THE DAILY BRIEFING
AROUND THE NFL
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If The Season Ended Today In The NFC:
W-L Div Conf Playoff%
x-Philadelphia East 12-1 1 7-1 In
Minnesota North 10-3 1 6-3 99
San Francisco West 9-4 1 7-2 98
Tampa Bay South 6-7 1 6-3 74
Dallas WC1 10-3 2 7-3 99
Washington WC2 7-5 3 4-4 72
NY Giants WC3 7-5 4 3-5 44
Seattle 7-6 2 5-5 55
Detroit 6-7 2 5-4 22
Playoff percentages from The538 (Carolina 22%, Atlanta 5%)
NFC South “leader” Tampa Bay is one game ahead of 5-8 Carolina and 5-8 Atlanta. They lost to Carolina in their first meeting, they beat the Falcons.
The top three teams seem destined to finish the year as the top three teams, although the order between two and three is still in some dispute. Dallas will have the top Wild Card.
Barring another tie, either the Giants or Commanders will have a 6th loss at this time next week. The Giants remaining schedule includes the Vikings and the resting Eagles in Week 18. The Commanders have at San Francisco, Cleveland, Dallas
After a 6-1 start, the Giants are 1-4-1 with the win over Houston.
After a 1-6 start, the Lions are 5-1 with the loss on a FG at the gun by Buffalo.
Detroit closes at Jets, at Carolina, Chicago, at Green Bay.
After a 6-3 start, the Seahawks are 1-3. They host the 49ers on Thursday, then go at Kansas City, Jets, Rams.
Here is how Peter King sees things:
The Eagles are the best team in football with a month left in the regular season. My top five, with four bye-less weeks and 64 regular-season games to play:
Philadelphia, 12-1. First team to clinch a playoff berth with the 48-22 rout of the formerly impressive Giants in Jersey Sunday. Philly has a two-game lead for NFC home-field, with the tiebreaker edge over both 10-3 teams, Dallas and Minnesota.
Kansas City, 10-3. Easier final four (Houston, Seattle, Denver, Vegas) than the Bills—at Cincinnati in Week 17—face. Very likely they’ll be a top-two seed for the fifth-straight season. In other words, every year Patrick Mahomes has started, they’ve been either the 1 or 2 seed.
San Francisco, 9-4. The 49ers get hurt a lot. But for six straight weeks, that D has allowed 17 points or less, and it’s throttled Tua Tagovailoa and Tom Brady in consecutive weeks. Amazing to think this franchise could play for the NFC title two straight years with Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy the starting quarterbacks.
Buffalo, 10-3. They got Von Miller to chase down Tua Tagovailoa and Joe Burrow down the stretch, then Patrick Mahomes in January. That dream is dead. Now, can an offense that has been good but not explosive make up for the ACL-related loss of Miller?
Cincinnati, 9-4. In Burrow they trust, and rightfully so. Bengals have averaged 30 a game in their 5-0 streak, and their fate may come down to Weeks 17 and 18 on the banks of the Ohio River: Buffalo on Monday night in Week 17, Baltimore on Sunday in Week 18.
The Eagles aren’t two touchdowns better than everyone else. But they’re explosive in the run and pass games. They’ve got a quarterback playing with Mahomes-like confidence. They’ve got the best offensive line in the game (more about that later). On the other side, they’ve got the best pass defense in football, they’re second in yards allowed, and they’ve allowed less than 20 points in eight games.
I mean, what’s not to like? In the last two weeks, they’ve beaten seven-win teams by 25 and 26 points, and they’ve got one tough team to play down the stretch—Dallas, in Texas, on Christmas Eve. Think of what it will take for the Eagles to lose the top seed in the NFC. Dallas or Minnesota would have to go 4-0 and the Eagles, playing a soft slate, would have to go 1-3. So it’s over, pretty much.
The DB was thinking along these lines. So let’s agree with King and put Dallas in as #6.
Who would be #7?
We might go with the Lions at the moment. They have beaten the 10-3 Vikings, not on this list, beaten the Giants, played the Bills to a standstill…
With the Dolphins dropping their last two, we have the Lions at #7. We will look at some “expert” rankings to see where others might have them as the week progresses.
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NFC NORTH
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DETROIT
A nickname for Lions Coach Dan Campbell courtesy of Chris Myers:
@TheChrisMyers
Gutsy call of the day goes to “Dan the Gamble Campbell” on fake punt from own 26 yard line on a 4th & 7 early in the 3rd quarter! Lions responded with a TD!
#LionsDen #NFL #LionsFans
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A Michigander is leading the Detroit defense. Peter King:
You may remember last spring, in the week before the draft, when Aidan Hutchinson, who was going to be a top-three pick, said openly he wanted to be picked by the Lions. The Michigan resident wanted it, his family wanted it. How cool would it be that a University of Michigan star would actually want to play for the woebegone Lions, and then it would actually work out?
And it did, of course. The Jaguars, picking first, passed on Hutchinson for Travon Walker, and the Lions took about eight seconds to pick Hutchinson. So what did he know, or why was he so intent on coming to a franchise that had been lost at sea for three generations?
“I got the chance to come somewhere and be part of coming alive and building a great team,” he said after the 11-point win over the previously 10-2 Vikings Sunday in Detroit. “I just wanted to come into the season and learn something every single game and make strides every game. I’m happy with my development so far.”
In the third quarter Sunday, with the Lions up 15, Hutchinson sacked Kirk Cousins for a seven-yard loss; the Vikings settled for a field goal on that drive. He had two hits of Cousins and three pressures, continuing a strong rookie year—seven sacks, 43 total pressures.
“The chemistry we’ve got right now, it’s kind of unmatched,” Hutchinson said. “We’re so complimentary right now offensively and defensively and we never flinch at the end. It’s no longer the same old Lions. We’ve overcome that. Now we’re on our way to becoming a really good football team.”
Detroit’s been able to score all season, but the turnaround coincided with a defensive improvement. The Lions have allowed 20.3 points a game in their 5-1 run. What’s interesting is that now GM Brad Holmes should be able to use his two first-round picks (Detroit’s, and the one from the Rams from the Matthew Stafford trade) on strengthening the roster rather than zeroing in on a quarterback after Jared Goff has had the kind of resurgent season he needed to have to seal his grip on the job. Maybe they find a sideline-to-sideline linebacker, or a bookend for Hutchinson, or a corner to team with Jeff Okudah. Whatever, with Goff looking better than a short-term fix, this is a team with a significantly brighter near future than we thought back on Labor Day.
