For this week’s NFL recap, I have once again decided to merge two things that I love very much; football and “The Office”. I believe that weaving in the incredible quotability of the NBC phenomenon with the highs and lows of NFL football will make for spectacular content. I take great joy in creating a world where Pam Beesly and Russell Wilson share a commonality, where Michael Scott has something to do with Patrick Mahomes. Oh, what a beautiful world that is.
“There’s something about an underdog that really inspires the unexceptional.” – Robert California
THE NEW YORK FOOTBALL GIANTS ARE 4-1 AND IT FEELS A LITTLE MORE REAL
Over the past few seasons, a Giants win has never been pretty. It’s usually a grimy, gritty rock fight that almost always ends in a combined final score of less than 50. Since 2020, the Giants have only had 13 victories and most of them felt empty.
New York started 0-5 in 2020, 0-3 in 2021 and were also bad from 2017-19; the Giants never had any sustained positive momentum to make fans believe that they were actually embarking down a path towards something great.
While Big Blue’s 3-1 record to start 2022 was its best since 2016, it looked a tad soft. Their three wins came against Tennessee, Carolina and Chicago, who are all in the bottom half of the league in offensive output. None of their three wins were convincing, although they certainly looked like a well-coached team, a welcome change from the past few years of coaching misery in East Rutherford.
Sunday morning, however, felt different. When Oshane Ximines sacked Aaron Rodgers on Green Bay’s last-ditch Hail Mary attempt to win the game, it clinched the most meaningful Giant victory in what felt like years. Why did this win feel so much more significant than any other over the past few years? The Giants not only played a complete game against a team they were supposed to lose to, but they showed signs of success that can be sustained.
On offense, Daniel Jones was incredible. Although the stat sheet may not reflect it, Jones made continuous good throws to a Giants receiving corps that was missing its top three pass-catchers. Despite nursing an ankle injury and a bloody hand, Jones still used his legs frequently, rushing 10 times for 37 yards.
Elsewhere, Saquon Barkley continued to look like his old self, breaking off multiple huge runs en route to 106 yards from scrimmage. Darius Slayton, who appeared to be on the verge of being cut, registered six catches for 79 yards and looked like the 2019 version of himself that caught eight touchdowns.
But the most exciting part about New York’s victory on Sunday was another brilliant coaching performance. The contrast of Joe Judge’s staff to Brian Daboll’s staff has been shocking. Jason Garrett’s offense was like a 2007 Honda Civic in a league full of Tesla’s and BMW’s; it was outdated, limiting and was exacerbated by seemingly every other NFL offense modernizing to more motion-heavy, more exciting schemes.
Under Daboll and quarterbacks coach Mike Kafka, Jones is being put in far more favorable situations; he’s getting out into space and running a lot more play-action, which is pretty smart when you have Saquon Barkley in the backfield and a mobile quarterback like Jones. Despite a slow start, Jones led the Giants on five consecutive scoring drives, including two of over 85 yards. They also ran a myriad of fun plays that kept the Packers defense on their toes all morning:
Defensively, the Giants don’t shut out the Packers in the second half if not for Wink Martindale’s aggressive play calling. Rodgers really struggled establishing a rhythm with his receivers, especially downfield, and that was in large part due to New York’s blitzes limiting Rodgers to primarily quick throws.
The most impressive part about New York’s 4-1 start is that they’re doing it with a roster that is unbelievably devoid of pure talent. Key contributors have been late-round draft picks practice squad players.
Guess what? It hasn’t mattered…yet. Daboll and the rest of the Giants coaching staff have clearly instilled a culture that emphasizes an underdog mentality, one of grit, heart and determination in the face of doubt, three traits that have defined great New York teams of the past. The ‘07 and ‘11 Super Bowl champion Giants were Wild Card teams that scratched and clawed their way to championships. The ‘90’s Knicks had some of the hungriest hoopers of that era under Pat Riley. The ‘94 Rangers, who were coming off of an underwhelming 79-point season and were not a preseason betting favorite to win the Stanley Cup, won the Cup after 54 years of failing to bring home a championship. The 2022 Giants are nowhere near as good as those teams, but they’ve embodied that similar spirit.
Are the Giants a legit playoff team? Considering how bad the teams below them in the NFC standings have looked thus far, coupled with the fact that the Giants have one of the easiest remaining schedules in the league, the playoffs have suddenly become a very attainable goal for the rejuvenated G-Men.
