the Ravens always choke in the playoffs, and the Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill, built up the defense, and keep winning one-score playoff games because Mahomes gets big moments out of JuJu, MVS, and some rookies.

Allen had his moment in 13 Seconds by finding Gabe Davis again, but the Bills still found a way to lose, and they frankly haven’t topped that moment in the playoffs ever since.

But that’s why Mahomes and the Chiefs are in their own tier, and the Bills are just the best-looking, ringless bridesmaid in the AFC.

Commanders at Eagles: Double Nickel Boys Run Wild on Washington

I’ll start by saying it’s almost impossible to beat these Eagles if the good version of Jalen Hurts shows up. I saw the knee bend against the Rams last week, and I thought that’d actually be problematic this week. Silly me. Hurts looked mobile and was as good as he’s been in any game this season.

Then when you throw in his receivers getting early production, Saquon Barkley hitting another 60-yard homerun on the first snap, and the Commanders fumbling it three times again just like they did in Week 16 to screw over their rookie quarterback, you end up with a 55-23 smackdown, the most points ever scored in a Conference Championship Game by one team.

I thought Jayden Daniels could be the one rookie who would get to a Super Bowl by producing a different outcome. In a way, he did stand out as he played better than any other rookie has in a conference championship game where rookies are now 0-6 since 1970. I hope he has more deep playoff runs in his future, because it would be insane if the closest he ever came was this year in a game where his defense allowed 7 rushing touchdowns and his skill guys put the ball on the ground three times early.

Daniels didn’t turn it over until he was down 25 points with 5:00 left. But the other Washington turnovers were very costly. Dyami Brown coughed up a fumble trying to get centimeters more YAC, leading to a short field and 14-3 lead for the Eagles. The Commanders could have scored before halftime to make it 20-20 or at least 20-15, but a fumbled kickoff led to another touchdown and 27-15 deficit at the half.

The real killer was the final minute of the third quarter. Washington was down 34-23 and driving at midfield with a first down. Austin Ekeler became the third skill player to put the ball on the ground for Washington as the Eagles are really good at forcing those fumbles. That led to the absurd sequence to start the fourth quarter of six straight attempts to do the Tush Push from the 1-yard line finally resulted in a touchdown run for Hurts, who scored three times just like Barkley on the day.

But it was the announcement that the refs could award a touchdown to Philadelphia if the Commanders kept jumping over the line before the snap in their effort to go all Troy Polamalu and stop the Tush Push.

I mean, that’s probably not a bad rule to have in case of emergency, but the whole thing looked ridiculous and I have really come to despite the Tush Push. Just get rid of it already and go back to normal quarterback sneaks. Washington should have called the refs’ bluff too —  go figure, it was Ed Hochuli’s son – and made them award the Eagles a touchdown. I’d love to see that in the stat sheet and how that dynamic works.

But yeah, it was a rough outing for the Commanders in a 55-23 loss. I think the only way they win the game is if they were +4 in turnovers (or just +3 in fumbles lost). Even without the turnovers, they still never showed a real answer to stopping Philadelphia’s offense. Even Will Shipley came in for Saquon and ripped off a 57-yard run before scoring a touchdown.

The Eagles had 11 drives, scored 8 touchdowns, missed one early field goal, and punted twice in the third quarter. Yeah, it wasn’t just about the turnovers even if that definitely made things worse for Washington’s chances.

So, that one was a dud but still an incredible turnaround season for the Commanders. I’m sure Daniels will be a trendy MVP pick for 2025, and I may even drink some of the Kool-Aid if they make some free-agent splash signings to give him stronger weapons and build up that defense.

But the Eagles are still the class of the NFC East, and they really have been the best NFC team over the last three years despite having a caricature of a head coach. We’ll see if they can solve the Chiefs in two weeks.

Next two weeks: Two weeks of hyping up the final game of the season. I’ll have plenty of Super Bowl articles next week. This week, I’m continuing with Part 5 of my LOAT series, looking at the playoff luck for Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes. I’m also going to do a bigger presentation on my Fraud Alert Rating metric. The Chiefs just have to win one more game for that to look as solid as possible.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Divisional Round

~ Scott ~ 1 Comment

After a lackluster wild card round, the NFL’s divisional round delivered with the Chiefs inching closer to the three-peat, the Commanders pulling off an all-time upset in Detroit, a quality snow game in Philadelphia, and the most Baltimore ending possible in Buffalo.

I couldn’t personally get a parlay to hit, but at least my tight ends parlay (+539) on 365Scores was correct, and I had some other good picks like Travis Kelce having another 70-yard game in the postseason, Amon-Ra St. Brown going over 90 yards, and Terry McLaurin scoring a touchdown.

At least I was right that Ravens-Bills would not be a great quarterback duel, and it would come down to those things like fumble recoveries and avoiding big drops, which the Ravens of course failed to do again.

I’ll try to limit officiating talk here because I’d prefer to do something more in depth on that later this week. Plus, it’s just really annoying to harp on that for every game when we know the officiating is bad. None of these games were directly decided by the refs.

Save that kind of referee talk for Championship Sunday from the 2018 season (IYKYK)

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Ravens at Bills: Baltimore Blunders Strike Again

I’ll be curious to watch the season finale of Hard Knocks this week and see how John Harbaugh reacts to the latest playoff loss for his Ravens. This one was different, and yet at the same time, it was very much on brand for Baltimore throughout his tenure. I’m not sure any other recent franchise has a long list of blunders like this in close playoff losses:

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1881204200320716801

Some of those games weren’t that close (2009 Colts, 2019 Titans), but many were, and many of these plays can probably be visualized in your head by their brief mention if you’ve followed the NFL closely for years.

I’ve pounded the table for the “Same Old Steelers, let’s fire Mike Tomlin” crusade for years now in Pittsburgh, which also loses playoff games in excruciatingly similar ways year after year. But while Harbaugh can say the same of his team, I simply don’t see it the same way that he’s got to go if they’re ever going to change.

At some point, the play is out of the coach’s hands, and players have to make the plays. Catch the ball, protect the ball, make the kick. Hold onto the fucking ball, as Lamar Jackson pointed out after the game, probably the most frustrating loss of his career after he had his best season in 2024.

https://twitter.com/big_business_/status/1881180079071601140

https://twitter.com/big_business_/status/1881180079071601140

I can already see the legacy talks for Lamar won’t be kind after this game even though it was clearly his best performance in a playoff loss. If he does indeed have a third MVP win this year, good luck ever getting nominated for a fourth. People are not going to take his regular seasons seriously until he puts together a great playoff run.

Maybe that’s fair too. But what’s not fair is to lump this 27-25 loss in Buffalo in with the past Baltimore playoff losses for Lamar.

Remember that stat about how he had his game with the fewest points that season in the playoffs all four times he’s gone? He broke that streak by putting up 25 in this game (lowest game was 16 points in Pittsburgh). Unfortunately, the Ravens were 13-0 when they scored 28+ this year and 0-6 when they didn’t. They needed 28+ again to win this game too and came up a little short.

But this game was still different. Usually, Jackson loses a low-scoring game and wire-to-wire in the playoffs. This time, he led an opening touchdown drive, making some big plays on third downs and making it look easy. But Buffalo was able to answer with its own opening drive touchdown to tie it at 7.

Jackson’s next pass was intercepted on either a poor read or a ball that just got away from him. Uh-oh, here comes the narrative. He can’t handle the playoffs and this was the coldest game of his career. But the Bills punted from there, so it didn’t really harm things.

The next drive was the significant one with the Ravens driving into Buffalo territory in a 7-7 game. It always hurts when you compound mistakes in the playoffs, and the Ravens did that here. Mark Andrews dropped a pass that should have set up a 2nd-and-short, then a bad snap was high to Jackson, he tried to make too much happen on the play instead of settling for a sack and third-and-long, and he fumbled it. The Bills returned it to the Baltimore 24 and set themselves up for another one of those short touchdown drives with Josh Allen scoring from 1 yard out to go up 14-7.

Just like that, Lamar had two quick turnovers, something he hadn’t done all regular season, and the playoff choke narrative was writing itself nicely. But there was a drop and bad snap that directly preceded that mistake. He wasn’t alone there.

We used to show grace to people who made up for their mistakes, but that seems to have gone out the window in today’s society. If you look at how Jackson finished the game from there, he played great and did his job. Throw in an opening-drive touchdown, and it’s really those two plays with the turnovers that were his biggest flaws on the night.

In the past, Lamar would have just crumbled from there. This time, he made plays and strung together drives, but they still didn’t all result in touchdowns because the running game had some letdowns. I’m not sure why they didn’t pound Henry more when they had 1st-and-goal at the 2. They were stuffed, then tried throwing twice before settling for a field goal and 14-10 deficit.

Buffalo used most of the final 3:43 in the half to score a touchdown, but the drive was not without controversy. On a 3rd-and-5, Allen threw incomplete for rookie Keon Coleman, who drew a defensive pass interference flag against former Bill Tre’Davious White. The call was bullshit. That’s either OPI or preferably no flag at all since they were both engaged with each other. Just a terrible call that led to the Bills scoring another 4-yard touchdown run by Allen to take a 21-10 lead into the half.

https://twitter.com/GeneSteratore/status/1881143728703979919

https://twitter.com/GeneSteratore/status/1881143728703979919

Again, this is the spot where you expect Lamar to crumble, but it did not happen this time. It helped that the Bills punted twice in the third quarter after a couple of ineffective drives. Frankly, I have no idea what the plan was for Buffalo’s passing game. They ran a chickenshit, dink-and-dunk style passing game where Allen got the ball out the fastest he has all season, but it only kind of worked because the running game was solid with America getting a chance to see how impressive this line and trio of backs has been.

But it took Allen a long time to even break 100 passing yards, and he only finished the game with 127 passing yards and 20 rushing yards on a quiet night.

Once Henry broke through with a touchdown run on his best drive of the night by far (he finished with 84 rushing yards), the Ravens went for two. I always say they’re terrible at these, and they didn’t prove me wrong as they love throwing on them. Jackson’s pass was incomplete and the Ravens still trailed 21-19. I didn’t think it was too early to go for it there.

The Bills settled for a 51-yard field goal to make it 24-19. This was looking a lot like their playoff game in this round last year against the Chiefs with Allen mixing a good running game and the dink and dunk to have a fourth-quarter lead at home. But Jackson had his shot to go up 27-24, the same score the Chiefs won that game by last year.

It was going well until Andrews decided to try getting YAC at midfield, only for him to have the ball punched out on a huge fumble. Just the second lost fumble of his career too. He usually doesn’t try to move like that in the open field, and it was a big turning point.

The Bills turned that into points but not before a huge decision on 4th-and-2 at the Baltimore 2 with 3:31 left:

  • Do you try to go for the touchdown and 31-19 lead, putting it basically out of reach with a 2-touchdown lead and the Ravens down to one timeout?
  • Do you go for the short field goal and take a 27-19 lead, feeling comfortable that the Ravens will blow another 2PC?
  • Do you risk not getting it, and leaving yourself open to the Ravens driving for the go-ahead touchdown?

In the end, I think Sean McDermott made the right call of a field goal just because of how sure I am about Baltimore screwing up those 2PC plays. With Henry on the sideline, without Zay Flowers all game, Jackson faced his legacy drive.

I thought he did a good job with it, and maybe scoring so quickly (1:33 left) was an issue as Buffalo would have plenty of time to go get the winning score. But you’re going to take the score when it’s open, and Jackson found Isaiah Likely for the 24-yard touchdown.

But what do they do on the 2-point conversion? They’re now 2-for-9 on these in the fourth quarter when trailing with Lamar at quarterback. I even have a tweet from 2021 talking about how they go to Mark Andrews way too much in these situations and don’t connect.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1473398508220825600

Sure enough, it happened again. I even screamed “Andrews!” at the TV as I saw he was open on the right side, and the pass was thrown to him again. I thought the pass was good enough and should have been caught by a Pro Bowler, but he just flat out dropped it, solidifying his spot as the biggest choker at his position as he still hasn’t scored a touchdown in the postseason. Couldn’t even catch this game-tying play right in his hands.

https://twitter.com/SharpFootball/status/1881168053033160798

That was it. The Bills recovered the onside kick and ran out the clock for a 27-25 win. The Ravens couldn’t overcome their minus-3 turnover margin on the road even though the tie was right there. Like Buffalo last year against Kansas City, it may have just ended in a 30-27 loss to a last second field goal, but you never know.

And you’ll never know when you make mistakes like that drop. Andrews should definitely get the brunt of the blame with his late-game mistakes. There’s just no margin for error left when you do that so late in the game to kill multiple drives.

The Bills had a 34-yard pass play on their third snap from scrimmage, then never had a play gain more than 17 yards the rest of the night. They sat back and pounced on Baltimore’s mistakes, getting the fortunate fumble and great field position from Lamar’s fumble on a bad snap, getting the bogus DPI call before halftime for an additional 4 points, and adding the insurance field goal after Andrews’ fumble that they forced with the punch-out. That was enough for the win this time.

The Ravens were kind of built to self-destruct at some point, but it’s still stunning to see that Jackson and Andrews would make these mistakes again in the biggest game of the year. It was Jackson early and Andrews late.

But the other stat that caught my attention, and maybe this is the way to bring it full circle and lay some responsibility on Harbaugh, is the lack of takeaways by the Ravens’ defense in the postseason.

Remember last year when Baltimore had the defensive triple crown? No. 1 in points allowed, sacks, and takeaways? Well, that great defense didn’t force a single takeaway in either playoff game against the Texans or Chiefs. That doesn’t mean they didn’t play well enough to win both games, but they didn’t get the takeaways that make it easier to do so like Buffalo’s been getting all year. The Bills are somehow now +16 in fumble recoveries and +27 in turnover margin this year – absurd numbers. They just set the modern NFL record with 21 straight games without losing the turnover battle.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1881273588407550258

Meanwhile, the Ravens have tied the NFL record by going four straight playoff games without a takeaway. Their last came in the 2022 AFC wild card in Cincinnati, the game started by Tyler Huntley for an injured Lamar, who hasn’t seen a takeaway in a playoff game since 2020 in Tennessee. That’s five straight playoff starts for Lamar where his defense didn’t get a turnover, which would be the longest streak in NFL history.

It’s still the ultimate team game. Baltimore’s lack of playoff success in the Jackson era has never been about only him, but he has been the central figure as the quarterback who has played well below his standards in those games.

But this game was something different. He had his mistakes, but so do many quarterbacks in big playoff games, including everyone from Joe Montana to Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes. I don’t remember when perfection was ever the requirement to win these games.

But when your star tight end turns into whatever you want to call Andrews’ performance, and your defense doesn’t get any takeaways or create a real swing of momentum, then you’re left with coming up short like this.

I can understand why Jackson sounded extra frustrated in the post-game, and even if he was truly talking about his own turnovers, I can forgive him if he had Andrews first in mind after everything that happened this season from Likely’s toe on opening night to Kyle Hamilton’s dropped interception in Cleveland to Justin Tucker’s awful game against the Eagles to now this loss in Buffalo.

At least we know damn well that the Ravens would have choked on the 2PC in Kansas City if they went for it opening night. I said it then. But if I knew in 2021 that they were throwing too many passes in general and way too many to Andrews in these clutch 2PC moments, why don’t they know that in 2025?

Jackson is making progress in the playoffs with three pretty solid games in his last four tries. His QBR (85.8) was higher in this game than Allen’s (71.1), and yes, he even beat him in the precious EPA stat.

But is Andrews making progress in big games? No. Is the defense coming up with the kind of clutch takeaways that drove teams like the Commanders, Eagles, and Bills to wins this weekend? Nope.

At least the Ravens didn’t panic after going down 21-10 this time, but their progress in the playoffs is slow moving. Bad enough to change coaches? I’m not sure. I just know someone is always screwing up in Baltimore save for 2012, and even that year was saved by Rahim Moore taking the worst angle possible on the touchdown to Jacoby Jones (RIP) in Denver.

Had that gone like every other Baltimore postseason, I don’t think I’d be talking about Harbaugh coaching this team right now. He’d have been let go many years ago.

But the Ravens have just completed one of the most dominant 7-year runs (2018-24) in NFL history without a single Super Bowl appearance to show for it. Even the 1979 Rams got there with Vince Ferragamo at quarterback. The closest thing to Baltimore might be Buffalo if that team loses next week too. Otherwise, it’s probably the 1999-2005 Colts as the closest comparison.

That team won the Super Bowl in 2006 after people wrote them off when they followed a 9-0 start with a 3-4 finish. They still had their albatross receiver (Marvin Harrison) weighing the offense down in the postseason, but they still produced enough points and the defense finally started producing turnovers.

Maybe Baltimore can do that in 2025, but it’s tough to keep coming back after finishing short like this. The competition isn’t going away either. It’s the same demons to slay, but Baltimore might have to look in house and fix some of their own demons first. Whether that means moving forward with Likely as TE1, a different coach, or trying to become more of a pass-first offense, they need to shake things up.

And no matter what you do, hold onto the fucking ball.

Commanders at Lions: Shock and Awe

I believed in Jayden Daniels enough to cover the spread and give Detroit a battle, but I sure as hell didn’t expect a 45-31 win to end Detroit’s dream season. He had that kind of “road virtuoso” performance that is so rare in the playoffs for a considerable underdog, and he did it as a rookie – granted, the best rookie QB to ever do it.

But for as shocking as the game was, it kind of made sense too. I just wrote the other day that Detroit’s fatal flaws are Jared Goff going goofy with turnovers and the defense having too many injuries to survive a playoff run against these non-Sam Darnold-led offenses.

Sure enough, both things did them in. Goff turned it over three times in the first half, then one more for good measure at the end with the game basically out of reach. The Lions also did themselves no favors when they threw a pick on a trick play in a 38-28 game in the fourth quarter with Jameson Williams making a bonehead throw. Maybe burn that one, Ben Johnson.

But I think the clear turning point was in the second quarter. You have this fun offensive game going on. Terry McLaurin just took a pass 58 yards to the end zone for a 17-14 lead. You think Detroit is going to answer, then bang, Goff throws a bad pick-six, he gets absolutely destroyed by a cheap shot to the face on the return. That should have been a penalty to negate the touchdown and make Washington earn it on offense. Instead, they get nothing in their favor and Goff leaves the game momentarily.

