| We can do the NFC if the Season Ended Today as we await the debut of Jets coach Jeff Ulbricht. The 49ers are back in the playoffs after beating Seattle last Thursday. NFC W-L ConfMinnesota North 5-0 3-0Atlanta South 4-2 4-0Washington East 4-2 2-1San Francisco West 3-3 1-3Detroit WC1 4-1 4-1Chicago WC2 4-2 2-0 Tampa Bay WC3 4-2 4-1Green Bay 4-2 2-2Philadelphia 3-2 2-2Dallas 3-3 1-2Seattle 3-3 0-3 With the other three teams in the NFC East losing, it was a good week for the Eagles. The greatness of the NFC North, at the moment, is unquestioned. Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk.com: The NFC North is far and away the best division in the NFL. Not only is it the only division since realignment to have all four teams win four games by Week Six, but the four NFC North teams are the Top 4 teams in the NFL in point differential. The Vikings lead the league in point differential at +63, with 139 points scored and 76 points allowed. The Lions are next at +60, with 151 points scored and 91 points allowed. The Bears are +47 with 148 points scored and 101 points allowed. And the Packers are +41 with 162 points scored and 121 points allowed. No other NFL team has a +40 point differential. The four NFC North teams probably can’t stay atop the point differential standings all season, for the simple reason that they’ll be playing each other. The Lions and Vikings meet on Sunday, which means they can’t both improve in point differential this week. But point differential is one of the quickest and easiest and best ways to determine a team’s quality. And on that measure, it’s the NFC North and everyone else. One reason the collective 17-5 record is possible is because only 1 of the 12 interconference games has been played so far – Minnesota’s 31-29 win over Green Bay in Week 4. The means the four teams are 16-4 outside the division. The Lions and Bears have yet to play in the division – and Chicago won’t until Week 11. On the other hand, things change for the Lions and the rest of the division as Detroit goes to Minnesota (on FOX) this week, then to Green Bay in Week 9. |
| NFC NORTH |
| CHICAGOQB JAYDEN DANIELS of the Commanders remains outstanding, but QB CALEB WILLIAMS of the Bears has not conceded Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. Jon Greenberg of The Athletic on a strong showing by Williams Sunday in London: Before you start pricing out Super Bowl rooms in New Orleans, an important context to keep in mind is that the Jaguars stink and their pass defense is awful, just like Carolina, who Williams torched the previous week. And as good as the Bears defense has been, it is getting beaten up. Defensive back Jaquan Brisker did not make the trip to London with a concussion and Kyler Gordon left Sunday’s game early with a hamstring injury. Conversely, the offense is looking pretty good. Maybe coordinator Shane Waldron doesn’t have to start looking for a real estate agent just yet. While Waldron (and to some extent head coach Matt Eberflus) have the most tenuous jobs, Williams is under more scrutiny than any other young quarterback in the league simply because of the context of his place of employment. Bears QB is right up there with Browns QB as a cursed position and Williams is the third rookie the Bears have tried at the position since 2017. And being a No. 1 overall pick carries its own pressures and history. Williams raised some eyebrows around the league when he got off to a slow start, but he’s shown why he could be a lot different than his local predecessors. In his last four games, he has thrown for 1,050 yards with nine touchdowns and three interceptions (just one over the last three games). The eye test will tell you he’s looked good and at times, great. His interception trying to go deep to DJ Moore in the first half was negated by all of his nice throws, none perhaps better than Allen’s second touchdown catch. Mitch Trubisky set the Bears rookie record with 2,193 passing yards (in 12 games) in 2017. Williams should have that beat before Thanksgiving. Charlie O’Rourke has Chicago’s rookie passing TD record of, uh, 11, set back in 1942 and Williams is just two away from tying it. Being the best Bears rookie quarterback of all time is just the first (small) step to bigger goals. But it’s been a treat to watch him develop in real time. Now, the good and bad news for Williams and the Bears is the easy part of the schedule is over. After the bye, they play the Commanders in suburban Maryland. Williams, a D.C.-era native, vs. Jayden Daniels is the headline there. Then, the Bears have a road game in Arizona and a home game against the Patriots before a treacherous six-game stretch against the NFC North (with a road game at the 49ers sandwiched in there). That’s where we’ll learn what Williams and the Bears are made of. But for now, Chicagoans can relax and feel some joy, for once, that there is a lot of Bears football left to be played. |
| DETROITBroken bones may not keep DE AIDEN HUTCHINSON out of the playoffs. Myles Simmons of ProFootballTalk.com: After Lions edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson suffered a fractured leg during Sunday’s win over the Cowboys, the franchise has issued a brief statement updating the player’s status. “Aidan Hutchinson underwent successful surgery to repair a fractured tibia and fibula at Baylor White Medical Center in Irving, Texas last night,” the statement reads. “Hutchinson will return to Detroit this week and is expected to make a full recovery. There is no timeline for his return to play at this time.” Hutchinson, 24, was having a terrific season for Detroit, posting 7.5 sacks with seven tackles for loss and 17 quarterback hits in the season’s first five games. A Detroit News report noted Hutchinson’s injury was not the worst-case scenario, which means there’s a chance Hutchinson could return should the Lions make it to Super Bowl LIX in February. But the Lions will surely give Hutchinson all the time he needs to return healthy and in a position to thrive. Albert Breer of SI.com on the Lions fast start and whether they can sustain without Hutchinson: The Detroit Lions are what we thought they were—the same team they have been going back to the middle of the 2022 season. And it showed, again, after the Dallas Cowboys got themselves off to a promising start Sunday afternoon at AT&T Stadium. Dak Prescott and the Dallas offense kicked off the game with a nine-play, 54-yard march that stalled out in the red zone and resulted in a 34-yard field goal from Brandon Aubrey. That made it 3–0, and also marked the last time the Cowboys would hold a lead. From there, Detroit absolutely smothered the Cowboys, scoring on all five of its first-half possessions, while holding Dallas out of the end zone for the game’s first 30 