“USE THE SURGE OF FEAR AND ADRENALINE TO SHARPEN YOUR DECISION MAKING” – Dwight Schrute
Brandon Staley (again)
Since Cade York missed what would have been the game-winning field goal against the Chargers, you might think I’d let Brandon Staley off the hook for a nearly game-losing play call…welp, you thought wrong, because Staley almost lost his team the game with a single decision, and that simply cannot be glossed over.
Despite missing Keenan Allen, Rashawn Slater and Joey Bosa once again, the Chargers found themselves up by two late in the fourth quarter with a chance to ice the game. With two minutes to go in regulation, the Chargers faced a third-and-three on their own 44-yard line. The Browns have no timeouts, so a first down effectively ends the game. Austin Ekeler is brought down after a gain of two, bringing up a fourth-and one on LA’s own 46-yard line.
Let’s pause for a moment and think about our options here. Going for it could end the game, but it could also backfire horribly; the Browns would get the ball and would only have to gain about four yards in just under 80 seconds to get into York’s field goal range, which is not difficult. Punting the ball (assuming you don’t spectacularly screw up) would likely require the Browns to gain at least 35 yards in less than 80 seconds with no timeouts, which is far more difficult.
Staley opted for the former option, and Herbert couldn’t connect with Mike Williams, who was covered like white on rice by Martin Emerson Jr. Even Keenan Allen had to publicly acknowledge his own coach’s odd decision:
Thankfully, York bailed them out, and the Chargers escaped Cleveland with a victory. However, this is the second time that Staley has made a terrible late-game decision, only this time, it didn’t end up costing the Chargers the game. Staley cannot keep outsmarting himself like this. I’m nowhere near qualified to be an NFL head coach, but a lot of times, simply looking at what’s in front of you can absolutely be the best means of making a decision.
In a season where the Chargers’ room for error is much slimmer with a lot of key players getting hurt, Staley cannot keep putting his team in the kind of situations he did on Sunday. If he does, we might not see the superstar version of Justin Herbert in the playoffs for a second consecutive season.
“You know what they say about a car wreck, where it’s so awful you can’t look away? The Dundies are like a car wreck that you want to look away from, but you have to stare at it because your boss is making you.” – Pam Beesly
The Colts and Broncos offenses attempting to play football on Thursday night
Thursday nights from September to December are wonderful. Professional football is on! It’s essentially an appetizer for a glorious weekend ahead, except last Thursday night was like a bad cup of clam chowder that made you want to vomit and question why you ordered it in the first place.
These two struggling AFC squads had a lot of the ingredients needed for a frustrating game. These were the two of the worst offenses in the NFL. One team’s offense had a quarterback who couldn’t stop fumbling, a treacherous offensive line and were without their All-Pro running back. The other team’s offense had a quarterback who eats Subway sandwiches menacingly, has played extremely disappointing football and a head coach who hasn’t appeared to be fit for the job yet.
The game started. Then, after what felt like the plot of “Vivarium” where we all seemed stuck in one dreadful place for eternity, the painful rock fight ended.
The amount of excruciatingly comical events in this game were astounding. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit sounded like they needed a few drinks as both teams were putting on their best Iowa football impersonations. Troves of Denver Broncos fans, the supporters of the home team, left before overtime, which is supposed to be the most exciting part of the game, simply because they’d had enough. After the game, Richard Sherman seemed to have vivid Super Bowl XLIX flashbacks while criticizing Denver’s late-game decision-making. All in all, everyone that sat through the entirety of this game should be honored with some sort of ceremony and deserves immense respect.
Speaking of the Broncos…it’s time for an official intervention regarding their offense, because this was rock bottom in a season where they’ve seemed to hit a new low every week. The blame pie could mainly be dished out to two people: Russell Wilson and Nathaniel Hackett.
Let’s start with Wilson. He was supposed to end the vicious cycle of underwhelming Broncos quarterbacks that had hamstrung the franchise since Peyton Manning’s departure in 2015. The Broncos gave up a treasure chest of assets and paid him a lot of money to hopefully snap the NFL’s second-longest playoff drought. After all, Wilson had been one of the most consistently good quarterbacks on a team that consistently won for almost a decade.
While it may be extremely surprising to see Wilson playing this poorly, he’s playing like he has his entire career. Russ has always been a freelancer: an eccentric artist that colors outside the lines while generally ignoring basic offensive structure. He has largely ignored the middle of the field in favor of deep shots, scrambles and checkdowns, a sort of “all-or-not-a-lot” approach to quarterbacking. While this has produced countless spectacular plays since he entered the league a decade ago, it’s not a sustainable way of quarterbacking.