That’s what started the Lions chasing a 10-point deficit the rest of the night. You like to think you can get one score before halftime, but Goff threw another pick. Then when you think you have some answers in the fourth quarter, you leave 12 men on the field defensively on a 4th-and-2, and the Commanders convert one that way in embarrassing fashion for Dan Campbell’s staff.

Then the Williams pick disaster happened, and just like that, it’s 45-28 with half a quarter to go and your season is essentially over. You can’t make up that turnover deficit against such a hot offense that played mistake free football. Daniels diagnosed the blitz so well, he didn’t take any sacks, no turnovers, and they were 3-of-4 on fourth down (not including the 12 men penalty).

It’s crazy to think the Lions were closer to winning last year’s Super Bowl than this one. I made sure not to blame Goff or Campbell’s decision making for last year’s blown lead in San Francisco in the title game. That was more about the Josh Reynold drops, the Gibbs fumble, and the deflected pass to Aiyuk that could have been picked. But this time around? Yeah, Goff shit the bed and that defense just didn’t have any answers for Daniels and company outside of a poorly run sneak by Marcus Mariota on the opening drive.

Just spectacular stuff from Washington, the only road team to win this postseason. They have one more tough task left, but why shouldn’t the best rookie quarterback ever become the first to start a Super Bowl? That’d be a hell of a story.

It also puts to shame these teams who talk about multi-year rebuilding plans and act like you need so many years to get competitive. This team won 4 games last year, hired a retread in Dan Quinn, a retread OC in Kliff Kingsbury, signed cast-off veterans like Zach Ertz and Austin Ekeler, and it’s all working because they found the right quarterback in Daniels. How can you not be impressed?

As for Detroit, it looks quite possible 2023 was their window to get it done. Beat the 49ers, and they would have had their shot at upsetting the Chiefs without great weapons on KC’s side that year and a head-to-head win to start that season in Arrowhead. The Lions aren’t going to fall off in 2025 most likely, but you wonder if they lose Johnson, what happens to the offensive creativity, and is Goff someone you can trust to go the distance in the playoffs? The defense should be healthier, but I question even if they had Aidan Hutchinson if they still have enough stars to be a championship unit on that side of the ball.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1880907234705567754

But I genuinely feel bad for Detroit fans because I thought this was going to be their year. Their aggressive calls on fourth down could have been quite the show against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl if the No. 1 seeds met. Now, maybe Washington can be that team with a true gamer and demon at quarterback in Daniels.

Rams at Eagles: Saquon the Snow Angel

My expectations for this game were low since I didn’t think the Rams had the offense to keep up if the Eagles were going to throw it more, and I expected another big game from Saquon Barkley.

But it turned out to be a good game in the snow thanks to the Rams showing Monday night wasn’t a fluke as they sacked Jalen Hurts seven times, including a couple of drives where they knocked him out of field goal range. They also recorded a safety on a sack where Hurts seemed to have no interest in trying to avoid it just minutes after a bad looking play on his knee on another sack. Maybe he needed some more time but his movement wasn’t great the rest of the game.

That kept the Rams alive, and so did a couple of missed extra points from Jake Elliott. But it’s really a miracle the Rams were 13 yards away from winning this game in the closing seconds when you consider their two lost fumbles in the second half, then giving up three touchdown runs of 40-plus yards in the game. Saquon again gashed them twice for 60+ yard scores, including what should have been the clincher from 78 yards out with 4:36 left.

But that missed extra point made it interesting at 28-15. Matthew Stafford finally started hitting some passes in succession in the no huddle, the Rams managed the clock well to get the first touchdown, and the defense stood tall on the three-and-out after sacking Hurts on an ill-advised second-down pass call.

Stafford had 2:23 left to drive 82 yards for the win, which would have been such a shocker after Barkley’s long run. The drive was going pretty well, but then the Rams had a huge false start, then picked the worst time to let Jalen Carter to crash in for a sack that brought up 4th-and-11. Stafford’s pass really wasn’t even close to Puka Nacua on the sideline and the game was over.

The Eagles had 184 rushing yards on their three big touchdown runs, and just 65 net passing yards to go with it because of the sacks. I thought A.J. Brown would step up after last week’s game, or that DeVonta Smith would be a big factor after he missed the Week 12 game. But they had 6 catches for 35 yards combined in this game.

Throw in Hurts sounding like he was high on pain medication at the end of the game and uncertain about next week, and it’s not the greatest look for next Sunday against the Commanders, who are rolling with confidence right now.

Don’t go penciling that Chiefs-Eagles rematch in by any means. It probably should happen just based on the general strength of these teams and home-field advantage, but they rarely make it look easy.

They still win though. But that was a solid effort from the Rams in weather they’re not used to playing games in.

Texans at Chiefs: When You’re Rusty and Still Win Wire-to-Wire

The Chiefs have broken the brains of so many people that I’m not sure what they’ll do if this team manages to win two more games this season. Even in a game where the Chiefs came out a bit rusty after 24 days since Christmas, they still never trailed, they found ways to make Travis Kelce look like his vintage self, and they put away the Texans with eight sacks and blocked another 35-yard field goal for good measure to the naysayers.

Were the Texans outplaying them early despite the scoreboard? Yeah, I said as much, and if you ignore dreadful special teams. But that all changed halfway through the second quarter. After Hollywood Brown dropped a perfect deep ball, Travis Kelce was left wide open over the middle where he actually made a YAC play for the longest playoff catch of his career (49 yards). The Chiefs finished that drive for a touchdown and led 13-3.

Even after that moment, the Chiefs still outscored the Texans 10-9 before intentionally taking a safety in the final seconds. The game never really felt in doubt, but that won’t stop ESPN from acting like it was a travesty the Texans lost another divisional round game. From Troy Aikman having a fit in the booth about the penalties to graphics like this after the game, they’re really trying to sell it hard that a team who lost wire-to-wire was the better team and something unnatural must have caused this loss:

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1880882765803270549

Yeah, it’s called the Texans played poorly, and the Chiefs took advantage of it.

On Sunday, the NFL supported both the roughing the passer call and late hit on Mahomes’ late slide. Don’t say the NFL never admits to errors, because I have a list of such times they did coming up this week. You may not like the dynamics of those calls with the late slide an issue, but they said any time you go to the head and neck area, it’s likely going to get a call that wouldn’t be changed even if replay assist looked at it.

Also, I can’t believe people are going to pretend like the Chiefs couldn’t overcome a 2nd-and-6, which would have been the situation after the Mahomes scramble without the 15-yard flag. Did the refs give up that touchdown on 3rd-and-goal from the 11 too? A perfect pass to Kelce while falling down to make it 20-12 in the fourth quarter.

Did the officials cause C.J. Stroud to go 1-of-8 in success rate while trailing 20-12 in the fourth quarter? He did that. The Chiefs tackled him cleanly on the opening drive that made him limp, and while he still had some good scrambles in this game, by the end of it he couldn’t move well, Steve Spagnuolo smelled blood in the water, and they racked up four of their eight sacks on one drive.

Then there’s the piss-poor special teams. You could see it on the opening snap when the Chiefs had a 63-yard return, fumbled it, but Houston failed to recover. Then the idiot (Kris Boyd) who forced the fumble threw his helmet off for a 15-yard flag, then had the nerve to go shove his position coach on the sideline.

If that wasn’t enough, the kicker Fairbairn missed an extra point, badly missed a 55-yard field goal they probably shouldn’t have attempted in the cold, and had his 35-yard kick blocked just so the Chiefs can show Denver was no fluke. That’s a 10-point swing on special teams alone, and with the Chiefs getting some good field position on several drives, that helped build up a yardage disparity.

But the other disingenuous part of that 49-0 graphic is the “outgained by 100 yards” stat of it. The Chiefs were outgained by 124 yards (336-212), but they lost 27 yards intentionally on the last drive with a couple of kneeldowns and an intentional safety. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been outgained by 100 yards and the stat wouldn’t exist. The safety might not have been 100% necessary but the strategy was to avoid a blocked punt return touchdown, the most harmful outcome that could have happened to the Chiefs at that stage of the game.

But I’m really annoyed about hearing about officials when the Texans played this poorly. Both defenders were clearly headhunting too on the play where Mahomes gave himself up and they could have just tagged him down. They took each other out on a head-to-head hit anyway, the same team that knocked out Trevor Lawrence with a nasty concussion this season. Maybe your team just has a target on its back from these plays, Houston.

I don’t see how the ref made DeMeco Ryans delay a decision to go for a fourth-and-10, fail to call timeout, then lose a bunch of yards on a sack. Houston played poorly. Even their 82-yard touchdown drive had to gain 101 yards of offense because they kept shooting themselves in the foot with penalties. It was that inefficient of a performance in turning yards into points.

There are things I’d like to see the Chiefs do better. You’re probably not beating Buffalo with 23 points or 0 catches from Hollywood and DeAndre Hopkins. The designed plays to Worthy felt too gimmicky and not the best use of his emerging talent. The lack of go for the kill shots in Houston territory were alarming from Andy Reid, who seems to get off by keeping the game within one score.

But the Texans did not even come close to deserving to win this game. The Chiefs took advantage of their mistakes and that’s why they’re moving on to host another AFC Championship Game, their seventh appearance in a row.

Next week: Huge rematches on Championship Sunday and so much history at stake. You’re God damn right I want the rookie QB vs. the three-peat in the Super Bowl, but that could be the least likely outcome we get from this final four. The Chiefs will have to overcome their last loss with starters against Buffalo, and the Eagles have to overcome their only loss in their last 15 games against the Commanders. That’s good stuff.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Wild Card Weekend

~ Scott ~ 1 Comment

No matter what an NFL team does for 18 weeks, no matter how much work you put into reviewing their season and predicting their playoff fate, sometimes a pick parade happens, and you end up with the first 32-12 final in NFL history.

That goofy result in Houston, during their annual Bill O’Brien Saturday Afternoon Invitational, was a harbinger of the weekend to come with one-sided games won by the home team up until Sunday night when we finally got some drama courtesy of Jayden Daniels and the misadventures in snaps from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

There’s still a Monday night game between the Vikings and Rams to come, but it wasn’t the most exciting wild card weekend. That’s for sure. The Commanders-Bucs game was the only one of the five games with a second-half lead change. The only one with a comeback opportunity. The only one where both teams scored more than 14 points.

But I guess a lot of the paper tigers and heavily flawed teams have been eliminated, so we’re still on track for a good divisional round.  

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Commanders at Buccaneers: The Best Rookie Quarterback Season Ever

When Jayden Daniels scored a garbage-time touchdown run in Tampa Bay in Week 1 to produce a 37-20 final, I loved it because it allowed me to hit an improbable SGP where I had Daniels and Mike Evans both scoring two touchdowns.

Little did I know that score would keep alive a streak where the Commanders have scored at least 18 points in all 18 games this season, the 12th team in NFL history to do that, and they have a chance to become just the third to do it in 19 games as their season will continue another week after winning yet another close game in Tampa Bay this time.

After that garbage-time touchdown run by Daniels in Week 1, he made some unique history against the Giants in Week 2 when he led his offense to 7 field goals on 7 drives, the only game in NFL history like that. But Week 3 in Cincinnati was the game where I was truly sold on the kid after he put up 38 points on six drives, scoring every time he had the ball. Then he scored his first two drives in Arizona, meaning 16 straight scoring drives when you exclude kneeldowns. No known streak in NFL history by one quarterback exceeds that.

Then even when Daniels lost a game in Baltimore against a contender, I was still impressed with the way he handled himself, throwing for 269 yards, 2 touchdowns, and he led his team in rushing with 22 yards that day as little help was provided. He had no turnovers.

Then the Hail Mary happened against Chicago, and while that’s a lucky play to get the tip, his ability to manufacture that drive, get it close enough, and extend the play long enough to pull that off was impressive. The rib injury may have slowed him down for a few weeks there, but after the bye week, he’s been very good and leading his team like a veteran with several more clutch game-winning drives like the efforts against the Eagles and Falcons.

I think Daniels had arguably the best regular season ever for a rookie quarterback when you consider he threw for 3,568 yards, 25 touchdowns, and rushed for 891 yards and 6 more scores to lead his team in rushing. That’s the kind of dual-threat season that only Lamar Jackson has pulled off this year, and at least he has Derrick Henry to help him out now. Daniels has often been the leading rusher in games for his team, and it happened again in his first playoff game.

But I think this road playoff win is also the cherry on top for giving him the edge over the likes of Ben Roethlisberger (2004), Dak Prescott (2016), and C.J. Stroud (2023) for the best rookie quarterback season ever.

Daniels just played a playoff game where his offense never punted and never turned the ball over, the kind of feat only Peyton Manning (2003 vs. Chiefs) and Josh Allen (2021 vs. Patriots) have achieved in the postseason. Granted, the Commanders turned it over on downs twice, but they also converted a few times that led to huge touchdowns that were the difference in the game.

There were only seven possessions for each team in this game, so mistakes were going to get magnified. Unfortunately for Baker Mayfield, a fumble is going to be the play people remember best from this game. The Bucs were up 17-13 and got the ball back after holding the Commanders on 4th-and-goal. I also mean literally holding as it sure looked like DPI should have been called on the Bucs for how they grabbed Zach Ertz in the end zone.

But right after Mike Evans made a great stretch effort to get a first down, the Bucs got cute with a little trickery in the backfield and the timing of the play was off, resulting in a fumbled snap that the Commaders recovered and used to go 13 yards for the go-ahead touchdown after Daniels found Terry McLaurin on a 4th-and-2.

What a crushing play and I really don’t think they needed to do something like that. I’m not sure if the plan was to hand it off or fake the handoff, but they screwed it up. Then with the chance to take the lead, the Bucs screwed that up too with Baker getting stopped on a run, setting up a 3rd-and-1 where the center’s snap timing was off, resulting in a 2-yard loss. Another snap disaster for the Bucs.

With 4:45 left, I can understand the rationale from Todd Bowles for the game-tying field goal on 4th-and-3 at the 14. You like to think you’ll get the ball back with four clock stoppages left. I don’t hate the decision to kick it, but maybe we have to start recognizing Daniels in that Patrick Mahomes kind of light as someone you simply don’t want to have the ball last.

Sure enough, Daniels was able to burn the last 4:41 while putting his team in range for an easy field goal. He used his arms and legs to get the job done. I don’t think Bowles made the best use of his timeouts either. It was going to be a 37-yard field goal by Washington as the final play of regulation, so barely longer than an extra point.

But when they showed this clip of kicker Zane Gonzalez constantly rubbing his hair as some sort of pre-kick ritual, I thought for sure this goofy MFer was going to blow the kick.

The truth is he kind of did, because the kick hit the upright only to get the favorable bounce through to send the Commanders to the divisional round for the first time since the 2005 season and to send the Buccaneers home after a crushing home loss.

Tampa will be stewing all offseason over some of those decisions like the fumbled snaps and kicking the field goal. As for Washington, this is what happens when you find the right quarterback in the draft. Daniels had a historic playoff debut, because the history of rookie quarterbacks on the road in the postseason is brutal.

In nearly 30 chances from all rookies in NFL history, Daniels joins just Sammy Baugh (the original Washington legend) from 1937 as the only rookies to win on the road while throwing for 200 yards, while throwing more than one touchdown pass, and while beating a team that actually scored more than 14 points as most rookies who in (Mark Sanchez/Joe Flacco variety) on the road in the playoffs do it on the back of a dominant defense. That’s not a multi-stat qualifier. Those are three different things where he joins Baugh as the only quarterbacks to do, and they did them all in the same game.

Daniels is “just built different” as they say these days. Washington will have its shot to shock the Lions in Detroit next.

Packers at Eagles: I Like Detroit Even More for the Super Bowl

This was the only game I predicted to be decided by double digits this weekend. I had the Eagles winning by 11 and they won by 12, so close enough. But what a terrible game to watch, and it was bad from the start when the Packers fumbled the opening kickoff. They definitely fumbled, but in a rare case, we had a close-up shot of the players fighting for the ball and what looked like a pretty decent recovery effort by the Packers to get it back:

At what point can you say the play is long over, the Packer has the ball, and is down by contact? I think that was a garbage call to say “the play stands” and give the Eagles the ball there. That was a huge call too as the Eagles needed that short field (28 yards) to get their early touchdown, because the offense was not good.

I don’t know if it was the concussion or what had Jalen Hurts out of sorts, but he was 6/13 for 39 yards at halftime despite the Eagles feeding him three turnovers from the Packers. Unfortunately, Jordan Love and the Packers couldn’t take advantage of that slow start from the passing game for Philly that saw A.J. Brown catch one ball for 10 yards and get some reading in on the sideline.

Injuries also hurt the Packers dearly as they lost multiple offensive linemen and wide receivers in this game after Christian Watson already tore his ACL last week. That’s how you end up with Bo Melton and “Malik Heath” as the targets on some of your most important plays of the season. I was waiting for Jeff Janis to show up.

In the second half, every slight answer by the Packers was met by the Eagles. A Green Bay field goal to make it 10-3 was met immediately by Dallas Goedert going off for a 24-yard touchdown that included three stiff arms of the same defender (Carrington Valentine), who might need to change his name now to avoid the shame of that highlight for Goedert.

Josh Jacobs played hard in his playoff debut for the Packers and ran hard for a great run to set up a touchdown that made it 16-10 with nearly a whole quarter to play. But instead of the defense stepping up, it let the Eagles burn half the quarter with one Tush Push along the way for a field goal that made it 19-10.

Love didn’t play well at all, but I thought his 4th-and-3 pass would have been a routine catch by a player like Romeo Doubs or Jayden Reed if they were healthy and in the game instead of Heath, who landed out of bounds with 5:03 left to end the last real threat. The Packers also were undisciplined and picked up a few silly 15-yard flags for late hits on Saquon Barkley, who was fine with a 100-yard game he only clinched in garbage time with the game wrapped up.