With the Giants and Seattle fading, the 6-7 Lions might squeeze into the seventh playoff spot with a 3-1 finish. And 3-1 is possible against this slate: at Jets, at Panthers, Bears, at Packers.
One more thing about Hutchinson. Talk about a local boy. He has lived his football life in the state of Michigan. It’s pretty interesting just how close everything has been for Hutchinson.
Hutchinson went to high school at Divine Child High School in Dearborn. He went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He practices in Allen Park, for Detroit in the NFL. He plays at Ford Field in downtown Detroit.
From Divine Child High to Michigan Stadium, as the crow flies: 27.0 miles to the west.
From Divine Child High to the Lions’ practice facility, as the crow flies: 4.7 miles to the southeast.
From Divine Child High to Ford Field, as the crow flies: 13.2 miles to the east.
“It is bizarre, to be honest with you,” Hutchinson said. “I’m taking the same freeway I took to Divine Child on my way to the Lions’ practice facility. I just get off [Interstate] 96 a little bit later. It’s so weird. I’m just so grateful to be in this position and to have the ability to be close to my family. I’m already a homebody. Being in this environment just allows me to thrive. I’m able to be myself.”
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A good headline in SI “Goff Claps” leads to this from Albert Breer:
Jared Goff has been there. He’s seen a team go from bad to good in a hurry. So even as the Lions lost six of their first seven, even as Dan Campbell’s record dipped to an unsightly 4-19-1 over his first 24 games as Detroit’s coach, and even as the defense struggled to get its footing and the offense went up and down, Goff could scroll back in his mental Rolodex to find optimism.
The quarterback has been on good teams. The Lions, even at 1–6, were close to being one.
That idea, of course, might have been a tougher sell on some players—mostly those who’d been in Detroit long enough to get that Here we go again feeling—than others. But even so, it persisted with all the guys who were punching the clock for Campbell. And eventually, that belief would actually amount to something, even if no one outside could see that coming.
“You never know how long the bad times are going to last, I guess,” Goff said shortly after getting home early Sunday evening. “The work we were putting in and the players we have and the coaches we have, we always believed in it. It was just a matter of time. In some ways, we were like, When is it going to pop?
“A lot of it is trust and belief, no doubt.”
On Sunday, against a 10–2 Vikings team, it looked like a lot more than just that. It looked like a group that ran the ball efficiently, with 134 yards on the afternoon, and kept it rolling when the opposing defense knew it was coming. It looked like a team capable of big, explosive plays for scores on offense, the same as it was grinding its way down the field more methodically. It looked like a resourceful defense, somehow capable of mitigating damage even as Kirk Cousins threw for 425 yards.
It looked like the Lions were what they thought they were back in October, when it looked to all of us like the wheels were coming off. It looked to them like a group about to hit the gas. That, quite simply, is a good team.
“It’s an unshakable group of players and coaches,” Campbell says via text. “They never wavered—none of them!”
So they knew it all along. With a fifth win in six games, this one 34–23 over a Vikings team looking to clinch the NFC North on Sunday, now the rest of us know, too.
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So why did the Lions’ players keep believing, in a place that should, at least on paper, inspire no such belief? As Goff sees it, it was as easy as just taking a look around.
“I can speak offensively, just the O-line we have, the receivers we have and the running backs we have are as good as I’ve been around,” Goff says. “And I’ve been on some good offenses. And those guys together, it’s like, O.K., it’s going to come. Like, We have the pieces, we have the players, we believe in [coordinator] Ben [Johnson]. He’s calling good things during training camp and early on in the season, and it was even when we were struggling.
“That belief was never lost, ever.”
On defense, the road was rockier. There were no-shows against the Eagles and Seahawks and Dolphins, plus the firing of pass-game coordinator Aubrey Pleasant, but the premise was no different. The Lions believed in a core blending veteran guys with emerging young pieces like Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill and Kerby Joseph.
And in the game that served as the season’s turning point for Detroit, a 15–9 home win over Green Bay, that beleaguered group shut the Packers out in the first half and got a red-zone stop in the final minute to put their division rival away.
That, as Goff would see it, is where the belief the Lions could do it morphed into a week-to-week belief that they would do it.
“We were losing these close games against really good teams and we were playing good football,” Goff says. “We really were [in] a lot of those games that we lost early on. I mean, there’s a world and a scenario where we could have a plus record right now if we finished off some of those games early on. But that was kind of the learning curve that we had to go through. And I was just saying to the guys, winning isn’t, like, some magic potion. It’s not something someone’s going to say in a team meeting. It’s really just emphasizing doing your job every single play, one play at a time and maybe be a little bit more focused in the fourth quarter to do your job. But we don’t need somebody to be Superman. We don’t need anybody to come out of nowhere and be a player that they aren’t. Just be who you are, do your job and things will fall where they may.
“For the last six weeks, we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Against the Bears in Week 10, it was a 91-yard touchdown drive to go ahead in the fourth quarter, and a fourth-down sack by Julian Okwara to seal it. Against the Giants in Week 11, it was a forced fumble from Will Harris in the fourth quarter to set up the drive to seal it. And against the Jaguars last week, it was capitalizing on an early takeaway and the offense coming out of the gate roaring.
On Sunday, against Cousins and Justin Jefferson and a talented Vikings roster, it became about the same sorts of plays, the kind that Minnesota made in surmounting a 24–14 deficit in the fourth quarter of the teams’ first meeting way back in September. Among them …
• A 41-yard bomb from Goff to Jameson Williams to open the scoring in the first quarter, which was set up by Jeff Okudah and Malcolm Rodriguez stoning Dalvin Cook on fourth-and-1 two plays earlier. Williams, for his part, couldn’t have been much more open than he was for his first NFL catch, which made Goff’s job pretty easy.
“Yeah, to be honest with you, they busted a coverage, and he was No. 1 in the progression and was wide open,” Goff says. “But with that being said, he still ran a good route and was fast enough to get past everybody. And he could be a total game-changer for us as we go on. But yeah, it was fun to get him that catch. I don’t think I’ve been a part of a first-catch-touchdown type of situation like that.”