minutes. It was 27–6 at halftime and 47–9 in the end. And it all started the same way the Lions have finished off so many of their other opponents, with a steady stream of David Montgomery and, perhaps, the NFL’s best offensive line. That approach closed out the Los Angeles Rams in Week 1, and set the tone in the Lions’ Week 4 win over the Seattle Seahawks. Against Dallas, it was there when Detroit had to respond to that opening salvo, with three Montgomery carries for 28 yards sandwiching a 42-yard dart from Jared Goff to Denver Broncos castoff Tim Patrick, including a physical 16-yard scoring run. “The opportunity presents itself—and if that means that I’m in when the opportunity presents itself, I know I need to be ready for it,” Montgomery told me postgame. “For me being able to understand and do that, that’s the only thing that matters.” What mattered this time around was that, by halftime, Montgomery had 58 of the Lions’ 92 rushing yards, and Detroit was well on its way to 4–1. The rest was breezy, for sure, and certainly a sign of where the visitors to Texas are now. But that doesn’t mean the game was without fireworks for an appreciative audience that needed some on a relatively dull Sunday. Maybe the best example? How offensive coordinator Ben Johnson called the second half. There was the hook-and-ladder to right tackle Penei Sewell. The play-action pass to left tackle Taylor Decker. The “route,” if you want to call it that, run by swing tackle Dan Skipper. All of those came with the game in hand, each as a sort of reward to vital parts of an offensive line that’s long been among the NFL’s best. “It’s fun,” Montgomery says. “When you watch football on Sundays, you want to see that kind of fun stuff. The plays we do already are pretty fun, and Ben gets pretty creative in what he decides to do [beyond the more conventional stuff].” The plays to Sewell, Decker and Skipper didn’t work. But almost everything else in Dallas did—with one very difficult exception. Indeed, the cost of the trip to Texas, which wound up being Aidan Hutchinson’s season, was heavy. Hutchinson’s leg snapped when his shin whipped around teammate Alim McNeill’s leg on a pass rush, sending the Lions’ star to the ground in pain, and his teammates onto the field to try to console their beloved captain. “He’s the heartbeat of this team,” Montgomery says. “You can feel the energy coursing through the way he talks and how he carries himself. That’s a big blow, but we’re taking this personal because we know that it means a lot to Aidan.” The good news is the Lions have a chance to lift Hutchinson’s spirits over the next few months, the same way they’ve lifted up their region the past couple of years. We already knew, before the season started, that Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes had put together something sustainable. What we’re learning now is that the ceiling on this particular group of players, even without Hutchinson, may be higher than most realized. And next week, they’ll have another chance to show it with a trip to Minnesota to play the unbeaten Vikings on tap. Montgomery, with a new two-year extension to stay in Detroit now signed, didn’t want to make too big a deal of next week just yet. Mostly because, at this point, being in games like that one isn’t new to him, or anyone else in his locker room. “It’s just handling our business,” he says. “We know what we’re capable of. If we all connect on all cylinders and we’re playing the way that we play, we’ll be hard to beat.” Which the Cowboys found out the hard way. |
| NFC EAST |
| DALLASJohn Breech of CBSSports.com with two notes from Lions 47, Cowboys 9: Cowboys get historically embarrassed. The Cowboys’ 47-9 loss to the Lions marked the largest home loss under Jerry Jones, who bought the team in 1989. They also trailed 27-6 at halftime, making them just the second team in NFL history to trail by 15 points or more at halftime in four straight home games. The Cowboys have also now allowed 167 total points in their last four home games, which is the most in a four-game home span since the Oilers gave up 176 from 1972 to 1973. Lions-Cowboys ends with a scorigami. The 47-9 final score marked the first time that score has ever happened in the NFL. It was the 1,087th unique final score in NFL history. There have been three scorigamis in the NFL this year and the Cowboys have now been involved in two of them. The other Scorigami for Dallas this year was in Week 2, another huge home loss when they game up 47 points – Saints 47, Cowboys 19. Should Cowboys Nation panic? Jay Busbee of YahooSports.com: ASKED: Is it possible to get a worse birthday present for Jerry Jones?What do you get a football plutocrat for his 82nd birthday? Well, if you’re the Dallas Cowboys, you scoop up a big steaming of dog crap, stick it in an old pizza box, wrap it in a silver-and-blue ribbon, and throw it right at his front door. That’s exactly what the Cowboys did for Jerry Jones on Sunday, losing to the Detroit Lions in a 47-9 debacle that somehow wasn’t even that close. The Cowboys have the highest-paid player and the broadest, most engaged fan base in the league, and they’re still not able to put a respectable product on the field week in and week out, year in and year out. Half the league literally can’t have a memory of the Cowboys’ last Super Bowl win, because it happened before they were born. Before we go too far down the road of “look how those terrible Cowboys treated poor ol’ Jerruh!”, well — who hired these guys? Who signs their checks? Jones has for years now insisted he’s in “win now” mode, and yet it’s clear the people in the building aren’t winning now. Jones doesn’t have the patience for a total rebuild, and with the money he could spend, he shouldn’t. Problem is, pointing fingers is easy; making the necessary changes is very, very hard. The reasons for Dallas’ problems are many and varied, but it all starts with Jones — and it’s ending there, too. Put another way: When even the Detroit Lions are clowning you, it’s time to rethink your entire worldview. |
| NEW YORK GIANTSQB DANIEL JONES has a week’s respite from PrimeTime coming up against the Eagles this week. John Breech: Prime-time woes continue for Daniel Jones. With the Giants’ 17-7 loss to the Bengals on Sunday night, Jones is now 1-14 in his career in prime time, which is the worst record of any QB who has at least five starts in prime time since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Jones is now 0-2 on the season in prime-time games, but he’ll get another chance to pick up a win in Week 8 when the Giants play the Steelers on “Monday Night Football.” So, Jones is 23-26-1 during daylight. Better than we might have thought. |