Actually, Love’s interception in the end zone at the 2-minute warning was some pretty blatant DPI on the Eagles, and that should have set up a first-and-goal at the 1. But the Packers already felt so defeated in a 22-10 game where they were down to one timeout that no one seemed to mind the missed call.

The Packers (11-7) finish this season getting swept by the Lions, Vikings, and Eagles as they just couldn’t beat the elite teams they were able to defeat in 2023. That’s a good formula for a one-and-done season as the No. 7 seed.

I guess we should assume the Eagles will play better than this in the rest of the playoffs, but if I’m Detroit, I don’t fear this team one bit. Not after this game.

Broncos at Bills: Sean Payton, You Tease

If you told me the Broncos wouldn’t score another point after their opening drive, I wouldn’t have believed it. Bo Nix was abandoned again by his running game, put in terrible situations all day by Sean Payton’s offense, and yet he still delivered a third-and-8 conversion and a beautiful 43-yard touchdown strike to Tony Franklin to start the game.

Maybe that should have been a warning sign that this wouldn’t be sustainable offense, but I thought it was an incredible start that showed Nix is ready for the big moment. Unfortunately, the Broncos wasted their fake punt by not going anywhere after it, then they had the loudest field goal miss I ever heard before halftime that should have made it 10-10, a spot they had to feel very comfortable with given the way their defense was getting shredded by Buffalo’s ground game and great offensive line.

But I think the game was largely lost for Denver in the second and third quarters between the weak play calls on early downs where Payton was trying to protect Nix by only making his job harder in having to convert third-and-longs.

In the third quarter, Denver went three-and-out twice with Nix only getting to drop back on third down when he needed 5 and 11 yards. That’s rubbish, and his receivers could have been better with their hands after some big drops in the game.

But the crucial drive came when Buffalo was up 13-7 in the third. Josh Allen threw a hospital ball to running back Ray Davis, which led him to a big hit that knocked him out of the game. That should have brought up third-and-13, but instead it is an automatic first down because of the flag for unnecessary roughness. The NFL made this switch years ago, and I still hate it every single time and say it shouldn’t be a penalty. The flag didn’t stop the hit, which only happened because of a terrible Allen throw that led his back right into contact.

The defender even pulled up and led with the shoulder, so he didn’t go for a helmet-to-helmet hit. I hate the way the offense gets these calls now. Later on that drive, the Bills faced a 4th-and-1. Allen scrambled for almost 7 seconds before throwing to the back of the end zone for Ty Johnson, another talented back in this offense who has done damage as a receiver. He somehow was able to keep his knee in bounds (or close enough on replay) before his foot touched out of bounds for a huge 24-yard touchdown.

I’ve said this is the difference in Buffalo this year and should share some of those numbers this week. Allen’s passes to targets in the backfield are having a huge impact since the Bills use these players down the field in mismatches. In fact, you’d be surprised how much production out of backfield targets goes to helping a quarterback win MVP. Those plays are a huge boost.

Then the Bills blew the game open on the first play of the fourth quarter when terrible tackling led to a 55-yard touchdown for Curtis Samuel to make it 28-7. Game over. The Bills held the ball for 41:43 as the Broncos couldn’t sustain offense and couldn’t slow down their running attack.

In the end, I think you have to say the Denver defense was a paper tiger this year. Patrick Surtain II might still win DPOY but not sure he had any real impact in this game. The Broncos had their worst games of the season defensively on the road against teams like the Bills, Chargers, Bengals, and Ravens, who all scored 30+. Even their 16-14 loss in Kansas City will go down as their sixth-worst game of the season in defensive EPA.

Tampa Bay was really the only qualify offense this defense slowed down this year, so that’s a disappointing way to end the season. But Payton needs to show more trust in Nix than he did in this game. He won’t be able to use the rookie excuse next time.

Steelers at Ravens: The Standard Continues

If I just started pasting in paragraphs from past articles about Pittsburgh playoff losses, would anyone even notice? They do the same thing every time, after all. This one from four years ago after they fell behind 28-0 to the Browns and lost has a lot of the same things I could go over for Saturday night’s 28-14 loss in Baltimore.

What really changed this time? Oh, there weren’t any turnovers in the game. I guess that’s an improvement on offense where they didn’t give up return scores or easy field position. Then again, I liked the fight the offense showed in some of those losses with Roethlisberger at quarterback instead of the pathetic no-show in the first half when they punted four times Saturday.

But let’s be clear. Russell Wilson was not the issue, and Justin Fields sure as hell wouldn’t have done any better in a game they were going to have to score a lot of points to win. The problem is Wilson has limitations and there’s no way you’re winning games like this with him at this stage of his career.

But the Steelers aren’t winning games like this with Mike Tomlin’s defense, which continues to be on the worst run in playoff history. That’s now six straight playoff games allowing 28+ points. No other team has more than four such games. That’s 230 points allowed in six playoff games, also a record.

The Steelers were 10-3 and ended this year with five straight wire-to-wire losses. That’s pathetic. They couldn’t even take a 3-0 lead in any of these games.

On Saturday night, they took their historically-bad playoff defense up against Lamar Jackson’s historically underperforming playoff offense, and Jackson won the matchup by halftime with a 21-0 lead and over 200 total yards from offense with his arm and legs. Derrick Henry also crucified them on the ground, and Lamar was making the Steelers look silly with the zone-read option, 2012’s trendiest offensive wrinkle in the NFL. T.J. Watt looked like he’s never defended it in his life, constantly crashing in on Henry while Lamar still had the ball. Amateur hour.

I’d say more, but what’s the point? It’s the same shit every year and nothing ever changes in Pittsburgh. It’s the worst form of NFL purgatory where you have no chance at a high draft pick, and you have no real shot to win a playoff game. Rinse and repeat. Best thing I can say is the fans were so uninterested in this game that even they weren’t taking the bait that this time would be any different.

If you start losing the fans, if you start being met with apathy, that should finally cause a shake-up with who is running this team. But until they fire Tomlin and find their next visionary coach, the standard is going to be the standard.

Chargers at Texans: Chargering Is Unstoppable

“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

That’s Kyle Reese warning Chargers fans about the curse of Chargering placed on their team. I thought Jim Harbaugh would fix it, but even he couldn’t overcome it in a playoff loss that stands to be more embarrassing than the blown 27-0 lead in Jacksonville.

At least in Jacksonville, I can say the 27-0 lead was unearned, propped up by short fields from an absurd number of takeaways before the defense blew it by playing a terrible half, and a kicker missing a 40-yard field goal that should have been enough.

But this time? I never would have believed Justin Herbert would implode like this. Not after he came out dealing with a backup tight end snatching a pass for 15 yards on the opening drive. This was going to be a vintage Herbert game. Instead, it’s the game that’s going to keep him out of every top quarterback discussion until he proves he can perform in the playoffs.

Sure, there were flaws as the short-yardage running game was terrible, Quentin Johnston predictably failed to catch a single ball in his playoff debut, and the lack of polished receivers after Ladd McConkey (he was incredible) proved to be a disaster for the Chargers.

But a lot of this was on Herbert too. After C.J. Stroud threw a pick, Herbert immediately negated it by tossing his first, forcing a deep ball on the next snap. He threw just 3 interceptions all year, and while that was always likely to regress against a high-pressure, high-takeaway defense, you don’t expect him to throw the most interceptions of his pro football career in this game.

The crusher came late in the third quarter when Herbert’s pass for McConkey was too high and intercepted for a touchdown to put the Chargers behind 20-6. Then Will Dissly dropped and deflected a pass that should have been caught for Herbert’s third pick. That one wasn’t his fault, but a lot of damage had already been done. He added a fourth pick in garbage time when it was 32-12.

But what a disastrous game as the Texans were struggling to get things going for most of the half only to still find themselves leading 10-6 at halftime. That should have been the first sign this was going to go south for the Chargers. They watched Stroud get away with an intentional grounding penalty in the end zone for a probable safety, then a bad snap led to a big play that sparked that 99-yard touchdown drive.

Then they take away a pick from Derwin James in the third quarter in the end zone that leads to a Houston field goal. Not great. That all led up to the pick parade, but the pass rush also amped up on Herbert once the Texans had some confidence they were going to win this game. Herbert was creamed in the fourth quarter.

Even after an 86-yard touchdown to McConkey, the Chargers made history by having their extra point blocked, Dicker the Kicker knocked it down instead of recovering the live ball, and the Texans returned it for the first ever defensive 2-point return in NFL playoff history to make it 25-12. Yep, that’s Chargers BINGO at that point.

This is the worst loss for the Chargers since losing that AFC divisional round game to the Mark Sanchez-led Jets in 2009. It might even be worse than that since it’s a game that shows Herbert and Harbaugh aren’t above results like this, and the Chargers are still not ready to overtake the Chiefs in the AFC West.

It really puts the Chargers in a bad spot where their best hope is to be a wild card team that is prone to having a brutal loss in the first round. I just went over that with Pittsburgh, so I can tell you it’s not a fun spot to be in at all for a fan.

See it for enough years and you just lose interest. Apathy sets in. Hope is such a better product to sell fans, because for a franchise that’s never won a Super Bowl, all they know is hope and potential.

But right now, it’s hard to see what hope the Chargers have that doesn’t simply include Andy Reid and Travis Kelce deciding to retire in a month, Bo Nix being a fraud, the Raiders hiring another bum QB/coach duo, and finding Herbert another great receiver to pair with McConkey.

Even then, Chargering just feels inevitable for this team. You can’t escape it.

Next week: It’s my favorite playoff round, but that doesn’t always mean the games will be great. Hard to not top this week, though. You can expect research on playoff rest with the Chiefs having an extended break here before they face Houston. Commanders-Lions is a fresh matchup that should be great for the offenses on Saturday night. I think Vikings-Rams at Eagles has dud written all over it, but we’ll see. Then the most hyped game of the year to this point will be Ravens at Bills. Early prediction: It won’t be a QB-driven shootout. They almost never are when they’re hyped this way, but I have all weak to explain that one.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 18

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

The conclusion of Week 18 in the NFL means it’s time I reflect on my preseason predictions. Let’s just say I’m not feeling great at all about my Super Bowl pick (Packers over Chiefs), but at least the Packers and Texans, two teams I hyped up, are in the tournament. You never know.

But I seem to have continued my troubling pattern of being way off on my picks every other year. I was off by an average of 2.88 wins this season, my worst since I started tracking this in 2013.

2024 NFL Predictions

In my defense, I bet a lot of people were thrown by some of the 10-win teams this season as the Vikings (14-3), Commanders (12-5), and Broncos (10-7) all blew away expectations with rookie quarterbacks and a career year from Sam Darnold. I picked the Commanders and Vikings specifically to finish 4-13, so that accounts for a lot of the disparities.

Then I was also done in by some of the most disappointing teams this season like the 49ers and Jets, who both blew a lot of leads in games they should have won this year. They blew 10 leads between them with the Jets (6) leading the league in that category with a way too dramatic season with Aaron Rodgers getting people fired.

It ended up being a top-heavy season with seven teams winning 12+ games, including four teams winning 14+ games. Helping to balance things, we had 10 teams lose 12+ games, so there were a lot of poor teams too. That’s probably going to lead to a real balancing act in 2025 where more teams should move closer to .500, so it’ll be important not to overreact to some of these records.

As for Week 18, the early slate produced some unexpected close games, the late slate was devoid of any real drama, and Sunday night was a bummer because of Sam Darnold’s awful game. In all, we had 9 games with a comeback opportunity.

For the last time this season, let’s run through a recap of all 32 teams in their final game of 2024.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Vikings at Lions: The New Year’s Ghost

It took 18 weeks, 17 games, and the 272nd and final game of the regular season before the worst nightmare for Minnesota fans became reality. On the big stage with the No. 1 seed on the line, Sam Darnold was seeing ghosts and shitting his pants.

People are going to see a 31-9 final score and just chalk it up as a Detroit blowout, but this was Minnesota’s game for the taking well into the third quarter when it only trailed 10-9 despite so many missed opportunities. Red zone play was the main culprit as Darnold was just abysmal in that confined space, missing receivers left and right. The Lions challenged him with a good pass rush while playing man coverage, and he simply couldn’t beat it with so many balls overthrown and off the mark. Darnold finished 18-of-41 for 166 yards. No turnovers but failing three times on fourth down is just as bad, especially when multiple drives were inside the Detroit 3.

The Lions were already No. 1 in red zone EPA/pass allowed, and that number should only look better after this game. But what a shocker to see this game produce four touchdowns, and all four were scored by Jahmyr Gibbs for Detroit.

Matchups matter, and maybe the Vikings could come up with some better man-coverage beaters in a rematch should there be one. But I think this game changes a lot of the feelings about these teams going into the playoffs as the Lions may in fact have enough on defense to get the job done for the Super Bowl, and the Vikings might just end up going 14-4 with sweeps by the Lions and Rams (their next opponent).

I’ve been pro-Darnold this season and he’s been passing so many different tests. But given this was the biggest game of his career, I can’t say I’m confident about what he’ll do in the playoffs when the season truly is on the line. At least this was a trial run and he got a taste of the atmosphere, but that was brutal to watch all night.

Saints at Buccaneers: Baker’s Legs to the Rescue

One of the day’s most entertaining games was watching Tampa Bay struggle as a two-touchdown home favorite against Spencer Rattler and the Saints with a division title on the line. I always say division games are scary. But despite being an offensive juggernaut in many games this year, the Bucs were down 16-6 at halftime and 19-13 going into the fourth quarter.

But Baker Mayfield’s legs made up for a slow start to his passing. He ran 9 times for 68 yards in this game, including some huge plays in the fourth quarter to lead a comeback. He also got things going with Jalen McMillan, who had a huge catch on fourth down and a touchdown on a drive where he was wrongfully penalized for a finger-pointing celebration that had nothing to do with gun violence. Then Mike Evans started making plays as he needed 85 yards in the game to reach 1,000 yards for the 11th year in a row.

Meanwhile, the Saints added to their misery of not being able to make a single fourth-quarter comeback win for the second season in a row. They were 0-7 this year with four blown leads, and this was just another.

But Baker’s improv on a lateral to Bucky Irving for an 11-yard touchdown gave the Bucs a 27-19 lead with 1:51 left. The Saints turned it over on downs with 36 seconds left. The game was effectively over, but Evans needed 5 more yards to get his 1,000, which would trigger a $3M bonus. It was risky, but they threw a pass to him, and the Saints didn’t seem to mind letting him make the play as he picked up 9 yards and the whole team celebrated as the game was over, the bonus was his, and the NFC South belongs to Tampa Bay.

They would have won it anyway after Atlanta lost in overtime in Carolina, but this was a grind against a really bad New Orleans team that’s missing so many key players. We’ll see how the Bucs fare in a Week 1 rematch with the Commanders, but that might be a better matchup for them than the Vikings.

Bengals at Steelers: Close But No Cigar

Well, I guess the Bengals won the closest thing they’ll have to a playoff game this year as they came through in Pittsburgh in a 19-17 slugfest to reach 9-8. But they didn’t get the help they needed from the Chiefs-Broncos game on Sunday, so they are out. That’s also what happens when you lose 16-10 at home to the Patriots, one of the worst teams in football, in Week 1. September matters too and the Bengals dug too big of a hole to get out of.

But as for the team that is in the playoffs from this game, just what the hell are the Steelers doing to end this season? They’ve lost four games in a row and are playing terrible offense. Even though the start of this game looked like the defense was going to be a disaster, they calmed down and kept the Bengals out of the end zone all night after giving up that opening-drive touchdown. The special teams had a big mistake with a fumble, but they made up for it by recovering a fumble later.

This was on Arthur Smith’s offense. All the nice things I said when they lit up the Bengals in Cincinnati earlier this season, throw them out the window like they never happened. The Steelers sure seemed to forget they did.

Russell Wilson had 414 yards in that first game, taking advantage of YAC and passes to his running backs over the middle. That didn’t exist in this game. Jaylen Warren had 0 catches. Calvin Austin, someone who can catch some quick hitters, had 0 catches. George Pickens caught an early screen that was terrible, then didn’t catch his last five targets, including several awful drops in maybe the worst game I’ve ever seen a Pittsburgh wideout play. He finished with 0 yards and I’d put his chances of a second contract in Pittsburgh at 0.0001%.

For most of the half, Wilson had two completions: the ill-fated screen to Pickens and a brilliant 25-yard catch by Mike Williams. But guess what? Williams never received another target the rest of the game. How the fvck does this happen?

Then even when they had a chance to go get a game-winning field goal, Wilson, a veteran who has done this dozens of times, completely botched the last drive with horrible clock management. I can’t crucify him for the whole game because of the drops by Pickens and then the fourth-and-ballgame drop by Pat Freiermuth, but Wilson was terrible for most of the game. Get rid of the ball faster instead of being a pin cushion for Trey Hendrickson (3.5 sacks).

It’s just such a frustrating offense to watch, because there’s no reason they can’t be better than this. The coaching incompetence is high, and once again, Mike Tomlin has no answers for a losing streak.

They probably embrace going to Baltimore because of past success and playing an ugly, low-scoring game. But they did just lose 34-17 there, so this might be a rude awakening and a 5-game losing streak to end the season.

Chiefs at Broncos: That’s Going to Leave a Mark on the Stats

Well, I guess the Chiefs aren’t very good when they rest their ~13 best players for the playoffs and they’re facing a team that’s playing for their season that already should have beat the KC starters in Arrowhead earlier this year.

But god damn, 38-0? Making Bo Nix look like a mobile Drew Brees. The Broncos outgained them 479-98. You have to go back to the 2000 Browns against the Jaguars to find the last NFL team to get outgained by at least 380 yards while being held under 100 yards.

The Chiefs aren’t going to care about this performance, but it does create an interesting dynamic. What if this spurs the Broncos to go beat Buffalo in this week’s 7-2 matchup, which would send the Broncos right back to Arrowhead after the Chiefs haven’t played their starters for 24-25 days? Getting rid of Buffalo would be ideal, but let’s not act like Denver hasn’t played the Chiefs well even going back to last year. The Chiefs just don’t score much on them and they have multiple DPOY candidates.

Maybe the Broncos flop in Buffalo and it’s a moot point, but they won there last year by forcing the Bills into so many turnovers that they fired their offensive coordinator. The Bills are due for some turnovers too.

