Good one to kick off Week 13 last night, and some monster games on the slate for the weekend. Lots to chew on …
• There was a point over the summer when Dak Prescott had thrown a bunch of training camp interceptions. My visit to Cowboys camp in Southern California was in the midst of that, and it gave me something to dive into with coach Mike McCarthy when he and I sat down for a couple of hours in his suite at the team’s hotel/makeshift facility.
As you’d expect, McCarthy defended Prescott by explaining there was a method to what was happening in late July and August.
With McCarthy seizing more control over the offense, after the departure of Kellen Moore to the Chargers, the Cowboys wanted to get better off-schedule. McCarthy explained to me that they wanted to drill scramble situations, so Prescott, and everyone else, would perform better when things went away from what a play would tell them to do.
It’s working.
One Cowboys staffer I texted with Friday morning, after Dallas beat the Seahawks 38–35 in a shootout Thursday night, raved about Prescott’s pocket awareness and confidence operating the offense off-rhythm and off-schedule. “He’s playing extremely confident,” texted the staffer. “Mike [McCarthy] and Schotty [coordinator Brian Schottenheimer] really stress those things daily in QB training, and he and the receivers are on the same page on those plays.”
One such play came at the start of the fourth quarter, on a first-and-10, with Dallas at the Seattle 34. Seahawks edge rusher Darrell Taylor beat right tackle Terence Steele clean and wound up in Prescott’s lap. Most quarterbacks would’ve gone down. Prescott did not, wrestling free of Taylor’s grasp—which is where the cool part, for the coaches who’ve worked with him, and his receivers, came.
Prescott’s eyes stayed downfield, he ran down the line of scrimmage, Jalen Tolbert saw it, broke off his route, and ran parallel to him, and Prescott put the ball between the one and the eight on his jersey for a 17-yard gain. The Cowboys wound up with a field goal on that possession. But the play itself, to those in the know, represented a lot more, with all that went into the mistakes he made in practice having an impact.
The numbers are a testament to that. Right now, Prescott is second in the NFL in passer rating (108.3), third in passing yards (3,266) and first in touchdown passes (26). And, oh, by the way, he’s thrown only six picks, which is a pretty good indicator that the lessons of the summer have paid off.
This should probably be taken as a lesson by a lot of other folks on how you digest what coaches and players are doing in training camp.
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• With Browns QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson down for Sunday, there’s a cold reality as to where they are at in the position.
Thompson-Robinson’s status in the concussion protocol is pretty black and white. He didn’t clear. The result of it, though, is painted in gray. With Thompson-Robinson ruled out, should veteran Joe Flacco ball out, the plan, set out by the coaches a couple of weeks ago—to give the rookie some runway to see whether he could raise the ceiling for the Deshaun Watson–less team at the position—would be turned upside down.
In that case, with the team potentially at 8–4, and fighting to stay in playoff position, my belief is that Kevin Stefanski and his staff would owe it to guys such as Myles Garrett, Denzel Ward, Amari Cooper and Joel Bitonio to stay the course and give them the best chance to get in the dance.
Maybe that wouldn’t be the case if this were September, but it is December.
And, yeah, it’s not great that a guy could lose his shot to a head injury. But in the words of every football coach on the planet, it simply is what it is.
• Given this week’s transfer portal craziness, I checked in with one AFC exec who came up on the college-scouting side on how all the movement has affected his ability to do his job—with players habitually changing teams and systems, and the picture for NFL teams getting more complex in how they assess prospects.
The exec said when he’s visiting schools over the summer, it definitely complicates his work, with the time he needs to spend just getting up to date with which kids have transferred schools, and all the different places certain guys have been.
But once they get past that part, it can actually help inform the character assessment that every team does on each player.
“If a guy transfers from [an FCS school], you get a clearer picture,” says the exec. “Getting to know the kid’s background is a challenge, because the guy is new to a certain scout’s area, so there has to be communication between your area guys. But we’ve dealt with transfers in the past. It’s not new. There’s just more of them. … Now, if a kid jumped three schools, you ask: What’s the reason? Is it the opportunity, or is it a character flaw?