• A 48-yard touchdown connection between Goff and DJ Chark, on the first play after a 35-yard punt return from Kalif Raymond, to give the Lions a 14–7 lead that they would carry into halftime.
“That’s just a go ball,” Goff says. “And he made a great catch. … Real simple, got a good matchup, DJ on a corner, that we liked, that we wanted to take advantage of.”
• A fake punt after the Lions appeared to go three-and-out on their first possession of the second half, with up man C.J. Moore taking the direct snap 42 yards, from the Detroit 26 to the Minnesota 32 (a taunting penalty set the offense back to the Vikings’ 47).
“You have to pick your moments, pick your times and I think that Dan’s grown into that as we’ve gone along, knowing when that time is,” Goff says. “I think you took that as his belief in us and his belief in the coaching staff, specifically the special teams coaching and how great they are.”
That belief was paid off, with the Lions’ quickly covering the remaining 47 yards and taking a 21–7 lead late in the third quarter.
• Justin Jackson’s 15-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter, on which he cut back against the grain to make something happen and turned a second-and-10 into a 15-point lead for the hosts with 13:28 left.
“Just an inside zone run and he made a nice cutback and finished on the pylon pretty well,” Goff says.
• Which brings us to, perhaps, the most fun call of them all. It was third-and-7 with two minutes left, and the Vikings had cut the lead to 8, at 31–23. The ball was on the Vikings’ 41, which meant the play failing would mean Minnesota getting another shot to drive the field and tie the game. So, naturally, Campbell and Johnson looked to … offensive tackle Penei Sewell.
“Ben came up with it this week,” Goff says. “Really, he came up with it on Friday. It was going to be a touchdown throw to [Sewell] in the red zone. But in that situation in that game, they were going to play a similar defense that you’d see in the red zone, maybe bringing pressure, maybe low safeties. So that little package of plays there was kind of reserved for that, and it came up in a better situation for it to seal the game for us.
“We called that play and kind of knew it was coming based on where we were, and who was in the game. Penei was fired up about it, and yeah, it was a great catch.”
Sewell did have to adjust to it in the air, flipping his hips and getting underneath it for a nine-yard gain that put the Lions back in field goal range. That play effectively ended the game—and represented another play that maybe the Lions wouldn’t have made a couple of months ago.
It’s easy for Goff to say I told you so now that Detroit is inching back into the NFC playoff picture—and he’d be justified in saying that, since he did, in fact, tell people so.
But Goff wasn’t the only one spreading the word in the Lions’ locker room a month and a half ago, in an effort to keep everyone on track and on task. It was also Sewell and Jamaal Williams and Taylor Decker on offense, and guys like Isaiah Buggs and Alex Anzalone on defense, who told their teammates that if they kept chipping away, the dam would soon break. Then, it actually happened.
“Something in our mentality, something in our building, our locker room kind of flipped [after] the Packers game,” Goff says. “It was like, O.K., that’s how you win the game. And then we did it again, and then we did it again. And it builds and it snowballs. And the feeling in our locker room is so fun right now, because these guys have had so many hard times and it was so difficult early on, and now there’s this feeling of, We can beat anybody and we can play with anybody.
“It’s going to be a four-quarter game, but somebody’s going to make a play and we believe in each other.”
The rest of the Lions’ schedule—they play at the Jets and Panthers the next two weeks, then close out their home schedule against the Bears and their season at Lambeau against the Packers—is at least manageable. And as it is, Detroit is just a game and a half out of the final wild-card spot in the NFC. Maybe this is the start of a playoff run. Maybe it’s the start of something the Lions wind up doing in 2023.
Either way, Goff is smack in the middle of it, less than two years after the Rams traded him, which, you’d guess, would be pretty personally satisfying, too, given all he’s gone through.
“The best way to answer that, it’s so much more personally satisfying to be doing it with the group of guys that we’re doing it with,” Goff says. “That’s regardless of what I’ve been through in the past. Like sure, yeah, it’s great. We’re playing well, and I’m doing some good things.
“But being able to do it with the same group that was here last year, Dan, a lot of the same coaches, a lot of the same players that have been here the last couple of years, and to be able to see them, see the switch flip and then be a part of that as the quarterback, that’s the most satisfying thing by far.”
More than anything, it’s that Goff has gotten to see the Lions become a good team again. The kind he always knew they could be.
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NFC EAST
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DALLAS
Dan Graziano of ESPN.com says don’t overreact to the yucky Cowboys win over the Texans:
The Cowboys are overrated, and got lucky to beat the Texans
Dallas was a 17-point favorite over Houston on Sunday, so the fact that the Cowboys trailed 20-17 at halftime and 23-20 in the final minutes of the game was certainly alarming. If you want to be considered a Super Bowl favorite and you pull a matchup against the worst team in the league in Week 14, you’re expected to hammer that team. The Cowboys did not hammer the Texans. Their vaunted defense gave up 327 yards and 23 points to a team that averages 283 yards and 16 points per game. They turned the ball over three times. They won the game, but they did not look the part of a team that’s going to make a run in January against the likes of the Eagles, Vikings and 49ers. At best, you could say they escaped with a win.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
We aren’t in the business of denigrating victories here, folks. Yes, I am surprised the Cowboys didn’t roll past the Texans the way they rolled past the Colts last week. But they did win the game, and if you can win games when you don’t play your best, that’s a point in your favor, not against you. Yes, they will have to play better in January than they did Sunday. But we’ve seen the Cowboys play at an elite level at times this year, so there’s no reason to believe they can’t.
The NFC playoffs are going to be eye-opening for a lot of teams. I believe the Cowboys, the Eagles and the 49ers are all very good teams. What we don’t know about them — any of them — is whether they have that killer playoff instinct they’ll need to finish off games in the postseason. Last year’s 49ers beat last year’s Cowboys (and last year’s Packers) in the playoffs, but they couldn’t get past the Rams. And the Eagles and Cowboys, as good as they look, are both unknowns once the playoffs start. If you want to doubt the Cowboys because they always seem to mess it up come January, fine. Their track record has earned that. But I say we can’t have any idea, as we sit here, who’s going to the Super Bowl from the NFC. And I also say Dallas has as good a chance as any of them.
