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USA Today Sports Media Group
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Sport
Doug Farrar

The NFL’s Worst of the Week: Diontae Johnson, shotgun runs, bad Jets/Pats, Shawn Hochuli

Diontae Johnson NFL Jets Jared Goff Jevon Holland Bailey Zappe Mac Jones Patriots DeMeco Ryans DJ Turner

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 12 of the 2023 NFL season.

Jared Goff thinking he had a free play... and getting busted for intentional grounding.

(Syndication: Detroit Free Press)

If there’s one thing NFL quarterbacks should have learned by now about the crapshow that is professional officiating, it’s never to assume you have a free play until and unless you see the flag. In the Detroit Lions’ 29-22 Thanksgiving Day loss to the Green Bay Packers, Detroit quarterback Jared Goff forgot that rule, and he paid for it.

With 3:22 left in the first half, Goff seemed to assume that defensive tackle Tedarrell Slaton was going to get busted for either offside or encroachment, and thus, he would have a free play. But there was no penalty called, Goff threw the ball away, and Goff was then handed an intentional grounding infraction. Whoops!

As the Packers were already up 23-6 at that point, kudos to the Lions for doing their best to fight back… but that was an ouch.

Shotgun runs on fourth-and-1.

(Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports)

With 4:19 left in the Seattle Seahawks’ 31-13 Thanksgiving night loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle made the decision to hand the ball to running back Zach Charbonnet. Quarterback Geno Smith was in shotgun, and the play went nowhere.

“The blocking scheme of the play was it was a downhill blocking scheme, but we’re in the gun to run it,” Carroll said the day after. “I think the call is hoping that you get them to widen, thinking ‘they may throw the football’ and we get an edge there. That’s all that was… Should have been an easy conversion right there. We didn’t get it.”

As for the Washington Commanders in their 45-10 Thanksgiving day loss to the Dallas Cowboys, they tried a shotgun run on fourth-and-1 with 8:19 left in the third quarter, and this thing was dead in the water before it even got in the water.

I mean… we love us some Eric Bieniemy, but Washington’s offensive coordinator might want to throw that idea out with the last of the leftovers.

Per Sports Info Solutions, NFL teams have run the ball on fourth-and-1 out of shotgun 27 times for 68 yards, two touchdowns, and 16 conversions to first down.

Fourth-and-1 runs from under center have been far more successful — 89 attempts for 233 yards, one touchdown, and 68 conversions to first down. Even when you take out the “tush push” numbers engendered by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (seven fourth-and-1 attempts from under center for 16 yards and seven conversions to first down), the metrics tell a very clear tale.

You’re not fooling anyone with these short-yardage shotgun runs, NFL coaches. Don’t overthink this — sometimes, one yard and a cloud of dust is still the best way to go.

The All-22 of Jevon Holland's pick-six against the Jets.

(Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

If you’re a fan of the New York Jets, there’s one thing you never want to say.

“It can’t get any worse.”

Because it always can.

The latest example of the 2023 Jets’ Drive to Futility occurred at the end of the first half of their Black Friday game against the Miami Dolphins. Quarterback Tim Boyle was just trying a half-hearted Hail Mary to see if the offense could put any points on the board.

Turns out, the offense could… but in the wrong direction. Miami safety Jevon Holland was one of about five defenders who had a shot at Boyle’s long duck, and he returned the thing 99 yards for a touchdown as time expired.

Holland got some nice cardio on the play, as well!

Miami’s head coach knew that this was ballgame. Oh, Jets.

When you watch the All-22 of the Jets’ attempts to tackle Holland, it looks like one of those games between adult mascots and little kids in which the little kids keep getting grassed.

Not the effort you want to see on the field.

Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe throwing virtually the same interception.

(Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports)

Folks, the New York Giants’ 10-7 win over the New England Patriots was a real… well, whatever it was. From the start, we knew we were witnessing an argument for fewer regular-season games.

Things got no better for the Patriots, especially for the Patriots’ quarterbacks, Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe.

As our friend Taylor Kyles points out, both Jones and Zappe threw cross-body intermediate passes into triple coverage, and in both cases, the result was what you’d expect.

I mean… that’s a carbon copy.

Belichick spent most of the week without telling anybody in the public sector who his starting quarterback would be for this game, and you can understand why.

For the game, Jones completed 12 of 21 passes for 89 yards and two interceptions before he was benched at the half, and Zappe completed nine of 14 passes for 54 yards and an interception in relief.

