I’m putting this together in the final hours of 2023. And with a week left in the season, there’s still a lot left to be determined. But here, coming out of Week 17, is what I know …
The San Francisco 49ers are still the wrecking ball you remember. And after Sunday’s workmanlike win over the Commanders, six days after the Ravens took them apart, I thought George Kittle’s perspective on the past week was instructive.
No, Christmas night didn’t go how anyone in Santa Clara drew it up. But what the veteran tight end saw on the tape might surprise you.
“This is something I like to point out—I learned last year in the NFC championship game, when we didn’t have a quarterback, just the fight that our guys have,” Kittle said, over the phone from the team bus. “The most important thing in football, besides winning, is your résumé, what you put on tape, what the camera sees, what the entire league gets to see when they watch your tape. You can turn on the tape from the NFC championship game last year or the Ravens game last week, and everybody just fights their tails off, offense, defense, special teams.
“When you’re part of a team like that, that mindset, no matter what’s going on and you have the will to fight, it makes it really special.”
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So it was that six days after that rough night, Kittle crowded with his teammates around my buddy and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mike Silver’s cell phone, to watch the Arizona Cardinals score to go ahead in Philadelphia, and inch the Niners closer to the No. 1 seed.
By then, they’d grinded out a 27–10 win in Washington. They’d taken the good and the bad of the Ravens game for what it was. And minutes later, they’d have home-field advantage in the NFC locked up.
“I saw Deebo [Samuel] hanging out with Mike—I saw he had his phone out, and I said, Oh that has to be that game,” Kittle says. “We watched it down to the last 40 seconds, and we went into the locker room and watched [the rest of] the game as a team. It was a pretty special moment.”
For a lot of reasons, the team Kittle kept calling special has a shot at more special moments.
One, of course, is a roster loaded to the brim with top-end players. Another is a coaching staff and front office that’s been poached by, and become a model for, the rest of the NFL.
But just as much, on Sunday, we saw it’s about a quarterback, too, who’s a lot more than the bus driver and this luxury liner of talent that many make him out to be.
Maybe because he came into the league as the last pick of the draft, a lot of folks were waiting for the bottom to drop out on Brock Purdy, so Christmas night was their time. He threw four picks against the Ravens and was pulled in the fourth quarter. That three of them were tipped was, well, not a huge part of the discussion—a discussion that became about the clock striking midnight on San Francisco’s Cinderella of a quarterback.
The Niners, of course, were never participating in that conversation. They’ve always had more confidence in Purdy than most fans realize. And Purdy paid that confidence off, once again, in Week 17, leading long scoring drives on the team’s first two possessions and finishing an efficient 22-of-28 for 230 yards, two touchdowns, no picks and a 124.7 passer rating, a performance that came complete with the signature playmaking flashes his critics seem to miss (like a cross-body, 17-yard touchdown throw to Brandon Aiyuk that capped a 95-yard drive in the fourth quarter).
“At this point, I don’t think any team that we play underestimates Brock,” Kittle says. “I think it’s a media thing. You don’t want the last pick in the draft, with 20-something starts under his belt, for everyone to be like, Oh, he’s so good. One thing that I’ve just loved seeing from him is he’s incredibly consistent. When you’re a quarterback and you start 48 games in college, you understand how to play the quarterback position. He’s gone through the highs. He’s gone through the lows. He never gets too high and he never gets too low. He’s very even keel.
“That’s one thing that people on the outside don’t see about him. He’s the same guy every day. He can throw for four touchdowns, he can throw four interceptions. He’s the same guy every single day. He doesn’t get in his feels or anything like that.”
And clearly, the Niners don’t either. So for Kittle, and Aiyuk, Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Charvarius Ward and everyone else in the Niners’ galaxy of stars, what came Sunday was what was expected—another hard-nosed effort, like they got in Philly last January or on Christmas night against the Ravens, with a much different result.