| PHILADELPHIAIt’s been 90 years since the Eagles have been this futile on offense in the first quarter. John Breech of CBSSports.com: you may have noticed that they always seem to get off to a slow start. During their 20-16 win over the Browns on Sunday, the Eagles didn’t score any points in the first quarter, which continues an ugly trend for them: They haven’t scored a SINGLE first quarter-point all season. This marks the first time in 90 years that the Eagles have gone through their first five games of the year without scoring a point in the first quarter. The last time the Eagles went through a drought like this came in their second year of existence back in 1934. During that season, they didn’t end up scoring a first-quarter point until their seventh game. The Eagles could tie that futile mark if they don’t score any first-quarter points in Week 7 against the Giants. |
| NFC SOUTH |
| TAMPA BAYA crazy offensive day for Tampa Bay. John Breech of CBSSports.com: Buccaneers big day. The Bucs piled up 594 yards against the Saints, which set the franchise record for most yards in a game. The previous mark was set in 2020 when the Bucs totaled 588 yards in a game with Tom Brady at QB. The Bucs also became just the fifth team in NFL history to throw for at least 300 yards and rush for at least 275 yards in the same game. A big contributor was RB SEAN TUCKER who filled in for ailing RB RACHAAD WHITE (and may have Wally Pipp’d him). In his first 16 NFL games, Tucker had a total of 53 scrimmage yards. At New Orleans on Sunday, he had 192 (136 rushing, 56 receiving). |
| AFC NORTH |
| CLEVELANDBill Barnwell of ESPN.com with the numbers to back up the somewhat obvious conclusion that the 2024 version of QB DESHAUN WATSON isn’t any good and he should play no more. It’s time. At 1-5, with their season on life support, the Browns need to bench Deshaun Watson. The nearly one quarter of a billion dollars Cleveland committed to pay him when it traded three first-round picks to acquire the former Texans quarterback in 2022 is a sunk cost. Continuing to play him both jeopardizes the credibility of the coaching staff to the franchise’s fans and players and extinguishes any hope of the Browns turning things around in 2024. Sunday’s loss to the Eagles wasn’t Watson’s worst performance of the season, but there haven’t been any meaningful signs of growth. Facing a Philadelphia defense that ranked 27th in expected points added (EPA) per play heading into the game, Watson turned 28 pass dropbacks into just 144 yards. He was sacked five times. The Browns failed to score an offensive touchdown and made their way into the red zone for the first time only on their eighth and final drive of the game. Browns coach Kevin Stefanski came out after the game Sunday and reiterated that the team isn’t making a change at quarterback. It’s impossible to know whether that decision is Stefanski’s or a mandate from the ownership group still on the hook for more than $93 million in remaining guaranteed money on Watson’s deal. For the purposes of the on-field product, though, it doesn’t matter. The Browns might not be a very good team with Jameis Winston at quarterback, but their offense likely would at least vaguely concern opposing defenses on a week-to-week basis. How bad is Watson playing? What, specifically, has gone wrong? What does it look like on tape? How much responsibility does the three-time Pro Bowler bear? And what happens if the Browns eventually decide to make a change? Let’s get started by considering the past six weeks of football. Frankly, the bar for jaw-dropping Watson stats is high. This is a historically bad level of play to begin a season. I’ll work up to it by starting with the offense as a whole: How bad is the Browns’ offense?It ranks 31st in EPA per play, ahead of only the Dolphins, who have been without starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa for most of the season. It is 31st in points per drive and averages a league-worst 19.5 yards per possession. The only thing the Browns do marginally well as a team is avoid turnovers, something that continued against the Eagles. The downside is they instead punt on nearly 51% of their possessions, the highest rate of any team. Sunday’s lone trip inside the 20-yard line gave them just their ninth red zone trip of the season. Again, that’s a league low. Only six teams have managed fewer red zone possessions through six games since the 2000 season, leaving Cleveland tied for 784th out of 798 possible teams. Four of those teams had their quarterbacks get injured or benched during that rough start. The exceptions were the 2008 Rams and 2009 Raiders, the latter of whom started JaMarcus Russell for most of the campaign. A viral stat went around Sunday afternoon, and while it wasn’t entirely true, it wasn’t far off. At one point during the loss, the Browns had converted just one of their prior 27 third-down attempts, including an 0-for-7 run to start the game Sunday. (The stat suggested Cleveland had an 0-for-25 streak on third downs going at halftime of the Eagles game, but it didn’t include a third-and-2 late in the Commanders game in which the Browns ran for four yards and Washington jumped offsides.) In all, the Browns have converted 19.2% of their third downs this season. The only other offense since the turn of the century to be less effective through six games on third downs was the 2010 Bears, who somehow managed to go 4-2 during that stretch by forcing 14 takeaways on defense. That run was mostly authored by Jay Cutler, but it included six quarters from Todd Collins, who went 10-of-27 for 68 yards with five interceptions. Watson hasn’t been quite that bad, but still: The Browns are 797th out of 798 possible teams at moving the chains on third downs through six games. What about Watson?To start, he ranks last in the league in Total QBR (21.5). The only player within 15 points of Watson is Will Levis (28.3). QBR has existed since 2007, and among passers who threw 100 pass attempts or more across their team’s first six games, Watson’s season ranks 558th out of 566. Again, the only quarterback who ranked below Watson who also wasn’t injured, benched or coming off the bench to take over for another passer during that six-game start to their season was Russell. And, like Watson, there’s a strong case Russell was playing more because Raiders ownership was invested in the idea of its starting quarterback being good than any actual recent evidence. Total QBR is just one stat. What about EPA? Well, The Ringer’s Austin Gayle helps there: Watson ranks last in cumulative EPA on dropbacks through the first six weeks of any season since 2000. Going back to those 566 quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts, Watson ranks at or near the bottom of the league in virtually every rate metric. Among them, he