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WASHINGTON
With the NFL, plaintiffs lawyers and Congressional Democrats looking into every aspect of Daniel Snyder’s life and business, Peter King is furious that Snyder sought to investigate his enemies:
Snyder saying, per former team president Bruce Allen, that he was going to have commissioner Roger Goodell shadowed to try to find out something damaging to use against Goodell. Allen said Snyder told him: “I’m going to follow — I’m going to have him followed, follow the Commissioner. You know, I’m going to find something out about him.” This is the top executive of Snyder’s team, testifying before Congress that he was going to have Goodell tailed to see if he could learn something to hold over Goodell’s head. This is confirmation of what Don Van Natta, Tisha Thompson and Seth Wickersham reported this fall about NFL sources claiming Snyder was trying to dig up dirt on big people in the league. Could Allen be lying? If he is, he risks a perjury charge and prison time for lying to a House committee.
The Oversight Committee reporting that, in his video testimony, Snyder said some version of “I don’t recall” more than 100 times. Included were such incredulous memory lapses as—though he did admit to using private investigators—he was “unaware” of who they approached or tailed and did not remember talking to his lawyers about who he wanted to have investigated or tailed. As former lawyer and Pro Football Talk Live host Mike Florio said on his TV show Friday: “‘I don’t recall’ is the ultimate perjury safe-harbor.” It is simply not believable to read Snyder being asked if private investigators were sent to the home of Allen and answering, “I’m not sure. I’m unaware.”
The league deserves its share of criticism, again, for not ordering the original report on the workplace environment of the Washington franchise to be written and released. After reports on the Miami bullying scandal, Ray Rice, and the Patriots’ Deflategate saga were written and made public, it’s a slap in the face of public trust to say an incredibly serious investigation into the seedy workplace culture of one of its 32 franchises is not worth a report—even if the names in the report all have to be redacted.
The larger point is this: How can the other 31 owners in the league witness this, and how can Goodell watch it, and think there is any way Daniel Snyder should continue to be an equal partner in the NFL? Snyder’s got to go, and he’s got to go yesterday.
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NFC SOUTH
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CAROLINA
A good point from ESPN’s Field Yates:
@FieldYates
When Steve Wilks took over as interim head coach for the Panthers, they were 1-4 and traded away their best player one game later.
They’re now 4-4 under Wilks, just one game out of the division lead, play hard and with a toughness that is unmistakable.
Huge credit to Wilks.
Peter King:
Coaches of the Week
Steve Wilks, interim head coach, Carolina. When owner David Tepper fired Matt Rhule with the Panthers 1-4, he installed Wilks, a defensive specialist, and said it was possible he could win the full-time job. Since then, Wilks has gone 4-4, the Panthers are running the ball as well as any team in football after trading Christian McCaffrey, and went into Seattle Sunday and ground down the physically imposing Seahawks. Carolina’s one game out of the lead in an awful NFC South with four games to play, and the players’ desire to win for Wilks is a big reason.
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TAMPA BAY
Greg Auman tweeted on Friday, before the disaster in SF that basically the 49ers game and the next two with Cincinnati and Arizona are meaningless. Tampa Bay still wins the division if it wins the last two:
@gregauman
Bucs certainly want to win Sunday at 49ers, but NFC South is bad enough that Tampa Bay can lose its next three games, be 6-9 and still control their playoff destiny. Finish with wins vs. Panthers and Falcons, on those two wins alone, they win the division at 8-9
@gregauman
Other teams in the division can’t finish better than 8-9 in that scenario, and Bucs would have swept Falcons and Saints, and would have tiebreaker edge on Panthers in conference record.
Conversely, if the Panthers – who have the Steelers and Lions coming up, can stay within one game of the Buccaneers – their current status at 5-8 – they control their own destiny with wins in the last two games against the Buccaneers and Saints.
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NFC WEST
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SAN FRANCISCO
Some are still saying that QB BROCK PURDY’s arm isn’t good enough, even after it has thrown for
But as Conor Orr of SI.com reveals, through a lot of intelligent hard work, it is much better than it was when scouts dismissed him after watching his Iowa State film:
Brock Purdy came out of Iowa State built a little bit too much like a fullback. He has humongous quadricep muscles, which, as a thrower, placed him on his toes more frequently and forced him to draw energy from muscles you wouldn’t ideally call upon in a passing motion. He was, in a clinical sense, a bit “pushy.”
It’s safe to assume that evaluators saw this and his relatively small stature for the position (6′ ⅝” at the NFL combine). And, considering his massive body of work—46 career starts for the Cyclones—they were able to determine that they knew all they needed to know about a player they probably weren’t going to select in the 2022 NFL Draft.
But Purdy also came out of college brilliant. There is a proprietary cognition test some teams and trainers use in order to get a better understanding of how a player’s brain works—it measures functions such as impulse control, which have a direct correlation on how likely they are to throw the correct routes in correct situations. Purdy rated as a starting NFL quarterback. He had a library of experience and situational learning in the pocket.
He also came out eager to try something new. Most of the time, draft prospects are shoved through conveyor belt trainers to prepare them for their All-Star game, combine and pro day; they focus on things such as the 40-yard dash, the shuttle runs, the bench press, the live throwing drills and the board work with teams in private meetings. It’s a collection of experts who are seemingly disconnected, and most prospects treat them that way.
But the idea of a holistic suite of pre-draft performance training regimens piqued Purdy’s interest. What if so much of it was actually interconnected? What if he spent the days between his final collegiate game and his draft day with a bunch of baseball players, an Australian-born QB guru and a workout room that could, at times, ask him to lift less than the weight of a football? What if the fullback became just a little bit more of a quarterback?
“This was one of the largest measurable increases in performance that we’ve ever seen,” says Will Hewlett, the guru, and a house expert of QB Collective (an expansive think tank founded by a former NFL player-turned-agent, Richmond Flowers, with connections to NFL coaches like Mike McDaniel, Matt LaFleur, Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay). During the draft process, Hewlett says he added roughly 5 mph to Purdy’s pass, which, had the quarterback been a baseball player, could have easily triggered an investigation for performance-enhancing drug use. “It got to the point where NFL organizations said, What on Earth did you do?”