“Losing sucks,” Kittle says. “When you have five turnovers too, you don’t really feel good as an offense. If you go back and watch the tape, we moved the ball pretty efficiently, had a lot of rushing yards. Brock was playing well aside from one bad pick and a couple tipped balls. We always talk about as a team, turnovers lead to wins. The defense didn’t get any and we gave up five. It’s kind of hard to do that, especially against a team that has Lamar Jackson on it, who is just a phenomenal football player.
“We weren’t too displeased with how we played last week, besides the turnovers. After that, we’re still a confident team. Everyone’s confident in Brock and our system. It didn’t take too long to get us off the mat.”
Clearly, they came off it swinging. And, Kittle would tell you, the tape could’ve showed you they would.
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The year’s version of the Cowboys is embracing being the Cowboys. And I know that sounds weird, but it’s a conclusion I came to after I got off the phone with McCarthy around midnight on Saturday—within an hour of his team’s dramatic 20–19 win over Detroit.
I’d asked him, simply, what he learned about his team over the past week, coming off the loss at the gun to the Dolphins, and through Christmas into a date with the Lions on short rest.
“T.M.F., man,” he said, laughing.
He did explain what that meant. The ‘T’ stands for tough. The M.F., well, you can use your imagination for those. Then, he explained what he meant by calling his players that.
“The biggest thing is the things that you have to go through, the extra stuff, the good and not so good, of being a Dallas Cowboy,” McCarthy says. “I think it does take a high level of discipline, maturity and focus to deal with the ups and downs of our universe here. That’s something that we’ve talked a lot about. It weighs on me a lot, and that’s why this stretch of December games being so rough, I think, really bodes well for us as we go into the playoffs.”
Maybe the best descriptor of that dynamic is where McCarthy and his team sit now. With a win next Sunday over the Commanders, the Cowboys will have won 12 games three years in a row. The last time the franchise pulled that off was over the four-year stretch through which Dallas won three Super Bowls. No coach in Cowboys history has ever done it.
And yet, after the loss to Miami, McCarthy, Dak Prescott and so many others had their viability questioned. That, of course, is life in the NFL’s big city, and I do think McCarthy and his team’s acceptance of that could make a difference (scores of folks have crumbled trying to rail against the unique pressure in Dallas in the past).
Of course, how the Cowboys got to this spot is a point of contention, and we will get to Saturday night’s officiating in a bit. But just as much as a bad miss by an official dictated how this one ended, Dallas’s ability to keep its collective head about it through the night put the home team in position to take advantage. And it showed up on both sides of the ball, and most prominently on the Cowboys’ first touchdown and their final stand.
The former came with Dallas in third-and-13 from its own 8, at the end of the first quarter. The Lions’ rush got through to Prescott’s left, with John Cominsky and Aidan Hutchinson steps from landing a safety, and Prescott escaped to his right and launched the ball deep to CeeDee Lamb, who outran the secondary in a scramble drill for a 92-yard score. It showed Prescott’s growth in the off-schedule-play work he and McCarthy did in August (remember the camp picks?), the rapport between him and Lamb, plus a boatload of poise.
“It’s all on Dak,” McCarthy says. “CeeDee did a great job of activating the scramble phase. But for Dak to keep that alive and protect the football, I think he’s improved in that area so much. Obviously a huge play in the game. Guy’s a joy to work with. Nothing rattles him, even after the interception, he just keeps going. Obviously, it was a breakdown and then you activate the scramble drill, step out of the tackle and make a huge play.”
Three quarters later, the Cowboys’ resolve would be tested again. The defense had yielded a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, drawing the Lions to within 20–19 and giving them a decision to make on the two-point conversion. On the first try, Taylor Decker scored on a tackle-eligible throw that was negated when the official said the tackle wasn’t, in fact, eligible (again, we’ll get to that).
All that, again, would put Dallas’s focus under a microscope. On the Lions’ second shot at the two-pointer, from the 7-yard line, Markquese Bell picked off Jared Goff. Then, after that was negated by Micah Parsons jumping offsides, Parsons and Chauncey Golston were able to create enough chaos to Jared Goff’s left to force a short throw that fell incomplete and secured the win.
