Every week in “4-Down Territory,” Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar and Luke Easterling of Bucs Wire and Draft Wire go over the things you need to know about, and the things you need to watch, in the NFL right now. With Week 13 of the 2022 NFL season in the books, and the Heisman Trophy finalists announced, there was a lot to cover!
This week, Doug and Luke discuss:
- USC quarterback Caleb Williams, TCU quarterback Max Duggan, Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud, and Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett III were announced as the finalists for the 2022 Heisman Trophy. With all due respect to those four players, what was the most egregious Heisman snub this year?
- The Russell Wilson trade is in danger of becoming the worst trade in NFL history — at least, for the Denver Broncos. At this point though, what has been the worst deal in the annals of pro football?
- A.J. Brown of the Philadelphia Eagles and Bobby Wagner of the Los Angeles Rams had compelling revenge games on Sunday against their former teams, the Tennessee Titans and the Seattle Seahawks. Which player’s revenge game was more compelling?
- Do the San Francisco 49ers still have a Super Bowl shot with rookie “Mr. Irrelevant” quarterback Brock Purdy under center?
You can watch this week’s episode of “4-Down Territory” right here:
Who was the biggest Heisman snub this year?
The finalists for the Heisman Trophy were announced Monday, and while all candidates have compelling cases, we’re going to have an internal vote here. Regardless of the finalists, if we at Four-Down Territory were responsible for who gets the award on December 10 – and of course, we should be – who would wrap that award up?
Doug: I know that defensive players don’t win the Heisman. Ndamukong Suh didn’t win it in 2009, which told me all I needed to know. Charles Woodson won it in 1997, though he did so as a three-way player on offense, defense, and special teams. But I’m going to embrace the futility and ask: Who has been the best and most transformative and most unstoppable player in college football this season? That would be Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter. I could go into Carter’s metrics, or get into his 2022 tape, and I’ll be doing all that soon enough. But let’s just put it this way. Carter is utterly unblockable even when you put two and three guys on him, and when he sacked LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels in the SEC Championship game on Saturday by picking Daniels up with one hand, and raising the “No. 1” sign with the other, I think Carter made all the statements he needed to make. He’s the best player in the NCAA this season, and he should be rewarded accordingly.
Luke: I agree with you completely, but for the sake of shining a light on someone else who deserves the attention, I would put UAB running back DeWayne McBride in the conversation. He leads the nation in rushing with 1,713 yards, and he did it on nearly 100 fewer carries than the No. 2 guy on that list. That’s 7.4 yards per carry, and his 19 rushing touchdowns are tied for second in the country. Say whatever you want about his level of competition, but those numbers are impressive if you’re in your backyard playing against your little brother. He’s one of my favorite running back prospects in this year’s draft class, I voted for him to be a finalist on my ballot for the Maxwell Award, and he deserves more love for the season he’s put together.
Worst trade in NFL history?
Just when we thought the Denver Broncos’ trade for Russell Wilson couldn’t get any worse, it did. The Broncos lost their ninth game of the season, a 10-9 stinker to the Ravens, and Wilson failed to throw a touchdown pass for the fourth time this season. Meanwhile, tight end Noah Fant, one of the three players (along with all those draft picks) traded for Wilson, caught a touchdown pass against the Rams. Setting the Herschel Walker trade aside as kind of a weird outlier, is the Russell Wilson trade now the worst trade in the history of pro football?
Doug: While this trade will go down as one of the worst ever unless Wilson finds some sort of miraculous career resurgence in the next few years, I have to go back to the haul the 1998 San Diego Chargers gave up to move up from the third overall pick to the second overall pick. In a trade with the Arizona Cardinals, they gave up the third overall pick in that draft, their first-round pick in the 1999 draft, their second-round pick in 1998, and wide receiver Eric Metcalf, and linebacker Patrick Sapp. In return, the Chargers got the right to take Ryan Leaf with the second overall pick, and we all know how that went. Meanwhile, the Cardinals picked Andre Wadsworth, Corey Chavous, and David Boston with the picks they picked up, and in 1998, they won the franchise’s first postseason game since 1947, when the Chicago Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL championship game. That, my friends, is an uneven bargain.
