Week 5 of the NFL season had its share of brutal moments.
CJ Stroud set the rookie record for most passes to start a career without an interception but couldn’t hang on for a win in Atlanta. The Minnesota Vikings had their comeback efforts vs. the Kansas City Chiefs extinguished by iffy officiating late. A game between the New Orleans Saints and New England Patriots featured the worst two quarterbacks to take any field Sunday, and they both played for Bill Belichick.
Of course, there was plenty to like as well. The Detroit Lions continued the march toward their first division title since Alf was on the air. The Atlanta Falcons generated a passing offense out of nothing except the neglected former fourth overall pick who’d been languishing in their lineup. T.J. Watt continued to play football with the spirit and physical determination of a robot sent back in time to murder John Connor.
So what’d I like most about Week 5? Friend, I’m glad you asked.
1
T.J. Watt, tremendously BACK
T.J. Watt’s 5.5 sacks in 2022 were a career low thanks to a knee injury that limited him to just 10 games that fall. That was mildly concerning, but the fact he finished the season with four sacks and eight quarterback hits in his final five games suggested the 2021 Defensive Player of the Year was still capable of playing at a high level.
As it turns out, he came back stronger than ever. He is, statistically, twice as good as he was to finish 2022. His two sacks in Week 5 gave him a league-leading eight on the year.
TJ WATT com o SACK pra cima do Lamar Jackson!!#NFLnaESPN | @espnbrasil pic.twitter.com/OV3zhWzC9x
— NFL Brasil (@NFLBrasil) October 8, 2023
The Steelers engineered a comeback win over their arch rival Baltimore Ravens behind the strength of their defense and special teams play. Pittsburgh attacked the line of scrimmage and, aided by entirely too many drops from the Baltimore receiving corps, bullied Lamar Jackson into his worst game of the year to date.
Watt wasn’t just making his presence known on sacks. He made sure the Ravens tore certain pages from their playbook Sunday by crashing into the backfield and limiting Jackson’s reads before he could even assess his situation.
TJ OMG
📺: #BALvsPIT on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/LxW25sxPWA pic.twitter.com/GCPxyrYGbN— NFL (@NFL) October 8, 2023
Even when the Ravens did a solid job blocking him, his relentless pursuit shut down Lamar Jackson’s cutback lanes and kept a Pittsburgh team with a mostly theoretical offense in this game.
TJ Watt had to share a dinner table with two other massive NFL players growing up and it shows every single snap he takes pic.twitter.com/JkEa8KE0cD
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) October 8, 2023
This is how Pittsburgh is 3-2 and undefeated against AFC North competition despite getting next to nothing from Kenny Pickett behind center. The Steelers now have wins in three games where their offense has scored a lone touchdown each week — each, coincidentally on 40-plus yard passing plays. On any given week their defense can raze your village, leaving Pickett to wing passes from the salted earth underfoot or Najee Harris to pick up three yards per carry.
Which is all to say, if Watt keeps this up and Pittsburgh makes it to the postseason, he won’t just be defensive player of the year. He might just be league MVP as well.
2
Jared Goff, quietly inserting himself into the MVP race
Barring a wild improvement, Jared Goff will not be the 2023 NFL regular season MVP. But he’ll be in the conversation, and that is wild.
Goff was ballast in the Rams’ trade for Matthew Stafford — a man with a massive contract whose inclusion further compelled Los Angeles to cough up multiple first round picks in the deal. He’d worn out his welcome in Sean McVay’s offense and wound up locked in an honest-to-goodness quarterback competition with John Wolford, a player with a career 59.2 passer rating.
Detroit inserted him in the starting lineup, in part because there was no obvious better option. But he’s stayed there because offensive coordinator Ben Johnson understood how to build a playbook around his former top overall pick quarterback.
LET. BEN. COOK.#CARvsDET | 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/V1lHuqYM0J
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) October 8, 2023
Goff thoroughly crushed an undermanned Carolina Panthers team in Week 5, throwing for three touchdowns and running for another in a 42-24 rout. Through five games, he’s on pace for 4,300 yards, 31 touchdowns, 10 interceptions and a glistening 104.4 passer rating.