“I thought our defense was tremendous in all the tough spots tonight,” McCarthy saiys. “I think that, clearly, when you look at the journey of your season, you need these kind of wins. When you’re in it, you’re competing, you’re trying to do the right thing. Clearly, these kinds of wins are something that really pay that off. I felt like going into this game this was going to be our toughest home game of the year. That held true.
“Even more so, it gave us some great experience to get ready for the playoffs.”
And maybe, just maybe, this time around, a different result when they get there.
There’s no excuse for Brad Allen, the head referee in the Cowboys-Lions game Saturday, messing up the tackle eligible call. That turned a win into a loss for Detroit—even if the NFC North champs had a couple more chances to win the game—and will almost certainly have a material effect on the playoff seeding and whether the Lions get to play at home in the divisional round.
That’s not right. There’s no excusing it. Period.
That said, there’s a little more to this than may meet the eye.
An executive texted me after the game pointing out how it was very unusual for more than one lineman to leave the huddle and go to the official in a situation like that. In this case, three Lions left the huddle to go over there—Taylor Decker, Penei Sewell and the Lions’ sixth lineman Dan Skipper. The video shows that Decker motioned covertly at himself, seemingly to signal what he says he told the official, that he was the one reporting as eligible.
Seconds later, Decker was at left tackle, while Skipper and Sewell were next to each other between the tight end and guard in an unbalanced formation. Since Skipper and Sewell were covered to both sides, neither could be eligible. Decker, though, wasn’t covered to the left, as the last man on the line to that side, so he could be eligible.
Anyway, the whole idea here, again, presumably, would be to keep the Cowboys from getting an early read on who the Lions were declaring eligible and create confusion. And while they may have confused Dallas, they definitely appeared to confuse the officials, who announced, as the play clock was creeping close to zero that “70” (Skipper) was eligible.
In that way, Allen screwed both teams. It’s not fair to Dallas that Decker would be eligible without it being announced (which was part of why he was open). It’s, of course, not fair to Detroit that the officials screwed up who was reporting. Yes, they were engaging in some serious gamesmanship, but gamesmanship that was within the rules.
And to a degree, I’d even say it was understandable that Allen could’ve screwed that up in the heat of the moment. The problem there, though, is that Lions coach Dan Campbell said afterward that he’d prepped the officials for the play, which was likely designed to mix up the Cowboys, who might assume a tackle eligible play was being thrown to Sewell (who has been a receiver on those in the past).
That, to me, makes this one really hard to swallow, because Detroit did all the right things, and yet the officials found a way to screw Dallas first (by giving them the wrong number), then Detroit after that (with the flag).
What’s next? Well, what’s next is we’ll get to see whether the NFL can muster some honesty. Or if it’ll go, as usual, into crisis management mode.
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Lamar Jackson is pretty clearly the MVP of the league. A lot of folks inside the league felt that way at midseason and, after what we what we all saw Sunday in the Ravens-Dolphins showdown that turned into a 56–19 beatdown, I’d think everyone on the outside would now agree.
He’s 26, and it’ll be his second time winning the award, which is remarkable in its own right.
But, to me, this one is a little different than the last one. There’s the fact that, now, four years later, the other 31 teams are more prepared and dialed into how the Ravens will attack them, so the element of shock-and-awe has been removed. Then there’s the reason why I think this is such an easy call. If 2019 was about what a mind-blowing talent Jackson was, to take the league by storm as he did, then this year, I believe, was equally impressive in how the quarterback was at his best when the Ravens absolutely needed him the most.
Last week, I told you the Ravens carried the three best wins in the league this year—routs of the Lions, Seahawks, and, last week, the 49ers. Sunday’s win over the Dolphins makes it four. Those, to me, were super impressive because, faced with very, very good teams that can go man-for-man with anyone, Baltimore responded by squeezing the life out of their opponents. And here’s Jackson’s output in those games …
• vs. Lions: 21-of-27, 357 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs, 155.8 passer rating.