is 565th in yards per attempt (5.1), 565th in yards per dropback (3.9) and 566th in first down rate (22.1%, just behind Bo Nix’s 22.2%). Watson is better by passer rating because it doesn’t include one major flaw in his game. Let’s get to that, actually, to help make the case Watson is off to a historical outlier of a dismal start to his season. What does this actually look like on tape? Where is he really struggling? And how much of that is on him versus the rest of the Cleveland offense? Taking sacks. The problems for the Browns start with Watson’s propensity for being taken down. He is being sacked on a league-high 12.4% of his dropbacks this season, which is nearly double the average rate of 6.7% and the highest rate of any starter. He has always taken sacks more often than most quarterbacks as a product of his style, but his career sack rate before 2024 was 9.1%. Cumulatively, he has been sacked 31 times and nobody else has been taken down more than 20 times. Those sacks are drive killers for most teams. Teams on the whole suffer dramatically when their quarterback gets sacked. The average drive without a sack in 2024 averages 2.2 points per possession. Add at least one sack to the mix and that drops in half to 1.1 points per drive. Obviously, there’s some selection bias there, as teams are more likely to be sacked in third-and-long situations, but being able to avoid negative yardage goes a long way in sustaining drives and scoring. Watson has been sacked at least once on 27 different drives this season. The Patriots, who kept Drake Maye on the bench for five weeks out of the fear he would be immediately injured by playing, are second. They have 19 drives with at least one sack. The Browns unsurprisingly lead the league in percentage of drives with at least one sack as well, with more than 40% of their possessions resulting in at least one takedown. Sacks aren’t the only problem — the Browns also rank last in points per drive when they don’t take a sack during a possession — but they destroy drives and create all those failed third downs. The average Cleveland third down this season has come with a whopping 9.2 yards to go, basically rendering its work on first and second down a waste of time. The Browns rank 574th out of 576 teams through 2007 in average yards to go on third down. Is all of that on Watson? Of course not. They have been battered by injuries to their offensive line. Jedrick Wills Jr. and Jack Conklin, the team’s two starting tackles, have missed most of the season. Guard Wyatt Teller is on injured reserve. Tackle Dawand Jones, a revelation last year filling in for Conklin at right tackle, has looked like a totally different player in the wrong way. Eight different linemen have played at least 50 snaps for the Browns this season. And they’re doing this without legendary offensive line coach Bill Callahan, who departed to join the Titans in the offseason. Quarterback sacks are relatively sticky from year to year even as teams change schemes and offensive linemen, which suggests they’re a product of the quarterback as opposed to what’s around him. Every team will have a moment in which they spring a leak in protection or have to go up against a superstar edge rusher, but passers play a big role in determining how often they’re sacked. And watching those sacks back on tape, a fair number are on Watson. He has been sacked in situations in which a signal-caller absolutely cannot take one, like a fourth down play against the Cowboys when he was rolling out and didn’t get rid of the football. He has taken sacks in quick game when he was staring at open receivers and in a spot in which he’s supposed to get rid of the football. He was sacked Sunday when he held the ball on a screen. He has taken sacks on plays in which there was a clear lane to step up through the pocket and instead tried to escape out the side. He has taken sacks in which he was hot off one side and responsible for getting the ball out before the pass rush got home. I’d estimate at least 10 of those sacks have more to do with Watson than everything else around him, and that’s a conservative estimate that assigns the blame for murkier plays to somebody else. That’s just not sustainable unless a quarterback is also simultaneously producing big plays. And because he’s getting sacked so often, his internal clock has been inconsistent; there are times in which he’s too aggressive to take the checkdown because he has been hit so often. NFL Next Gen Stats has a measure called “quick quarterback pressures,” which gauges how often a QB is put into duress before he can get into rhythm. Watson’s quick pressure rate is 16.8%, which is above league-average but still only the league’s 10th-highest rate. His typical sack comes after an average of 4.6 seconds, which is right at league average. The line has not been good, but he’s undoubtedly playing a meaningful role in the Browns enduring too many sacks. Just moving to a quarterback with a league-average career sack rate, like Winston, would likely be enough to improve the Cleveland offense by keeping it out of third-and-forevers. A lack of explosive plays. Quarterbacks can make up for high sack rates by producing big plays. Watson with the Texans was a great example; while he was running high sack rates throughout his time in Houston (2017-20), he averaged 12.3 yards per completion, the fourth-highest rate for any passer over that four-year span. The only player with a better QBR on deep throws over that stretch was Patrick Mahomes. That version of Watson hasn’t shown up in 2024. He’s just 3-of-17 for 77 yards on deep passes. The only starter with fewer deep completions is Jacoby Brissett. Watson is both not attempting big throws and struggling when he does try them. He ranks last in the NFL in first-down rate (17.7%) and yards per attempt (4.5) on those deep passes. He has been hit on more than 50% of those pass attempts, and even some of the successes are ugly; he stared down an open Jerry Jeudy on a dig, didn’t throw the football when the window was open, scrambled to the other side of the field and then took a hit while eventually finding Jeudy for a first down. An inability to fire passes on target. While Watson was unlucky to have Amari Cooper drop a touchdown pass on a deep throw, many of these passes simply haven’t been close. Eleven of those 17 deep throws have been considered off-target attempts by ESPN’s tracking, the second-highest rate for anybody, behind Bears rookie Caleb Williams. Some throws haven’t been close. Watson has put passes that are clearly designed to be catchable yards out of bounds without pass pressure, something NFL quarterbacks rarely do: Over the past two weeks, Watson has been lucky to get away with a pair of would-be interceptions on