More MMQB: Doug Pederson on Everything to Celebrate in Jacksonville | Three Deep: Bengals Are ‘Pretty Damn Good, Too’ | How Kirk Cousins and the Vikings Engineered the Greatest Comeback in NFL History | Six From Saturday: Good for Alabama Stars Playing in Bowl Game
I’m not sure we’ll ever see another game end the way Patriots-Raiders did. And its beauty, of course, was in the chaos of its unexplainable, inexplicable final play.
The truth, though, is there was a very real method to what happened at Allegiant Stadium.
First, let’s set the scene. The Raiders had blown a 17–3 halftime lead, after already holding the record (four) for most double-digit leads squandered in a season. The Patriots scored 21 consecutive to take their first lead at 24–17 with 3:43 left. The teams then traded three-and-outs, and the Raiders went on a nine-play, 81-yard touchdown drive to tie it at 24 with 32 seconds to go. New England got the ball back and moved it 20 yards in five plays.
Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports
That set up third-and-10. New England 45. Three seconds left.
And the kind of situation the Raiders refer to as “Desperado.”
“The Desperado situation is usually when a team is trying to lateral the ball and advance it to score,” Chandler Jones tells me, just after getting home from the stadium Sunday night. “They’ll use it at the end of the half or a game …”
By now, you know the result. Jones more or less picked off the lateral, shoved Patriots quarterback Mac Jones to the ground, got to the end zone and the Raiders won, 30–24.
What you might not understand is how and why it started.
Jones was actually following rules in getting to the landmark he did. At the snap, Patriots RB Rhamondre Stevenson took the handoff on a draw. At the Raiders’ 45, Jones dove at him and tried to punch the ball out. Stevenson burst upfield past him. As Jones picked himself up off the field, a Desperado situation started to unfold. Stevenson ran through the Las Vegas defense all the way inside the Raiders’ 35, then flipped the ball to his right to WR Jakobi Meyers.
“So when I saw they started doing the whole hot-potato thing, I stood up immediately and started trying to spot-up who was the next guy that’s behind the line of scrimmage, who could he pitch back to next,” Jones says. “And I was just like, stay back, stay back because they could be throwing to someone back here and he could be fast enough to score.”
And then, Jones’s rules kicked in.
“We would always have a man assigned to the deepest skill player on the field,” Raiders coach Josh McDaniels texted Sunday night. “Chandler was doing his job.”
Jones’s man? It wound up being Mac Jones.
After figuring that out, the job got easier.
“Talking in basketball terms—I’ll go box someone out,” Chandler Jones says.
So Chandler Jones “boxed out” Mac Jones, essentially making himself a wall between the quarterback and the ball. He wasn’t really expecting Meyers to throw it all the way back to Mac. And he definitely wasn’t expecting to have a play like that on the ball. But there he was, and here the ball came. Chandler caught it clean, and immediately went to work, with his first move being one on the Patriots quarterback.
“I don’t think I’ve thrown a stiff arm in practice,” Jones says, laughing. “When I caught the ball, he was there, I was thinking, You know what, I could try to put a juke move on. I could try to outrun him. I don’t know, maybe I could outrun Mac Jones. But whenever defensive players are running for touchdowns, they always get made fun of for getting caught by the quarterback. So I thought, I’m not gonna try to outrun him. I’m just trying to run over him. If I fall and trip, I’ll pitch it. Because there were guys behind me.”
Their services wouldn’t be needed. After discarding Mac, Chandler Jones covered the rest, cruising to the end zone to put away the victory.
Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports
The interesting thing, per Jones, is that captains and leaders in the huddle actually told the guys, We gotta get the ball. And, Jones admits, he was just lucky enough to be the one where the ball was thrown. “I was blessed,” Jones says. “I was blessed to be there.”
After he scored, Foster Moreau offered to take the ball off Jones’s hands for the time being. Jones then went looking for it in the locker room. Moreau told him he gave it to McDaniels. McDaniels then gave it back to Jones as he was presenting game balls and addressing the team. At which point, Jones gave it back to McDaniels.