• vs. Seahawks: 21-of-26, 187 yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs, 96.6 passer rating.
• at 49ers: 23-of-35, 252 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 105.9 passer rating.
• vs. Dolphins: 18-of-21, 321 yards, 5 TDs, 0 INTs, 158.3 passer rating.
That’s 10 touchdowns, no picks and a cumulative passer rating of 138.8. And while averaging nearly 300 yards per game throwing in those games, he also rushed for 176 on 33 carries (5.3 average) over the four showdowns.
It’s because of that sort of stuff that the Ravens have locked up the AFC’s top seed with a week to go. It’s also why, as I see it, the rest of the conference, and league, is dealing with a different Jackson than they were before.
So when I was talking to him postgame about all of this, I did have to ask him whether he’d agree with me that he should be what he will be—the league MVP.
“If that’s what the voters say, I’ll run with it,” he said, over the phone. “My goal is the Super Bowl. I’m going to be grateful for it if I do receive it. That’ll be the second one. I’ll be grateful. But I’m chasing something else. So I really don’t have a comment on it.”
Well, we can comment, and I’d say the whole argument is over. And there might be, as Jackson said, bigger things ahead.
We’ll have more from the former and future MVP, and on his evolution, in the MMQB Lead on the site later Monday.
There’s a lot to clean up on the Russell Wilson news, so I’ll do some of that here. The reality of this situation? Wilson was playing for an ownership group and a powerful head coach who came aboard after the blockbuster trade of March 2022 and, thus, went into this season, after Wilson’s disastrous first year, looking to determine the value of the quarterback, more so than just maxing him out as a player.
There’s a difference. If you’re just trying to get the most of him, you’re committed to making it work. If you’re trying to value him, you’re evaluating whether he’s worth having around.
This week, implicitly, the Broncos finalized that decision. I won’t bore any of you with the details of his contract’s rolling guarantee structure. The easiest way to look at it is there are a series of buyouts in the deal. Wilson has $39 million fully guaranteed next year. So that’s what the bill is to bail now. If he’s on the roster in March, a $37 million injury guarantee for 2025 vests as fully guaranteed, making that the buyout after the ’24 season. So the Broncos were deciding whether to pay to get out now or keep him for the next two years.
Given that keeping him would have meant paying him near the top of the market, and going into Year 3 of the Sean Payton era with a 38-year-old quarterback, I don’t think the call was that tough.
The wheels have also been turning on this one for a while. As has been documented, they really started spinning on Halloween night. That was when Wilson’s agent, Mark Rodgers, and Broncos GM George Paton and VP of football administration Rich Hurtado had a call to discuss changing the contract. Denver proposed pushing the vesting date for Wilson’s 2025 guarantee back from March ’24 into ’25. The injury guarantees would remain. The money would stay the same. But Wilson would then enter into a year-to-year arrangement.
At that point, the idea that Denver could deactivate Wilson for the rest of the season if he didn’t agree was raised, and a deadline for accepting terms was set. Whether that was presented as a threat is now a point of contention. Either way, at that point, Wilson’s camp consulted with the NFLPA, which advised Wilson to call the team’s bluff. Denver huddled with the NFL’s management council. Wilson then refused the proposal to delay the vesting date.
Days later, the team sent Wilson’s camp a letter, telling the quarterback it would accept his decision not to alter the contract, and that his playing time going forward would be of Payton’s discretion and to serve the “best interest of the football team.”
Part of the league’s concern in whatever the management council’s advice was to the Broncos here could tie back to the collusion grievance the union has pending that alleges teams worked together after Deshaun Watson signed his deal in 2022 to prevent “certain quarterbacks” from getting guaranteed contracts. And if you want to dive into that, you can look up how rolling guarantees have been used as a workaround on the funding rule.
So yeah, this is all pretty complicated. I’d give Wilson credit for being able to work through it over the past two months and speak honestly about it at his locker Friday. What’s next for him is anyone’s guess—he still wants to play, but finding a place he can start might not be the easiest thing in the world, and it’s tough to envision him as a bridge or a backup.