deep throws that met the same fate. They were only saved because two defenders had a potential play on the football and ran into each other as they were trying to make the catch. The one Sunday should have ended with both Eagles players earning passes defensed for keeping each other from a reception: Seventeen passes is a small sample, but Watson is also second worst in the league when it comes to off-target rate on all pass attempts this season, with just under 20% of his passes going awry. Again, Williams ranks last. There are moments in which it looks like he gets stuck on receivers, doesn’t run through his progression and then either throws the ball away or fires the ball into the third row. Watson is returning from shoulder surgery, but this has been a problem throughout his tenure in Cleveland. His off-target rate was 21.3% last season, before he went down after playing six games. Even on the throws Watson completes, there’s no consistent accuracy or the sort of ball placement most veteran quarterbacks have. Those sorts of plays don’t go down as misses, but they do reduce yards-after-catch opportunities and create chances for defenders to break passes up. He knows where he needs to place the ball on slants and out routes. He just doesn’t consistently put his passes on target. There’s no core strength to fall back on. When Watson was at his best in Houston, the Texans’ offense featured RPOs and often worked out of empty backfields. Spreading the offense out forced defenses to tip their hand with coverages, created space for Watson as a runner and scrambler and allowing the young quarterback to identify matchups he wanted to exploit. When working out of empty from 2017-2020, he led the NFL in completion percentage over expected (5.7%), passing yards (3,299) and ranked fourth in QBR. This Browns’ coaching staff wants to get him back in his comfort zone, but it isn’t comfortable anymore. He has 56 dropbacks out of empty this season. The only other quarterback who has more than 35 such plays is Geno Smith, who is ahead of Watson with 64. Smith has generally been effective working out of empty, so it makes sense that the Seahawks would lean into it. Watson has not. His 23.2 QBR out of empty ranks 24th. He’s 27th in yards per dropback out of empty, ahead of four quarterbacks who use it no more than two or three times per game. He was averaging nearly 11 dropbacks per game out of empty before Sunday, when the Browns mostly took it out of the playbook and only went to empty looks three times. How is it impacting the rest of the offense?Because of these concerns, the Cleveland offense is broken. The Browns don’t have a great running game because teams aren’t scared of getting beat deep and aren’t facing the version of this team that had a healthy Nick Chubb and a great offensive line. They spend the vast majority of their time behind schedule. They don’t hit big plays often, so they need the offense to be consistent in generating first downs to move the ball down the field, something Watson & Co. are doing at one of the worst rates in recent league history. The Browns give up on quite a few third-and-long situations and either run quick game, screens, draws or something designed to avoid a bad situation getting worse with a strip sack or an interception. When Stefanski’s offense has been at its best, it has used heavy doses of play-action. Stefanski was able to get the best out of Kirk Cousins and Baker Mayfield by upping their play-action rates. The Browns are arguably the league’s most analytically inclined organization, so they’re well aware of the evidence that using play-action increases quarterback efficiency, even if the running game isn’t working well. Watson is one of the few quarterbacks not getting much of a boost from play fakes. Although he has attempted the third-most play-action passes this season, he ranks 30th in play-action QBR (32.4) and last in yards per play-action dropback (3.9). Those numbers were even worse before Sunday, when he had his best day of the season on play-action, going 6-of-8 for 69 yards, including a 35-yard completion to Jeudy. And in a league in which every team loves exploiting the middle of the field, the Browns are 30th in yards per attempt on throws between the numbers, ahead of the Titans and Broncos. Watching tape of this offense, the other players don’t look like they’re having fun. Cooper has been unlucky at times, with an 82-yard touchdown wiped off by a penalty against the Raiders, but he looks like he has never played with Watson before. He has let down his quarterback with a pair of drops, including one which turned into a brutal interception. On Sunday, he was flagged for 15 yards for pulling the facemask of an Eagles defender on a poorly thrown pass. With Cooper reportedly wanting a new deal, I wonder if Cleveland considers moving on from the wideout before the trade deadline. There are other moments in which the offense just doesn’t appear to have much hope, faith or energy. In Week 5, Wills returned to the lineup and helped allow a sack on a twist where he seemed to give up mid-play. On Sunday, the Browns had a play in which Watson turned one way at the snap and Cooper and Elijah Moore stayed put and didn’t run routes on the backside of the play. Watch the fourth-down completion to David Njoku on Sunday and you’ll see Jeudy, running a slant alongside Njoku, immediately stop after he realizes he’s not getting the ball. Every offense has mistakes or sloppy moments, but the Browns don’t look engaged on the offense. The other piece of evidence: There are too many penalties. The Browns lead the NFL with 36 offensive penalties this season, a remarkable piece of self-sabotage for an offense that accomplishes as little as they do when they aren’t incurring flags. Those penalties cost Cleveland dearly in the loss to Philadelphia. An 18-yard run by D’Onta Foreman to get in the red zone was called back for a hold by tight end Geoff Swaim. A third-and-11 scramble by Watson to get in the red zone a second time was brought back after a holding call on reserve lineman Michael Dunn. Both times, the Browns settled for field goals. The most impactful calls came on the final possession of the game, when Watson played his best. Trailing by seven points, he started the drive by hitting Jeudy on a rare successful play-action shot downfield for 35 yards. Pierre Strong broke a Nakobe Dean tackle on a swing pass for another first down. Cooper’s facemask call set the Browns back at first-and-25, but a short completion to Foreman and a well-thrown slant to Cooper put them in a first-and-goal situation. Two plays later, they faced a third-and-goal from Philadelphia’s 3-yard line. Everything fell apart. Guard Zak Zinter committed a false start. On third-and-goal from