Interesting AFC race all around this year. I still think a Bengals-Bills game would have been must-see TV and the most interesting 7-2 game you could have, but we’ll see if Denver can turn this opportunity into something.

Bears at Packers: Not Feeling Good About Green Bay Anymore

If I’m just being honest, the Packers, my preseason Super Bowl pick, haven’t done much to impress me this season. Had it not been for a blocked field goal in Chicago, they would have finished 0-6 in division games. They already lost in Brazil to the Eagles, their playoff opponent. They beat up on a paper tiger like the Dolphins on Thanksgiving and smoked the 49ers without Brock Purdy. They beat the Rams before they were good this year.

What’s their best win? A 24-22 squeaker over the Texans? Maybe they’ll surprise us in the playoffs, but I’m not sure Sunday could have gone much worse as Matt LaFleur suffered his first loss to the Bears, which ended their 10-game losing streak overall and their 11-game losing streak to the Packers by making a field goal at the end. Had the Packers just picked up 2 more yards to get a fresh set of downs, they could have won the game themselves on a walk-off field goal. But they left Caleb Williams time, and after dinking and dunking to little success all day, he came through and his kicker had his back this time.

Jordan Love injured his elbow and his status is unknown. Christian Watson left injured, but what else is new there? I just don’t feel good at all about Green Bay repeating last year’s playoff success as the No. 7 seed. This team won more games (11-6), but what’s impressive? At least they won in Detroit last year and beat the Chiefs.

Commanders at Cowboys: Mariota to the Rescue

While the Packers were losing to the Bears, the Commanders were on the ropes against the Cowboys once again. I’m not sure what Jayden Daniels was trying to accomplish in this game, but after taking several sacks, they sent him to the bench at halftime for veteran Marcus Mariota.

But they continued playing their other starters as Terry McLaurin came up clutch on the game-winning drive. He had four catches on the drive, including the game-winning touchdown from 5 yards out with just 0:03 left. That’s how the Commanders were able to get to 12 wins with a 23-19 victory over a Dallas team that got a monster game out of Micah Parsons (2.5 sacks) and a rare look at Trey Lance, who I still say should have been starting over Cooper Rush after Dak Prescott was lost.

So concludes a very disappointing Dallas season at 7-10. But I will say that Jerry Jones is surprisingly gifted as an actor after seeing him in Landman this weekend.

Panthers at Falcons: Bryce Young Finishes Strong

The Panthers (5-12) could be a trendy pick for the NFC South or wild card next year after a respectable finish for Bryce Young given where his season began. Sunday was arguably his best game ever as he accounted for 5 total touchdowns, including the walk-off winner in overtime in a 44-38 game.

But we have all offseason to talk about whether we can trust that finish or see what pieces the Panthers add to this roster. The more troubling issue is the way Atlanta (8-9) faltered down the stretch, and the way the defense has disappointed rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr., who led a couple of game-tying touchdown drives but never got the ball in overtime losses to Washington and Carolina.

The Falcons just gave up 44 points in his third start. As you might imagine, Tom Brady went 381 starts in the NFL without his team ever allowing more than 42 points. I like to bring that up only because it puts Brady’s incredible team help in context, but also because most of those games were under Bill Belichick, the coach the Falcons spurred in hiring in favor of Morris this year.

Still liking that move, Mr. Blank?

Seahawks at Rams: Geno’s Money Drive

Not much was on the line for the Seahawks, but Geno Smith had $6 million in incentives to hit, and he pulled off the trifecta for them. The key was getting the 10th win of the season for Seattle, the first 10-win team to miss the playoffs in the 7-team format. But it took a 4QC/GWD for Geno, the richest one of his career as he fought through the pain to throw his fourth touchdown pass to put the Seahawks up late.

Jimmy Garoppolo tried to answer after playing a solid game with the Rams’ backups, but his 4th-and-ballgame pass skipped in there short in a 30-25 loss. I’m a little surprised the Rams didn’t try to win for the No. 3 seed, but I guess they see little difference in No. 4 and No. 3, and they already beat the Vikings this year, their opponent next week.

But a good day for Geno that almost makes up for blowing the first Rams game that cost them the division title in the end.

Chargers at Raiders: Now the Real Fun Begins

Is Week 18 even real football when Quentin Johnston is catching 13-of-14 targets for 186 yards? But look out if he’s playing like that with Justin Herbert having his best defense, his best offensive line, and a real coach going into the playoffs with some momentum and a quality matchup in Houston next week.

This team is Kansas City’s worst nightmare in the divisional round. A gamer like Herbert who already tested them in Arrowhead without Ladd McConkey and J.K. Dobbins, and a pass rush that was after Mahomes all night and held the Chiefs under 20 points in both games. I could easily see NFL Films recording a “Who’s got it better than us?” chant from Harbaugh in a victorious locker room in two weeks to end the three-peat.

But first thing’s first. The Chargers need to deliver in Houston against that pass rush next week. Herbert has to get that first playoff win under his belt.

As for the Raiders, I’d fire the coach and do whatever I can to find some new quarterbacks for 2025.

Dolphins at Jets: Is That It for Aaron Rodgers?

I’m not surprised at all that Aaron Rodgers lit up the Dolphins for four touchdowns in what will probably be his last game for the Jets. Paper tiger defense with a backup quarterback starting in place of Tua Tagovailoa. It was never going to end well for Miami this year, and now Tyreek Hill seems to be on the way out – the Jimmy Butler path?

But Rodgers and the Jets (5-12) were the biggest disappointment in the league this year. If you told someone he’d get a trade for Davante Adams and finished with the stat line he had, you’d think the Jets were 10-7 or 11-6. But they blew a league-high six leads in the fourth quarter and firing Robert Saleh was premature.

Bills at Patriots: New England Wins, New England Loses, New England Fires Coach

The Bills definitely did the right thing by losing this one to make sure the Patriots didn’t have control of the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft. Don’t need them getting Travis Hunter, but that’s still a possibility if the other teams force quarterback picks at the top.

But the team’s 4th win of the season was no happy ending for owner Robert Kraft, who waited almost no time before firing coach Jerod Mayo. I think that’s the right call since he never should have been hired in the first place and didn’t show any value for the job this year. But the timing was still a bit harsh. Mike Vrabel coming next?

Shout out to Joe Milton though. I don’t care who was on the field for either team. He made some spectacular plays and should get some longer looks in the NFL even if it has to be with another team down the road.

Giants at Eagles: Tanner McKee the New Kevin Kolb or Matt Flynn?

With the way teams are so quarterback starved, Tanner McKee could be making himself some money with these performances late in the year for the Eagles. He’s thrown 4 touchdown passes in basically 6 quarters, and they asked him to throw 41 passes in a wire-to-wire win against the Giants with the Eagles resting their good players – just like the Chiefs did but with far better results against a weaker opponent.

But even with backups, the Eagles had enough on both sides of the ball to get past the Giants, who will finish 3-14 with a ton of question marks.

Hell, maybe they can trade a third-round pick for McKee…

Jaguars at Colts: Overtime? In This Economy?

I guess no one told the Jaguars (4-13) and Colts (8-9) their game didn’t mean anything, because these motherfvckers went to overtime in Week 18. It ended the way you should expect with Joe Flacco leading his 30th game-winning drive with a field goal, and Mac Jones being unable to answer it because of a sack and a 20-yard completion on 4th-and-22.

We’ll see if both coaches are back next year, but I think it’s pretty unlikely, especially in Jacksonville.

Texans at Titans: Will Levis Era Over?

Is it over for Will Levis in Tennessee, which finished 3-14 and secured the No. 1 pick? If so, it was a fitting end in a 23-14 loss in Houston where he was involved in some wild turnover and touchdown plays.

And it seems to me you lived your life

Like a candle in the wind

Never knowing who to throw to

When the blitz came in

And I wish they didn’t draft you

With that high of a pick

Your mayo ran out long before

At least your dick is big

Goodnight, sweet prince.

49ers at Cardinals: When San Francisco Goes Low…

San Francisco’s last 22 seasons since 2003 only include 15 non-winning seasons and 7 trips to at least the NFC Championship Game. There’s no middle ground with this team, which fell to last place in the NFC West with a 6-11 record. The injuries will be blamed for this one, and that’s fair to a degree, but let’s not act like blowing all those fourth-quarter leads in the division didn’t ultimately screw them.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals (8-9) completed the sweep here by running up the score to 47 points, but where was this offense in all those weeks where they couldn’t break 14 or 17 points? Too inconsistent for me.

Browns at Ravens: The Biggest Spread of the Season

For a while there, it didn’t look like the Ravens were going to cover the 20-point spread, the largest this season. They were only up 21-10 in the fourth quarter after dropping a ton of passes, Zay Flowers left early with a knee injury, and the Ravens looked a little bored defensively and frustrated offensively. But Derrick Henry finally got rolling after a poor start, and before you knew it, the Ravens were up 35-10 to put this one away and win the AFC North.

Did Lamar Jackson do enough for his third MVP? I think he already did before the game started. It wasn’t the masterpiece ending for his case, but he didn’t do much wrong in this one. Will voters just go with the pity vote for Josh Allen like the sportsbooks seem to think given the odds? We’ll see. But Jackson just had arguably the greatest dual-threat season ever, and we’ll see if he can turn it into his best playoff run.

Next week: The playoffs. That means the annual Houston playoff game on a Saturday afternoon to kick things off. Then we’ll see if Pittsburgh’s historically underperforming playoff defense will show up again, or if Baltimore’s historically underperforming playoff offense will neutralize it in one of the closest games this weekend. I’m not that sold Denver will give Buffalo a good game, but maybe the Chiefs gave them some confidence in what they’re doing. Packers-Eagles will be played on a better field than Brazil this time. Commanders-Bucs, the last time these teams met in the playoffs in Tampa (January 2006), my furnace was broke, so hopefully that’s not a repeat event this weekend. Vikings-Rams is a perfect matchup to end the week, the rematch of the missed facemask penalty.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 17

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

In picking NFL games weekly for over 20 years, I still long for the week where I go 16-0. I’ve been 15-1 before, and if the Lions take care of the 49ers Monday night, then Week 17 will be a 15-1 week too.

But those god damn Colts just had to screw it up with the upset of the week against the lowest-scoring team in the league. So, I’ll wait for another chance to go 16-0, and this would have been a great week as favorites absolutely killed it with a 14-1 record so far.

Most of the games weren’t even that competitive with only six games featuring a comeback opportunity, and we didn’t have a single fourth-quarter lead change in the NFL from the time Sam Darnold threw that touchdown to Justin Jefferson in Seattle last week up until the Falcons-Commanders game tonight.

It’s been a long week, and I’m not even going to bother covering Wednesday and Thursday’s games here. Let’s get to it.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Falcons at Commanders: Welcome to the Salary Cap Era, Washington

One of my favorite annual stats to cite is no longer true. When I had to write about the Washington franchise, I always pointed out how this is the only NFL team that hasn’t had an 11-win season in the salary cap era since 1994. Every other team’s had multiple 11-win seasons in that time.

Well, the Commanders represent a new era for the franchise, Daniel Snyder is no longer the owner, and rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels is their savior. Daniels was again historic as a dual-threat on the night in a comeback win against Atlanta, and the Commanders are 11-5 and heading to the playoffs behind the player I think is the MVP of the league this year.

It wasn’t a great start as the Falcons led 17-7, but the Commanders were hurting themselves with a lot of offensive holding penalties, a penalty these refs were calling very tight all night and sometimes on both teams.

But the Commanders controlled the clock in the second half, and Daniels was almost perfect down the stretch. He led a long go-ahead touchdown drive to start the fourth quarter, he had a touchdown pass to put them up 11 negated by another holding penalty, and then after Michael Penix Jr. led a clutch game-tying touchdown drive by converting on multiple 4th-and-longs, Daniels again threw a strike on 3rd-and-10 deep to a streaking receiver.

But the pass was dropped, and the Commanders went three-and-out in the final minute of a tied game. That looked like it might cost them, but the Falcons badly mismanaged their two timeouts by wasting time and not getting closer for their new kicker, Riley Patterson. After getting a DPI penalty, they tried a 56-yard field goal that was straight enough but short, so we went to overtime.

The Commanders won the toss and Daniels in his first overtime game did not give Atlanta the ball back. He controlled the drive with his arm and legs on a night where he ran it 16 times for 127 yards before throwing his third touchdown pass to Zach Ertz, who made a nice catch in the end zone to put an end to this one at 30-24.

The Falcons (8-8) are back to being in trouble for the playoffs, because they picked the worst time to blow their first fourth-quarter lead in the Raheem Morris era. But they really blew the clock management in each half of this one. I’m not sure why teams are getting so bad at not calling timeouts or spiking the ball or getting the next play in quicker. Someone like Peyton Manning has to be watching these games in disgust with the poor jobs we’re seeing around the league.

But Daniels looks like the next big thing in the NFL. We’ll get to see what he can do in the playoffs where he can enhance his legacy after one of the greatest rookie quarterback seasons ever.

Arguably the greatest when you consider his efficiency, his dual-threat ability, the way he makes up for the defense to win games with clutch moments, and he’s doing it for a franchise that hasn’t known success like this in decades.

Broncos at Bengals: Sean Payton Choke Meme

Some coincidence that our only two game-winning drives in Week 17 came courtesy of rookie quarterbacks forcing overtime on the road in 30-24 games that didn’t feel like they were ever going to end with some piss-poor game management from each team.

This was the better game of the two with the higher stakes, and watching the Denver defense hold Cincinnati to just a touchdown in the first half. It really felt like another Cincinnati playoff game where the offense looked tight, underwhelming, and the defense was stepping up in a 10-10 game to start the fourth quarter.

But the floodgates really opened in the fourth quarter with the teams exchanging touchdowns before they exchanged turnovers with a Tee Higgins fumble and a bad Bo Nix interception. That pick and a big pass to Ja’Marr Chase gave the Bengals a 1st-and-10 at the Denver 21 at the 2-minute warning with the Broncos down to two timeouts.

Now this is a situation where you would love to manage the clock so that if you take a couple of plays to get a first down, you could time this up to win 20-17 on a field goal on the final snap, the best way to end a game like this. But the Bengals, a team with minimal success in these situations over the years, botched it big time. They completed a pass to Chase Bronw that led the back out of bounds, then Burrow threw an incomplete pass, so that’s two snaps that took 9 seconds and saved both timeouts for Denver. Horrible job.

After converting a third down, the Bengals tried to run with Brown, who made an understandable decision to not score. But he must not be a baseball player as his slide technique was bad and he injured his ankle on the play, which cost his team a timeout. Not good. If he goes down properly, they could just take 2 knees and kick a field goal in the last 10 seconds to win this one.

That changed things, but it was still weird to see Burrow just sneak it in for a touchdown that Denver probably didn’t mind given the circumstances. The Broncos were going to get the ball back with 1:29 and a timeout. That’s pretty good, and the other reason you fear being up a touchdown instead of a field goal in that situation is that the team could always go for two and the win should they score. If it’s a field goal game, they’re just going to get the field goal most likely.

Sure enough, the Cincinnati defense let down after an encouraging game to that point. I’m not sure it was the greatest game management once the Broncos got inside the 35, but on a 4th-and-1, Nix showed some stones when he threw deep for Marvin Mims for a 25-yard touchdown with 8 seconds left.

Originally, it looked like the Broncos were going to go for two, but they changed their minds after a review confirmed the touchdown. This has been the big second-guessing moment after the game if they should have just gone for the 2-point conversion there to win the game.

But this was an unusual circumstance, because an overtime tie for Denver is just as good as a win in getting them into the playoffs. With that knowledge, I can totally buy going for the extra point and overtime. There’s also the fact that I think Joe Burrow has one of the weakest killer instincts in the NFL and I wouldn’t fear going to overtime with him one bit.

Sure enough, the Bengals got the ball first in overtime, and as soon as the drive reached midfield with the Bengals in position to go win the game, Burrow took back-to-back sacks and the team had to punt. Tale as old as time.

But the Broncos also went three-and-out, so that was bad. Their playcalling down the stretch was brutal, including a very ill-timed screen pass in the fourth quarter that almost lost the game earlier for them.

The Bengals took their second overtime drive and wasted it with a 33-yard field goal that hit the upright on third down. Why kick it a down early when you have time to get even closer? That kick isn’t hitting the upright if the kick was a few yards closer. Typical Zac Taylor in these spots.

With 2:43 left, a competent team would make Cincy pay for this, but the Broncos have not looked smart these last few weeks. I’m far more annoyed by Payton’s approach to this drive than any decision to kick an extra point at the end of regulation. First, he saved the Bengals time by calling multiple timeouts on defense on the previous drive. Would have been more beneficial to let that tick down if they were just going to choke anyway. Remember, the tie is cool for Denver and season ending for Cincinnati.

But then to not see the opportunity with 2:43 left that a first down or two ends the game and gets you in the playoffs? Awful. The Broncos ran three bad plays, punted, and only used up 23 seconds.

Burrow found Higgins for 31 yards on their best connection of the day down the sideline, then instead of relying on a backup kicker, they just threw a touchdown from 3 yards out to win it 30-24 and keep hope alive.

But I can’t help but point out how bad the game management was for both teams. If you’re the Bengals, you want to win that 20-17 in regulation and avoid this mess. That’s what the Chiefs would do in that spot, and yet people would have the nerve to bash them for winning a low-scoring 20-17 game. Meanwhile, that’s just smart football. 30-24 with all these extra possessions is just dumb.

However, that’s why these teams are fighting with Miami to be the last ones in the tournament and go to Buffalo. They’re not good teams this year. But they did make for an entertaining game and finish on Saturday.

Packers at Vikings: Sam Darnold Takeover

Remember in 2019 when Dan Orlovsky would make that ridiculous point about Carson Wentz “taking over” games for the Eagles? I’m not sure what made me think of that from this game, but I saw the way Sam Darnold was just completely outplaying Jordan Love, who struggled to get to 100 passing yards, and it made me think of the way Darnold just took this game over with 377 passing yards on 43 attempts despite the Vikings never trailing after it was 3-0 early.