That last line is a bit of a loaded question, especially when it comes to Purdy. A few months ago he was the NFL Draft’s Mr. Irrelevant, the final selection at No. 262. He earned a spot as the 49ers’ third-string quarterback. Now? He is stepping under center for one of the NFL’s elite teams, and that fact doesn’t seem to be freaking anyone out (most betting markets, as of this week, have San Francisco as the fifth-most popular team to win the Super Bowl).
This is a story about what on Earth they did on a small scale. It’s also a story about what they might have done on a larger scale, and whether there is evidence that you can take one of the draft’s most available resources—quarterbacks who are sharp processors with a robust hard drive of in-game experience but aren’t reminiscent physically of the league’s best quarterbacks—and turn them into one of its most potent weapons.
The process of giving Brock Purdy a better fastball started with the quarterback encircled by 3-D motion capture cameras, which track and lay out every aspect of his throwing motion. Here is what the cameras found:
• He created too much elbow extension and elbow flexion as he brought his arm up.
• He needed to settle into a better pre-pass stance, which involved dropping his hips and engaging his glute muscles.
• He was not drawing nearly enough from his hip muscles on the throw.
• His backstroke was elongated.
• His front arm had too much movement and was not connected to the throw.
Once they identified the inefficiencies in his motion, Hewlett and a partner, physical therapist and clinical specialist Dr. Tom Gormely, embarked on a complementary weight and throwing program designed to safely expedite an eight-week improvement over the course of four or five weekly sessions.
(We cut out a section of technical talk here, but safe to say he did a lot of different things)
“Brock worked his ass off,” Gormely says, summing the process up.
Gormely and Hewlett would stay in touch or, often, attend each other’s sessions, which made working on Purdy a kind of live-editing process. Gormely would tell Hewlett what they were working on in the gym and what to look for on a throw, and Hewlett would report back to Gormely on what he saw during the throwing sessions that may require more attention and focus in the gym. Then Hewlett, through the QB Collective could refine the expectations of Purdy at the next level, asking pro coaches for their thoughts, ensuring that they were not drilling anything extraneous to modern offenses.
They also saw Purdy enjoying the idea of immersing himself into the lives and habits of throwers. Gormely got his start in baseball, so the facility was swarmed with major league and minor league baseball players during their concurrent offseasons. Among them were Orioles pitchers Mike Baumann and Tyler Wells.
“He would sit down and be like ‘Big Mike, what are you focusing on when you’re pitching on the mound? What are you doing with your rear leg?’ He was trying to pick up little things. Like, Mike throws 100 miles per hour. Brock wanted to know ‘How do you generate so much force?’ They would sit there eating lunch and chop it up. That inquisitiveness makes him special. He wanted to learn.”
By the time Purdy arrived at the Shrine Bowl, a little more than a month after his final collegiate game (a loss to Clemson in the … clears throat … Cheez-It Bowl), it was clear he was in the process of refining his identity as a thrower into more of what we see now. For instance, late in the first half last Sunday against the Dolphins, when facing an unblocked edge rusher barreling toward him, he rifled a ball to George Kittle over the middle to pick up a critical first down. The whipping motion of his arm took just a split second. The ball cut through a zone of four defenders.
In his first NFL regular-season game, Purdy was 25-of-37 for 210 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. His snap-to-throw time, 2.67 seconds, was among the fastest for quarterbacks in Week 13.
“I know he was going through a transition in terms of what he was doing,” says Eric Galko, the director of football operations and player personnel for the Shrine Bowl. “He was starting for four years—why change what was working? But he knew he wasn’t a finished product despite being in school and playing as well as he did.
“He’s a guy that kind of suffered from NFL teams’ eyes from what I call ‘over-evaluation,’ where they kind of knew what he was for so long that they kind of said ‘Eh, that’s Brock Purdy.’ But we thought he was not dissimilar to a player like Baker Mayfield who, a few years ago, went No. 1 overall in the draft.”
Adding to Galko’s optimism was the obvious: “It looked different. And to be that different, to show you can improve in just a couple of weeks, see that kind of development, there was a lot of room for him to get better.”
It brought up an idea that is rarely touched on in a macroeconomic sense. At the moment, due to an increase in the quality and availability of athlete training and nutrition everywhere, we are at a point in the NFL where there are more incredible outlier-type skill-position players entering the draft each year. Since 2018 alone, we have seen Saquon Barkley, Nick Chubb, Mark Andrews, Deebo Samuel, A.J. Brown, DK Metcalf, CeeDee Lamb, Justin Jefferson, Jonathan Taylor, Ja’Marr Chase, Jaylen Waddle and Kyle Pitts, just to name a small handful.
Why are we wasting so much pain and effort in finding quarterbacks who look like Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes, when they are harder to find than a humble Twitter account? Why are we assuming that someone like Purdy can’t get better, good enough to feed the glut of talent at the position currently blooming across football?
This theory ignores what Hewlett and Gormely both brought up independently, that Purdy is himself a special kind of outlier in his own right, and possesses the kind of intelligence and leadership abilities that allow him to climb into this position in the first place. Indeed, 49ers tackle Trent Williams told a reporter this week of Purdy: “You would think he’s Peyton Manning or something” given the comfort with which he goes after far more experienced, veteran teammates.
If that’s the case, perhaps there’s something to be said for the 49ers’ hope in a seventh-round rookie, and for the kind of prospect who knows himself well enough to realize that, even though he might be good enough to make the NFL, he can still relearn to throw a fastball.
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LOS ANGELES RAMS
Peter King gets the good from QB BAKER MAYFIELD on the whacky couple of days that made him a hero again. Great story on how he already had purchased a ticket to LA prior to the Rams claim being awarded and was waiting at the airport:
The preamble
Baker Mayfield, the third-string Carolina quarterback, asked for and was granted his release Monday. He was subject to waivers, and the claiming order, 1 through 4, was Houston, Chicago, Denver and the L.A. Rams. Mayfield’s agent went to work. Houston wouldn’t claim him (for some reason), and Chicago and Denver wouldn’t either. Good chance the Rams would, though. Teams had till 4 p.m. Tuesday to make a claim, after which the league would award Mayfield to the claiming team. If no one claimed him, he’d be a free agent.
Mayfield went online. There was an American flight, 1247, from Charlotte to Los Angeles at 4:48 p.m on Tuesday. “I got the ticket,” he told me, “and I got the insurance on the flight just in case.”