the 8, the Browns went empty and got a matchup they liked with the 6-foot-4 Njoku against the 5-foot-11 C.J. Gardner-Johnson, but the Eagles safety broke up the pass. The Browns then lined up to go for it on fourth-and-goal again out of empty, but Wills committed a false start, and Stefanski elected to kick a field goal to make it a four-point game. Cleveland went from having two plays to try to score a touchdown from the 3-yard line to kicking a field goal. It never got the ball back. The margin for error on this offense is extremely small. All of the problems I’ve mentioned above both exist in their own right and are intertwined with the others. The penalties and the sacks get the Browns in third-and-long. Watson’s inability to threaten teams deep locks up the run game and forces them into the sorts of drives they can’t sustain. The lack of play-action forces the receivers to win one-on-one, and they’re not playing well enough to do that consistently. And while there might be a drive here or there where things feel better, it doesn’t seem like there’s any significant path toward improvement ahead. The Flacco problemIf Watson had struggled through last season and the Browns had missed the postseason, it would have been easy to chalk this up to an ideological battle between Watson and Stefanski. That’s a debate the quarterback almost always wins, as former Jets coach Robert Saleh might be able to tell you now. PJ Walker and Dorian Thompson-Robinson weren’t as good as Watson in the same offense a year ago, and so given that Watson went 5-1 before hitting injured reserve, there would have been plausible deniability about identifying who to blame for Cleveland’s woes. That’s not what happened, though. Joe Flacco, who had been sitting on his couch for most of the 2023 season, signed with the Browns in December and elevated the offense. Flacco was more efficient and effective than Watson despite playing without his starting left tackle or his top two options at right tackle. Flacco even had a huge game against the Jets and their dominant defense without Cooper. Watson’s 5-1 record was mostly a product of the defense playing much better with him than it did with the other passers. I’m not sure Flacco is a great quarterback, but bringing him in allowed Stefanski to lean into the offense the coach wants to run. The Browns upped their under-center and play-action rates, dramatically improving on Watson’s performance in both areas. Flacco took sacks on 3.8% of his dropbacks, while Watson was taken down more than 9% of the time. Even given that Flacco didn’t get as much defensive help and threw eight interceptions in five games, the Browns went 4-1 with him as the starter and made it into the postseason. And that’s without even considering Brissett, who grossly outplayed Watson when the two were on the Browns roster together in 2022. Fans aren’t dumb. Neither are players. The Browns couldn’t re-sign Flacco in the offseason because of the potential for a controversy. If Watson struggled early in the season, fans were going to be screaming for Flacco, who had outplayed the incumbent in 2023. The players might have followed. Moving on from Flacco and getting a better quarterback to replace him in Winston made sense, both in terms of upgrading at backup and bringing in someone for whom the fan base had no particular affinity. Winston is no guarantee, either. He didn’t run much play-action during his time under Sean Payton and Pete Carmichael in New Orleans, and like Flacco, he can throw teams both into and out of games. Going back to 2019, his last full season as a starter with the Bucs, he ranked third in the NFL in QBR on play-action passes, averaging 12.0 yards per attempt. He was also under center for nearly 27% of his dropbacks and ranked fourth in yards per attempt (10.5) there as well. While Winston wouldn’t be a sure thing, there isn’t much risk of downgrading at quarterback moving on from a guy who is producing as little as Watson has been. Watson is off to the worst six-game start in a season we’ve seen from a quarterback in the past 15 years, if not longer. Quarterbacks have been benched this season for less, let alone over that time frame. The only guy who was able to survive a stretch this bad with his job security intact was Russell, who wasn’t an NFL-caliber quarterback and only kept his job because the Raiders had invested the first overall pick to acquire him. It seems foolish to pretend there’s any other reason for Watson to hold onto his starting role besides his contract. Between the surplus value of the draft picks the Browns sent to the Texans and the guaranteed money he will take home as part of this contract, Cleveland ownership committed well over $300 million to acquire him. The franchise looked past the 11-game suspension he would receive before ever playing a game with the Browns after he was accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct during massage sessions. They ran Mayfield out of the building as part of a trade to the Panthers, eating another $10.5 million in the process. That bet has not paid off. Since the start of 2022, Watson has started 18 games and put up a 34.4 QBR, ahead of only Zach Wilson and Bryce Young among passers with 500 pass attempts. He has never looked remotely like the quarterback the Browns were expecting to acquire. While there were built-in excuses for his struggles in 2022 and 2023, he has been worse this season. He was outplayed on short notice by a 38-year-old quarterback the rest of the league didn’t want. Just about every starting quarterback of the past 15 years has outplayed his first six games of 2024. What happens now?The argument in favor of starting Watson has been reduced entirely to the money. The Browns are on the hook for the remainder of his fully-guaranteed contract. There has never been a player benched for an extended period of time while making anything close to his annual salary of $46 million per season. Teams have taken players such as Derek Carr and Russell Wilson out of the lineup late in the season to avoid future guarantees locking themselves in, but Watson hasn’t even reached the halfway point of his contract, which won’t expire until after the 2026 season. If there’s any good news for the Browns, it’s that they’ve already paid a significant amount of the money due to Watson. After converting most of his base salary into a signing bonus this August, they have paid him $136.5 million of the $230 million he’s due, or nearly 60% of the contract. They owe about $800,000 for the rest of 2024 and a base salary of $46 million in each of the 2025 and 2026 seasons. As terrible as that contract is, there’s not much Cleveland can do about it at this point. There’s no leverage to force Watson to take a pay cut. The team