“And he can keep it if he wants,” Jones says. “I’m more happy about the play.”
So are a lot of other people in Vegas who, like the rest of us, never saw anything like it, and may never see anything like it again.
The end of the Chargers game was, to me—in a lot of ways—the manifestation of how Brandon Staley sees his team. And that take is born out of a couple years of conversations with Staley about game management. But I’ll let him explain what I’m getting at here.
“We put a lot of emphasis on it as a team, and when you hear it during training camp, I talk about the history of this league, how it’s been formed in two-minute,” Staley said early last night. “We talk a ton about two-minute defense, two-minute offense, and what happens, what you got to do. Every week, we have situational Saturday, and we’re combing through the league, or we’re going back to the ’80s, whatever applies that we feel like can help our team win. And we have people who are committed.”
Thus came the final minute of the Chargers’ 17–14 win over the Titans on Sunday.
And the story really starts with L.A. having all three of its timeouts, up 14–7, as a banged-up Ryan Tannehill tried to position the Titans to tie the game. After driving Tennessee from its own 26 to the Chargers’ 21—spending his final timeout along the way—Tannehill found Austin Hooper over the middle for 17 yards to set up first-and-goal from the four-yard line.
Staley didn’t hesitate burning his first timeout with 59 seconds left.
“When they completed the in-route to get inside the 5 there, we knew that the thing that we can’t do is lose any time for Justin [Herbert] if they score,” Staley says. “We want to create as much time for him as possible.”
First down: Derrick Henry for two yards, five seconds tick off, second timeout.
Second down: Henry for another yard, three more seconds gone, third timeout.
Then, on third-and-goal from the 1, the Titans got behind Tannehill and on a sneak pushed him through the goal line to tie the game. So that left 48 seconds, and no timeouts for the Chargers to get down the field. Which, of course, as Staley says “is going to change our approach, relative to the plays we run.”
The first one was a deep out to Mike Williams for 16 yards, with Williams sliding to make sure he was out of bounds. Forty-two-seconds left. Then came a little drag route to tight end Gerald Everett—designed to get Everett running full speed toward the right sideline—and he got out after picking up six yards with 32 seconds left.
“We wanted to have the avenue for him to be able to get out of bounds,” Staley says. “We weren’t trying to have something that was an in-breaker [route] there where you’re tackled, there’s time, you gotta clock it, everyone’s got to come back. They’re really, really good inside pass rushers, so it was well-protected with outlets headed to the flat. And their zones just really dropped with a lot of depth there.”
Next up, the Chargers were going to Williams again, this time down the right sideline, but it didn’t go nearly the way he or the coaches planned.
“We were trying to create a deep bench cut, deep out cut,” Staley says. “If it’s there, obviously you can throw it on time, and that’s the route that [Herbert] hit Mike on earlier. But then, when the pocket gets collapsed and he moves, now those guys are doing that special thing that they have, that very, very special chemistry a No. 1 receiver and a quarterback have. And Justin can put the ball in places that very few can.
“And if you look at the TV copy, Mike kind of gave him a little baby point, and he knew he was going to be able to hit him back inside, away from the sideline, so to speak. And Justin just does what he does, which is he can put it exactly where he wants.”
That was good for 35 yards. But not good enough to get Williams out of bounds. So Williams had to think fast as the official next to him wound the clock.
“What I thought was really special about what happened with Mike on the sideline is that he didn’t assume that he was out of bounds,” Staley says. “He raced the ball to the hash, just like we practiced, so we could get the ball clocked. And then we were able to execute the foul ball there at the end to take more time off the clock and finish the game.”
Indeed, Staley had Herbert run around to take time off the clock, so by the time Cameron Dicker came on to kick the game winner, there were just eight seconds left. And Dicker’s kick, a successful one, of course, wound up being the game’s last play.
Which got the Chargers to 8–6 and back in the AFC playoff picture.