As a pass-catcher, it’s very difficult to be on the same wavelength as your quarterback when he’s not following the structure of an offense. For example, a large part of what makes the Bills offense so lethal (other than the fact that they have a literal metahuman at quarterback) is that they know exactly where the ball is supposed to go every single time, which makes it very easy to establish a rhythm. Josh Allen also has a lot of trust in all of his receivers, which is helpful when option A (Stefon Diggs) isn’t available.
The Broncos don’t have either of those things. Wilson’s inability to work the middle of the field because he’s literally too short to see over the middle as well as his seeming lack of trust in other Denver pass-catchers besides Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton has created moments like what we saw on Thursday night.
First, there was this egregious miss:
Then, a horrendous interception that had zero business being thrown:
Then, a bizarre, befuddling, gut-wrenching and backbreaking interception that also should not have been thrown, especially considering that it was Stephon Gilmore that Russ was testing:
Finally, the play that encapsulated Denver’s night on offense. Wilson completely missed a wide open KJ Hamler, who the play was literally designed for, for what would’ve been a game-winning touchdown and instead opted for a desperation bullet that was thrown behind Sutton, which went about as well as one likely would’ve predicted:
Now, we must talk about Hackett. Santana Moss once said that big-time players step up in big games, and that quote applies to coaches as well. The best coaches make the best decisions when the lights are the brightest and when the pressure is the greatest. Through five weeks, Hackett has proven to be anything but a big-time player with numerous confusing decisions (and indecisions), especially in the most important moments of the game.
On Thursday, Hackett once again made multiple coaching mistakes. As atrocious as it was, Wilson’s second pick of the game that led to Indy’s game-tying field goal should not have happened. The Broncos faced a third-and-four up three with 2:13 to go in regulation. The Colts have no timeouts. A first down likely ends the game. Even if the Colts get a stop, you kick a short field goal and make Indy’s offense, which had yet to find the end zone all night, put together a lengthy touchdown drive with little time to do so.
The decision to go for the win in overtime is less worrisome…until you remember that Hackett elected to kick a 64-yard field goal in Seattle instead of going for it on fourth-and-five after mysteriously milking the clock less than a month ago. First, he didn’t trust his quarterback to make a play, now he trusted him too much.
So now what? In order for the Broncos to figure it out, Russ needs to change, and Hackett needs to get better at making decisions. While the Broncos are committed to Wilson, Hackett’s seat is hot. A lot of the front office and coaching staff is new, so they’re not inclined to keep anyone around who they don’t think is getting the job done. If Hackett keeps fumbling in the spotlight, he might have a Willaim Henry Harrison-esque tenure in Denver.
**Andy punching through a wall**
The Falcons’ feelings toward the referees (probably)
Take a couple of minutes to read the summary page of Rule 12, Section 2, Article 11 in the NFL Rulebook, which pertains to roughing the passer penalties. Actually, don’t read that. This relates back to the Staley section of this column; just use your eyes to make a decision here on whether roughing the passer should have been called on Grady Jarrett:
If you answered no, good job! You likely have proper judgment. Unfortunately, Jerome Boger did not, and since Boger actually had the authority to make the call, it was ruled a roughing the passer. I understand that human error exists, but this should not still be happening in 2022.
“I…declare…BANKRUPTCYYYYYY!” – Michael Scott
The Pittsburgh Steelers
After another Gabe Davis eruption and an almost record-setting half from Josh Allen, the Bills steamrolled the Steelers, who now sit at 1-4. With games against Tampa Bay, Miami, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Baltimore (2x) still on the schedule, the Steelers are going to have to work some magic to extend their streak of consecutive non-losing seasons to 19. This looks like the beginning of an unprecedented plummet for Pittsburgh.
Are the Steelers just the Colts with a better franchise reputation to fall back on? Their offensive line continues to struggle, and their defense still looks broken without T.J. Watt. Although Pittsburgh’s receivers continued to play well, Kenny Pickett couldn’t push the ball downfield despite having a solid day.
The consecutive non-losing seasons statistic is mind-boggling. Every other fanbase in the NFL has witnessed their team stink for at least one season other than the Patriots and Steelers. Pittsburgh fans that are 18 and under have literally never experienced a single losing season from their football team. As of now, the Steelers hold the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, which would be the highest they’ve picked since they selected Terry Bradshaw with the first overall pick all the way back in 1970. If the Steel Curtain continues to look closer to a torn up piece of fabric, the Steelers might find themselves in a place they never thought they’d end up in.