would only save about $1 million per year by releasing him, so there isn’t much of a reason to cut him. Keeping him around, even if he isn’t playing, allows the Browns to structure the remaining $93.5 million in favorable ways, likely by converting his 2025 base salary to a signing bonus and then converting some portion of his 2026 salary into a second bonus. If that happens, Watson could have cap hits of $37.4 million in 2025, $62.2 million in 2026 and then $91.1 million in 2027. That sounds dramatic, but Cleveland rolls over more cap space than any other team as a product of clever contract structuring and some light-spending seasons early on during their rebuild. They have nearly $44 million in cap space this year and will be able to roll the majority of that over into 2025 and beyond. As the cap rises, they should be able to absorb this deal over the next two years without being compromised by cap concerns. The 2027 cap will be a bigger problem, but the Browns could pursue structures that spread some of that money into 2028. There’s not really any other option. Again, cutting Watson would be more financially constricting. There’s no team that would take any significant portion of this deal via trade given his injuries and struggles. The Browns could theoretically try to get creative and send away players or draft picks along with Watson to get another team to eat some of the remaining cash on the Watson trade in what would amount to their version of the Brock Osweiler swap, but that would mean committing even more assets toward him. On top of that, he has a no-trade clause and would need to approve any deal. The best thing for the Browns to do, realistically, is to transition as quietly and quickly as possible. Benching Watson for Winston would give them their new starter for the rest of 2024. If they want to claim Watson’s surgically repaired shoulder is giving him problems as a way to save face, they could stash him on injured reserve for the remainder of the season, which would remove the possibility he would return to the starting role if Winston struggles or gets injured. After that, the Browns need to use the 2025 offseason to find a new starter. The Watson contract will make doing so more difficult, but not impossible. Trading for Cousins would leave them on the hook for $27.5 million in 2025 and either a $10 million buyout or a $35 million salary in 2026. It’s not that wild to imagine them spending $73.5 million on quarterbacks between Cousins and Watson as the nominal backup. Alternately, ESPN’s Football Power Index projects Cleveland to finish with the No. 3 pick in the 2025 draft, which would put it in position to draft a quarterback and pay him a fraction of Watson’s salary. Watson would become the highest-paid backup quarterback in NFL history by a considerable margin. That’s not going to be a pleasant scenario — and it could end with the team eventually agreeing to let Watson leave while paying the remainder of his salary — but the Browns can’t let the mistake they made in March 2022 paralyze their chances of competing through the end of 2026. They already wasted an elite season from their defense a year ago, and while that unit hasn’t been quite as good in 2024, there’s a young core locked up for years to come, including Myles Garrett, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and Denzel Ward. The Browns made a mistake by trading for Watson. Every week they continue to send him out onto the field only compounds that mistake. It’s time to move on. |
| AFC EAST |
| MIAMICoach Mike McDaniel and the Dolphins expect QB TUA TAGOVIALOA to play football again sometime this season – although there is no specific timetable. Josh Alper ofProFootballTalk.com: The Dolphins are back from their bye week and the potential return of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was the subject of the first question at head coach Mike McDaniel’s press conference on Monday morning. Tagovailoa has missed three games after suffering a concussion in Week Two and will become eligible to be designated for return from injured reserve after this week’s game against the Colts. McDaniel said all the word Tagovailoa has gotten has “continued to be positive” and he said he expects the quarterback to play again this season, but the coach was noncommittal about Tagovailoa practicing next week. “There’s still information that he’s seeking this week,” McDaniel said. “As far as timelines go, I know he’s not playing this week and I do expect to see him playing football in 2024, but where that is exactly we’ll let the process continue since we still have time before we could even entertain anything.” It’s the first time that McDaniel has said he expects Tagovailoa to play again and he said it is “exciting” to think about having the quarterback back on the field even if it remains unclear when that will actually happen. |
| NEW ENGLANDChad Graff of The Athletic on the pluses and minuses of QB DRAKE MAYE’s starting debut: Maye’s debut meant the offense looked better than it had in a year. That’s because New England is such a mess that, while the franchise may have solved the question at quarterback, Sunday showed how flawed the rest of the roster is. An offensive line that was bad to start with is now riddled with injuries. The running game that’s supposed to be the strength of the offense was borderline dysfunctional. The young wide receiver they hoped would flourish this season, second-round pick Ja’Lynn Polk, had more drops than catches. And the once-prized defense that was the hallmark of a tough team was gashed over and over. That left the Patriots in the awkward position of both being pleased with the debut of Maye, who helped the offense hit marks it hasn’t in a year, and concerned about how much longer this roster transformation might take. “I told all those guys, I said, ‘You should feel like crap today,’” coach Jerod Mayo said of his defense. But Mayo was complimentary of his new quarterback. “It’s definitely encouraging,” Mayo said. “From a team-wide perspective right now, we let him down. It was his first game, and I feel like I let him down. I’m sure all the coaches feel like we let everyone down. We’ve just got to be better.” Maye ended up 20-for-33 passing for 243 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions. The yardage number was the highest for a Pats quarterback in nearly a year (Mac Jones threw for 272 in Week 7 last season). If he keeps playing as well as he did while the team struggles in almost every other phase of the game, the pressure will be turned up on this coaching staff. How can the running game be so bad, managing only 44 yards on 21 designed rushes for 2.1 yards per carry? (Maye was the Pats’ leading rusher Sunday thanks to his five scrambles for 