Ten NFL Takes - Week Nine

Take number one: When the Ravens are clicking in all three phases, they are the best team in the league, full stop. A Denver team that had won five of six and has one of the best defenses in the league was embarrassed in Baltimore yesterday. Lamar threw for just shy of 300 yards on 16 completions (which is almost unheard of) and notched his record fourth perfect passer rating, Derrick Henry eclipsed 100 yards rushing, Zay Flowers had 100 plus yards receiving *in the first half* (for the second time this season!) and the defense and special teams both showed up. The Ravens hung 41 on the Broncos without it looking difficult. Their best is better than everyone else’s best but the question for this team is no longer about making the playoffs or even getting to the Super Bowl, it’s winning it all. Sports history is littered with teams that ran up impressive regular season records and contended for a title but never won. The Ravens are one more playoff flameout away from being labeled chokers.

Take number two: It is weird to live in a world where the Detroit Lions are the best team by far in the NFC, but here we are. They thumped Green Bay at Green Bay on a wet field in lousy conditions without their top defensive end and (for most of the game) their do-it-all safety and yet the game was never really in doubt. They can win on the ground, they can win in the air, they can win with special teams, and their defense is solid (although I still think they need to make a trade to bolster their pass rush). The Lions have just one outdoor game left on their schedule where weather will probably play a factor (a December game at Chicago) with every other game in a dome aside from an end-of-the-year road game in San Francisco. They’re going to get the number one seed in the NFC and have to be considered the odds on favorite to represent the conference in the Super Bowl.

Take number three: There is some bad football being played this year. Back in the day, we would get toward the end of the season and some quirk in the schedule would result in what was derisively called “The Toilet Bowl” between two of the league’s worst teams. There were two Toilet Bowl games yesterday – Panthers/Saints and Titans/Patriots, both of which were borderline unwatchable. A quarter of the teams in the entire league have two wins and are going nowhere fast. The Saints fired their head coach and the Raiders dumped a bunch of their position coaches this morning. Expect more to come.

Take number four: I saw a wild statistic on NBC’s Sunday Night pre-game show. It was something to the effect of there have been the same number of field goals made from 60 yards or more this year (four) as were made in the league’s first 80 years. We are living in a golden age of field goal kickers and it is just … weird. When I was growing up, anything beyond 50 yards was rarely made and PATs were chip shots from the two yard line. Now, PATs are the equivalent of 40 yard field goals (and made routinely) and coaches have no qualms about rolling out a kicker at 60 yards or more. They are still low percentage attempts (about which we’ll discuss later) but it is no longer shocking when a ball sails through the uprights at that distance, just ask the Bills and Dolphins.

Take number five: The Jets refuse to leave us alone. Like some football version of WWE’s Undertaker, just when you are ready to bury them, the Jets pop up off the mat. Yes, their win over the Texans at home was decent (although they did nothing in the first half), no, I do not think it will make one bit of difference in the end. That loss to the Patriots doomed their season, the math just is not there for them to make the playoffs.

Take number six: I am a week late to the Anthony Richardson discourse, but First Things First had a graphic I thought was useful. They compared Richardson’s first 10 games in the pros to Josh Allen’s first 10 games in the pros. In almost every category – completion percentage, touchdown-to-interception ratio, quarterback ranking – they were almost identical. The point is not that Richardson will become Josh Allen, just that 10 games is a too-small sample size to draw career-level conclusions about a player. It may be that Richardson simply needs more time to develop better practice and study habits, needs to pay more attention to his conditioning, or just, well, grow up, after all the kid is still only 21 years old, but maybe giving him some time without the pressure of being the starting quarterback will end up working. If not, the Colts are two years away from needing a new signal caller.

Take number seven: If the Bears knock down that Commanders Hail Mary last week, the various sins committed – the goal line hand off to the back up center, the out route the Bears conceded on the penultimate play of the game that got Washington to midfield, the linebacker spying Daniels on the last play, and Tyrique Stevenson jawing with the crowd – all get forgotten in the narrative of a spirited comeback. Instead, Bears fans marinated in that loss for a week and then watched the team lay an egg in Arizona yesterday. Why do I bring that up? Consider the Eagles. They were cruising against a bad Jaguars team, let that bad team back in the game, and then, up five late in the fourth quarter, instead of punting on fourth down and pinning the Jags deep in their own territory, the Eagles try a 58-yard field goal to try and go up by eight. The kick misses, Jacksonville gets great field position, is marching down for a touchdown that will put them ahead, and the Eagles get bailed out because Trevor Lawrence is, as I mentioned last week, a rich man’s Daniel Jones. If the Jags score instead of turning it over, Philly talk radio is Three Mile Island level radioactive this morning and the narrative is much different. Instead, the Eagles are a half-game out of first place, riding a nice winning streak and everyone is going nuts over Saquon’s reverse hurdle.

Take number eight: Jameis Winston went into yesterday’s game against the Chargers with 99 career starts and 99 career interceptions and in true Jameis fashion, he made sure that his one interception per game average remained intact by throwing not one, not two, but three picks. As I said last week, it’s feast or famine with this guy. What makes no sense to me is that this is a team that clearly needs to rebuild and has contracts they could unload in order to mitigate the dead cap hit they are going to take (it’s just a question of how much) when they inevitably cut ties with Deshaun Watson but they are stubbornly refusing to do so even though their season is over.

Take number nine: Dunking on the Cowboys never gets old. In recent years, it was reserved for their playoff failings, but this year, the fun is beginning much earlier. In retrospect, we should have seen this coming. The team’s failure to lock in Lamb and Prescott handicapped their ability to sign free agents, the offense is one dimensional, the head coach was not extended, and they brought in a new defensive coordinator whose recent track record was lousy. While the team has been a bit unlucky with injuries, that is not the only reason Dallas is sitting at 3-5. Jerry can talk all he wants about making moves at the trade deadline, the reality is that the season was lost before it ever began.

Take number ten: That the Giants and Panthers are playing in Munich this Sunday goes to show that we are still punishing the Germans for starting those two world wars. You would be hard pressed to find a worse match up, perhaps the first foreign Toilet Bowl game.