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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Doug Farrar

NFL’s Worst of the Week: Giants-Jets, Steelers get hosed, double Falcons, Brock Purdy

NFL Giants Steelers Falcons Jets Will Levis Ron Rivera Alan Eck DeAndre Hopkins Kenny Pickett

Football is a wonderful, thrilling, inspiring game that can lift us to new heights in our lives.

But football is also a weird, inexplicable, at times downright stupid game that may force you to perform Keith Moon-level furniture destruction in your own living room.

So, as much as we at Touchdown Wire endeavor to write about what makes the game great, there are also times when it’s important to point out the dumb plays, boneheaded decisions, and officiating errors that make football all too human.

Folks, it’s time for the Worst of the Week for Week 8 of the 2023 NFL season.

Everything about the Giants-Jets game except for the Dog Agility Challenge.

(Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)

Coaches will talk about “burn the tape” games — those games that are so atypical, you just move on and hope you never see what you just saw again. The New York Jets’ 13-10 win over the New York Giants might be a “burn the tape” win for the fans who actually attended this thing, and anybody else who watched it.

Giants quarterbacks Tyrod Taylor and Tommy DeVito combined for -9 net passing yards. Saquon Barkley led the Giants with three receptions on five targets… for zero yards. There were 24 punts in this game — 13 from the Giants and 11 from the Jets — the most in a game since the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers combined for 27 in a 7-6 slopfest in Oakland’s favor on October 11, 1998.

So, of course, any game this bad had to go to overtime. By the way, the Giants had -8 net passing yards at the end of regulation, so they managed to get worse in the fifth quarter.

Giants head coach Brian Daboll obviously had no faith in DeVito, his rookie backup. And who could blame him?

The best — and only — good thing about this game was the Dog Agility Challenge at halftime.

We just hope that the doggies didn’t suffer any injuries on that dangerous MetLife Stadium turf.

Alan Eck's officiating in the Steelers' loss to the Jaguars.

(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)

The most interesting thing about the NFL’s rules for roughing the passer (which you can read here) is this proviso at the end:

When in doubt about a roughness call or potentially dangerous tactic against the quarterback, the Referee should always call roughing the passer.

Referee Alan Eck and his crew didn’t get THAT memo before they started calling Sunday’s Pittsburgh Steelers-Jacksonville Jaguars game. There were multiple questionable hits on Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett before this hit by Jaguars defensive tackle Adam Gotsis with 17 seconds left in the first half.

Pickett was injured on the play, and this wasn’t the only time Eck and his guys averted their eyes to what might have been construed as extracurricular activity. Dave Dameshek, our buddy who is an avowed Steelers homer, nonetheless has some salient points below, and from both sides. Steelers linebacker Keanu Neal was flagged for roughing the passer on the first play detailed, and then… crickets.

Eck’s crew had called four roughing the passer penalties coming into this game, so your guess is as good as ours regarding what appeared to be missed.

There was also this penalty that had former NFL officiating head Mike Pereira shaking his head. This negated a 55-yard Chris Bowell field goal with six seconds left in the first half, and Boswell missed the retry that was pushed back to the Jacksonville 43.

Current VP of Officiating Walt Anderson was unmoved.

Boswell just wanted it all to make sense…

… and Mike Tomlin is asking the question we’d all like to ask.

Ron Rivera failing to challenge Devonta Smith's (non) catch.

(Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports)

The Washington Commanders actually had a reasonable shot at upsetting the Philadelphia Eagles in what was eventually a 38-31 loss for Ron Rivera’s team. There was one play that didn’t help Washington at all. With 5:38 left in the third quarter and the Commanders up 17-10, the Eagles had fourth-and-4 at the Washington 45-yard line. Jalen Hurts threw an intermediate pass to receiver Devonta Smith that certainly didn’t look like a catch…

…but Rivera didn’t challenge it, and his explanation was unsatisfactory.

It was called a 17-yard reception that put the ball on the Washington 28-yard line, and four plays later, A.J. Brown caught this amazing 25-yard touchdown that tied the game.

