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The Ravens maul the Lions
When I first thought of what a hypothetical fight between a raven and a lion would look like, I initially thought a lion would win without much trouble. The tale of the tape is pretty lopsided in favor of the one that can eat buffaloes.
However, I forgot about one important thing: ravens can fly, and lions can’t. Why engage in on-ground combat when you can just leave the ground whenever you want? That’s exactly what happened at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday. The Lions, who prided themselves on destroying opponents in the trenches, got dismantled by the Ravens through the air en route to their biggest blowout victory in almost three seasons.
The captain of the flight was Lamar Jackson who, by efficiency/production combination standards, had one of the five best games of his career on Sunday. The Ravens scored touchdowns on five of their first six possessions, and it easily could’ve been six straight had Jackson and Justice Hill not fumbled a handoff inside of Detroit’s 25-yard line. The former MVP razzled and dazzled all afternoon with throws like this.
https://x.com/ryanmink/status/1716852215145541754?s=20
And scrambles like this:
https://x.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1716144711394607368?s=20
This is the kind of stuff that’s gotten quarterbacks universally enamored by the football world. Michael Vick, Johnny Manziel, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson. It was a wildly fun reminder of why teams immediately being out on him last offseason was extremely silly.
“Lamar beat us,” Lions head coach Dan Campbell said. “He hammered us with his arm. He ran when he needed to, and we did not handle it well.”
Jackson’s two-way impact was on full display. There were a handful of throws where the threat of Jackson’s legs opened up a receiver, including Gus Edwards’ 80-yard reception in the fourth quarter. While Baltimore’s receivers dropped a bajillion passes not too long ago, they also showed on Sunday how much they’re benefiting Jackson.
It’s still too early to hand out awards; that’s why they do that after the season’s over. But this week (and the past few, if we’re being completely honest) showed once again how valuable Jackson is with his elite arm talent to go along with how dangerous he is with his legs. Should both things continue to show up at a high level, Baltimore’s offense can transcend to a place they haven’t reached since Lamar’s MVP season in 2019.
An unexpected shootout in Indianapolis
I knew the Colts were doomed when I saw they were sporting their “Indiana Nights” jerseys against the Browns.
The team’s website said that the new threads were “inspired by the blue and black of the Indiana night skies”; the only issue is that the Indiana night sky is definitely NOT royal blue. In fact, I don’t think any night sky anywhere in the world is consistently royal blue. Besides, plenty of other teams who’ve worn alternate jerseys for night games – the Carolina Panthers, Miami (FL) and Tennessee, for example – have properly rocked all-black looks to more accurately resemble the color of the night sky. Figure it out, Indy!
While I could foresee a Colts loss on Sunday – they were without Anthony Richardson against a historically dominant Browns defense – I wasn’t thinking they’d lose a wild Midwest shootout that featured Gardner Minshew scoring multiple rushing touchdowns in a single game for the first time…ever? (He didn’t do it in college or high school). The Colts hadn’t been involved in that high-scoring of a contest since they blew a 32-point lead against the Vikings last season, and Cleveland hadn’t done it since Baker Mayfield went toe-to-toe with Justin Herbert two seasons ago.
Somehow, in a game that saw 77 points scored, it was a defensive player that was the star of the show. Earlier this season, I said that some network should re-make a Jadeveon Clowny commercial that centered around him giving quarterbacks nightmares with Micah Parsons when he was wreaking havoc on offenses. Several weeks later, Garrett seems a little more deserving of the honor. After all, Garrett is closer to a scary physical apparition than Parsons.
Garrett had his fingerprints all over the game on Sunday, both on defense and special teams. Not only did he register two strip sacks (one of which was recovered in the end zone for a touchdown), he leapt over the line and blocked a field goal. Like, fully cleared every blue jersey he could’ve touched. This wasn’t Aaron Gordon over Tacko Fall, where Gordon smashed Fall’s neck; Dwyane Wade would’ve given this one a perfect 10.
The Patriots stun the Bills
A couple of weeks ago, I said that the Patriots were broken. This week, they broke the Bills, a team New England owned from the genesis of the Brady era until Josh Allen came along.
I’m unsure if this way of winning is sustainable for the Patriots, but it was certainly encouraging. Offensively, they played extremely clean football and were able to establish the run. Defensively, they forced the Bills out-of-structure (to little avail) and stifled the run.
Mac Jones had the best combination of efficiency and production of his NFL career; the only other times he completed more than 83% of his passes came in 2021, when he threw a pick and a touchdown against the Falcons, and in 2022, when he threw no picks but no touchdowns against the Jets. This time around, his 272 passing yards and two touchdowns bested those two aforementioned performances. He was getting the ball out quickly to open receivers, which included the game-winner to Mike Gesicki with 12 seconds left.