“You checked the box for the flight insurance, so you could get the refund if you don’t take the trip?” I said.
“I did,” he said. “I honestly was just waiting in the airport for a phone call, hoping and praying the call was from a Los Angeles number.”
At 4:10 p.m., Rams GM Les Snead called to tell Mayfield he was a Ram. Mayfield got on the plane. The Rams sent him a condensed gameplan by the time he was on the 5-hour, 31-minute flight, but he could not download it till he landed. “Plan wi-fi was not friendly on that one, so I was pretty stressed out,” Mayfield said. He got to the Rams facility an hour north of the airport around 9 p.m. PT and huddled with offensive coordinator Liam Coen and assistant QB coach/passing game coordinator Zac Robinson for 90 minutes. “Still on east coast time, so it was a little late for me,” Mayfield said. Bed by 11:15 p.m. PT in a nearby hotel.
The tell
Mayfield said he just had this feeling about Sean McVay claiming him. In February 2018, Mayfield was working out in preparation for the Combine in southern California and got on one of few nonstop flights from LAX to Indianapolis, on Southwest. Rams coaches were on the flight, and when Mayfield walked by McVay, the coach told him to hold on. McVay kicked his seat neighbor, a Rams assistant, out so he could have a 3.5-hour chat with Mayfield, a top-five prospect in the ’18 draft. The Rams had Jared Goff so would not be picking a passer, but McVay just wanted to talk football.
“We really started talking about Lincoln Riley and his scheme, what makes him such a good coach, how I saw the game. (Riley was Mayfield’s head coach at Oklahoma who now coaches at USC.) Then we talked about concepts. We started drawing some stuff up in my notepad. One hundred percent it did not feel like an interview. He was genuinely interested in some of the things that we did at Oklahoma to have that success. To me that was so eye-opening to see a guy at the NFL level, that had had so much success leading up to that point, still asking a college kid about a college scheme and what we were doing.”
The walkthrough
Thursday games mean no real practices before the game. The Rams had a 9:45 a.m. walkthrough practice to go over the gameplan. Mayfield got in at 6 a.m. for more elementary work on the Rams’ terminology and system, and for a quick physical exam. This thought occurred to him: Since 2017, this was the sixth offense he was tasked to learn—Lincoln Riley’s at Oklahoma, Cleveland with Hue Jackson and then Freddie Kitchens and then Kevin Stefanski, Carolina with Ben McAdoo, and now the Rams with McVay.
“In the middle of it, I did not feel like switching offenses that many times was good, but now, for me, it really is a blessing,” he said. “I could think about learning most of the plays before, and knowing how they work against certain coverages I might see [against the Raiders]. I’ve gotten to be confident I can figure it out.” Example: When McVay was Washington offensive coordinator, Bill Callahan was his offensive line coach in 2015 and ’16, and McVay liked Callahan’s protection packages and brought some of the concepts to the Rams. In 2020, Callahan was Cleveland’s line coach, and worked with Mayfield weekly on protections. So Mayfield felt right at home with his blocking schemes on Thursday.
Presumptive starter John Wolford got most of the snaps in the walkthrough, and in Thursday’s two-minute walkthrough. But Mayfield got a few. I was curious: How many throws before the game did he have with the top receiver he’d never thrown to before, Van Jefferson?
“Ten to 15,” he said. “A few of them, you say, that felt good, that looked good. Let’s call that [in the game].”
The drive
Shaky game, obviously. Wolford QB’d a three-and-out to start, and the final 50 minutes were handed to Mayfield. In Mayfield’s first 40 minutes, he put up three measly points, and streaming devices across the country clicked away from Amazon Prime. But Mayfield drove the Rams to seven first downs and a Cam Akers TD run with 3:19 left, and the Rams forced a three-and-out by the Raiders, and Vegas punter A.J. Cole skittered a sideline-hugging 64-yard punt to the Ram two with 1:45 left. I mean, no way. Mayfield might drive the Rams eight yards, but 98? In 100 seconds? With no timeouts? No way.
First bit of good fortune: the erased interception. On third-and-two from the 10-, Mayfield threw for Jefferson up the left seam and Raider safety Duron Harmon picked it. “Van was my first read and I saw the DB [Harmon] grabbing him. So I triggered it.” Threw it right then, he meant. “Right. Sean and I talked about this [Thursday]—Van’s either gonna make a contested catch or get a defensive hold or DPI [defensive pass interference]. A feel like that comes with the fact that I’ve played a decent amount of ball.” DPI. First down, Rams’ 22-.
Second bit of good fortune: Next play, Mayfield got sacked for a loss of nine. Getting up, Mayfield had the ball slapped out of his hand, stupidly, by Raiders defensive lineman Jerry Tillery. No flag, at first. “I looked at the ref and said, ‘That’s a penalty. That’s delay of game on the defense. You gotta throw that.’ He reached in his pocket and threw the flag. It’s ticky-tack, but it’s a penalty.” First down, Rams’ 28-.
First great throw: Next play, 80 seconds left, two Raiders covered seventh-round 2021 wideout Ben Skowronek, a tall drink of water Mayfield had just met one day earlier. “We needed a chunk,” Mayfield said. “I mean, he’s a big dude. [Skowronek’s 6-3.] He’s a contested-catch guy. I just threw it up there and gave him a chance.” What helped was the ball was a yard or two short, and Skowronek came back a step for it, and Raiders corner Nate Hobbs was a bit discombobulated, and Ram jumped over Raider for the catch, good for 32 yards. “Those are the moments in a two-minute drill, somebody’s gotta make a play. Catching it right on top of the DB’s head, with the safety bearing down on him? That’s a guy I’m gonna trust, a lot.”
Second great throw: Some inexplicable stuff. Second-and-10 from the Vegas 23-, with 15 seconds left. Rams in a 1-by-3 formation, Jefferson alone split left, and Tutu Atwell, Skowronek and tight end Tyler Higbee is a row to the right. Higbee and Skowronek float to the end zone, both single-covered. Atwell does a deep out, and two safeties and a corner float to his area. Three men on Atwell! Jefferson, alone, sprinting to the left pylon, covered by Sam Webb, an undrafted rookie from Missouri Western State. Rams’ best receiver in the game, covered alone, with no help over the top, by the Missouri Western guy. A year ago, he’s playing Emporia State and Fort Hays and the Central Missouri Mules. Now with an NFL game on the line, he’s trying to knock away a pass from the first pick in the entire draft in 2018 to a second-round pick in 2020.