Even if Coach Rivera couldn’t see the play — maybe he was yelling at somebody at the time — somebody in the Commanders’ booth should have wired down to him, telling him to throw the red flag.

The Falcons' defense against Will Levis.

(Syndication: The Tennessean)

With Ryan Tannehill sidelined due to an ankle injury, and backup Malik Willis playing like… well. Malik Willis, Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel made the call to give Will Levis not only his first NFL start, but his first actual NFL snaps. It’s been a long journey for the 2022 second-round pick out of Kentucky, but Levis clearly stored up some explosive plays for that debut. He became the third quarterback in pro football history, following Fran Tarkenton in 1961 and Marcus Mariota in 2015, to throw four touchdown passes in his NFL debut. And his passer rating of 130.5 was the second-highest for a pro quarterback in his first game, trailing only Robert Griffin III’s 139.9 in 2012.

A great game for Levis, but what on earth happened to an Atlanta Falcons defense that came into this game looking more feisty than most people expected?

Many people wanted to know.

Levis totaled 125 air yards on his four touchdowns, and he threw for 238 yards in the entire game. That included two touchdowns of 43 air yards, and three of those scoring passes went to receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who hadn’t scored a touchdown since Week 12 of the 2022 season, when he was with the Arizona Cardinals.

“Most of the time when you see an explosive play like that, something didn’t go the way it’s supposed to, right?” Falcons defensive lineman Calais Campbell said after the game, a 28-23 win for the Titans. “If a guy gets beat in position, you can live with that because that’s usually just somebody making a play. Which I think one of those was that, right? But the other, there was three big time explosives where you got to watch the tape to figure out exactly what happened.”

We suspect that the tape study will not be favorable for the Falcons.

Arthur Smith's bizarre red zone call.

(Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports)

Speaking of the Falcons…

…Head coach and offensive shot-caller Arthur Smith is quite fond of responding to questions about the design of his offense, and his seeming love of ignoring his most explosive playmakers, with comments about how he doesn’t care about anybody’s fantasy team.

Which, of course, isn’t the point. The point is to get the ball in the hands of your best guys, and Smith has come up short in that regard though most of the season. Which is one reason the Falcons came into Sunday’s game against the Tennessee Titans ranked 24th in Offensive DVOA. This time, Smith had another “interesting” idea that — as you might expect — didn’t work.

With 10:36 left in the first quarter, Smith pulled running back Bijan Robinson off the field at the Tennessee seven-yard line so that… well, so that tight end Jonnu Smith could throw an incomplete pass to tight end MyCole Pruitt.

On the next play, quarterback Desmond Ridder was sacked for a 10-yard loss, and Younghoe Koo saved some semblance of scoring with a 29-yard field goal.

If Smith keeps this up, he might soon have a lot more time to play fantasy football — whether he likes it or not.

Kyle Shanahan's decision to play Brock Purdy.

(Syndication: The Enquirer)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy suffered what looked to be a concussion on this quarterback sneak last Monday against the Minnesota Vikings.

After that concussion in a 22-17 loss for San Francisco, Purdy’s game understandably fell apart.

But six days later, there Purdy was. back on the field against the Cincinnati Bengals, and this was another loss for the 49ers — 31-17 this time. And this isn’t even about Purdy’s performance; it’s about the 49ers putting him on the field in the first place. Because no matter how healthy and cogent he might have been on Sunday (we have no idea), Purdy took at least one major hit to the head in this game, and he was not taken out.

“It was just the typical whiplash of a play like that, you know, head goes back, hits the ground,” Purdy said after the play. “But it’s like any other body part, you get hit and shake it off a little bit. So, I’m good from that.”

So what about Purdy’s coach protecting him from himself, as coaches are supposed to do?

“No, he wouldn’t have been allowed to play,” Shanahan said when asked if Purdy was showing any symptoms.

For the record, Purdy completed 22 of 31 passes for 365 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 94.2. Four of the five interceptions he’s thrown this season have come since last Monday night’s concussion… so even if the coaches are glossing over that, maybe there’s a thought about sitting him for performance reasons. 

The 49ers have a bye in Week 9, which should give Purdy a chance to recover. But we’d like to see more care here.

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