Semi-hot take (I actually have no clue if people have strong opinions on this or not): I think Gesicki’s version of the griddy is very cool, and I think Jones doing his own version of it is perfectly ok as well.
https://x.com/Patriots/status/1716185668022349943?s=20
Call it a skedaddle. Call it weird. Call it goofy. I don’t care. I’ll never give a person crap for dancing joyously, even if it looks a little silly to some.
Quick(ish) hitters
The Raiders try an onside kick strategy that I’ve been pining for since…ever?
I don’t agree with many special teams decisions the Raiders make, but this one…this one made me very happy.
https://x.com/NFL/status/1716182652586528794?s=20
I’m pretty sure I first discovered the idea of an onside kick while playing Madden. After I’d tried a few virtual onside kicks to no avail, a thought popped into my head.
“Why can’t the kicker just kick it as hard as possible at someone?”
Little ol’ Quentin was a real visionary! And the best part is that the thought process still holds up. If an NFL kicker sends a howitzer right at the closest member of the return team, what are they going to do, catch it? The ball is moving so fast at a target that’s so close that a wild deflection is highly likely. In fact, let’s do some quick math.
Travis Homer was standing about ten yards away from Daniel Carlson, which is equivalent to about 30 feet. If a kicked football from an NFL kicker travels approximately 45 miles per hour on average, the speed at which the ball arrived from Point A (Carlson’s foot) to Point B (Homer’s face) was equivalent to about a 90 MPH fastball from an MLB pitcher’s mound to home plate. I can’t find a rule saying that kickers can’t do this, so I’m unsure what’s taken so long for a team to try this.
Luckily for Chicago, the airborne ball landed harmlessly in the arms of Cole Kmet. But despite the intended result for the Raiders not coming to fruition, I really hope we see more fastball kicks and helmet bonks in the future.
Are the Giants anti-vampire homebodies?
Maybe the lights were too bright. Maybe it’s the fact that, through six games, the Giants played arguably three of the best teams in the league. Maybe they just felt far more comfortable playing a day game at home, which they did for the first time all season…in Week 7. The defense continues to look solid, and Tyrod Taylor has done a nice job filling in for Daniel Jones. It’s also kind of crazy what happens when Jaylin Hyatt actually gets in the game and draws one-on-one coverage. Good things, usually!
Younghoe Koo drills another game-winner
The list of truly clutch kickers in NFL history is very short. The likes of Adam Vinatieri, Morten Andersen, Gary Anderson and Justin Tucker are very much a part of that club, but how many more game-winners does Younghoe Koo have to convert in order to join that club?
On Sunday, Koo drilled his seventh career buzzer-beating, game-winning field goal to help the Falcons edge the Buccaneers. Add on three other kicks that weren’t buzzer-beaters but eventual game-winners, and we have ourselves arguably the most clutch kicker in the game besides Tucker.
Let’s hear it for Texas A&M satellite schools!
It’s been a big year for athletics within Texas A&M’s satellite schools. Back in March, Texas A&M Corpus-Christi’s men’s basketball team won their conference tournament for a second consecutive season, defeated Southeast Missouri State in the First Four and gave top-seeded Alabama a run for their money in the Round of 64.
Over at Division II Texas A&M-Commerce, the Lions haven’t had too much to cheer about lately, especially in football. The team is currently 1-6, but one of their football alumni, current Dolphins defensive back Kader Kohou, made one of the biggest plays of the day on Sunday night against the Eagles.
https://x.com/NFLonFOX/status/1716280004940898548?s=20
For Kohou, it was a bounce-back performance from a few weeks ago, when Stefon Diggs toasted him for six catches, 130 yards and a hat trick of touchdowns. Now, we shall await the arrival of a future NFL superstar from Texas A&M-Kingsville.
Awards and superlatives
The JoJo Siwa “have you learned NOTHING?!” Award: Josh McDaniels
A few weeks ago, Josh McDaniels kicked a field goal when he definitely shouldn’t have kicked a field goal. It was confusing, so confusing that pretty much everyone agreed that McDaniels made the wrong decision.
Atoning for a mistake involves two steps: acknowledging the mistake, then putting the lessons you’ve learned into action when a similar situation arises. Here, McDaniels didn’t even know he’d made a mistake a few weeks ago. He contended after Las Vegas’s 23-18 loss to Pittsburgh that kicking a field goal down eight instead of going for it on fourth down and potentially scoring a touchdown would’ve had the Raiders down two possessions regardless. The only problem with that logic is that, since the advent of the two-point conversion in 1994, NFL teams actually could score eight points in one possession. Basically, McDaniels either forgot a team could score eight points in one possession, or he was unable to perform basic arithmetic.
Whatever the reason, it felt like McDaniels had actually learned from his mistake. Down 18, he chose to go for it on fourth-and-four from Chicago’s nine-yard line. The Raiders converted, only to face a fourth-and-goal from the six-yard line a few plays later.