His 69.8 percent completion rate would be the highest of his career despite throwing, on average, his longest passes since the height of his powers in Los Angeles. That downfield accuracy was on full display Sunday. Goff completed six of eight passes that traveled at least 10 yards downfield for 136 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Goff isn’t just thriving on trickeration. He’s also making pinpoint throws in places only his targets can snatch them. He’s elevating players like rookie tight end Sam LaPorta and Josh Reynolds into starring roles with his play.
.@JaredGoff16 & @J_Rey_11 have that 🧪️#CARvsDET | 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/eNQrARtlNE
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) October 8, 2023
There are a lot of factors at play here. Goff is l-i-v-i-n livin’ behind one of the league’s top offensive lines. His two sacks Sunday actually increased his sack rate to 4.1 percent, which is still a top five mark among quarterbacks. This extra space to operate is important for a player who isn’t known for his scrambling ability, but Johnson’s playcalling has turned a potential weakness into a strength. The Lions are liable to roll him out in unexpected circumstances and create new opportunities to thrive.
The rookie Sam LaPorta with the tuddy!
📺: #CARvsDET on FOX
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/LxW25sxPWA pic.twitter.com/sd4RaTJIoM— NFL (@NFL) October 8, 2023
There’d be concern if this were only a five-game sample, but this is the Goff we saw to close out 2022. He’s embracing the weird — doing things like allowing Frank Ragnow to whip the ball through his dang legs for a direct snap — and making the correct reads along the way. More importantly, he’s got reinforcements who can make his offense even better.
Goff roasted the Giants without WR1 Amon-Ra St. Brown or 2023 first round running back Jahmyr Gibbs. It was the first game back from a gambling suspension for 2022 first round wideout Jameson Williams (three targets, two catches, two yards). There’s a significant capacity for things to get better in Detroit.
This consolation prize quarterback is the sun in the middle of that system, and Johnson’s playcalling is the hydrogen Goff turning into helium with efficient strikes and smart decision making. The Lions have a very real chance to claim their first NFC North title … ever (and first division title of any kind since 1989). It wouldn’t be that way without the quarterback the Rams no longer wanted.
3
The Dolphins' armada of really, really fast dudes
The NFL’s Next Gen Stats program tracks players with real-time location monitors so it can more accurately gauge where they are on the field and how they’re performing. This, naturally, led to a low-stakes sprinting competition where the league observes and ranks each player’s top speed on specific plays throughout the season. Here’s what the top nine slots look like through Week 5:
That image may be a little hard to see, so here’s the basic gist: seven of the top nine recorded on-field speeds this season belong to a Miami Dolphin. Tyreek Hill and Devon Achane each show up three times. 31-year-old Raheem Mostert makes an appearance. And two of those elite speed numbers came from Sunday’s win over the New York Giants.
.@ffvmousvon_ said SEE YA 👋
📺 #NYGvsMIA on @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/csZB1AG8ca
— Miami Dolphins (@MiamiDolphins) October 8, 2023
The Dolphins’ primary goal is to bludgeon opponents with the kind of pure speed that threatens to raise Al Davis from the dead any given Sunday. Head coach Mike McDaniel’s plan to keep Tua Tagovailoa in butter brickle is to baffle defenses who know they’re equally liable to give up a 50-plus yard play on a handoff, screen pass, or deep ball. With so many pick-your-poison options in the lineup, there’s room for everyone to thrive.
.@cheetah LOOSE!! 🐆💨
📺: #NYGvsMIA on FOX
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/LxW25sxPWA pic.twitter.com/p0PhQDYL18— NFL (@NFL) October 8, 2023
This isn’t a feature of McDaniel’s game plan. It *is* his plan. The former ward of Kyle Shanahan has taken the 49ers “short target, long gain” philosophy and installed it with a core of absolute burners. McDaniel’s primary aim is to create space downfield and let his stupidly fast playmakers thrive from there, thus allowing a questionable quarterback — once Jimmy Garoppolo and now Tagovailoa — to thrive.