38 yards.) How can the defense be so bad against the run (allowing 190-plus yards for a second straight week) and the pass, allowing three touchdowns and too often losing track of Stefon Diggs? Still, there’s hope in Foxboro. Hope that maybe those were one-off issues against a good Texans team. Hope that better performances will come to match Maye, who played well after a rocky start even if there were some rookie mistakes mixed in. Just twice since Tom Brady left had the Pats thrown for more than 240 yards and three touchdowns. Maye did it in his first start. Maye’s scrambling also got New England out of some bad situations behind their still-struggling offensive line. In the days before Maye’s debut, Mayo said he sensed a renewed energy from the team. Then with Maye at the helm, the offense produced like it hadn’t yet this season — even if that’s admittedly a low bar to clear and they still turned the ball over four times. “He’s got swag,” said Demario Douglas, whose 92 yards were the most by a Patriots receiver in 24 games, a streak dating to 2022. “I’d run through a wall for him.” The most important part of this Patriots rebuild is making sure that Maye is The Guy. Nothing else matters if they whiff on the quarterback. In that regard, Sunday was a step in the right direction. But at the same time, it was also an unfortunate reminder of just how far the Patriots are from contending. The receivers need a major upgrade. Obviously, the offensive line does too — potentially as many as four new starters. Tight end depth is an issue. And that’s just the offense. Sure, the defense is without some of its most important players: Christian Barmore, Ja’Whaun Bentley, Jabrill Peppers and the departed Matthew Judon. But they shouldn’t make this big of a difference. Of course, this isn’t to absolve Maye. His first interception was just plain bad. The second was unlucky, but he also needs to put more air on the throw to the flat so it doesn’t get deflected in the first place. And there was a sack or two he could’ve avoided by throwing the ball away. But there were more positives from him than negatives. His first-half touchdown to Kayshon Boutte was the most air yards on a Patriots completion in three years, per Next Gen Stats. His 243 passing yards were the most the Texans have allowed this season. Yet the Patriots still lost by 20. The game never felt in doubt. That’s because, on a day when five rookie quarterbacks started an NFL game, it was also clear that Maye has the most to overcome, stuck with the worst situation among them. Even if it seems like the Patriots might’ve hit on the quarterback, their rebuild is still in the very early stages. |
| NEW YORK JETSSo feisty EDGE HASSAN RIDDICK put the kibosh on a deal his agents from CAA thought they had worked out with the Jets. Now, with his fines and lost salary mounting, he turns to dealmaker Drew Rosenhaus to make things right. First, this from Mike Florio on CAA’s departure from the scene: In the rare case of an agency firing a client, there’s always a reason for it. Three days after CAA fired Jets defensive end Haason Reddick, one potential reason has emerged. Via Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Reddick declined to proceed with a one-year deal that was “all but worked out” between CAA and the Jets. The timing isn’t precisely clear. Per the report, it was “early in the season.” The offer also would have “made [Reddick] whole and much more,” allowing him to earn back the millions in fines he incurred by holding out. Without more specifics, it’s impossible to even begin to assess, from an objective standpoint, whether Reddick should have taken the deal. At this point, both the Jets and CAA have a reason to paint him as unreasonable. (And, obviously, CAA wouldn’t have fired him if CAA didn’t actually believe he was being unreasonable.) Regardless, Reddick decided that he didn’t want it. And CAA eventually decided it didn’t want to represent him. And this on Rosenhaus arriving, per Rich Cimini of ESPN.com: Dropped by his longtime agency last week, New York Jets holdout pass rusher Haason Reddick has hired Drew Rosenhaus and Ryan Matha as his new agents. Rosenhaus, who already has talked with the Jets, told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that he expressed hope that the dispute can be resolved soon. “We look forward to working with the Jets to get this resolved as soon as possible,” Rosenhaus told Schefter. “Haason would like to be a New York Jet for years to come, and our goal is to make that happen.” If Reddick truly wants to remain with the Jets, it would represent in about face because he requested a trade on August 12. The Jets have said they won’t trade him. Rosenhaus said he’s planning to attend Monday night’s game against the Buffalo Bills, where he presumably will meet with Jets officials. Reddick, 30, acquired in a March 29 trade with the Philadelphia Eagles, is the NFL’s last remaining holdout. The saga took a strange turn last week when CAA dropped him as a client. CAA and the Jets were conducting talks toward a renegotiated contract, but Reddick apparently refused to budge from his desire to get a long-term extension. This has been one of the most bizarre holdouts in recent NFL history. Just last week, Jets owner Woody Johnson issued a public plea to Reddick, telling reporters, “Haason, get in your car, drive down I-95 and come to the New York Jets. We can meet you and give you an escort right in the building and you will fit right in and you’re going to love it here, and you’re going to feel welcome and you’re going to accomplish great things with us.” Reddick, who lives in Camden, New Jersey, about 90 minutes from the Jets’ training facility, has skipped all team events since the trade, forfeiting about $4.7 million in game checks and accruing another $5 million in NFL-mandated fines. The Jets acquired him with one year, $14.25 million in nonguaranteed base pay remaining on his contract. Reddick, who has 50.5 sacks over the previous four seasons, demanded a long-term deal commensurate with the top pass rushers. The Eagles decided to trade him instead of paying him. The Jets offered an extension at the time of the trade, but it was quickly rejected. At that point, Reddick agreed to play under his existing contract, according to the team. Reddick evidently felt he was promised a long-term extension, so he didn’t report to any offseason events or training camp. After losing pass rusher Bryce Huff to the Eagles in free agency, the Jets traded for Reddick, sending a conditional 2026 third-round pick to the Eagles. If Reddick doesn’t report by Week 13, he won’t get credit for the season and his contract will toll, meaning the Jets would retain his rights for 2025 instead of him becoming a free agent. |