Darnold had a fantastic game again. Sure, he threw the one pick when they were up big and it led to a little comeback attempt from the Packers that made this one scary at 27-25 with 2:18 left after the Packers wisely went for two. Someone explain to Tom Brady why they did that, please. Greg Olsen knows.

But with Aaron Jones injured, the Vikings needed to salt this one away with the passing game, and Darnold delivered on his last few attempts in the four-minute offense to make sure the Packers never touched the ball again.

You like a safer ending than that, but you’ll gladly take the big win for the Vikings, who swept the Packers with a pair of 2-point wins where Green Bay never had the ball in the fourth quarter while trailing by one score. That’s hard to pull off against an 11-win team, but they did it twice this year, and now they are going to be in Detroit next Sunday night for the No. 1 seed. Incredible stuff.

As for the Packers, my preseason Super Bowl pick, it’s very alarming the way they’ve lost to the Lions twice, the Vikings twice, and also in Brazil against the Eagles in Week 1. They made it look close enough at the end of these games, but you have to beat these teams in the playoffs to get to the Super Bowl, and that’s not looking strong right now.

But maybe they have a revenge tour in mind. We’ll just have to see as this division has been fantastic, and it’s getting the proper send-off with one of the best regular-season games in NFL history as it could be a pair of 14-2 teams if Detroit wins Monday night.

Jets at Bills: The New Three Stooges

And to think this game looked like it might decide the AFC East back in May when the schedule came out. But at least the Jets didn’t have to worry about blowing a fourth-quarter lead this time. They were down 40-0 before getting some points with Tyrod Taylor replacing Aaron Rodgers in the fourth quarter. That’s the first time in Rodgers’ career he trailed by 40 points in a game.

Anyone touting this as an MVP performance for Josh Allen just had their mind made up before the game even started. This shouldn’t move the needle as he finished with 199 total yards and 3 touchdowns, including a 1-yard sneak on 1st-and-goal to start the game. But the Bills only had 10 points on offense in the first half. The short fields they kept getting from the defense blew this one open after the Bills scored touchdowns of 38, 37, and 15 yards.

Rodgers had a rough day with 4 sacks, 2 picks, and he even picked up a 15-yard flag for a little shove out of bounds on a defender after his pick.

This is Buffalo’s division and could be for a long time like it was for New England.

Colts at Giants: No Banners, Just Misery

The 2024 Colts had issues with their quarterback position, including a disastrous benching of Anthony Richardson for Joe Flacco, and of course the way Richardson has struggled with accuracy and staying healthy. But let’s not blame their downfall at the end on Richardson’s latest injury that put Flacco back in action in a must-win game in New York.

It was the defense who ultimately delivered the final embarrassing blow for this team after allowing Drew Lock, who had one of the worst games by any quarterback this season against Atlanta last week, to lead the lowest-scoring team in the NFL to 45 points.

Lock damn near had a perfect passer rating (155.3) with 309 yards and 4 touchdowns, but I don’t want to give him too much credit. The inability to tackle Malik Nabers (171 yards and 2 TD) had a lot to do with those numbers. This is right up there with the Tavon Austin (2013), Jonas Gray (2014), Brock Osweiler (2016), and 2021 Jacksonville games for the Colts. If you know the Colts, you know what I mean.

The offense was far from perfect, but they put up 33 points and Flacco had a couple of late turnovers after the game looked out of reach. It was just a disastrous day for the defense as they couldn’t even tackle Lock on an obvious scramble for another touchdown with 2:57 left that made it 42-33.

Embarrassing stuff, and I think heads have to roll in Indy after this. The defensive coordinator at the very least must go. At least with the team in past seasons after Andrew Luck retired, they had some moments I joked about with banners, mocking their “2014 AFC Finalist” banner. But this team under Steichen? No such achievements. Just enough teasing that they’re a bad wild-card caliber team that will get bounced in the 7-2 matchup, then they can’t even get into the tournament anyway.

The Colts have become irrelevant, and that’s sad to see.

Panthers at Buccaneers: More Domination

The Panthers and Buccaneers were in overtime in Week 13 with Baker Mayfield having a sloppy game. That wasn’t the case Sunday as he had as many incomplete passes (5) as he had touchdown passes. The Bucs were absolutely dominant in a 48-14 win to get back on track after that upset loss in Dallas.

Thanks to the Commanders taking care of Atlanta, the Bucs are back in position to win the NFC South again. They’ll just have to beat the Saints at home or hope the Falcons lose to the Panthers.

Cardinals at Rams: Another Low-Scoring Win

Ever since the Rams beat Buffalo 44-42, they are 3-0 in games that ended 44-24 cumulatively. It’s been a wild run for a team with Matthew Stafford at quarterback, who again didn’t get much going in the passing game outside of throwing to Puka Nacua.

The Rams are the first team since the 2006 Broncos to win at least three straight games where they didn’t score 20 points and didn’t allow 10 points. Those Broncos did it in five straight games. But the Rams are 10-6 after a 1-4 start, 9-2 since the bye, and they needed their defense to deliver with a goal line stand against the Cardinals.

Kyler Murray finally threw a touchdown to Trey McBride on a screen pass, but when he later went for him with the game on the line, he hit him right in the head with the ball and it was caught on the deflection for an incredible interception to secure the 13-9 win.

With Washington’s win, the Rams clinched the NFC West. They could play the Commanders or Packers in the playoffs, and it likely will be tough on them. But another great turnaround job by McVay after a poor start.

Cowboys at Eagles: Kenny Pickett Doing Kenny Pickett Things

A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed Kenny Pickett would be starting a game for the Eagles to clinch the division title, but here we are. One thing that doesn’t surprise me is it was Pickett vs. Cooper Rush as Dak Prescott and Jalen Hurts have met just three times since Hurts was drafted in 2020. They’re the Ravens-Steelers of the NFC as far as their quarterbacks missing the rivalry games go.

But before leaving yet another game with an injury, Pickett had some hilarious highlights like this play here:

He also should have had two touchdown passes in a half for the first time in his career, but penalties and a receiver going down at the 1 before he snuck it in on the Tush Push prevented that. But you have to laugh that the third quarterback, Tanner McKee, came in for Pickett and threw 2 touchdowns on 4 pass attempts in his NFL debut.

With CeeDee Lamb out, the Cowboys had little to show for on offense, turned it over four times, and made this a fairly easy 41-7 win for Philly. Saquon Barkley rushed for 167 yards, becoming the 9th player to hit 2,000 yards in a season. I’m glad he did it in 16 games. I’m not sure him breaking Dickerson’s record – he needs 101 yards – in a 17th game where he probably doesn’t even need to play a snap with the Eagles the No. 2 seed – would be a legitimate way to break the record. Just let it be and get ready for the playoffs.

Chargers at Patriots: What Exactly Does New England Do Well?

I’m used to the Chargers choking against the Patriots, and even in winning there last year, they still had two field goals in a 6-0 dud. But between Drake Maye checking out early with a possible concussion (he later returned) and the way the score got out of hand so quickly, I found myself changing the cats’ litter boxes by the third quarter after Ladd McConkey (my guy) punked them for a second touchdown.

Nice to see the Chargers get a comfortable win and punch their postseason ticket with a 10-6 record. I’m just not sure what the Patriots do well at this point as the defense has gotten worse with Jerod Mayo, and they still don’t have any weapons for Drake Maye.

But hey, they might have the No. 1 pick now and we know they won’t need to draft a quarterback. Travis Hunter time?

Raiders at Saints: I Actually Missed Derek Carr Sunday

This was supposed to be Derek Carr’s chance to make history by losing starts to all 32 NFL teams. But he was out with an injury, so we got treated to another Spencer Rattler start. At least they scored some points this week after getting shutout in Green Bay, but it was still a decisive 25-10 win for the Raiders, who are suddenly on a winning streak.

Given the way the offense moved the ball with a rare appearance by the running game (156 yards), I think the Raiders would have defeated Carr in New Orleans in this one. A pity we didn’t get the chance to see it.

Dolphins at Browns: Good Job, Miami

I rarely have anything good to say about Miami, because I don’t think any franchise does more to have irrelevant 7-to-9 win seasons that don’t produce a postseason win. But I have to say it was a good job by Mike McDaniel’s team to win on the road in Cleveland with Tyler Huntley at quarterback after a surprise inactive for Tua Tagovailoa in a must-win game.

Huntley was very good at managing the game while the Browns saw “DTR” complete 24-of-47 passes for 170 yards in a 20-3 final. For the people who don’t believe quarterbacks change everything, just think how differently this game looks if it was Tua vs. Jameis.

But the Dolphins (8-8) stay alive and just need the Broncos to lose to the Chiefs to make the playoffs next week if they beat the Jets to finish 9-8. But a 9-8 finish that doesn’t even result in a postseason berth would be 100% on brand for Miami.

Titans at Jaguars: It’s Raining, It’s Boring

Well, the Titans (3-13) are abysmal after a couple of low-scoring losses at the hands of the Jaguars this month. They had a late shot to win this one with a touchdown and 2-point conversion, but Mason Rudolph’s rally came up 26 yards short.

We’ll see if the Jaguars make a coaching change for 2025, but you have to say the Jaguars are closer to competing than the Titans as the way things stand. At least Trevor Lawrence can come back and throw to a young stud in Brian Thomas Jr. next season.

Next week: The end is nigh. On Saturday, it looks like they’re giving Lamar Jackson one last MVP showcase with the biggest spread (18.5) of the season against the Browns. Then it’s Bengals-Steelers, which feels like an attempt to get Cincy in since the Steelers might want to rest players if the Ravens have the division locked up. Sunday, we’ll see if the Broncos can beat Kansas City’s backups (Carson Wentz beat the 49ers’ backups last year with the Rams) or if Sean Payton will join the 2004 Bills as chokers in that situation. But the big one is the last one with Vikings at Lions, possibly a matchup of 14-2 teams for the No. 1 seed. Brilliant.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 16

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

The NFL delivered such a frontloaded Week 16 schedule that six of the likely AFC playoff teams already played on Thursday and Saturday. All that Sunday had left was Buffalo slumming it with the Patriots.

But the games were competitive, and 12 of the 15 games so far this week had a comeback opportunity with six game-winning drives already in the books. We saw a concussion knock Jalen Hurts out of the big game in Washington, an iconic performance for Jayden Daniels in the comeback win, and the Cowboys even decided to play hard Sunday night to upset the Buccaneers and bring some chaos to the NFC South.

A week ago, people were flocking towards an Eagles-Bills Super Bowl. Now, that doesn’t look so hot with the reality that neither is likely to be a No. 1 seed, and teams like the Chiefs, Lions, Vikings, Packers, and Ravens are still very much relevant in this race.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Eagles at Commanders: Kenny Pickett? (Read It in the “Scut Farkas?” Narration Voice)

Sunday’s best game on paper turned out to be the best game for reasons no one expected. Jalen Hurts was ruled out early after a concussion on a long run where he just looked a hair off after getting up. That was enough to take him out and replace him with Kenny Pickett of all people.

Oh, it was quite the Pickett experience too as he took 3 sacks with his oblivious nature to the pass rush, he threw a pick, he locked onto basically 2 receivers (A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith had 23 of the team’s 28 pass targets), the Eagles were 3-for-16 on third down, and he still made a couple of clutch throws that probably should have won the game.

But it didn’t work out this time as Philadelphia’s winning streak was snapped at 10 games. The Eagles got a 68-yard touchdown run out of Saquon Barkley, but his other 28 carries only gained 82 yards as the Commanders kept stuffing runs to stay in the game after the offense had 5 turnovers on a sloppy day where they even started the game with a turnover on downs after Brian Robinson Jr. was stuffed on a 4th-and-1 run.

The ability to withstand 5 giveaways and still come back to beat a top defense like the Eagles 36-33 is really impressive for Jayden Daniels, the rookie sensation who absolutely locked up the Offensive Rookie of the Year award here. Even with his skill players fumbling 3 times and giving him 32 rushing yards, Daniels was a dual-threat machine in this game with 258 passing yards and 81 rushing yards. The only other quarterback in NFL history to even have one game with 5 touchdown passes, 220 passing yards, and 70 rushing yards was Cam Newton in 2015 against the Giants, a game that locked up his MVP award that year.

Would things have turned out differently if Hurts wasn’t concussed? Perhaps. But it’s not like the Eagles didn’t score 33 points, didn’t lead 14-0/21-7/27-14, or didn’t rack up takeaways. They just couldn’t finish the job.

Barkley had a big drop on his only pass target in the fourth quarter. Later, Daniels made his biggest mistake with an interception with 2:53 left in a 30-28 game. But instead of icing the game, the Eagles couldn’t convert a 3rd-and-5 when Pickett’s pass was dropped by a wide-open Smith, a shockingly bad drop that’s even worse than the one Barkley had in Week 2 against Atlanta, another improbable loss for the Eagles this year and why their shot at the No. 1 seed is all but toast.

That gave Daniels another shot in a 33-28 game with 1:52 left, and he delivered another clutch drive for a 9-yard touchdown to Jamison Crowder with 6 seconds left to go up 36-33 after a 2-point conversion run.

The Commanders are still going to likely fall short of winning the NFC East, but can you imagine if the wild card match is No. 7 Washington at No. 2 Philadelphia? That just got a lot more likely and interesting after this game.

Texans at Chiefs: Stroud-Mahomes I Not Quite as Planned

When the NFL schedule came out in May, I was hyping up Texans-Chiefs as a huge game for the MVP race and No. 1 seed. I thought C.J. Stroud would be the next challenger to Patrick Mahomes in the AFC, and this game would be his chance on a national stage to show how far he and this team has come against the defending champs.

Well, the season hasn’t quite turned out that way, but both teams still came in as division winners and the Chiefs are chasing the No. 1 seed. I also think Stroud held his own and did a decent job on the road after losing Tank Dell to a gruesome knee injury. He’s already lost Stefon Diggs, so it’s basically Nico Collins and some guys, and one of those guys (tight end Dalton Schultz) had a pretty egregious drop in the second half.

But Stroud also threw two picks, and you can’t do that in Kansas City. The Chiefs are getting that turnover regression in full force now with 8 takeaways in the last two games after 10 takeaways through 13 games. The offense also hasn’t turned it over in 5 straight games, the longest streak in the Mahomes era. So, everything I was saying about turnovers for this team earlier this season is coming true now with the defense starting to get them and the offense avoiding them well.

But it was still another one-score win despite the Chiefs only spending about 5-6 minutes trailing in a game they mostly controlled. Hollywood Brown made his season debut and looked solid given he’s never played a real game before with this offense. Definitely should be a plus going forward. Even Xaiver Worthy played well and scored another touchdown. Still not getting much from the running game, but I like that the Chiefs made a real effort to get the ball out fast against an elite pass rush.

Mahomes played very well, and go figure, he showed on the opening drive that the ankle was no big deal with two huge scrambles, including a 15-yard touchdown run. The Chiefs finished with 27 points on 9 drives, and that includes Kareem Hunt sliding down at the end when he could have scored if he wanted to.

But the Chiefs are more than content with their 27-19 type of victory as they are 14-1 and march towards another No. 1 seed. They get two cracks at winning one game to clinch it.

Steelers at Ravens: Pittsburgh Might Lose Out Now

Why does this game feel so long ago when Saturday was just one day before Sunday? But I wanted to quickly touch on three things with this one.

First, Russell Wilson undoubtedly screwed things up here in a game that was more high scoring than expected and there for the taking. He got greedy on the scramble that turned into a fumble when he should have been satisfied with a 1st-and-goal. Then the pick-six after Minkah Fitzpatrick delivered an incredible pick was just a back breaker and game ender to make it 31-17 in the fourth quarter. Can’t afford those kind of mistakes on the road against a playoff opponent.

As for Mike Tomlin, I think he let the Philadelphia punt beat him twice. Tomlin was rightfully criticized for punting last week in Philadelphia before the Eagles went on to run out the final 10-plus minutes on the clock. But instead of learning the right lesson that the punt was bad because of the 27-13 score and the struggles to get Philly off the field, Tomin ignored the game situation Saturday and made another bad call when he went for a 4th-and-6 at the Baltimore 45 with a whole quarter left. Wilson threw deep to Calvin Austin for an incompletion.

Maybe it’s a moot point since two plays later, Lamar Jackson wasted Derrick Henry’s 44-yard run by throwing a pick, but I still would like to see Tomlin learn when to punt and when to go for it with better skill and reasoning instead of what feels like randomness. He got aggressive in a spot that really didn’t call for it. I also think he was frustrated the Ravens recovered all 3 of those early fumbles that could have really turned this game around. It just wasn’t Pittsburgh’s day as fumble recoveries on those plays is key to how they’ve been beating Baltimore so routinely.

But I wouldn’t say it was exactly Lamar Jackson’s day either. Sure, he threw 3 touchdowns and got his cleanest win yet against the Steelers. But he only hit one 20-yard completion in the game against a secondary that was already missing a corner (Donte Jackson) and lost another (Joey Porter Jr.) to injury. T.J. Watt wasn’t 100% after a fourth-quarter injury last week and wasn’t a factor here. The Ravens recovered Jackson’s early strip-sack fumble. He only had 25 rushing yards on 6 carries, so they kept him contained again. Then he threw a horrible pick in the red zone when the Ravens had their shot to go up two scores.

But Henry rushed for 162 yards and the Steelers left some key receivers open throughout the game. I don’t think they’d have any fear of a rematch even if it was played in Baltimore in the playoffs. George Pickens, Jackson, and Porter Jr. should be back for that one and a healthier Watt (hopefully).

We might end up seeing that too, because it wouldn’t be surprising if the Steelers lost out here with the Chiefs and Bengals up next. I guess it depends on how badly both teams need that Week 18 game.

But the Ravens needed this one to avoid losing the AFC North, and they came through. We’ll see what they do in Houston next while the Steelers have to deal with the Chiefs.

Patriots at Bills: Running Backs Matter?

As new AFC East rivals, you’re going to hear a lot of comparisons between Drake Maye and Josh Allen in the next few years, or at least for as long enough as Maye gives us a reason to.