Just like a few weeks ago, McDaniels inexplicably chose to kick a field goal, even though the handy-dandy numbers said that was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decision. Someone get Abby Lee Miller in here.
https://x.com/SethWalder/status/1716171901180002814?s=20
The most Kyle Pitts Kyle Pitts Play of the Season: Kyle Pitts
To preface, the Falcons actually haven’t been as terrible on offense as some might think. They’re 12th in offensive success rate and 14th in explosive designed run rate. There are a couple of reasons that Atlanta might be thought of as a lower-tier offense. They’re tied for third in the league in giveaways, which is a big reason why their offensive EPA is in the bottom 10 (the Falcons are fifth in the league in EPA lost to turnovers).
The other reason their national perception is a tad skewed is that they don’t get the ball to their best players like almost any other team would. Top-ten pick Bijan Robinson has as many rushing touchdowns for the Falcons as I do, and more famously, top-five pick Kyle Pitts has fewer receptions and receiving yards than Jonnu Smith.
Pitts had a trio of catches on Sunday, but there was one that couldn’t have been more representative of his career in Atlanta thus far.
https://x.com/BleacherReport/status/1716148287374524847?s=20
Despite that being one of the gnarliest catches of the year and another display of Pitts’ incredible talents, the ball was off-target, and the play only gained three yards.
I tried so haaaard, and got so faaaaaaar, but in the end, it doesn’t even maaaatterrrrr…
Division II Demon: Tyson Bagent
Shepherdstown is a quaint little area in rural West Virginia. It sits along the Potomac River, right across from the Maryland-West Virginia border and about ten minutes from where the Battle of Antietam was held.
It’s also where Division II Shepherd University is located, which hasn’t had many football alumni EXCEPT BEARS UNDEFEATED NFL STARTING QUARTERBACK TYSON BAGENT, WHO HAS A HIGHER CAREER WIN PERCENTAGE THAN TOM BRADY AND WHOSE DAD IS A 28-TIME ARM WRESTLING CHAMPION.
In all seriousness, the odds of Bagent being here were extremely slim. An undrafted rookie QB from Division II hadn’t made an NFL start since 1950, and yet, here Bagent was. In 2022, Bagent took on schools like Southern Connecticut State, Lock Haven and East Stroudsburg. In his first organized football start since he and the Rams got walloped by the Colorado School of Mines last December in the DII playoffs, Bagent was tasked with leading the Chicago Bears to victory against the Las Vegas Raiders. He had this to say leading up to the game:
“I think everything that has happened and will happen was already set in stone to happen. And I think coming from where I come from, I’ve pretty much beat every odd that there was for me, so I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m going to go out there and fight with these guys to the death and try to stack up as many wins as I can until we get Justin back.”
It wasn’t very explosive, but Bagent got the job done, completing over 72% of his passes without a turnover en route to a blowout victory over the increasingly hapless Raiders. While he didn’t stretch the field much – only four of his 29 pass attempts traveled more than 10 yards in the air – he was safe and efficient. Coolest of all, he offered some lovely life advice after the victory.
“Don’t ever let anyone’s opinion stop you from chasing what you want.”
Speaking of demons…
The Guy that Can’t Catch a Break: Brett Maher
The current starting kicker for the Los Angeles Rams has had his recent past well-documented. Last postseason, as a member of the Cowboys, Maher missed a single-game record four extra points in Dallas’ Divisional Round win over the Buccaneers. It was bad. Very bad. Levels of bad football that had literally never been seen from a kicker.
When Maher signed with the Rams to replace the departed Matt Gay this offseason, the hope was that the single-game catastrophic implosions would subside. Things were going alright for the most part – Maher was 17/20 heading into Sunday, with his four missed kicks all coming in eventual Rams wins.
Then, it happened again. In a game the Rams lost by seven, Maher missed a 51-yard kick wide left, doinked a 53-yarder off the left upright and shanked an extra point. Three missed kicks. Seven points left on the board. Maher was released shortly after.
It’s been quite the fall from grace for Maher who, in 2021 and 2022, was one of the most accurate kickers in the league. He even had a few 60+ yarders to his name. But out of all the positions on a football field, the kicker has arguably the least amount of room for error solely based on how little opportunity they get to succeed compared to everyone else. Quarterbacks, offensive lineman, defensive lineman and most other positions definitely make a handful of mistakes per game. However, Maher made eight mistakes in two games which, unfortunately for him, proved to be far too many to keep a roster spot.
Stat of the Week
Against the Dolphins on Sunday, Lane Johnson allowed his first sack since November 22, 2020. That’s 1,064 days between sacks allowed. I was a junior in high school. The 2020 presidential election wasn’t even three weeks into the future. We still believed that Ben Simmons could propel a team to a championship.
In all seriousness, having sturdy and durable offensive lineman isn’t super common. Lane Johnson has been one of the few exceptions for a very long time. With great players, it’s surprising when they mess up; Sunday showed exactly that.