What’s next for the Broncos is easier. They’ll have a new quarterback in 2024.
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This year’s draft is loaded—and that’s reflected in the College Football Playoff. Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Washington will take the field Monday in Pasadena and New Orleans, and we’ll see a boatload of guys who’ll have their names called early in April—with the talent spread across the teams more evenly than it normally is (where in the past we’d have some combo of Bama, Georgia, Ohio State and Clemson with most of the top-end guys).
So to try to illustrate that, I ran a little straw poll this week to give you a good look at who you should be watching in the two games. I asked a half dozen execs this week to rank the top five players on the four playoff teams, in order of how they think they’ll come off the board (rather than just giving their own personal opinion). Here’s the list, with points scored in the tally, and a quick hit on each guy …
1) Dallas Turner, OLB, Alabama (24 points): Last year, I had a couple NFL folks tell me they believed Turner was a better prospect than Will Anderson Jr., who went third in the draft. After a nine-sack, first-team All-American season, it’s fair to say that, even if he’s not, the idea then wasn’t far-fetched. “Dallas is a better athlete than Will,” one NFC exec said this week. “Will played harder.” So, yeah, Turner won’t wait long on draft night.
2) JC Latham, OT, Alabama (20 points): Latham is like Evan Neal, in that he’s impossibly big (360 pounds) for a guy who looks lean for an offensive linemen. He’s started for two years at right tackle for the Tide, and that athletic profile is a big reason why many believe that as good as he’s been, as a second-team All-American, the best might be yet to come.
3) Rome Odunze, WR, Washington (20 points): Big, strong, and consistent, Odunze has a very good chance to be the second receiver taken, after Ohio State superstar Marvin Harrison Jr. Odunze, listed at 6'3" and 216 pounds, went over 100 yards in nine of the Huskies’ games this fall, and was first-team All-American and a Biletnikoff Award finalist.
4) Byron Murphy, DT, Texas (9 points): In his first full year as a starter, the 308-pound true junior was just what so many NFL teams are looking for—a game-wrecker on the interior of the defensive line. He’ll head to the Sugar Bowl with five sacks on the season and a big test ahead against a really good Husky front.
5) Troy Fautanu, OT, Washington (7 points): The fifth-year senior was All–Pac 12 in both of his seasons as Washington’s starting left tackle and also has the versatility to have started at guard. Going against the defensive fronts he’ll see in the CFP will give him a chance to raise his stock, starting with Texas’s freakish line in New Orleans.
6) Terrion Arnold, CB, Alabama (6 points): Arnold has outplayed his more ballyhooed bookend Kool-Aid McKinstry this year and is tall, long, physical and versatile—capable of being the kind of secondary chess piece NFL coaches drool over. In his second year as a starter, he’s emerged as a first-round prospect.
7) J.J. McCarthy, QB, Michigan (3 points): McCarthy appeared on one ballot, as the third-highest-ranked prospect—and with his being the Michigan QB, you’d betting on the come line. He wasn’t often asked to carry his team. Can he do it in the NFL, with very solid athletic traits? It’ll be argued plenty in the spring.
8) Adonai Mitchell, WR, Texas (1 point): The Georgia transfer—who scored the game-winning touchdown for the Bulldogs in the national semifinal last year—has emerged as a very intriguing prospect, given his combination size and speed. He has 51 catches for 813 yards and 10 touchdowns going into the Sugar Bowl.
The AFC South has great stories and is set up for a great finish. The Jaguars, Colts and Texans all won Sunday, and that puts all three at 9–7 going into Week 18.
Here, quickly, is what you need to know, as to how next week sets up …
• By virtue of a 4–1 divisional record, the Jaguars control their own destiny and will win the AFC South for a second straight year with a win over the Titans in Nashville.
• If the Jaguars lose, then Texans at Colts will be for the division title. If the Jaguars win, the game will still be relevant, with the winner likely to get in as a wild card.