“Obviously, I was shocked,” Mayfield told me. “Not only because they were in in press coverage, but because they didn’t have a two-shell-safety defense, so the safeties could react to the play in front of them. But good for us. I mean, I just put the ball up there for Van, just like with Ben, and they made plays. They made great plays.”
Final: Rams 17, Raiders 16.
Pause. “I mean, I didn’t even know if I’d play in the game. Nobody expected us to be able to win that game, let’s be honest.”
The end
Forty-seven hours and 45 minutes after Baker Mayfield walked into the Rams’ practice facility for the first time Tuesday night, a stunned Sean McVay stepped to the podium for his post-game press conference. “I’m still like, what the hell’s going on right now?” he said.
The next day, I asked Mayfield: “Of all the things you’ve done in football—high school, college, pro—where does this rank?”
“Crazy as it seems,” he said, “this might be number one, to be honest with you. With 48 hours from getting here till gametime, this is number one for me. It’s not just the moment. It’s everything that led up to it. It’s just special. Unforgettable.”
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AFC WEST
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LOS ANGELES CHARGERS
QB JUSTIN HERBERT tore up the Dolphins, set a record, and suddenly the Chargers have life. Lindsey Thiry of ESPN.com:
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert faked a handoff, rolled to his right, settled his feet, then sent a pass sailing through the night air.
Herbert’s 55-yard laser of a throw landed in the outstretched arms of wide receiver Mike Williams, drawing cheers throughout SoFi Stadium.
The pass came in the third quarter and was part of a six-play drive that resulted in a field goal to help lift the Bolts to a 23-17 victory over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, keeping L.A.’s hope alive for their first playoff berth in four seasons.
But for Herbert, the deep completion meant more than another highlight play, as he passed former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck for the most passing yards through a quarterback’s first three NFL seasons.
“I’ve got a ton of respect for Andrew Luck,” Herbert said. “For him as a football player, as a person, as a teammate — I think it’s just cool to be in the same conversation as him.”
Herbert has amassed 13,056 passing yards in 44 starts. Luck had 12,957 passing yards in his first three seasons, followed by Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning, who had 12,287 in his first three.
Wide receiver Keenan Allen has caught 240 passes for 2,530 yards in nearly three seasons with Herbert.
“He’s just getting better, he’s just starting,” Allen said. “He’s about to blow this league away.”
Against the Dolphins, Herbert completed 39 of 51 passes for 367 yards and a touchdown for the Bolts (7-6).
“As a quarterback, selfishly, I would love to throw the ball,” Herbert said when asked about the pass-heavy game plan. “I wish we could throw it every single down. I think it’s just kind of the game plan that we went with. We knew that it was going to be that type of game.”
It was Herbert’s 21st career game with 300-plus passing yards, two more than any other player in his first three seasons, including Luck.
“He played with great energy tonight that really affected his teammates in a positive way,” coach Brandon Staley said. “He made a lot of winning plays, really good decisions throughout the game.”
Sunday night was the first time this season that Herbert had both Allen and Williams available throughout an entire game. Entering Sunday, Allen and Williams had played only 5.7% of the Bolts’ 811 snaps together due to injuries.
Williams returned from a high ankle sprain that had limited him to only six snaps since Week 7. He caught six passes for 116 yards, including a 10-yard touchdown that Herbert fired that required the 6-foot-4 Williams to leap high to make the catch before ensuring both toes tapped inbounds, despite his momentum carrying him out the back of the end zone.
“I just knew that Mike was going to be able to go up and get it,” Herbert said. “He has done such an incredible job getting his feet inbounds.”
“Felt pretty good, just wanted to be available the whole game,” Williams said. “I felt comfortable. At the end it got a little tight, but I was still able to play and move around.”
Allen caught 12 passes for 92 yards, marking his 10th career game with at least 12 receptions — the most in NFL history.
Herbert completed a pass to nine different players for the fourth time this season.
“That’s the offense that we like to play, where people touch the ball,” Staley said. “I thought that we ran the football well enough. Like I said, Justin was fantastic with his decision-making tonight.”
Defensively, despite playing without safety Derwin James Jr., defensive lineman Sebastian Joseph-Day and cornerback Bryce Callahan, the Bolts limited quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to 145 passing yards and a touchdown, as the third-year quarterback completed only 10 of 28 attempts for a completion percentage of 36%, the lowest of his career.
“The game plan was simple,” cornerback Michael Davis said. “We were playing fast and loose.”
With the victory, the Chargers chance of earning a playoff berth increases from 60% to 79%, according to ESPN analytics. The Bolts currently are the No. 7 seed in the AFC, tied with the New York Jets (7-6) but boasting a better conference record.
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AFC SOUTH
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INDIANAPOLIS
Peter King distills the ESPN story of Seth Wickersham on the sudden retirement of QB Andrew Luck:
Andrew Luck. Seth Wickersham’s opus on Luck—why he quit, what he’s doing now—answered a thousand questions we’ve all had on Luck. What we learned:
He didn’t love football the way diehards like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning did. He chuckled when he told Wickersham about being a quarterback, “Well, shoot. I don’t think I had a choice.” His dad, Oliver, was a quarterback, and Andrew was a quarterback through his adolescence and into college, and he was a great one, so it was pre-ordained—Andrew Luck would be a quarterback. The story makes you think he liked being a quarterback but didn’t pine for it. “What I didn’t allow myself to explore enough was how much I loved football.” He called his post-college life “a story that felt written.”
Luck got tired of feeling hurt all the time. Tom Brady has talked about being sore all the time when he was 25, but if that was the cost of having his dream job, so be it. That led him to the TB12 stuff. But Luck, as Wickersham makes clear, didn’t want that life of always being in in chronic pain. Perhaps as importantly, Luck didn’t like the person he was when he was in that kind of pain.