But, again, there was a little more to this one for Staley because of how it unfolded.
“Today’s performance, and specifically the end of the game, was a great vision for our team because you had all three phases that contributed,” Staley says. “We’ve tried to build this team right. Our special teams have been fantastic all year, as you know. It’s been s---ty for this franchise for decades, and now it’s one of the absolute best in the NFL. And we’ve invested heavily. We’ve got one of the top special-teams units in the league. We’ve had a defense that’s been completely decimated, decimated the full practice squad, D-linemen. …
“We just invested heavily in being good at the end of the games, and as you know, to be good at the end of the games, you have to have a quarterback who can put you on his back. And that’s what we have. Just really proud of our team, because it was everybody today.”
And as a result, all that stands between L.A. and its first playoff berth under Staley is wins against the Colts, Rams and Broncos. Which, if they play the way they did down the stretch against the Titans, seems to be pretty doable.
To me, there was an underrated aspect to the Vikings’ comeback Saturday night that can tell you a little something about who they are as a team. And that was not to allow the way the game was officiated to get to them and, in particular, not let the two defensive touchdowns that were overturned affect them.
The first came in the second quarter. The Vikings were down 23–0. Michael Pittman Jr. was fighting for extra yardage on a third-and-10. He didn’t get it. The ball was wrestled away. Chandon Sullivan collected it and ran it to the end zone. But the officials had already blown the play dead (unnecessarily). So rather than it being 23–7, it stayed 23–0. The Colts punted. Three plays later, Kirk Cousins threw a pick-six to make it 30–0.
Then, deep into the comeback, it happened again. For this one, the Vikings trailed 36–28, and Deon Jackson took a handoff up the middle only to have the ball punched loose by Za’Darius Smith and run all the way back for a touchdown (again) by Sullivan. But this play had been inexplicably blown dead early, too, nullifying the touchdown and making the play unreviewable.
What followed that play was better than the first, but both challenged the Vikings, in that it took key plays away at a time when the team’s margin for error was razor thin. And for Minnesota not to lose its head in those spots, indeed, took some mental toughness.
“Especially for our defense,” Cousins told me Saturday after the game, “because I’m not as close to it when that happens. Our defense is on the field and then they tell them, ‘Hey, you gotta line up to play again, even though you didn’t get the call you wanted.’ That’s hard to do, so the fact that they only gave up three points in the second half says a lot about them, especially because we were giving them short fields a lot by going for it on fourth down and drives getting stalled, and still they held up
“And last week, Justin [Jefferson] wasn’t out of bounds, and they blew the whistle dead, and so we lost out on that touchdown to Justin. Then, this week, they blew the whistle twice. So it’s tough when they blow that whistle, because the play can’t really be reviewed or you can’t go back and improve or fix it. You just basically are left with what happened.”
And how you respond. And, obviously, the Vikings responded with the greatest comeback in NFL history.
Want more on that? Check out my interview with Cousins in the immediate aftermath—it was published Sunday.
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The Commanders got hosed, and that’s where we are with officiating in the NFL. In case you didn’t stay up for it, the Giants wound up outlasting the Commanders 20–12 on Sunday night, and the handling of the final two minutes of it was eye-opening.
First, Brian Robinson Jr. scored on third-and-goal from the one-yard line with 1:03 left—only to have the score overturned on a ticky-tack illegal formation call (even NBC’s officiating analyst, Terry McAulay, agreed with that sentiment). That moved the ball back to the 6, which from there—two plays later on third down—Taylor Heinicke tried to thread the ball through traffic to Curtis Samuel, but it fell incomplete. Replay showed that, while it was in the air, Giants corner Darnay Holmes put a modified bearhug on Samuel (DPI would’ve put the ball on the 1).
Add that to the missed calls we just mentioned from Saturday—which the Vikings overcame—and the NFL needs to do something.