And maybe most interesting to me is how, even with some of the ups and downs of this year, the South itself has a chance to be a gantlet of a division for the foreseeable future. The Jags have a Super Bowl–winning head coach (Doug Pederson) while the Texans and Colts have Coach of the Year candidates in their first-year leaders (DeMeco Ryans and Shane Steichen, respectively). All three have young, high first-round quarterbacks brimming with potential (Trevor Lawrence, C.J Stroud and Anthony Richardson, though Richardson has missed most of this year).
Also, all three are here now, and got here in ways that should bring confidence.
For Jacksonville, on Sunday, it was being able to respond without Lawrence, and amid a four-game losing streak. The team’s leadership council met with Pederson after an embarrassing loss last week to Tampa Bay, to try to reset things. What resulted were conversations about generating energy with the season flagging—and building momentum heading into a game with the struggling Panthers.
And the Jags had to do it behind a backup quarterback, in C.J. Beathard, who had the benefit of having Lawrence whisper to him early in the week that he probably wouldn’t make it to game day with his ailing shoulder (“He’s usually more honest with me than others,” Beathard said).
“The energy level is sometimes … we even talked about it, even if it has to be fake, sometimes you just got to do it,” Beathard said over the phone. “It’s like, I don’t care if you're not feeling it. You’re not always gonna feel good during practice, but you got to act like you’re feeling it because the energy is contagious. And when you see the defense, yelling and getting their energy up, it gets the offense’s energy up on the field and it just gets you feeling good throughout the week.
“Then, you kind of lose sight of the four losses previous to that and know that we’re moving in the right direction.”
A 26–0 win over Carolina would indicate they are.
Meanwhile, the Colts showed similar resilience in fighting back from last week’s listless loss in Atlanta, a resilience Steichen has come to expect from his group, and a resilience that was valuable as the Raiders kept swinging in the second half. A resilience that goes back to the summer, when a new staff and set of players had to build a team and get set for a season with their best player, Jonathan Taylor, holding out. And a resilience that Steichen thinks is a simple result of the Colts stocking their roster with good people, as much as they have good players.
“I just think it’s that [good] people care,” Steichen told me, as he drove home after the win. “It ain’t always going to be perfect. But if you get a bunch of guys that are high character and care about the guys around them and in the locker room, and do it the right way? When you’ve got that, it gives you a chance every Sunday to win.”
And then, of course, you have the Texans, and how they got through Stroud’s two-game absence (due to a concussion), and how Stroud came back Sunday to throw for 213 yards, a touchdown and 102.7 quarterback rating in a 26–3 win, and you get the picture.
Week 18 will be fun with all these guys. The next few years should be too.
The way the Patriots have played the past month raises interesting questions for the Kraft family this week, with the season finale, and decision time, coming.
Yes, the Bills do have a habit of playing down to the competition—it happened last week against the Chargers, too. But if there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear from Buffalo’s 27–21 win Sunday, one that set up next week’s game against the Dolphins as an AFC East championship game, it’s that their opposition has not quit on its coach.
The Patriots fought through four turnovers in the game’s first 18 minutes to make a serious game of what could’ve easily devolved into a blowout. It didn’t. In fact, the Patriots got the ball inside their own 5 with 6:41 left, down six points, with a chance, albeit a remote one, to drive the field and win the game. And that’s an extension of a month of ball New England shouldn’t be ashamed of—with wins over the Steelers and Broncos, and competitive games with the Chiefs and Bills.
So that’s one side of it. The other side is that …
• Robert Kraft has 12 losses for the first time in his 30 seasons of ownership.
• Bill Belichick has 12 losses for the first time in 29 seasons as a head coach.
• The Patriots have 12 losses for the first time since 1992.
• Belichick is part of a 12-loss team for the first time since 1983.
On top of that, this Patriots team has a number of key free agents, a high draft pick coming, a lot of cap space to work with and it lacks a base of rising young talent. Meaning this year was bad, the future doesn’t look particularly bright right now, and a massive offseason is coming.
