Ten NFL Takes - Week 15

 

Take number one: Ric Flair famously said “to be the man, you gotta beat the man” and if you beat the teams with the best records in both the AFC and NFC convincingly, I say, “you’re the man” at least until the playoffs start and you inevitably poop the bed because you’re Buffalo and that’s just what you do.

Take number two: It pains to say the Eagles are the best team in the NFC, it does, but the Eagles are the best team in the NFC. Complete top to bottom, and with an edge the rest of the country finds annoying but defines the city in ways only people who live there appreciate, they manhandled and outclasses the Steelers on a day Saquon did very little and Kellen Moore seemed to say “you don’t think Jalen Hurts can beat you with his arm? Watch him.”

Take number three: What appear to be reckless decisions that look great in retrospect because they work can also look idiotic when they do not. Case in point? Detroit. Down 10 in the fourth quarter to the aforementioned Bills with roughly 12 minutes left to play, the Lions went for an onside kick and it blew up in their faces. Couple that with still more injuries on a defense that was already depleted and a conference top heavy with other contenders breathing down their necks, the Lions may not even win their division, much less get the number one seed (and bye). Did that one play cost them the game? Probably not, but it certainly didn’t help.

Take number four: The speed with which the 49ers window for winning a Super Bowl went from “wide open” to “probably closed” made my head spin. Ten months ago, they were <this close> to winning it all and now they will probably not make the playoffs, the team suddenly looks old, the future is uncertain, and there are legitimate questions about whether (or how much) they should pay Brock Purdy.

Take number five: I admire Saints interim head coach Darren Rizzi for rolling the dice at the end of the game where he team just scored a touchdown and saying “screw it, let’s go for two and the win.” As a Commanders fan, I’m glad his offensive coordinator picked an awful play to call that the Commanders defended easily, but as a fan of sports, I appreciate the gamble. Your team is not going anywhere, why not give them a chance to win the game.

Take number six: I love Lamar. He is probably my favorite player in the league and watching him operate an offense when it is clicking on all cylinders is like what I assume watching Michelangelo looked like back in the day. 100 games played and he just notched his *sixth* game where he threw five touchdown passes. Granted, the Giants are terrible, but he just makes things looks so effortless it is a shame his team keeps committing stupid penalties that may not have hurt them against an inferior team like New York, but is going to bite them in the backside in the playoffs.

Take number seven: The Texans won the AFC South yesterday and it barely caused a ripple which speaks both to the expectations they have not lived up to (good? Yes. Legitimate Super Bowl contender? Not so much.) and the weakness of their division (it helps when two of the other three teams are among the worst in the league). The other teams have coaches and those coaches have done a better job scheming against CJ Stroud while Stroud and last year’s wunderkind Bobby Slowik, have not come up with effective counters. The NFL is a constantly evolving game of cat-and-mouse and that Texans offense is still trying to figure things out fourteen games into the season.

Take number eight: I cannot remember there being less confidence in a team with one loss this late in the season but when your all-world quarterback hobbles out of the game on a bad ankle and you have been winning with smoke and mirrors all season while your one loss came to a team that stomped you out, it does not actually matter that it is the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. It may be that lots of money is lost betting against them in the playoffs, but they play Saturday and then next Wednesday. If they go 2-0, they lock up that one seed and can get rested for the playoffs, but 1-1, or 0-2 (with the possibility of Carson Wentz starting for them?!) and that three-peat seems less and less likely.

Take number nine: Can you guess who is the only team with wins over Detroit and Philadelphia this year? If you said the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, you are right! 2-0 against teams who are 24-2 against everyone else they’ve played and yet does anyone think of Tampa as a legitimate threat in the NFC? I don’t know. Baker’s having a great season (although his tendency to toss INT’s has crept back in recent weeks), they have a great rookie in Bucky Irving and a stout defense. I think it speaks more to the fact the NFC is deep this year, but keep an eye on the Bucs.

Take number ten: NFL-adjacent take. I do not think the Bill Belichick experiment at UNC is going to work. Why? A couple of reasons. First, Belichick’s pitch was that he would replicate an NFL-style program which will attract top talent who want to prepare for playing professionally. Ok, but every major college football program is already this and has for years. Belichick is playing catch up against schools like Georgia, Alabama, Oregon, Texas, and Ohio State (to name just a few) who already have the pro-level practice facilities, the nutritionists, the sports psychologists, and on and on. Second, the idea that Belichick will just dazzle recruits or players in the transfer portal with his credentials is overblown. Yes, Belichick can dump his eight Super Bowl rings on the table, but there are plenty of head coaches and coordinators in the college game who have NFL experience and while the pro game used to influence the college game, the opposite has become far more prevalent, especially on offense, in recent years. Moreover, Belichick has done zero recruiting at the college level and the first guy he brought in – Mike Lombardi – has been out of the pro game for almost a decade and has no college experience whatsoever either. If we learned anything from Belichick’s time as the de facto Patriots GM, he is actually not a great evaluator of college talent. His drafts, particularly the last five years or so at New England, were terrible. The third problem is related to the second. If this was 20 years ago, then yes, simply flashing those rings might work on recruits, but in the NIL and transfer portal world where college football is basically a professional sports league WITH NO SALARY CAP, UNC is at a distinct disadvantage financially. Sure, it has wealthy boosters and alumni, but consider SMU. SMU has so much money sloshing around its football program, it joined the ACC while agreeing to be cut out of the TV revenue sharing among the schools in the conference. And guess where SMU is right now? In the college playoffs. My point is that other schools with deeper pockets, good coaching, and a track record of getting players to the NFL are not going to roll over for Bill Belichick. Which brings me to my final reason. The dude is old. At 72, other schools will recruit against both his age and suggest he might try and get one last crack at the NFL because he is so close to getting the all-time wins record. Add it all up and I think he lasts two years, maybe three, and then either retires for good or some NFL owner desperate to retool his franchise throws a bunch of money at him to coach.