I, for one, would force the refs to be more accountable—make them face the assembled media, the same way a coach or player would, and stop worrying so much about people criticizing them (since they deserve it). After that, the next thing I’d do, if I were commissioner, is institute a full-time SkyJudge on every crew.
We’ve been over this before. It’s time to do it, once and for all. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be someone in the booth, as part of every crew, to correct egregious calls and missed calls in real time—and give each crew the benefit every one of us has sitting on the couch, which is the ability to instantly see every call from 10 angles. Direct that person to change only calls that are over-the-top wrong, and obviously quick enough to make a change on the fly, and you’ll have a faster, cleaner game, with fewer challenges involved.
So there would be a few awkward situations for the refs where they get buzzed down and told to “drop the flag” or “pick that one up”? O.K., well, then don’t get it wrong in the first place.
It would’ve made a difference Sunday, I think. My guess is such a system wouldn’t have changed the formation flag—one that probably was letter-of-the-law right. But it sure would’ve taken care of Holmes tackling Samuel. And signified that the NFL was willing to do whatever it takes to get to the right calls on the field. Which, in this case, is simply a matter of letting continually advancing technology take care of the problem for you.
Bad officiating, by the way, is not meant to take a thing away from the Giants, who played their tails off and deserved to win. Daniel Jones left it all on the field, running the ball 10 times as part of the 20–12 win, and Saquon Barkley was both steady and spectacular in going for 120 scrimmage yards on 23 touches.
But if we’re being honest—from a Giants perspective—Sunday night was about Kayvon Thibodeaux. The fifth pick in last April’s draft finished with a sack, three tackles for losses, and 12 total tackles, plus a strip-sack that he scooped and scored himself,, but his statistics don’t begin to explain how omnipresent he seemed to be for the balance of the night. And that really, as the Giants see it, is more an illustration of where he’s been—while the knee injury he suffered in preseason against the Bengals slowed him down early, he has steadily improved and had a big game Sunday night.
Thibodeaux has been really good of late, validating some internal comparisons he drew to Von Miller before the draft.
The win also snapped the Giants out of an 0-3-1 funk and put them in the sixth spot in the NFC playoff picture. There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic with the direction of the Giants’ organization, and where Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen are taking it. Especially with the influx of young guys such as Thibodeaux (and fellow top-10 pick Evan Neal) into the building.
Saturday night should put to bed the narrative that the Bills can’t win close games. Buffalo’s ripped off five consecutive wins since the Minnesota meltdown—which follows a pattern from the past two years, with long winning streaks following the Hail Murray in 2020 and the Wind Game and first-half no-show in Tampa Bay in ’21—and they’re doing it by doing what a lot of people said they couldn’t, which is showing up in big moments.
That moment came for the Bills in the fourth quarter against Miami after the Dolphins kicked a field goal with 11:56 to go up 29–21 on the hosts.
Josh Allen responded by piloting a seven-play, 75-yard drive keyed by his own 44-yard run through the heart of the Miami defense, a five-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal to Dawson Knox, and another Allen run for the tying two-pointer. Then, the defense got off the field. The offense came back on and drove 86 yards on 15 plays to drain the rest of the clock and set up Tyler Bass’s 25-yard field goal at the buzzer.
It was the fourth of five games during the Bills’ current win streak to be decided by a single possession. It was the third of those that required either a drive or a stop in the final minute. And, the coaches would tell you, getting the team where it needs to be has come down to executing at a higher level at key junctures in these games, and there are two pieces to that.
The first is getting really solid play that might not get noticed when the roster’s depth is tested. Left tackle Dion Dawkins turned in that sort of performance Saturday—he’s getting healthier and the coaches loved how he played in the passing game against the Miami edge guys [Jaelan Phillips and Bradley Chubb]—and, really, it’s been a different guy each week.
The second is that the Bills now are learning the reality of what it’s like to stand in there and take everyone’s best shot. That means getting motivated teams with playbooks wide open on a week-in, week-out basis knowing that winning that one game can make or break their season.