All of it leaves Kraft with the greatest coach ever, coaching a team that hasn’t quit on him, but systemic issues that have left him with the worst record in the AFC and second-worst record in the league.
How do you cut through it? Well, I’m not sure we learned a lot that we didn’t know over the past month. Belichick can still coach. But how Belichick has built his roster and his staff have been the issues over the past four years—it’s never been how hard the team plays, or whether Belichick still has a great football mind—which is to say the systemic stuff remains.
So if you’re Kraft, notwithstanding a strong effort Sunday, some level of serious change is needed.
Where does that change leave Belichick? We’ll see.
If the Chiefs have shown us anything, it’s that their formula has to be different this year. That much, to me, was obvious in how they closed out the Joe Burrow–less Bengals, and an eighth-straight AFC West title, Sunday.
The final was Kansas City 25, Cincinnati 17.
Closer inspection of the game tells a more vivid story of where the Bengals are.
The Chiefs went into the half down 17–13, and they scored four times after the break. All four times, it was Harrison Butker kicking a field goal. There were big plays on those drives (67- and 24-yard connections from Patrick Mahomes to Rashee Rice, and a 41-yarder to Justin Watson), but two of those drives bogged down inside the 10 and the other two required long kicks from Butker.
Meanwhile, the defense pitched a shutout over the game’s final 36 minutes. And on the Bengals’ final possession, with Cincinnati trying to come back, down 25–17, Steve Spagnuolo’s group posted four sacks. The first two came courtesy of a blitzing Justin Reid, and necessitated a fourth-and-18 conversion from Jake Browning to keep the Bengals alive. The last two came on consecutive plays from George Karlaftis and Chris Jones, forced the Bengals to burn their last two times, and set the Chiefs up to close out Cincinnati on third-and-27 and fourth-and-27.
So here’s the thing: It’s been 16 games. At this point, it seems like we know what the Chiefs have. On offense, with an aging, diminished Travis Kelce, it’s a group with some skill-position balance, but no real No. 1 weapon, which leaves a lot on Mahomes’s shoulders to make it work (one reason why Andy Reid leaned on the run game Sunday). On defense, they have perhaps the most talented group Reid has fielded in his 11 seasons in charge.
With the playoffs coming, it’s time to lean into that. And if Sunday is any indication, and you can check Isiah Pacheco’s numbers to verify this (130 yards on 18 carries), that may already be happening.
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We’ve got an exciting Week 18 on the way. But before finishing up Week 17, and turning the page to 2024, as always, we have some quick-hitting takeaways for you …
• For what it’s worth, Jarrett Stidham made Sean Payton look pretty good Sunday—he was a steady 20-of-32 for 224 yards and a touchdown in the Broncos’ 16–9 win over the Chargers. There’s a reason Payton gave Stidham the money he did in the offseason ($10 million over two years), and a reason why a lot of people saw that as a strong first sign that Payton would be moving on from Wilson. We’ll have more on Stidham on the way this week.
• Dennis Allen’s job status has been questioned of late—and there still could be changes coming in New Orleans. But the Saints’ second-year coach had his team ready to roll in Tampa, and the guy sure can still call a defense. Baker Mayfield hadn’t thrown an interception in a month. The Saints picked him off twice, forced and recovered another fumble, and held the Bucs under four yards per carry to key a 23–13 win. That said, the Bucs still hold the NFC South tiebreaker. So all they have to do to win the division from here is beat the worst team in the league (Carolina) next week.
• Speaking of that team, that was a really bad look for Carolina owner David Tepper, especially with some prospective coaching candidates leery of how Tepper has run the team he bought in 2018. Tepper’s next coach will be his fourth. And next week, he’ll have 99 games under his belt since taking over, with 22 of those presided over by interim coaches (Steve Wilks and Chris Tabor). I’ve heard, for what it’s worth, he’s shown that he’s learned from some of his mistakes in how he’s approached the early stages of this latest coaching search. Which only makes the idea that he’d throw a drink on a fan at a meaningless game in a long lost season even more confounding.