Here’s one such comparison: Maye’s 2024 rookie season is better than Josh Allen’s 2018 rookie season. If the Patriots invest wisely this offseason, I’d expect Maye’s second season to also be better than Allen’s second season. Anything beyond that might be a stretch.

But that’s the future. As for Sunday, it’s no stretch at all to say Maye outplayed Allen in their first matchup but didn’t get the win because of the difference in how their running backs played. It was 14 degrees at kickoff, but Maye did well throwing the ball in Buffalo, making some excellent plays down the field and in tight windows on shorter throws.

The Patriots led 14-0 early, but they couldn’t build on that lead. Buffalo also quickly cut into half of it with a 46-yard touchdown run by James Cook, his fourth burst from over 40 yards for a score this year. He later added another touchdown catch on another drive where he broke a 25-yard run.

It covered up a poor game from Allen, who threw for 154 yards on 16-of-29 passing. He only had one touchdown pass and threw an ugly looking interception in the end zone that the Patriots were caught trying to return instead of taking the touchback. Allen only rushed for 30 yards too, so it just wasn’t a very effective game for him at all. His 28.7 QBR was the third lowest this week while Maye’s was 67.3.

But this game turned in the third quarter when Rhamondre Stevenson lost a fumble, setting up the Bills for a 50-yard go-ahead field goal on a drive that was just 10 yards long. The Bills led 17-14 and never trailed again from that point. I can’t help but point out all the big fumbles the skill players for the Patriots have had since 2020 after Tom Brady left the team. This didn’t use to happen to them, but it has now and Stevenson is a repeat offender with some huge fumbles in his career.

This game is another glaring example, but the stat sheet is going to show that Maye fumbled on a lateral pass to Stevenson in the fourth quarter that was returned for an easy Buffalo touchdown to make it 24-14.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1870980329097539969

Was the pass too hard? Hell no. That’s a pretty soft lob that hit Stevenson right in the hands well before any contact. The problem was he shouldn’t have thrown it as the defender was bearing down and it was going to be a huge loss even if caught. Throwing it backwards to make it a live ball instead of forward to be a swing pass that might go incomplete just made it worse.

But that play really ruined the game for New England, and I swear Stevenson is a double agent at times for this team. Don’t forget the time he choked against the Bengals in 2022 on 1st-and-goal from inside the 5.

Eventually, the Patriots scored a touchdown with 1:13 left, but they wasted almost a full minute after having 1st-and-goal at the 1 with 2:14 left. Antonio Gibson, the other back, was stuffed for a 3-yard loss, leading to an extended series of plays, including a bad dropped fumble by Maye that he recovered, that took a minute off the clock and left the Patriots with little hope of getting the ball back despite keeping all three timeouts.

Maybe Drake Maye should embrace his “the new Josh Allen” and should have did the Tush Push on that 1st-and-goal play at 2:14. Get this thing in before the 2-minute warning and the Patriots could have had 4 clock stoppages in a 24-21 game on a day where Allen wasn’t good.

But this is why the Patriots are 3-12.

Buccaneers at Cowboys: Where Was This Dallas Team Earlier?

The Cowboys (7-8) may have been eliminated from the playoffs Sunday, but they’re possibly a botched punt against Cincinnati away from a 5-game winning streak after taking down the Buccaneers in a wild 26-24 game Sunday night.

Where was this team earlier in the season when it was getting destroyed by 20-point deficits at home every week? Cooper Rush had a successful night against the Tampa Bay defense, and the Buccaneers had some really poor plays with drops and getting outmuscled for the ball by Dallas’ defense who just looked like they wanted it more all night. The interception in the fourth quarter in the end zone was a great example of that.

But what about the ending? It looked like Tampa Bay was going to pull off an improbable 9-point comeback in the last 5:00 by scoring twice. They got the ball back with 1:40 and only needed a field goal. But one of the craziest endings you’ll ever see took place. On the first snap, Baker Mayfield kept fighting to avoid a sack, flipped the ball out to receiving back Rachaad White, who carried it like a loaf of bread before securing it and gaining some YAC.

https://twitter.com/brgridiron/status/1871052626302804198

But even though he got both hands on the ball again, the Cowboys still ripped the ball away from him for a game-deciding fumble. Madness.

Tampa Bay (8-7) is going to need Atlanta to lose a game if it wants to win the NFC South again. This was a bad performance in Dallas for them.

Vikings at Seahawks: Another Close Win for Kevin O’Connell and Sam Darnold

Remember when the Vikings were 5-0 and people started writing them off after a little 2-game losing streak? Well, they’re 8-0 since their last loss, and the latest test they passed was another gut-check win on the road in Seattle against a team playing for a division title chase.

I continue to be impressed with Sam Darnold, who shook off another 3-sack game by still throwing 3 touchdowns, including the game winner from 39 yards out to Justin Jefferson with 3:51 left. Darnold has led 5 game-winning drives this season, doubling his career total he had coming into 2024.

Geno Smith played well on that knee injury for most of the game, but when push came to shove, he took a sack and a fantastic tackle on a 3rd-and-16 checkdown to the running back led to a 60-yard field goal, which was missed with 1:55 left. After Smith got the ball back with 55 seconds left and still in need of a field goal for overtime, he immediately threw a bad pick to end the game.

I’m heavily rooting for the Vikings to beat Green Bay next week so that we can get the last game of the regular season to be Vikings-Lions in Detroit for the No. 1 seed. I’m also not ruling out 2024 being Sam Darnold’s Eli/Flacco/Foles moment as we feel overdue for that kind of postseason.

Lions at Bears: On the Bright Side, No Clock Mismanagement This Time…

The Bears almost beat the Lions on Thanksgiving, but there was no such close finish this time as the score stayed 34-17 the entire final quarter. It didn’t help that the Bears had another slow start, falling behind 20-0, but you have to blame Rome Odunze for a couple of early fumble plays for that this time.

But the Lions were excellent on offense with a big game from Jared Goff and Jahmyr Gibbs in a starring role without David Montgomery (MCL). I believe the theory that offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was “showing off” to impress the Bears’ front office if he is to be their next head coach. Calling that intentional “stumble” play with Goff throwing a touchdown was an excellent example of him pulling out all the tricks even when the Lions probably didn’t need them to beat Chicago again.

But Johnson should want to coach a team like Chicago. First, you stay out of the AFC where most of the elite quarterbacks are, and you have a chance to build up the Bears with Caleb Williams, who again had a game where I think it showed his potential more than it did problems. He threw for 334 yards, no picks again, and he only took 2 sacks this week. He was also his team’s leading rusher again with 34 yards.

Johnson is a hot commodity in the coaching ranks, so we’ll see where he lands next month. But this very well may have been part of his interview with the Bears.

Rams at Jets: Almost a Historic Game

The Rams just can’t play a “normal” game this month. They go from a 44-42 wire-to-wire win over the Bills to a 12-6 comeback win in rainy San Francisco, and now it’s a 19-9 win in New York that looks low scoring as hell, but this game actually came close to being historic.

Each team only had the ball three times in the first half as long drives ruled the day. In the third quarter, the Jets had a drive that lasted nearly 10 minutes and ended with a turnover on downs, a killer and probably a bad decision to go for a 4th-and-4 instead of a short field goal to go up 12-6.

But the Rams’ next drive bled into the fourth quarter, a game-tying field goal drive, so we had a game with just 8 total possessions with 12:44 to play. This could have set the record for the fastest 60-minute NFL game ever played and the one with the fewest possessions between two teams (think 11 would do the trick, maybe 12), but we didn’t get there in the end.

Aaron Rodgers went from some strong drive engineering as his protection held up to giving up the ball on a strip-sack as he got a little too comfortable in holding onto it. That put the Rams on a short field for a go-ahead touchdown drive as Matthew Stafford found a healthy Tyler Higbee for 11 yards. Rodgers couldn’t answer on the ensuing 4th-and-4, and the Rams added a field goal to make it 19-9.

The Jets’ last real hope was a 49-yard field goal with 2:02 left, but as has been the case all season, the kicking team blew it. Even when they tried to get one last possession back, they muffed the punt, so the special teams have been just abysmal for the 2024 Jets.

And that’s how you end up blowing your sixth 4th-quarter lead of the year to lead all teams, the most since Josh McDaniels’ Raiders in 2022. Just going to leave this here, and keep in mind it’s 15 starts that Rodgers started and finished this year as that 16 number includes last year’s Buffalo opener when he tore his Achilles.

https://twitter.com/ScottKacsmar/status/1871091880181870770

Cardinals at Panthers: Adios, Arizona

The Cardinals (7-8) have been eliminated from the playoffs after a bad loss in Carolina. They forced overtime after trailing 20-3 early and 30-20 in the fourth quarter. But losing James Conner, who was having a huge game, didn’t help, and in overtime, the Cardianls couldn’t get a drive going. They were even so desperate to move the chains they went for a 4th-and-2 at their own 18, which would have set the Panthers up for a game-winning chipshot if they didn’t get it.

They converted, but the reason that’s a big gamble is you’re still not guaranteed to move the ball any deeper and might end up punting it back anyway. That’s exactly what happened too. Between a delay of game penalty and sack of Kyler Murray on third down, the Cardinals ended up punting from their own 4 after another penalty on top of that. By the time the Panthers got the ball for the second time in overtime, they were at midfield and it only took one Chuba Hubbard run for 28 yards to get in field goal range, then he just ended it with a 21-yard touchdown run to win 36-30.

I don’t know if Bryce Young will ever be good, but I do know that Kyler Murray just missed the playoffs for the fifth time in six years in Arizona, and no one seems to care about that. He’s reaching that Sam Bradford level of “no one cares” for a No. 1 overall pick.

Browns at Bengals: Should Have Been Jameis All Along

As it turns out, Jameis Winston had some type of injury that kept him out of action this week. It’s a shame because I think the Browns could have won this game with him taking on that defense instead of a minimal passing game from Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who took 5 sacks and threw 2 picks while leading the offense to 6 points on 10 drives. That will help the stats for the Cincinnati defense this year.

You could tell early that it wouldn’t be Cleveland’s day when D’Onta Foreman fumbled at the 1-yard line to start the game instead of taking a 7-0 lead. The Bengals were stuck on 17 points for a while, and Joe Burrow even fumbled on a strip-sack from the Cleveland 1 late in the fourth quarter when he was trying to extend his streak of games with 3 touchdown passes.

That’s why I criticize Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts for taking the easy option on the Tush Push instead of being asked to make a throw down there in a confined space. You never know what might happen, but Burrow didn’t even get a pass off here. I’m not saying the sneak isn’t the percentage play, but it’s not something we should be giving excessive credit to for the quarterback.

But Burrow got the ball back and extended his streak anyway after Myles Garrett jumped offside and Burrow went hunting for that streak on a deep throw to Ja’Marr Chase, who came down with the touchdown to make it 24-6.

But it’s all for naught if the Broncos come into Cincinnati next week and win in a de-facto playoff game. That’s going to be the biggest Cincinnati game of the last two seasons.

49ers at Dolphins: From Losing to the Chiefs in the Playoffs to 6-8 Starts

The 49ers were eliminated from the playoffs before this one kicked off in the late window. While I was watching it on RedZone and the 49ers were trailing 19-10, it hit me seeing these teams with 6-8 records after they were both in the playoffs as two of the teams the Chiefs beat that had better than +100 point differentials in 2023. What a difference a year makes for these motion merchants.

I also find myself again scoffing at the injury excuses for the 49ers, who lost again here , when you still see a roster with Brock Purdy, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Jauan Jennings, Leonard Floyd, Nick Bosa, Dre Greenlaw, Fred Warner, etc. You really need more than that to not lose by 12 points to the paper tiger Dolphins?

But I digress. Jake Moody being a terrible kicker is one major roster flaw as he missed a 41-yard kick in this game that wasted a third quarter drive. But late in a 22-17 game, it was pressure on Purdy that led to a bad interception and the Dolphins put it away with a long Achane touchdown run they didn’t necessarily need as the game is over if he goes down at any point inside the 40.

But hey, run it up and celebrate something as the Dolphins (7-8) are technically not eliminated yet. It’s the 49ers who are toast.

Titans at Colts: The Almost Epic Comeback of the Year  

It was only two years ago when the Colts blew a 33-0 lead to the Vikings. This time, they were up 38-7 on the Titans with 6:50 to go in the third quarter thanks to some huge touchdown runs by Jonathan Taylor, who secured the ball this week. But the Titans marched on three straight touchdown drives behind Mason Rudolph, and this was suddenly a game again at 38-30 with 2:53 left. The Titans converted a pair of 2-point conversions.

The Colts only threw 10 passes at this point, but Anthony Richardson did at least deliver an accurate throw on his 11th attempt to convert a 3rd-and-8 at the 2-minute warning, or else we might have seen a real attempt at this 31-point comeback, a true rarity in NFL history.

But by the time the Titans got the ball back, there were just 3 seconds left and they were 89 yards away from the end zone while still needing another conversion just to force overtime. Rudolph threw one of the most charitable interceptions you’ll ever see to finally end it. But what a weird finish and game overall.

The Colts (7-8) are still kicking and have a real shot at finishing 9-8 again while still missing the playoffs.

Giants at Falcons: Penix Will Always Remember His First

I hope someone pulled rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr. aside after his first NFL start and win and reminded him they won’t all be this easy. You can’t count on your defense intercepting two passes for touchdowns from a quarterback like Drew Lock every week. Those returns were even longer than any offensive play the Falcons had as their longest gain was 22 yards.

But it was a 34-7 blowout, Penix didn’t take any sacks, his first interception was 100% on Kyle Pitts, and you can’t really argue with the results. But we’ll see how he does against Jayden Daniels next Sunday night as the Falcons now control their own destiny for the NFC South again.

Jaguars at Raiders: Vegas Wins (Sorta?)

The Raiders ended their 10-game losing streak with a rare comeback win against exactly the caliber of team you’d expect them to finally beat in the Jaguars. It was watching a coach (Antonio Pierce) with a 1-10 record at 4QC attempts against a quarterback (Mac Jones) with a 3-15 record in such games, so something had to give.

In the end, it was the Raiders getting the win, but is it really a win when you give the Giants (2-13) a clear path to the No. 1 pick in the draft now? Not that there’s a huge quarterback prize waiting for them in April if the draft experts are to be trusted, but the Raiders probably aren’t going to control the top of the draft now.

Next week: Five game days from Wednesday-Monday. I think we’re peaking early again on Christmas, and I also think it’s going to be the Chiefs and Ravens winning again like Saturday. Seahawks-Bears is Thursday night, so we’ll see if the Bears can ever end this losing streak before 2025. The Saturday triple-header truly looks like a bad waste of my time on the couch, but I guess Broncos-Bengals is the highlight in the middle. That doesn’t leave much for Sunday, but Packers-Vikings is a good one, and SNF is Falcons-Commanders, which takes on new intrigue of course. Lions will try to destroy the 49ers on MNF to end the week in an NFC Championship Game rematch.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 15

~ Scott ~ Leave a comment

There were 13 games on Sunday’s NFL slate, but if you like close games, this wasn’t a good day for you. Only four games had a comeback opportunity (five for the week including TNF), and only four games were decided by fewer than 10 points.

You know it’s a rough week for close games when even the Chiefs led by 14+ points for the final 34:46. But Week 15 did still feel like a pivotal one for the Super Bowl LIX chase:

  • The Lions showed there’s no reason to trust their defense to get stops as they deal with too many injuries on that side of the ball.
  • The Bills show they might be impossible to stop in the Superdome in February if they can survive the AFC playoffs in likely wintry conditions.
  • The Chiefs have some real concerns with Patrick Mahomes’ high-ankle sprain and losing control of the top seed with a much tougher remaining schedule than Buffalo.
  • The Eagles look like a well-rounded team now that the passing game showed up against the Steelers.

Those four teams are topping the latest Super Bowl odds, but you can’t discount a run by the Ravens or Packers. I might even add the Vikings in there, but let’s see what happens Monday night first on that front. With so many comfortable wins already, maybe an upset could be in store for Monday night.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Bills at Lions: Deja Vu Role Reversal  

No matter what preconceived notions you had about Detroit losing this game, you can likely discard them. They didn’t lose because of Jared Goff, who was awesome with 494 yards, 5 touchdowns, and no turnovers on a day where his running backs were held to 35 yards on 13 carries. In fact, the game’s only turnover was a fumble by Amon-Ra St. Brown that set up the Bills on a short field.

They also didn’t lose 48-42 because of whacky Dan Campbell decisions. The Lions were 3-for-3 on fourth downs, and they even let their kicker (Jake Bates) try a 52-yard field goal before halftime. He missed on the type of kick he’s been making for them this year. That miss and the fumble hurt on a day where the Lions had little margin for error.

The Lions lost because their injury-ravaged defense had no answers for stopping the Bills, who stayed hot from last week, and Campbell knew he couldn’t rely on that unit to get stops in this one after a bad start with the Bills taking a 14-0 lead, pouncing early on big pass plays to their backup running backs.

In many ways, it was déjà vu to last week for Buffalo in their 44-42 loss in Los Angeles against the Rams, except this time they were the team that led wire-to-wire while the Lions were always stuck playing catch up. Both teams piled up over 520 yards of offense, but the Bills always made sure the Lions were behind 2-or-3 scores for all six of their second-half possessions, much like the Bills faced last week in LA. Just no chance of tying or taking the lead late.

But it did get a little interesting when the Bills had to settle for a field goal to make it 48-35 with 2:03 left. The Lions saved their timeouts and they were able to score a touchdown with 12 seconds and two timeouts left. They were very close to recovering an onside kick that could have made this a Hail Mary finish, but the Bills ultimately came out of the pile with the ball to end it.

Speaking of onside kicks, that seems to be the decision that Campbell is getting shredded for when he tried one with 12 minutes left in a 38-28 game. The Bills recovered and Mack Hollins was actually able to return it to the Detroit 5, setting up another easy touchdown drive for the Bills to go up 45-28 one play later.