“It took everything we had to pull this one out tonight,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said to reporters afterwards. “It just makes it special. ... Like I said, humbling, that’s how I feel about it. Humbled to be a part of it in this great town that doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves, honestly. And the fans, I mean, this place is unique. So, just awesome. Awesome.”
The Ravens were a tough watch Saturday. And give credit to a Browns team that featured an improved defense—and an increasingly comfortable Deshaun Watson—one that could be a tough playoff out if they hadn’t fallen so far behind over the first couple of months of the season. Here are some numbers from backup QB Tyler Huntley to show you where Baltimore stands right now:
• 17-of-30, 138 yards, INT, 54.9 rating
• 4.6 yards per pass attempt
• Six carries, 15 yards
• Three sacks
• Two turnovers
On paper, it actually shouldn’t be so hard to find a good backup for Lamar Jackson. Few teams are looking for the sorts of stylistic backups like the Ravens to keep the offense the same in case Jackson gets hurt. And that’s why someone such as Huntley would be there as an undrafted free agent—after an illustrious college career at Utah—for the Ravens to go get on the cheap.
The problem, it turns out, is when you actually have to play the guy. That’s when you find out, as the numbers above indicate, just how unique and special Jackson is.
Which is to say, Godspeed, to Baltimore on the looming contract situation with Jackson.
The Ravens have been steadfast in their unwillingness to do a fully guaranteed contract for Jackson. And Jackson doesn’t seem to have budged much on his demands. So what we’ve got is an old-fashioned standoff with how the Ravens look sans Jackson shaping up as a nice thing for the quarterback to be able to point to come March.
I think it’s unsurprising that the Steelers are suddenly creeping into the fringes of the AFC playoff race. Even though they’ve had quarterback tumult. Even though they were without T.J. Watt for a good percentage of the season. And even in a conference that was supposed to be loaded going into the year.
Even better, on Sunday, they had a (and Mike Tomlin will hate me using this term, I know) very Steeler style of win in beating the Panthers, 24–16.
“Hard-fought game,” Tomlin told reporters. “I think we played an attrition game today. We wanted to win the line of scrimmage on both sides. I thought we were effective in doing so. I thought we ran it on offense and played behind our running game. I thought we did a good job of minimizing their run on defense. Obviously, that was big because we’ve been leaking here the last six quarters or so defensively in that area.
“Appreciative of the efforts.”
The win on the line of scrimmage wasn’t hard to see in the box score.
The Steelers rushed for 156 yards on 45 carries, while the Panthers had 21 yards on 16 carries.
Sam Darnold responded with maybe his best game as a Panther, going 14-of-23 for 225 yards. And it wasn’t nearly enough, as Pittsburgh’s run game led to consistency that showed up in the difference in first downs (22–12), third-down efficiency (75.0%–36.4%) and time of possession (36:11–23:49).
So for all the handwringing over trading Chase Claypool to the Bears and George Pickens’ usage and everything else, it looks like the answer to building things back was right in front of all of us. And it’s an answer that happens to be well-worn in Pittsburgh.
The Chiefs were lucky to escape Houston with a win. And it’ll probably be forgotten when we’re all covering Kansas City in the AFC title game in six weeks. But there was something notable, at least to me, to come out of the Chiefs’ 30–24 overtime win at NRG Stadium.
It was what Andy Reid went out of his way to say about Lovie Smith afterward.
“My hat goes off to Lovie for the great job he’s done here,” Reid said in his opening statement before taking questions at his press conference. “I mean, you’ve seen it the last two weeks. It’s a hard job, and it takes time as a head coach. Lovie, my word of advice, is just give him time.
“He’s a tremendous football coach. I’ve had a chance to compete against him for a number of years and just rock-solid football teams. The thing I was proudest about our guys was they kept playing. They didn’t let anything hinder them, whether it was calls, whether it was fumbles, whatever. They kept playing.”
That much was definitely true of both teams Sunday and, considering one of those two is 1-12-1, Reid is right to point out the effort from Smith’s team.