Luke: The Ricky Williams trade comes to mind, trading your entire draft for a running back. The Saints made that deal with Washington, who dropped down to No. 12 overall, then back up to No. 7, two spots down from the No. 5 pick they dealt to New Orleans. Washington took Hall of Fame cornerback Champ Bailey with that pick. Hall of Fame running back Edgerrin James went the pick before Williams, should-be Hall of Fame wide receiver Torry Holt was taken the pick after. Nice work, Ditka.
Best revenge game of Week 13?
Two notable players had revenge games in Week 13. There was Eagles receiver A.J. Brown, who tore up the defense of the Tennessee Titans, the team that didn’t think he was worth a marquee contract and traded him to Philly instead this past offseason, and Rams linebacker Bobby Wagner, who faced the Seahawks for the first time since Seattle deemed him irrelevant to its future plans and gave the future Hall of Famer his outright release soon after the aforementioned Russell Wilson trade. Revenge games don’t always work out, but in both of these cases, Brown and Wagner were dynamite against their former teams. Which revenge game was more impressive to you?
Doug: I think Wagner’s effort was more impressive in a single-game sense. We already knew how devastating Brown could be in the Eagles’ offense, but though Wagner had played pretty well this season, there was no way to expect what he did to Seattle’s offense. The Rams lost the game, 27-23, but that was not at all on Wagner, who had five solo tackles, two sacks, three tackles for loss, two quarterback hits, a pass defensed, and an interception. Given the issues the Seahawks have had on defense recently, Wagner showed just how much of a colossal mistake they made in letting him move on.
Luke: Yeah, I’ll go with Wagner because Brown is doing exactly what most (if not all) of us expected him to do in Philly. He’s an ascending player entering his prime, and now he’s in a dynamic offense that’s taking full advantage of his abilities. The Seahawks let Wagner walk because they saw a descending player they didn’t want to keep paying for, and the 32-year-old future Hall of Famer made them look pretty silly on Sunday. The fact that he did it for a team that’s having the kind of disappointing season the Rams are right now, and with all the injured players they’re missing, made it all the more impressive. If you’ve watched Wagner throughout his career though, it definitely wasn’t surprising.
Can the 49ers hold it together with Brock Purdy?
On Sunday, 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo suffered what turned out to be a season-ending foot injury against the Dolphins. As Trey Lance was already out for the season with his own injuries, this puts Kyle Shanahan in a bit of a bind. With the trade deadline past, the 49ers have two choices: Either go with rookie Brock Purdy, the 2022 Mr. Irrelevant as the last player selected, or look for free agent help off the street. Purdy looked pretty good against Miami’s defense, completing 25 of 37 passes for 210 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 88.8. If you’re Shanahan, do you roll with the rookie and hope for the best, or do you try to spackle as best you can with whatever’s available at this point?
Doug: Not that Purdy is the most impressive possible candidate in a situation like this, but he showed one distinct advantage over any other possible late entrant – he understands, and can work well enough in, one of the NFL’s most complicated offenses and passing games. And given everything else the team has going for it, that might be enough. The open market has Cam Newton and a bunch of unimpressive career backups for the most part, and when you have a guy who’s already in the building and up to his neck in the playbook… I think that’s where they go.
This, by the way, is yet another argument for extending the trade deadline to the end of the season. Imagine what the 49ers might be able to wrangle from another team were this the case.
Luke: The trade deadline is something that definitely needs to be addressed, but at this point, the Niners are definitely better off rolling with Purdy. You saw his teammates rally around him Sunday, and the offense really didn’t miss a beat. They weren’t out there playing the Texans, either…it was one of the better teams in the league in the Dolphins. He knows the offense, he’s obviously got his teammates believing in him…that’s a better recipe for success than bringing in someone else at this point.