Tagovailoa’s average target distance is down from 9.5 in 2022, second-highest in the NFL, to 7.8 (15th) this season. Despite that, his yards per attempt average has risen from 8.9 (best in the NFL) to 9.6 (ditto). He’s throwing less dangerous passes, throwing them well — his 80.8 percent on target ranks sixth in the league — and being rewarded by the over-caffeinated group of toddlers he gets to rely on as a receiving corps. The Dolphins have more than 2,500 yards of total offense through five games.
As a result, his Dolphins are 4-1 and stand alone atop the AFC East. And McDaniel doesn’t have to worry about his stars getting complacent, because they know their velocity is on the stat sheet now. They’re only gonna try to keep outdoing each other.
Tyreek Hill said he got caught because Giants defender had the angle & he got tired. Hill said De’Von Achane just had a straight line with no Giants defender angles on his TD.
Hill vs. Achane for NFL’s fastest man will be a fun year-long battle. The biggest winner? Dolphins https://t.co/aN66FWzh3d
— Cameron Wolfe (@CameronWolfe) October 8, 2023
Miami relies on a small nation’s track team to buoy its offense. So far that’s worked out incredibly well, creating an environment where Tagovailoa can have a statistically below-average game and still throw for more than 300 yards in a rout.
The Buffalo Bills showed the world how to stop that by generating constant pressure with four-man fronts and crowding the secondary. Few teams can copy that, however — and even if they can, no team is better equipped to turn a rash of short passes into devastating gains than the Dolphins.
4
Kyle Pitts is back in the gameplan and, surprise, the Falcons' offense looks competent again
Apparently all it took for Desmond Ridder to remember he has a mismatch machine and former fourth overall pick at tight end was to have Pitts … turn left.
That’s obviously a joke, but so was Pitts’ usage in the first four games of the season. The former 1,000-yard threat had only 21 targets through four games — the same as heavy hitters like Calvin Austin and Parris Campbell. He’d only caught 11, in part due to a nagging leg injury but also because, well, Ridder’s throws his way mostly stunk.
Kyle Pitts is stuck in purgatory:
2023 — 52.9% catchable target rate (last among TEs)
2022 — 63% catchable targets (last)
Pitts has seen just nine (9!!) catchable targets through three games. A total of 23 TEs have 10+ catchable targets.
via @FantasyPtsData
— Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) September 27, 2023
This changed in Week 5 and the Atlanta offense was better for it. Pitts’ 11 targets set a career high, and he turned that into seven catches for 87 yards and, importantly, five first downs. Desmond Ridder’s 16.8 expected points added (EPA) were a career high. Sunday marked the first time all season the Falcons’ success rate when throwing on first down was higher than 72 percent:
This stands as proof of concept that a Falcons’ passing game can work, but only if Pitts is part of it. Sunday’s route tree suggests head coach Arthur Smith took aim at the physical limitations of Pitts’ knee injury and swapped out his hard-cutting routes for softer, rounded ones — instead letting his elite top-line speed and size create separation instead of short bursts. This worked.
Really well!
This is important. Atlanta got 447 yards of offense on a day where Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier were bottled up for 86 yards on 31 carries. The Falcons’ running backs offered very little and the team still piled up yardage because Ridder had open targets all over the dang place.
This wasn’t all because of Pitts, but he played a role in creating space across a shaky secondary. Dusting the Texans’ young defense won’t win you any awards, but it’s the kind of performance from which Smith and his rising core can build. Pitts, even less than 100 percent, is the type of force who can command safety help and has the size and hands to reel in underthrows and off-target passes that may come with Ridder’s growing pains.
There’s no guarantee this lasts. Pitts’ quantity and quality of targets has been largely in flux throughout his career and particularly in the last season and a half. But Sunday showed how much easier he can make life for a lineup of young skill players. Atlanta should chase that.