I’m still not sure it’ll be enough to save Smith’s job.
We got quick-hitter takeaways. And they’re coming right at you …
• It’s hard not to read too much into Brett Rypien getting hot and looking pretty competent in running Nathaniel Hackett’s offense in Denver.
• The Broncos did beat the Cardinals, and that’s not saying much—Arizona, right now, is pretty messy, and it’ll be interesting to see the level to which they institute change in the offseason. They’ll likely first replace GM Steve Keim and they have a couple of really qualified internal candidates to look at in Adrian Wilson and Quentin Harris.
• Fun anomaly: Taysom Hill’s 2022 passer rating going into the home stretch: 147.3.
• Even in a loss, Robinson’s running stood out for the Commanders—he finished Sunday with 89 yards on 12 carries, and runs his you-know-what off. And while we’re there, Jahan Dotson is having a pretty nice rookie year, too.
• Good to see J.K. Dobbins inch closer to being back fully, with 125 yards on 13 carries in the Ravens’ loss to the Browns.
• Desmond Ridder’s debut in Atlanta (13-of-26, 97 yards) left a lot to be desired. He should have some runway now, though, with the team his for the balance of the year.
• Justin Fields’s run, you know the one, was as spectacular a play as you’ll see from an NFL quarterback. And with Fields now the third quarterback in NFL history to run for 1,000 yards in a season, it’ll be interesting to see how he’s re-assessed this offseason.
• Zach Wilson was not terrible (18-of-35, 317 yards, two TDs, INT) in his return to game action.
• The clock definitely seems like it’s ticking on Jeff Saturday.
• There’s been a lot of bad news on owners of late. So good stuff, courtesy Bloomberg, on all the work Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie’s doing and has done—I can say first-hand that Lurie’s making a real difference in a number of different arenas.
Three for Monday
1) O.K., so Rams-Packers is one of those games that looked a lot sexier when they scheduled it than it does now as they prepare to play it. But there’s still fun stuff about this one—and one thing I’ll be keeping an eye on, for sure, is Green Bay’s group of young receivers. The hope was, earlier in the year, that over time, Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs would grow into real replacements, in tandem, for Davante Adams. And it still might happen, but time is running out this season. So with Doubs returning to the lineup Monday night, and Watson getting his footing, it’ll be interesting to watch the two against L.A., and maybe specifically how much Aaron Rodgers trusts, or doesn’t trust, the two of them.
2) Lots of eyes will be on Baker Mayfield. Some should also be on who’s playing center for the Rams. Because that offensive line group has been a significant piece of why the Rams haven’t gotten nearly as much out of their quarterbacks as they usually do, and Brian Allen is questionable for this game. Mayfield had Allen for his amazing Rams debut 11 days ago.
3) This one absolutely means something to the coaches involved—Rams coach Sean McVay and Packers coach Matt LaFleur worked together in Washington, McVay hired LaFleur to be his first offensive coordinator in L.A. and the two remain close. For what it’s worth, LaFleur is 2–0 against McVay, beating him in the 2020 playoffs and last year’s regular season.
One thing you need to know
I had my fun with the soccer hipsters during the World Cup (like I always do).
But I have to say that was a legitimately awesome few weeks, and the final was one of the best championship games I’ve ever seen. And I think this is how that sport makes it through with the kids—my 8-year-old, who loves football more than anything, was pumped about watching Argentina-France on Sunday, and had two of his buddies over for it. The three of them knew all about Messi and Mbappé and were locked in through the end of it.
In the end, I think they were watching because they all play, and they knew that was the best of the best, an all-time great playing against an emerging great, from two powerhouses of the sport facing off with everything on the line. And that appealed to them.
I don’t think it means they’ll watch MLS any more than the NFL would get an 8-year-old to tune into a MAC game on a Tuesday. But it will get them hooked on the sport, which is the whole idea. And it might even get this 42-year-old who’s been bored by this stuff over the years to engage for a few weeks every few years.