“But, yeah, if you’re going from one school to a bigger school, to compete on a bigger stage, that’s a lot different than going to a third school because you can’t acclimate anywhere.”
• An under-the-radar critical name to the AFC title chase: Rashee Rice. The Chiefs’ second-round pick has had five catches in eight of 11 games, four in nine of 11 games and last week exploded for 10 catches, 107 yards and a touchdown against the Raiders.
The Chiefs’ decision to stand pat at receiver traces back to DeAndre Hopkins’s contract ask changing in the spring. At that point, Kansas City pivoted and spent the money it would’ve used on Hopkins on left tackle Donovan Smith, and then took Rice with the 55th pick. The idea, at that point, was that Rice and Skyy Moore (who the Chiefs envisioned playing an Albert Wilson–type role in the offense) would improve with time and be factors in January.
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It hasn’t worked out quite as planned yet with Moore, but Rice’s consistency, and improvement, are giving the team optimism that he can be the complement to Travis Kelce in the passing game the Chiefs have needed. Coordinator Matt Nagy said this week that Rice has become less robotic in how he’s playing, which is a nice sign of growth for any rookie, and it indicates what I’ve heard—that the Chiefs really did see last Sunday coming for a while.
And what they see is a guy who can grow into the sort of receiver Deebo Samuel is in the size, strength and violence he runs with after the catch with a little less speed.
• New England’s move to turn to Bailey Zappe can be read, as I see it, as more of a decision to sit down Mac Jones than necessarily thinking there’s a good option on the roster.
Coming out of Germany during the bye week, the Patriots staff met and held one practice. The prevailing thought coming out of it was that there may not be a better option than Jones on the team—even this version of Jones. So they went through practice and decided to give Jones another shot, with the reality being that going away from Jones more permanently (he’d already been benched in three games) would be an “anyone but Mac scenario.”
Jones’s play against the Giants on Sunday led to a fourth benching, generating that scenario.
And so now we’ll probably get to see what the steady, but unspectacular, Zappe can do operating a game plan designed for him for the first time this year. Zappe, for what it’s worth, had a decent week of practice, and one that, according to those there, was probably a little better than they’ve had from the position as of late.
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• While we’re there, the Patriots getting Patrick Mahomes flexed out of prime time is a low point for a franchise that used to live week to week on the NFL marquee.
It’s also the sort of thing that’ll get an owner’s attention.
• I don’t understand how anyone is playing Den Mother over Aaron Rodgers’s ability to return from an Achilles injury in record time. The guy turns 40 on Saturday. He knows the risk. He knows his body. And I’d like to think most of us would like to see him play.
• Game of underrated importance Sunday: Panthers at Buccaneers. Carolina comes in with an interim coach, Chris Tabor, and the ability to affect the top of the draft, with zero motivation to tank and Chicago holding its first-rounder. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay’s now a game off the pace in the NFC South at 4–7, and being able to compete in the league’s worst division is shaping up to be a critical factor in how ownership handles the offseason.
• Friday night’s Pac-12 title game between Oregon and Washington is worth your time if you’re a fan of a quarterback-needy team. Ducks star Bo Nix has risen through this year and probably snuck (at least) into the back half of the first round. Huskies triggerman Michael Penix Jr., on the other hand, isn’t quite held in the same regard among scouts I’ve talked to, but can help himself Friday against an excellent defense. Should be a fun one.
• I’ll leave you with a quote from Pete Carroll, after the Seahawks’ Thursday night loss.
“It’s unfortunate that it feels like there was a whole other factor in this game,” he told reporters. “I don’t know, you guys know it a lot better than I do, but there was just way too many penalties in this game, for both sides. We’ve to get out of that kind of football.”
Want to know what’ll make the league’s officiating problem hit a critical mass? It’s when guys in positions such as Carroll’s get so fed up that they blow through all the stop signs and speak out like he did.