• I know Steelers fans are probably tired of hearing about it, but Mike Tomlin’s streak of .500-or-better seasons is remarkable, a streak that Tomlin added a year to Sunday with Pittsburgh’s win in Seattle. He’s now 17-for-17. For context, Bill Cowher had three losing seasons over 15 as Steelers coach. Chuck Noll had seven over 23 seasons in charge. Tomlin, again, has had none in 17 years.
• That’s one reason why if I’m Tepper or Commanders owner Josh Harris, I’m calling Art Rooney (remember, both Tepper and Harris were Steelers minority owners before buying their own teams) just to see if Tomlin might be available. All Rooney can do is say no.
• I tried to tell people before the season there was no way a Sean McVay team would tank. And now, impressively, the Rams are in the playoffs. Remember, this is a team carrying some $75 million in dead money and has, at points this year, had 19 rookies on its 53-man roster. It’s also a group that was working with a madeover offensive staff, and linchpins such as Jalen Ramsey and Leonard Floyd gone from the defense. It hasn’t always been pretty, and wasn’t in Sunday’s 26–25 win over the Giants (Matthew Stafford was picked twice, Tyrod Taylor threw for 319 yards). But the team got better over time, and now, again, looks like it has an awfully bright future, not to mention a chance to be pretty aggressive again this offseason. And as for now? Well, I tried to tell you they wouldn’t take their foot off the pedal. I’m not sure I’d want to face them in the wild-card round if I were the Lions, Cowboys or Eagles.
• Credit to Matt Eberflus and Justin Fields. The Bears’ coach and quarterback kept working as questions swirled around each guy’s job security the past couple months, and it’s great to see them get results now. With Sunday’s win over Atlanta, Eberflus has won five of seven to get his team to 7–9. Meanwhile, Fields played great against his hometown Falcons and has gotten better over time. And with the Bears locking up the first pick, by virtue of the Panthers’ loss (remember, they have Carolina’s pick) and Cardinals’ win, Fields knows (and has publicly acknowledged now) that there’s a real chance USC star Caleb Williams will replace him as the Bears’ franchise quarterback in 2024. But I’d say the way he’s handled all of this should get him a shot somewhere else next year.
• It’s hard to explain or comprehend the Eagles’ collapse. But one thing seems certain, and that’s that if Dallas wins the division next week (all the Cowboys have to do is beat the Commanders), and Philly bows out in the first round of the playoffs, significant changes will come on defense. I’d think Matt Patricia, who’s running a scheme that’s not his (and, as such, makes it tougher for him to find answers on the fly) would get consideration to oversee that change next year. But I’d expect Philly to look outside the organization, too. And it’ll be interesting to see whether Howie Roseman’s love for Vic Fangio’s scheme remains, after Sean Desai’s version of it failed.
• Kyler Murray has beat back a lot of bad perception this year with his new bosses. From the start, while he was rehabbing his torn-up knee, Murray embraced the challenge of learning a totally different scheme for the first time in forever (Kliff Kingsbury’s offense was a version of what he’d run in college and high school) under coordinator Drew Petzing. That enthusiasm has shown up in his play, and, as it turns out, he’s playing Arizona out of position to take Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. Which only increases the likelihood that GM Monti Ossenfort and coach Jonathan Gannon will have him back in 2024.
• Finally, Kittle’s reasoning for valuing home-field advantage, I thought was pretty different. “It means a ton,” he told me. “When you play in San Francisco, those flights to go anywhere else are pretty long, and they do wear you down a little bit. I’m about to get on a five-hour flight home [from Washington]. Being able to stay at home for the next couple weeks, hopefully, it’s awesome. You train your body, you’re going to stay home with your family, sleep in your own bed and get all the rehab you need, not to worry about a flight on a Friday, it’s pretty awesome. The fact that this team got it done and it was a goal back in OTAs in spring, for us to be able to accomplish that is pretty special.” I’ve never heard a player from a West Coast team explain it like that. But it’s logical, all the way around.
