On to Week 16 …
• There was a lot of drama before Monday Night Football in Seattle, and the hard truth is, a couple of hours before kickoff, even the Seahawks themselves didn’t know what they were going to do at quarterback.
At the walkthrough the night before the game, I’m told, Drew Lock and Geno Smith split the reps right down the middle. And while Sean Mannion was elevated from the practice squad, the decision on Smith’s status wasn’t set in stone until when the team turned its inactive list 90 minutes before kickoff.
For players at any position, dealing with that roller coaster of emotions going into such a crucial game would be a challenge. At quarterback, even more so. And one reason why Smith and Lock were able to handle it as they did was because of their relationship with each other.
That was on display after Lock unleashed a game-winning dime to Jaxon Smith-Njigba to beat the Eagles, and gestured to the sideline like he was holstering a couple of six-shooters. Smith repeated the gesture back to him. The sequence reminded me of two summers ago, when Lock and Smith (former Broncos and Jets draft picks, respectively) were competing with each other to replace Russell Wilson as Seahawks starter.
Pete Carroll had once mentioned to me the two had a kind of kinship after being given up on by other teams. So I asked the two quarterbacks about it, and they confirmed that.
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“Without a doubt,” Lock said then. “I feel like both have a grasp of this game and what goes into it, not just the football side, the feelings, the emotions, the Mondays after a game, we’ve both felt very similar things and we can both appreciate each other for that. Being able to talk to him after plays, being able to talk to him after practice, my mindset and his mindset I know is the same. I’m only in my fourth year of training camp situations, but your mindset, you’ve just grown as a quarterback, you know what it’s like.
“Somedays, the defense is gonna get you. My rookie year, and I’m sure his rookie year, I’d let that eat me alive after they beat us, but they’re good, too, and they make plays, and they’re getting paid to do it, too. It’s cool to have a quarterback room where we’ve had the same experiences, we’ve grown into the quarterbacks we are now from similar situations, it’s fun to be around.”
“There’s a definite connection,” Smith added. “The thing about Drew I like is he’s another competitive guy—super competitive. He’s got great ability. I don’t know why he went in the second round, but he’s got first-round talent. I can’t speak for what happened when he was in Denver, but what I will say is he’s always prepared, prepares the way he’s supposed to, and, like I said, when he’s out competing, you can see, you can feel his competitiveness.”
I thought it was pretty cool at the time. And it was pretty cool to see how it’s grown, too, and how it allowed the two to navigate a challenging situation Monday without an issue.
• When Nick Caserio and the Texans got calls on third-string quarterback Case Keenum in August and September, they shut them all down. And that’s worth mentioning now because, well, their decision has paid off in a very big way.
First and foremost, the 35-year-old delivered the Texans a win Sunday—throwing for 229 yards, a touchdown and a pick, and leading Houston back from a 13–3 deficit at the half to a 19–16 win in overtime. Keenum did it without receivers Tank Dell and Nico Collins, and with big throws in the fourth quarter (to Dalton Schultz) and overtime (to Devin Singletary).
But more than just that, Keenum’s been worth his weight in gold in the quarterback room, helping to build the right environment from which the coaches can develop C.J. Stroud and backup Davis Mills. So, yes, Caserio and DeMeco Ryans deserve credit for seeing what Keenum could do for Stroud, and valuing that over whatever Day 3 pick they may have been able to get in return for him (in a league desperate for quality depth at the position).
Keenum knows it, too.
“First of all, Rule No. 1 is being ready to go,” Keenum says. “But my relationship with C.J., Davis, the quarterback room, I think a healthy quarterback room is a good one. And that tends to make everybody’s life better, when the quarterback room is on the same page on a lot of things—how they see the defense, how they pick up pressures, how you see different plays, attacking those defenses, and then even hanging out.
“We have a pretty good rapport with the quarterbacks. We do weekly quarterback dinners and get together quite a bit. It’s been a good year. And I really do enjoy working with C.J. He’s a great, really mature young man. And I’ve enjoyed getting to know him and watching him play this year. I think he’s a generational talent and … he is special. He’s really good.”
And there’s a bonus for Keenum here, too, in getting to be part of this turnaround in his home state, and adopted hometown, where he played as a collegian, and began his NFL career.
“There’s no doubt, man,” he says. “I love Houston, and it’s home. You’ve lived here in offseasons for a long time. And to come back and to wear that Houston name on the front of my jersey, that means something. I’ve been around the country, Cleveland and Buffalo, Washington and Denver and a lot of places, you know. None of them feel like Houston. Houston’s home for me.”
Pretty cool all the way around.
• We’ve talked a lot about the Bills’ window in this space over the past few weeks—but there is a flip side to the sand in the hourglass starting to descend. And that’s the idea that getting older in the NFL usually means you’ve got an experienced, battle-hardened group, and that’s what Buffalo has shown itself to be over the past month or so.
This season has been weird, for sure.
There was an opening-night loss to the Jets, after they lost Aaron Rodgers four plays in. There were the three games that followed that, through which the Bills looked like the NFL’s best team by a comfortable margin. Then, they went 3–5, with all five losses coming by a possession at the end of the game. That would’ve been enough to crater a lesser team, especially after the Sean McDermott story broke as the team came off its bye.