But I get the call from Campbell. He knows how his defense has been playing these last few weeks, especially in the second half of games when their limited depth is greatly tested and hasn’t been able to get stops. The Lions also lost more defenders to injury in this game. I think Campbell figured he’d give stealing a possession with an onside kick recovery a try, and if they didn’t get it, at least Buffalo would score quickly than if you gave them a longer field. I don’t mind the call. I just think people are having a more negative reaction because the result was a return to the 5-yard line, which rarely happens on an onside kick.

I already get the sense that Campbell is going to face some harsh criticism in the playoffs even though his defense isn’t giving him much of a choice to trust them to get a stop.

In ending Kansas City’s 15-game winning streak and Detroit’s 11-game winning streak, that’s probably going to keep the Bills as the favorites for the Super Bowl going into the playoffs since they have a cakewalk schedule these last three weeks and every other contender doesn’t. Actually, I’m seeing Bills (+425), Lions (+440), Eagles (+450), and Chiefs (+475) at BetOnline, so it’s one of the closest 4-way races you’ll ever see. But that’s sure to change if the Bills can land the No. 1 seed, which gets a boost from the Mahomes injury.

But there’s no way I’m crowning Buffalo in Week 15. Scoring 42+ points in back-to-back road games is cool, but they’ve also just allowed 42+ points in back-to-back road games too. Of the 309 teams to allow 40 points in multiple games (consecutive or not) in the Super Bowl era (1966-2023), just one of them won the Super Bowl that year. It was the 2007 Giants.

The Bills have killed some epic winning streaks themselves this season. Maybe they even get a chance to end a 15-game winning streak for the Eagles in the Super Bowl in a rematch of 2023’s best regular-season game. That looks a bit more likely now than a Bills-Lions rematch in February with the state of the defense for Detroit.

We’ll see what Minnesota does Monday night against the Bears, but the NFC North is far from locked up for Detroit too. It still has the No. 1 seed lead over the Eagles, but the remaining schedule favors the Eagles.

Chiefs at Browns: Turnover Regression

I posted a lot of stats this week about Kansas City’s historic success despite only having 10 takeaways on the season. Part of the reason I did that is because I knew they were facing Jameis Winston and the Browns this week, and everyone knows he can be charitable with the ball.

But it’s also a matter of regression. Either the Chiefs are going to start taking the ball away more often, or they might start losing games this season. Well, the turnover regression started early on Sunday, but the Browns blew it away with turning the ball over six times in a 21-7 loss.

The special teams got it started with a forced fumble on a punt return, and that’s even after the Browns cut Kadarius Toney this week. Then Jameis Winston was intercepted in the end zone, the first of three Jameis picks before he was benched for DTR, who also threw a pick. Hell, even Trent McDuffie got the first pick of his NFL career after playing roughly 3,000 snaps for the Chiefs. Poor Nick Chubb broke his foot and lost a fumble. Just a miserable day for the Browns as the Chiefs got a huge boost in takeaways.

It’s the first Kansas City game since the wild card win against Miami in frigid temperatures where the score wasn’t within one possession at some point in the fourth quarter. The Chiefs led 21-7 for the final 18 minutes. See what happens when you get takeaways? You lead 21-0 and win 21-7 without all the drama.

But there was drama of course as Patrick Mahomes did not finish this game due to a high-ankle sprain. It was a rough second half for Mahomes with 8 straight incompletions at one point, but one has to wonder why Andy Reid would still be throwing the ball so much with a rare big lead. The Chiefs didn’t give up any sacks in this game with guard Joe Thuney getting the start at left tackle, but there were 11 quarterback hits, which should be one of the highest numbers in a game in Mahomes’ career. Letting him get hit repeatedly with a multi-touchdown lead looked quite dumb.

Everything went downhill after DeAndre Hopkins dropped a great pass on third-and-long for the third game in a row. The Chiefs kept throwing incompletions soon after that, and while their turnover regression was fantastic, they also saw their 3rd-down success rate plummet in this game as they were just 7-of-18 (38.9%) after being over 52% this year.

Mahomes’ injury actually happened on a 4th-and-3 at the Cleveland 39 with 8:01 left. Man, for all the times where you curse at Andy Reid for punting, maybe that’s a spot where you actually take a 5-yard penalty and punt and let your defense do its job, or just wait for Cleveland to turn it over again with a backup quarterback entering the game.

A lot of things have been poorly managed with the Chiefs lately, but now we’ll see how they handle this schedule crunch with games coming up on Saturday (Texans) and next Wednesday (at Steelers) while there is little margin for error if the Chiefs (13-1) want to hold off Buffalo (11-2) for the No. 1 seed that they seemingly need if they want the three-peat to happen.

But it could come down to Carson Wentz against an elite pass rush from the Texans this Saturday. Good going, Andy.

Steelers at Eagles: As Expected

Not a ton to say here because I really did expect the Eagles to win by 14+ points as the game just wasn’t that important for the Steelers, who can win the AFC North with a win in Baltimore on Saturday. Everything was stacked against them here with George Pickens still out, the Eagles being a really strong opponent with an elite defense, and you had to figure Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown would connect after grumblings in the building about their passing game. The last time they played in 2022, Hurts and Brown torched this defense, and the results Sunday weren’t far off.

Hurts and Brown were outstanding early on, and to the Steelers’ credit, they fought back to make it a 17-13 game at halftime. But what a second half for ball control for the Eagles. They had three very long drives, which helped limit the Steelers to 11 offensive snaps in the second half on just two drives. You never see that in any half.

The Eagles couldn’t be stopped, and yeah, the Steelers helped with roughing the long snapper on a field goal to extend one drive, then Najee Harris fumbled a pitch on their last real chance of tying the game.

But the Tush Push was too much to deal with, and the Eagles just kept converting crucial downs. However, Mike Tomlin deserves criticism for punting on 4th-and-7 at the Philly 46 in a 27-13 game with 10:40 left. Yeah, that’s not a great situation to be in, but you’re already down 2 touchdowns and can’t get them off the field. Just go for it.

He punted, and the Eagles went on an epic 21-play drive that consumed the final 10:29 on the clock. They converted five times on third or fourth down, a perfect way to close out a game.

I didn’t expect much from the Steelers in this game. But after an encouraging first half by the defense hanging in there, it was disappointing to see how badly they were dominated in the second half. It doesn’t paint a good picture for the rest of the season with the Ravens, Chiefs, and Bengals to come before the playoffs.

Dolphins at Texans: The Streak Continues (Or Begins Anew)

I know C.J. Stroud and the Texans haven’t been living up to the hype I started giving them in February. But they are the AFC South champs again, and they were home for this game, which is frankly all I needed to bet on them to beat the Miami Dolphins, one of the worst teams at beating playoff teams on the road in the Mike McDaniel era.

The Dolphins had lost every game in that scenario going back to their last win in such a game in September 2022 in Baltimore. They had lost 10 straight such games going into this season before losing in Seattle, losing in Buffalo, losing in Green Bay, and losing in Houston. However, they did win at the Rams in Week 10, and the Rams might win the NFC West instead of Seattle. So, it’s possible the streak ended at 11 games with the LA win, but it’s likely picked back up with losses in Green Bay and Houston.

I belabor this point on Miami because once you see it, it makes it really hard to ever trust them to do anything important. So, that’s why I don’t really put much value in what completion percentage Tua Tagovailoa has, or what he does against a Jets team that can’t stop blowing leads this year like last week. Show me something in a big game, and sure enough, Tagovailoa had four turnovers in this winnable game, including two picks in a fourth quarter that never changed on the scoreboard with a 20-12 final.

It’s not like Stroud was fantastic in this game. He threw 2 touchdowns to Nico Collins, who somehow only had 17 yards on 4 catches in the game. Stroud took another 4 sacks and Joe Mixon (12 carries for 23 yards) was shut down again.

This was on Tua to deliver, and he failed miserably – let’s not miss that Tyreek Hill was bad too – in another fourth quarter. Few things are this reliably predictable in the NFL like the Dolphins facing a good team on the road.

Colts at Broncos: The Signature Game for the Anthony Richardson Era?

This might be the game where people jumped off the hope train for the Shane Steichen-Anthony Richardson era for the Colts (6-8). In truth, it was neither guy who was to blame for the turning point in this loss in Denver. Jonathan Taylor looked like he scored a 41-yard touchdown run that was going to give the Colts a 20-7 lead in the third quarter, which felt like it could have been insurmountable with how badly rookie Bo Nix was playing on a 3-pick day.

But Taylor made the dumbest play in football to trigger the only situation where I don’t mind one of the dumbest rules in football being enforced. He dropped the ball prematurely before he broke the plane, resulting in a touchback and Denver’s ball. Huge mistake.

While plenty more mistakes were made by the Colts, that took a clear touchdown off the board. Denver finally took the lead in the fourth quarter on a 15-yard touchdown drive after a long punt return by Mims set them up. Then Steichen and Adonai Mitchell made the play that is the new “fake punt against the Patriots” for this era of the Colts:

https://twitter.com/YahooSports/status/1868446322149527559

Always love a play that makes me literally laugh out loud. With Mitchell’s slow release on the pitch back, you could just see this one coming from a mile away before Nik Bonitto returned it 50 yards for a crushing touchdown to make it 24-13. Richardson, who was 17-of-38 with two picks, wasn’t overcoming that deficit, and it only grew more to a 31-13 final.

That’s just a sobering finish to a game and basically the season. Now you don’t know if you can trust your coach, your quarterback, and apparently not your high draft pick on a receiver this year for 2025.

I enjoyed my years of Colts fandom while it lasted (2002-2019), but I’m glad I gave up on it before this era came along. I couldn’t stomach this level of incompetency.

Packers at Seahawks: Seattle Is in Trouble

The Seahawks (8-6) were already a slight underdog to the Rams when it came to winning the NFC West going into the weekend. When you looked at the remaining schedules, it made sense with the Rams having easier games and home field for the Week 18 meeting.

But the Seahawks also didn’t look like a real contender on Sunday night as the Packers were walking all over them in a 23-6 game. It only got mildly interesting when a Josh Jacobs fumble led to a Seattle touchdown drive with backup Sam Howell in the game for an injured Geno Smith, another big problem for Seattle to overcome the rest of the season.

But the Packers eventually put things away with another touchdown pass to Romeo Doubs, who caught both of Jordan Love’s touchdowns. The Packers are 10-4 and might be the best third-place team you’ll ever see.

As for Seattle, this defense’s performance is so clearly dependent on who they’re playing. With the Vikings and Rams still to come, that’s not encouraging.

Buccaneers at Chargers: Baker Doesn’t Care Where Your Scoring Defense Ranks

Even without Chris Godwin and a bad habit for turnovers, the Buccaneers are one of the most lethal offenses in the league this year. Even though the Chargers were still the No. 1 scoring defense, Tampa dropped 40 points in their building with 506 yards of offense, outgaining the Chargers by a full 300 yards in a 40-17 rout that was close well into the third quarter.

But Mike Evans took over with two touchdown catches in the third quarter as he’s still coming for that 1,000-yard streak despite missing games to injury, and Justin Herbert threw his first pick since September.

Tampa Bay (8-6) might actually live up to that “team you don’t want to face in the playoffs” narrative that gets forced on someone each year. As for the Chargers, I’m not going to call the defense a fraud, but it’s not a good sign when your 3 worst games are at home against the Bengals, Ravens, and Buccaneers, probably the three best offenses they’ve played this year. They just can’t keep up with teams like that given the lack of weapons around Herbert.

Ravens at Giants: The Giant Spread Goes Baltimore’s Way

We got an early sense of whether or not Lamar Jackson was being truthful about running more the rest of the season. He took off for 15 yards on the second snap from scrimmage, but this time it ended in a fumble. The Ravens declined to go for a 4th-and-1 at midfield and punted on the next drive, and you started to wonder if this biggest spread of the season (Ravens -16.5) was going to be a flop with the Ravens a little rusty after the bye week.

But they got it done eventually. While Jackson finished with 65 rushing yards, it was not a running demolition against one of the worst run defenses in the league as Derrick Henry finished with 14 carries for 67 yards and no touchdowns again. Instead, Jackson was 21-of-25 for 290 yards and 5 touchdowns, just missing out on another perfect passer rating game.

The passing game came easy for the Ravens in this one, and the same can’t be said (ever?) for the Giants, who started Tommy DeVito and ended with Tim Boyle after DeVito suffered a concussion. That helped the spread work out as Boyle missed some scoring opportunities in the 35-14 loss.

But this was supposed to be a rout. Let’s see what the Ravens do against the Steelers when the division title can be won by Pittsburgh this Saturday in Baltimore. The Ravens are already looking like a considerable favorite for that one, but we know those games have been going Pittsburgh’s way for years.

Bengals at Titans: Turnover Fest Goes Cincinnati’s Way in Mentor vs. Mentee Matchup

On the plus side, Joe Burrow threw two picks in this game, including one on the first drive, so we shouldn’t have to hear the Oppression Olympics working overtime to prop up his season for having a poor record despite a certain TD:INT ratio. He’s up to eight picks this season and also lost another fumble in this game.

But it didn’t matter as the Titans went on to turn it over six times, including a pick-six that got Will Levis immediately benched for Mason Rudolph after it was Levis’ fourth turnover. Pretty brutal stuff against this defense. The Bengals led by double digits the entire second half, one of their most comfortable wins all season.

I guess the Titans will go back to Levis next week, but they’re just playing out the schedule with little optimism for 2025. The Bengals (6-8) got some help with the Colts and Dolphins losing, or did they? The Bengals still rank behind both teams in the playoff standings, and it might have been beneficial if the Broncos lost to Indy to facilitate a collapse there while you can count on the Colts to keep losing other games.

Well, I’m sure it’ll all sort itself out but the Bengals had a good day overall at former OC Brian Callahan’s expense.

Commanders at Saints: Almost a Controversial Outcome

Playing in New Orleans again, those NFC South flashbacks must have hit Dan Quinn as the Commanders nearly blew a 17-0 lead in the second half that would have been one of the most controversial endings this season.

The Saints got back in the game by benching their new quarterback for rookie Spencer Rattler, but it was a trick play with a great catch by Alvin Kamara that got them on the board. The Commanders later had a chance to ice the game with a field goal to make it a 10-point game, but Greg Joseph missed a 54-yard field goal with 1:55 left.

That gave the Saints a chance at the tie or win, and they converted a 4th-down play to the 1-yard line in the closing seconds. But for some reason, the clock stopped at 0:09 for a solid 4 seconds before it started rolling again and that gave Rattler time to get the spike off. Had this not happened, it’s quite possible the clock would have run out. Maybe they could have gotten it with 1 second left had they seen it running out on them, but it would have been super close and that kind of clock error is inexcusable in this moment.

https://twitter.com/ChadwikoTWW/status/1868431498447323403

The Saints scored the touchdown on the last play, and they made the right decision to go for 2 and the win. But Rattler’s pass wasn’t even close in the end zone, and the Commanders (-7.5) held on for the 20-19 win after a real scare.

The only thing I’m shocked about here is that this didn’t happen in Philadelphia, because that’s the stadium where I’ve observed some real shady clock operating. But they’re apparently blaming this one on an official on the field accidentally stopping the clock when he shouldn’t have. Either way, it shouldn’t happen.

Oddly enough, this was the first time all year the Commanders successfully defended a one-score lead in the fourth quarter, the last team to do so in a game this year. What a sweat it was though.

Jets at Jaguars: Davante Adams’ Best Half

Congratulations to Aaron Rodgers on his 24th fourth-quarter comeback win, tying him with Patrick Mahomes on the career list even though his career is a dozen years shorter.

But it really was one of the greatest halves by a receiver in NFL history that made this one possible. The Jets only had 3 completions at halftime in another lackluster start. Davante Adams didn’t have a single catch, but in the second half alone, he went off for 198 yards and 2 touchdowns on 9 catches. He also caught a go-ahead 2-point conversion after his 71-yard touchdown put the Jets ahead after they almost blew their sixth 4th-quarter lead of the season.

It was also Adams who took the ball to the 1-yard line on the game-winning drive, which was a touchdown run by Breece Hall that the Jaguars may have just allowed willingly to get the ball back with some time in a 32-25 game. However, Mac Jones returned to his senses and threw a game-ending pick.

Maybe the craziest stat after Adams nearly going for a 400-yard full-game pace with that second half was that Rodgers led the Jets in rushing with 45 yards on 6 carries.

It’s too little too late for these Jets, but that was a vintage Rodgers to Adams performance that we thought we’d see earlier this year.

Cowboys at Panthers: Can See Why Carolina Is Usually the Underdog…

I can see why the Panthers have been underdogs for more than 30 straight games before Sunday where they lost 30-14 at home to Dallas. Count me in as one of the suckers who bought the fool’s gold that Carolina was doing better the last month (they really were, though) and that they could beat a Dallas team with a quarterback in Cooper Rush who couldn’t even throw for 200 yards at home against that Cincinnati defense.

Well, Rush threw 3 touchdowns in this one even if it took some great efforts from his receivers. Bryce Young had 4 turnovers and 6 sacks, including a strip-sack to start the second half when it was a 10-7 game, which really opened the floodgates on this one.

Dallas even won convincingly despite trying a 70-yard field goal that went about as poorly as you can imagine. I guess Carolina is still really bad.

Patriots at Cardinals: Third Down Differential 1991 Style

Not an interesting game as the Cardinals basically routed the Patriots to end their 3-game losing streak. But an interesting stat was on third down where the Patriots were 0-for-6 and the Cardinals were 10-for-15. It’s only the fifth game since 1991, the year they started officially tracking down stats, where one team failed to convert a single third down and their opponent converted at least two-thirds with a minimum 10 conversions.

The closest such game to this was back in 1991 when the Cardinals were 11-for-16 and the Patriots were 0-for-6 in a 24-10 win by the Phoenix Cardinals. So, there’s some more déjà vu.

Next week: Broncos-Chargers is solid for TNF with both teams hoping to make the playoffs. Saturday should have been great, but here we go with Patrick Mahomes and T.J. Watt leaving the fourth quarter with injuries and now facing a short week. Eagles-Commanders the highlight of Sunday’s early schedule even if it feels inevitable that the Eagles win the NFC East. Vikings-Seahawks the highlight in a low-key late slate. Bucs-Cowboys is a shit game for SNF that should have been flexed, but God forbid we do that to Jerry Jones. Saints-Packers should be a Green Bay rout on Monday night. So, I’m not really sure where the week peaks. Probably Steelers-Ravens for the AFC North on Saturday.