The 2-9 Patriots now have the second overall draft pick position behind the 1-9 Carolina Panthers, who traded their 2024 first-round pick to the Chicago Bears for the right to move up to No. 1 in the 2023 draft. They selected Alabama quarterback Bryce Young with that pick, of course.

We’re assuming that whoever’s in charge in Foxboro next year will be looking similarly at a college quarterback to reboot the franchise.

Diontae Johnson's "effort" on Jaylen Warren's fumble.

(Kareem Elgazzar-USA TODAY Sports)

So, the Pittsburgh Steelers have had quite the week. After the got themselves embarrassed by the Cleveland Browns last Sunday, head coach Mike Tomlin made the wise decision to fire offensive coordinator Matt Canada. But the aftereffects of Pittsburgh’s broken offense were also clear. Right after that game, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, receiver Diontae Johnson got into a “heated argument” with safety Minkah Fitzpatrick that teammates Cameron Heyward and T.J. Watt had to break up.

Evidently, Johnson’s fight didn’t extend to the Steelers’ Sunday game against the Cincinnati Bengals. With 4:45 left in the first quarter, running back Jaylen Warren fumbled the ball, and it was recovered by Bengals cornerback DJ Turner.

Now, at the top of the screen, you’ll notice that Johnson is in a fake screen look, and he doesn’t even appear to be aware of the fumble happening right next to him. Which allowed Turner to pick up the ball and return it 28 yards to the Cincinnati 11-yard line.

The good news is that the post-Canada Steelers looked much better on offense (that play aside) and beat the Bengals, 16-10.

Johnson’s postgame explanation was less than cathartic or whatever.

DeMeco Ryans' decision to try a 58-yard field goal at the end of Texans-Jaguars

(Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports)

There’s no question that Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans is on everybody’s short list for NFL Coach of the Year, but the first-year shot-caller made a curious decision at the end of his team’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Houston had the ball at the Jacksonville 39-yard line with fourth-and-12 and 34 seconds left in the game.

Instead of putting the ball in the hands of C.J. Stroud, who came into this game with one fourth-quarter touchdown as a passer and another fourth-down touchdown as a runner this season, Ryans made the call to have kicker Matt Amendola, on the roster after starting kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn was placed on injured reserve with a quadricep injury earlier this month, attempt a 58-yard field goal.

Here was the result.

Ammendola did indeed nearly tie the game, but we have to look at the process here. Ammendola has been in the NFL since 2021. and New York Jets, the Arizona Cardinals, the Kansas City Chiefs, and now the Texans, he had never made a field goal attempt of 50 or more yards. The last time he even attempted one was with the Jets in 2021 — in fact, he attempted three that season, and he missed them all.

Furthermore, if you go back to Ammendola’s career at Oklahoma State, he hadn’t made a field goal attempt of 50 or more yards since 2017.

So, again, we have to wonder why.

“Yeah, it felt like that was the right decision for us to kick the ball,” Ryans said after the game. “It was close. It just didn’t go in. I thought we had good range from there. Just didn’t make the kick.”

Why exactly would you have expected him to, coach?

Shawn Hochuli's officiating crew in the Eagles-Bills game.

(Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports)

It has certainly been a horrible season for NFL officiating, yes? No matter which team you call your own, you can point to one obvious example in which your team has been hosed by a group of officials that are inconsistent at best, and incompetent at worst.

Here at Touchdown Wire, we’ve written about the league’s awful product all season, but it’s going to be very difficult to top the no-call in the game between the Buffalo Bills and the Philadelphia Eagles for sheer WTF status.

Here was the situation. With 1:34 left in the second quarter, and the Bills up 10-7, Eagles edge-rusher Haason Reddick pressured Bills quarterback Josh Allen. In the process, Reddick tore the front of Allen’s jersey at the collar, and clearly grabbed the back of Allen’s jersey at the collar.

And that part of the play, per the NFL Rule Book, is a horse-collar tackle. Per ESPN’s Kevin Seifert:

Instead, Allen was called for intentional grounding, despite the fact that there were two receivers in the direct vicinity of his throw. Shawn Hochuli’s crew really blew this one. And this despite the fact that there was an official looking directly at the play from a couple yards behind.

There was also a clear pass interference against the Eagles that was not called… perhaps the official on the scene forgot to watch the play.

And the hits just kept on coming… for both teams.

In overtime, the Bills benefited from a ticky-tack roughing the passer call on Eagles linebacker Nicholas Morrow, in which Allen was clearly doing his best LeBron impersonation.

Hochuli’s explanations for some of these calls were predictably odd.

I’m not usually one to call for firings or suspensions in these cases, but let’s just say that none of the people on this crew should be anywhere near a playoff game.

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