Instead, the Bills trusted what they had, and stayed the course, and now they’re heading into the final three weeks after wins over Dallas and Kansas City with what looks like a very real shot at the team’s first Super Bowl title.
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“We just take one moment at a time and understand that we are a good football team,” says safety Jordan Poyer, who was one of McDermott’s first acquisitions in 2017. “Each game is going to come down to how we play. That’s how we feel. We’re a damn good football team. Early on in the season, you can say we were struggling, trying to find our identity. Now, it’s time to get hot. We’re playing well. We’re going to keep this momentum going.”
They have Easton Stick, Giff Smith and the Chargers waiting this week, then Bailey Zappe and the Patriots after that. And with a little luck, and wins in those games, their Week 18 game in Miami could well be for the division title—which would’ve been pretty tough to believe three weeks ago after the team left Philadelphia 6–6, and with a heartbreaking loss.
• The Falcons are going back to Taylor Heinicke as they try to keep their hopes of winning the NFC South alive, and it highlights what a mess the quarterback situation has turned into in Atlanta.
And—I may sound absurd in saying this—I actually think how the Falcons have handled it the past three years is very logical.
Their approach was to try to avoid being the team that goes all in on a quarterback that they, well, weren’t all in on, with the idea being all that really does is make you the 45-win NBA team that’s stuck in the good-not-great category. I mostly agree, and would say it’s proved in the fact that the Buccaneers are much better off with Baker Mayfield at $10 million than the Saints are with Derek Carr, the Raiders are with Jimmy Garoppolo or even the Giants are with Daniel Jones right now (with all those players a few ticks under the top of the market).
So Atlanta tried to tread water with Matt Ryan in Year 1, Marcus Mariota in Year 2, and Desmond Ridder in Year 3, as it built the rest of the roster up—with the benefit being a better situation for the quarterback when the team finds that player, and the risk being the bottom falling out completely at the most important position on the field.
And that risk became reality, and the Falcons are 6–8.
But that doesn’t mean what they did conceptually was wrong, nor does it mean that the plan couldn’t still work—if Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot can find their guy in 2024.
• Logic and history told us that the minute the Jets were eliminated from the playoffs, the idea of an Aaron Rodgers comeback would evaporate. And while Rodgers didn’t quite say the dream of him playing again in 2023 was dead during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, he certainly seemed ready to call the fight in how he was talking.
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“If I was 100% today, I’d definitely be pushing to play,” Rodgers told McAfee. “But the fact is, I’m not. I’ve been working hard to get closer to that. But I’m still 14 weeks tomorrow from my surgery. And being medically cleared as 100% healed is not realistic at 14 weeks.”
Rodgers then said that, even if the Jets had won Sunday to keep their playoff hopes alive, it was no sure thing that he’d have been able to play in Week 16. He added that he would have had to go through a week of 11-on-11 work, and see how he was moving in the pocket, how he was able to get out of the pocket, and most of all how his leg was responding to all of it before a final call on his availability was made—with the decision going through the doctors and trainers.
And even then, it always seemed like a long shot. Cam Akers made it back in less than six months two years ago, and that was, rightly, seen as superhuman. Rodgers would’ve been coming back in less than four months. Which, to use Rodgers’s phrasing, was probably a little unrealistic all along.
• J.C. Jackson’s been rightly criticized for a lot of things as a Patriot and Charger, but after digging around a little, it’s clear he deserves some empathy. He was active for New England’s game Sunday against the Chiefs but didn’t play. His agent, Neil Schwartz, has said publicly it was a mental health issue, and I’ve been able to confirm that with some folks from the team.
Here’s to hoping Jackson is O.K. and gets all the help he needs.
• While we’re talking Patriots, Bill Belichick’s name has popped up a lot in connection to the Commanders’ job. And there’s one thing at play there that might be a hurdle to that happening: My sense is that new owner Josh Harris won’t hand the keys to the entire operation over to a single person. So if Belichick wants the power he has in New England (total power, which is tough for a coach to get these days), he might have to look elsewhere.
• Not that it’ll make a huge difference in the Bears’ decision-maker one way or the other, but it was interesting to see Chicago’s receivers line up to have Justin Fields’s back this week. Darnell Mooney told reporters that “Justin is the quarterback of the future.”
“What, it’s like two of them?” said DJ Moore, referencing USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye. “I don’t think they’re better than Justin.”
• It’s interesting to see a non-first-round quarterback in Taulia Tagovailoa opt out of his bowl game to prepare for the draft. Maybe it’s me, but I feel like a player such as him, who’ll be trying to change the minds of scouts, could benefit more from some game tape against Auburn than three or four extra weeks of preparing for the combine. And I say that as someone who is the first to say first-rounders probably should sit out nonplayoff bowl games.
• Jerry Jones pointed to the weather as a factor in the Cowboys’ loss Sunday in Buffalo. And it was. But there’s also a good chance Dallas could land in messy elements on the road against the Buccaneers (rain) or the Eagles (cold) in January if things fall a certain way. So I’d bet Jones’s coaching staff would say that going out there in the elements in Orchard Park was actually good for the team.