2024 NFL Stat Oddity: Week 14

~ Scott ~ 2 Comments

Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a hugely consequential day in the 2024 NFL season, but Week 14 felt like a big one with the Chiefs (12-1) getting some cushion in the AFC after the Bills were upset by the Rams in the shootout of the year that was still a wire-to-wire win for Sean McVay’s team. The Chiefs also came through with yet another close win to clinch the AFC West for the ninth year in a row.

The Steelers also took care of business against the Browns, so that Week 16 game in Baltimore can win them the AFC North regardless of what happens in Week 15. But we’ll worry about that game when it’s here.

We had eight games with a comeback opportunity, and so far, no team came back from a double-digit deficit to win this week. Could that mean more trouble for the Bengals against Cooper Rush in Dallas? We’ll see.

This season in NFL Stat Oddity:

Bills at Rams: The Puka Nacua Show

If you’re a fan of the Rams, you have to be wondering where the hell was this offense for coach Sean McVay when they couldn’t even score a single touchdown at home against Miami on MNF in Week 10. That could still be the loss that keeps them out of the playoffs, but they turned heads with this strong offensive performance against Buffalo in a stunning 44-42 win.

Right from the opening drive, it was clear they came prepared for this one. But while the running game looked good early, it became much more dependent on Puka Nacua making incredible catches to extend drives for Matthew Stafford.

As for the Bills, it was wild to see how this usually dominant team could not stay ahead of the Rams. They had nine possessions in the game and here’s what happened with the scoring margin at the beginning of each:

  • Down 7-0, 1-yard Josh Allen touchdown run
  • Down 10-7, blocked punt returned for touchdown (17-7) after three straight Josh Allen incompletions
  • Down 17-7, 41-yard touchdown on a screen pass
  • Down 24-14, punt before halftime
  • Down 24-14, 3-and-out to start third quarter
  • Down 31-14, 51-yard touchdown pass to Khalil Shakir
  • Down 38-21, 1-yard Josh Allen touchdown run
  • Down 38-28, 21-yard touchdown to Mack Hollins
  • Down 44-35, 1-yard Josh Allen touchdown run

That means the Bills only had the ball one time the entire game where they trailed by fewer than 7 points, and that was the damaging 2nd drive when they punted quickly and it was blocked for a huge touchdown. They found themselves trying to chase that all day, and despite getting two huge touchdowns on YAC plays, they still couldn’t force the Rams into enough stops to get the ball back with a chance to ever tie or take the lead.

The Rams are usually not great in closing games out under McVay, especially in the 4-minute offense. But he had a plan for this one. Instead of kicking a long field goal to try to take a 6-point lead with several minutes left, he did the smart thing by going for it. The Rams got away with a false start, but Stafford was able to find Tutu Atwell for a huge 11-yard gain with the clock moving down near 3:00.

The old McVay kicks the field goal there and relies on his defense. He learned something here, or maybe Sunday was just a really great day for him, his offense, and Nacua. Fittingly, it was Nacua who capped off the drive with a 19-yard touchdown. But after the Rams missed the extra point with 1:54 left, there was a slight door open in a 44-35 game.

The Bills got down the field quickly thanks to some penalties, but it was  on 1st-and-goal at the 1 with 1:06 left where they made a serious error in strategy, the latest blunder in the Sean McDermott era. The Bills tried to run Allen on the sneak again, a play that he was 3-for-5 on in this game at the 1. But you can’t be doing that, not scoring, and burning a precious timeout at 1:02 to run it again.

In his career (regular season), Allen has 20 touchdown runs from the 1-yard line and 9 touchdown passes from the 1. It’s clear which strategy he feels more comfortable doing, and that number is only 16 touchdown passes if we extend to the 2-yard line as well. He wants the higher-percentage play in the run instead of trying to find a throwing lane that tight in or risk another sack.

But in this particular spot, you really don’t have the time to be running the ball because of that fear of getting stopped and wasting too much time. You have to avoid using any timeouts, because you want to avoid doing the onside kick or at least avoid having to recover one to have a realistic shot. By taking the timeout at 1:02, that meant it was going to come down to the onside kick recovery. Tom Brady, who sounded worse than usual as he was losing his voice, was all over this strategic failure, the latest blunder for the Bills in the McDermott era in a loss.

Allen eventually got his touchdown run, his third of the day to go along with three touchdown passes, a stat line that only Otto Graham put up in the 1954 NFL Championship Game. But that’s why I said on Twitter that they were trying to pad Allen’s stat line with the easy, high percentage score of a run so people can inflate the value of this 3+3=6 stat instead of sticking to a needed strategy of making a throw in this spot, which is usually going to be tougher than someone sneaking over the line for a yard. Again, Allen’s success rate from the 1 on that play here was only 3-for-5 on Sunday.

Sure enough, they made it come down to the onside kick, which they didn’t recover. The Rams ended up punting and the clock expired at the end of the punt. All those points and touchdowns for a wire-to-wire loss where the Bills never even had the ball in a one-score game after the blocked punt for a touchdown early in the second quarter.

I’ve been very critical of McVay in games like this in the past, but he was mostly on the money with his approach here. He outcoached McDermott and the Bills, and Nacua and Stafford were outstanding.

If this propels the Rams (7-6) to a division title run by running the table, then it takes on even more significance. But the Bills gave up a huge opportunity to the Chiefs with a game in Detroit to come next, and with the way that defense is banged up, it could be another 44-42 game.

Will the Bills fall short in that one too? They’re only 2-2 against current playoff teams this year. As for Allen’s MVP odds actually improving from -250 to -450 after a loss, there’s always later in the week for another article on that. I need sleep.

Chargers at Chiefs: Another AFC West Wrapped Up

Like Spotify, the Chiefs were mailing in their AFC West Wrapped for 2024. Another 19-17 victory against a division rival? Just type up the script and send it in. Maybe add a doink FG by the backup kicker to end this one with a little spice.

But it was business as usual for the 2024 Chiefs, which means a win, which means a weekly fraud alert by social media for the “worst 12-1 team ever.” But I would say it’s alarming that the games are playing out so similarly as the 2020 Steelers and 2023 Eagles started falling into familiar scripts before their collapses too. The Chiefs are in a much better spot than those teams and have the track record to believe in them, but you can’t keep blowing 13-point leads this quickly every week, you can’t keep giving up so many pressures and sacks on Patrick Mahomes, and you have to remember to run the ball.

A lot of these Kansas City issues were on display even with new left tackle D.J. Humphries, who left the game with a fourth quarter injury. Pretty bold move to go empty backfield with Wanya Morris back at left tackle, but they made it work out.

Mahomes didn’t play his best game, but he also threw his best pass of the night to DeAndre Hopkins on a 3rd-and-16 with the Chiefs trailing in the fourth quarter, and for the second week in a row, the veteran did not make the catch in a big moment. He had an excuse of the defender hitting him this time, but you still have to hang onto a pass that would have made it first-and-goal. The Chiefs settled for a 50-yard field goal from backup kicker Matthew Wright, and he was good.

But the Chargers held the ball for 8:29 before settling for their own field goal to regain a 17-16 lead with 4:35 left. Justin Herbert was missing his only reliable receiver in Ladd McConkey and his best running back in J.K. Dobbins. That certainly made the job easier for the Chiefs, but once again, they struggled to get any takeaways in a game that didn’t have any again on either side. The only turnover in Kansas City’s last three games was the fumbled snap by the Raiders on Black Friday.

This was also a low-possession game with 9 drives for each quarterback. But after Herbert took the lead, he never saw the field again on a night where he played decently with 213 yards. Even Quentin Johnston made a few nice catches and caught a touchdown.

But in leading his seventh game-winning drive of 2024, Mahomes again used his legs to deliver decisive plays like the 3rd-and-10 conversion to Xavier Worthy. At the 2-minute warning, the Chiefs faced a hug 3rd-and-7, because giving Herbert the ball back there may mean you never see it again in a loss. But Mahomes again scrambled, dodged a sack, and found a waiting Travis Kelce for the conversion.

From there, it was just a matter of setting up the field goal as the last snap. Wright came on and bounced the kick off the left upright before it deflected in okay for the game-winning kick. The Chiefs have won the AFC West nine years in a row, trailing only the record set by the 2009-19 Patriots (11).

The Chiefs are 12-1 and “Chiefs win by 1-13 points” is literally 12-1 as a bet this year. The only other team to win 12 games by 1-13 points in a season was the 2004 Steelers, another record the Chiefs could break with ease this year.

Maybe the Chiefs can throw in a twist next week in Cleveland and introduce some defensive takeaways to the mix courtesy of Jameis Winston.

Panthers at Eagles: Xavier Legette? More Like Leggette Your Ass a Bus Ticket Home After That Drop

If you’re a fan of the Carolina Panthers, this month should be the most optimistic you’ve felt about the team since 2018, if not longer ago. While they didn’t get the win in Philly as a 13.5-point underdog, this should be remembered as the day where Bryce Young was about to lead a 97-yard game-winning touchdown drive against a stingy defense, and Xavier Legette did this:

https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1865862520889618860

I thought he had it live. But after that huge drop, there was a delay of game penalty, and Young eventually threw incomplete on 4th-and-9 to end the game, a 22-16 punch to the gut after it looked like Young did everything right.

Jalen Hurts had a really rough passing day (108 passing yards and 4 sacks), but the running game produced 209 yards with 124 yards to Saquon Barkley. Go figure, I had 125 as my bet, and it probably happens if the Eagles didn’t have a penalty on 2nd down while they were hanging onto their one-score lead, causing them to throw more.

But the Eagles (-13.5) never led by more than 6 points, and even that only happened early in the fourth quarter after Hurts threw a short touchdown pass. Not the most impressive win for the Eagles by any means. They lost the pass-rush battle to Young and the Panthers.

Damn near lost the game too. Pittsburgh gets a shot next.

Falcons at Vikings: Sam Darnold’s Day to Shine

I rarely say this, but I felt kind of bad for Kirk Cousins in Minnesota this week. This was going to be his big revenge game, and while he struck early, it was Sam Darnold who shined with 347 yards and 5 touchdown passes.

After Cousins tied the game at 21 with a touchdown and 2-point conversion with 39 seconds left in the third quarter, by the next time he took the field, it was a 35-21 deficit and barely half a quarter remained. The special teams coughed up a fumble on the ensuing kickoff after Darnold’s go-ahead touchdown pass to Jordan Addison, who caught 3 on the day to go along with a pair for Justin Jefferson.

Then with the clock not in his favor, Cousins’ pass was intercepted by one hand by Byron Murphy with 6:26 left. The Vikings added yet another touchdown in the 42-21 rout that was tied at 21 to start the quarter.

The Falcons (6-7) have lost the division lead to the Buccaneers (7-6), so we’ll see where things go from here, but it’s not looking good for preseason favorite Atlanta.

Browns at Steelers: No Pickens, A Few Problems

I’d be lying if I said the Steelers didn’t have any issues without George Pickens, who was a surprise inactive on Sunday morning due to a hamstring injury suffered late in the week. But the Steelers’ issues early had more to do with the players they were targeting rather than the players they should get involved with Russell Wilson in Pickens’ absence.

Once they started throwing to them, we saw production with Mike Williams down the field and tight end Pat Freiermuth had a good game with 48 yards and a touchdown. But Wilson only threw for 158 yards this week.

This game was also decided by Chris Boswell being a much better kicker than Dustin Hopkins, who missed from 38 and 43 yards. It wasn’t even that cold here Sunday, so he had even less of an excuse for those misses. Throw in a big Jameis Winston pick on a double-clutched screen that led to a short-field touchdown to get the Steelers going, and it was a team loss by the Browns.

You can’t beat the sight of Kadarius Toney (the one and only) muffing a punt with 2:53 left in a 27-14 game. He’s always trying to destroy games for his teams. But the Steelers were able to get to 10-3 and avoid their first sweep at the hands of Cleveland since 1988.

Seahawks at Cardinals: I Guess Geno Owns Arizona?

I know I’m not the only one struggling with these NFC West teams this year. The Seahawks took the first game 16-6, so I figured the Cardinals would play better offense at home and steal this one for the split.

Welp, I didn’t realize the Seahawks are now on a 7-game winning streak against the Cardinals with Geno Smith 6-0 as a starter in those games. Arizona has struggled to score in these games, and that was the problem again after an opening-drive touchdown was followed by a pair of Kyler Murray interceptions.

Meanwhile, it was a clean game for Geno without any sacks or turnovers. Zach Charbonnet was sharp with 134 yards and 2 touchdowns in a starring role without Kenneth Walker available.

But the Year of the Kicker falling apart around the league did Arizona in too here. Down 27-18, they rightly settled for a 40-yard field goal with half a quarter left. But it was off the goal post from kicker Chad Ryland, a big miss. He was the bust the Patriots drafted in 2023 and they got rid of after one season. He was doing better for Arizona this season, but that one stings.

The Seahawks burned valuable time and added a field goal to get to the weird 30-18 final score. The game ended with Murray taking a sack deep in the red zone and the Cardinals long out of timeouts since they used them so early in the quarter in an arguably reckless way.

But it’s looking more likely by the week that the Seahawks (8-5) are going to emerge from this division as the winner. But they do play the Packers and Vikings next, so it’s far from over.

Jets at Dolphins: A 14th Straight Postseason Without the Jets

Aaron Rodgers (339 yards) finally had his first 300-yard passing game since 2021, and it still wasn’t enough to avoid a fifth blown lead in the fourth quarter this season for the Jets. This time they are officially eliminated from the playoffs with a 3-10 record.

They were up 23-15 in the final quarter, but Tua Tagovailoa had the hot hand again against this defense, and he found Tyreek Hill on a fourth-and-4. Even after the Jets took a late 26-23 lead, they went backwards on consecutive plays on that drive to make sure the Dolphins would have time left to answer, and instead of getting a touchback, Miami’s long kick return out to the 46 made it a lot easier to get the game-tying field goal for overtime from 52 yards out.

The Dolphins won the coin toss and went on offense. Even though tight end Jonnu Smith has been a revelation in this offense in the last month, he didn’t have a catch until overtime. They found him on back-to-back plays (the same play, in fact) for 20 and 14 yards, then he also finished the drive with a 10-yard touchdown to win the game 32-26.

We’re starting to see a lot more 300-yard passing duels in recent weeks, but Tagovailoa took the best Rodgers could do and one-upped him at the end for the win. Miami (6-7) is not dead yet but must keep on winning every week to have a shot at the last wild card.

Bears at 49ers: Well, It Wasn’t ALL Matt Eberflus

Normally, I’d expect a little bump in performance in the first game after a team fires its terrible coach, but I also expected a bounce-back performance from the 49ers (-3.5) in this game against Chicago. I had no idea it’d be 24-0 with the 49ers outgaining the Bears 319-4 in yards in the first half. That’s not a typo.

It got a little closer in the second half, but not even Kyle Shanahan’s mastery of blowing leads could make this one interesting. Caleb Williams fumbled on a Tuck Rule play, except the Tuck Rule is long gone. The 49ers held on to win 38-13, and we’ll see if it’s too little too late to save their season at 6-7.

Saints at Giants: No Field Goal Is Safe Anymore

We can talk about Drew Lock starting 0-for-8 or Derek Carr throwing the first interception by the Giants since Sam Darnold in Week 1, but do you really care at this point?

What’s interesting here is that the Saints blocked a 35-yard-field goal in the final seconds when it looked like the Giants were going to force overtime in a 14-11 game. It was very similar to the endings with blocked field goals in Chiefs-Broncos and Packers-Bears this season. That’s three times for something we rarely ever see.

I think that adds some great, legitimate intrigue to these moments. If you look at the way they blocked the kick, you wonder why we don’t see this a little more often. It feels more doable than recovering an onside kick these days.

Raiders at Buccaneers: Your Average Baker Rollercoaster

There’s some Jameis to this Baker Mayfield season in Tampa Bay. After two early touchdowns to build a 14-0 lead, this one lingered into the fourth quarter after Mayfield turned it over three times in the second quarter.

But the Raiders lost another quarterback to injury with Aidan O’Connell getting an air cast on his leg, and I can only hope it had to do with a previous injury getting worse, because the hit I’m seeing that “caused it” makes it look like contact sports won’t be for him.

Desmond Ridder replaced him for the fourth quarter of a 14-10 game, but he went three-and-out before the Buccaneers put it away with back-to-back touchdown drives in a 28-13 final that was misleadingly lopsided? Or maybe it was fittingly accurate. I don’t know anymore with teams like this. I just know the Raiders almost never win these games anymore.

Jaguars at Titans: No Longer a TNF Special in December for People to Ignore

Remember when they’d throw this game on a Thursday night in December when people probably wanted to go Christmas shopping or something? Well, let’s be glad they have some higher standards these days for Amazon Prime paying out the ass for these games. No one wants to watch a 10-6 shitfest between Mac Jones and Will Levis.

But I really thought this was the one game all season where you could trust Will Levis, who wasn’t horrible the last month, to put up some points and stats at home in an “easy win” against Mac Jones. And yet, it was a 10-6 comeback win as Jones improved his 4QC/GWD record to 3-14 in his career.

Levis had his chances to answer, but some laxed route running by Calvin Ridley and no special catch by Nick Westbrook-Ikhine (no longer under the radar) in the red zone led to a turnover on downs. The offense never got the ball in the end zone and now both teams are 3-10. Terrible stuff and probably one of the lowest-rated Titans-Jags games of all time.

Next week: The big one (Bills-Lions) loses some luster with the Buffalo loss. But that helps bolster Rams-49ers a bit on TNF to start the week and you might as well call that a playoff game since the loser should be done. We’ll see if the Chiefs can actually get some turnovers from Jameis Winston in Cleveland. Is Steelers-Eagles really going to be on the same time as Bills-Lions? Would prefer to see those at different times. Packers-Seahawks is solid for SNF. A weak MNF double-header (Bears-Vikings and Falcons-Raiders) to end it. Desmond Ridder Revenge Game? Ugh.