He might be a football coach one day, but he likely won’t come back to play. Frank Reich, the former Colts coach, sent him a note earlier this year after hearing the song “Message In A Bottle” by the Police. Reich texted Luck, “Sending out an SOS.” Wickersham said Luck texted back a firm no. And Luck said: “There are things I miss. But there are things that, one, I’m not willing to give up about my life now, and two, that I don’t want to put myself through again.”
As a grad student at Stanford now, with a family, Luck is leading the life he wants. The last scene of the story, Luck riding away from Wickersham on his bike on the Stanford campus, was so fitting. Luck sees himself as a grad-school student and husband and parent looking for the life he might have begun to live nine years ago had he never been a great quarterback. And he’s pretty okay with that.
What I was left with after reading and re-reading the story: Luck doesn’t have all the answers about why he quit, about why he left the Colts high and dry two weeks before the 2019 season, and about why his quarterback body continually betrayed him. He does know he’s doing what he wants to do now.
And this:
I regret the timing of when I retired.
—Andrew Luck, to Seth Wickersham, opening up for the first time after three years of retirement, here referring to leaving the Colts two weeks before the season in 2019.
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TENNESSEE
Amy Adams Strunk told Theresa Walker of The AP why she, and she alone, canned GM Jon Robinson:
Amy Adams Strunk’s evaluation of Jon Robinson’s performance as the Titans’ general manager never stopped, and the Tennessee controlling owner said Friday she saw no reason to wait once she decided her franchise needed a change.
No matter how difficult that was.
“At the end of the day, I’ve got to make hard decisions,” Strunk told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.
“Once I made the decision, I was like, ’I can’t sit on it. I’ve got to go ahead and do it to be fair to Jon.′ I don’t know how many weeks we have left in the season. There could be a lot more hopefully in our season, and it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do to drag this along.”
Strunk fired Robinson on Tuesday despite the general manager never posting worse than a 9-7 record and going 69-47 with six straight winning seasons. That’s second in the NFL only to Kansas City’s streak of 10 consecutive winning records.
– – –
And no, seeing former Tennessee wide receiver A.J. Brown have a good game last week in a 35-10 win against her Titans played no part in firing Robinson.
“I’d already made my decision,” Strunk said. “A.J. had a great game. More power to him, but that didn’t actually have anything to do with that.”
Strunk said she couldn’t ignore the holes on a roster that has used 76 different players this season after setting an NFL-record with 91 different players last season.
Tennessee has lost three straight playoff games, the last two at home. Strunk said she wants the Super Bowl that eluded her late father, Bud Adams, who founded the franchise in Houston.
“I told the fans from the very beginning that I want to win it all and I want to be one of those elite teams that people are always scared of, and it’s my responsibility,” Strunk said. “And eventually it’s up to me to make those kind of decisions that get us there.”
– – –
Strunk dismissed a couple topics that have circulated since the firing:
— Vrabel did not issue any ultimatum to Strunk about Robinson.
— That stunning trade of Brown during the first round of the April draft? Strunk was in the draft room and fully aware of the ongoing negotiations with Brown’s agent leading up to the draft.
Ryan Cowden, the vice president of player personnel, is overseeing personnel in the interim and has been a candidate for GM openings along with Monti Ossenfort, director of player personnel. The Titans sent Brian Gardner, director of pro scouting, to the NFL meeting in May promoting minority candidates for front office jobs.
Strunk said she’s willing to wait, even past the Super Bowl if that’s what it takes, to hire the right person as the next general manager. Vrabel will have input, as he did with Robinson. But Strunk said coaching and being general manager are jobs that require a person’s full attention.
Her biggest key?
“To get that right person in the job,” Strunk said.
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AFC EAST
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NEW YORK JETS
Even with courageous QB MIKE WHITE in the hospital, the Jets continue to make QB ZACH WILSON persona non grata. Jason Owens of YahooSports.com:
A bad New York Jets quarterback situation got worse on Sunday in a 20-12 loss to the Buffalo Bills. But it wasn’t bad enough to consider a return to Zach Wilson
Mike White got banged up, and Joe Flacco struggled in relief in the loss, raising speculation that Wilson could return next week against the Detroit Lions. Head coach Robert Saleh squashed the idea immediately in his postgame conference. He did so as he announced that White was in an ambulance.
White was en route to a hospital to be tested for rib injuries sustained on a pair of violent blows against the Bills. Barring bad news from the hospital, White will “for sure” start next week against the Detroit Lions, according to Saleh. He reportedly joined his Jets teammates for the plane ride home.
Will Wilson play for Jets again?
Wilson was benched benched in Week 11 amid poor performance and a lack of confidence among his teammates. He was inactive for Sunday’s game and doesn’t sound close to a return despite Saleh insisting after his benching that his “career here is not over.”
With the Jets fighting for a playoff berth at 7-6, White hurt and Flacco clearly not the answer, the situation begs the question: If not now, when is the time for New York to give its 2021 first-round pick another chance?
White replaced Wilson in the lineup in November and took the field on Sunday for his third straight start. The Jets quarterback was sidelined twice by violent blows, with the second sending him to the New York locker room. His day appeared to be done when he was injured on a hit by Bills linebacker Matt Milano in the third quarter.
Flacco took over and immediately gave up the ball on a strip sack by Gregory Rousseau. He remained in the game for the ensuing possession, but White returned after being evaluated and initially listed as questionable to return with a rib injury. He was largely ineffective when he played and clearly in pain when he walked off the field postgame.
Regardless of who was under center on Sunday, the Jets struggled to move the ball and found the end zone just once in a 12-point effort. White needed 44 passes to tally 268 passing yards and failed to find the end zone. Flacco was 1-of-3 with a lost fumble. The performance squandered another strong effort from a Jets defense that’s emerged as one of the NFL’s best.
New York started the game by forcing Buffalo to punt on its first five possessions. It limited an offense featuring Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs to 232 yards from scrimmage. The performance is commonplace of a unit that entered Sunday giving up just 18.6 points per game. The game result was frustratingly familiar for a Jets team that dropped three of four games while averaging 12.3 points in the losses.
Despite the downturn, the Jets are in the thick of the AFC wild-card race as they eye their first postseason berth since 2010. They field an elite defense and boast a breakout rookie on offense in receiver Garrett Wilson. But quarterback remains an anchor with no easy solution. For now the answer remains White, even though he was just hospitalized. It makes one wonder if Wilson will every play in a Jets uniform again.
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