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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/11/28/...-city-chiefs-overtime-field-goal-decision-nfl
The Decision and the Doink
The Chiefs-Broncos game had it all Sunday, from a coach’s impossible dilemma to a kicker’s ‘prettiest goal.’ A breakdown of the OT thriller plus the rest of Week 12, including Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston and more
By Peter King
Photo: Aaron Ontiveroz/Getty Images
It’s a fascinating decision to face, one that every sports talk-show host in America will discuss for the next few days. Analytic equations will be proffered. A former player on ESPN will adamantly say Denver coach Gary Kubiak made the right call as the clock ticked past midnight on the East Coast. A former player on ESPN will adamantly say Kubiak made the wrong call. Kubiak will be a dunce, or he will be a Seal Team 6 sergeant.
Sunday night, Kansas City at Denver. Overtime, 68 seconds to play, Broncos’ ball, fourth-and-10, K.C. 44-yard line. The game is already 3 hours, 46 minutes old. Players are dragging. America’s on the edge of its seat. If it’s not the game of the year, this AFC West duel to the end is its first cousin.
Kubiak, the Denver coach, has one timeout left. He uses it. He needs to think.
* * *
There’s plenty to write about today, but there’s one thing to write about today: Kubiak’s call. Across the field, Andy Reid talked to his coaches about it.
“I said to our guys, ‘Gary’s got a big decision to make,’” Reid said from the Chiefs locker room early this morning. “If they punt, they’ll punt it out of bounds so [dangerous Tyreek Hill] can’t return it. If he goes for it and doesn’t make it, he’s got a problem with field position. If he goes for the field goal, it’s a long kick, and they risk giving us the ball in good field position. Then he kept his offensive line out there, so I’m thinking, ‘What is he going to do?’”
Timeout. I didn’t talk to Kubiak after the game, but in cases like this he always asks his trusted special-teams coach, Joe DeCamillis, if kicker Brandon McManus has the range for a kick this far. Kubiak and DeCamillis certainly would know that McManus hadn’t attempted a 62-yard field goal in his pro career. His long: 57, which he made last year.
They would also know that 62 yards is within his range; he’d made a 70-yard kick when he was competing for the job in training camp in 2015; but kicking in temperate Denver is different from kicking the harder football in 38-degree Denver, which is what Sunday evening was. Kubiak and DeCamillis knew that too.
The other issue, frankly, was Denver’s position in this weird AFC West pennant race. As Kubiak pondered the decision, Oakland (9-2) was 1.5 games up on Denver and Kansas City (both 7-3), and the Broncos had the worst division tiebreaker situation, at just 1-2 in the division. Among the three teams, a tie between the Chiefs and Broncos would help Oakland the most and hurt Denver the most. A loss, obviously, would hurt more than a tie.
Denver could go for the first down, but it seemed a long shot to make 10 yards against this ferocious pass rush, though the Broncos had much better luck moving the ball after halftime. Making the field goal seemed more likely than making 10 yards, Kubiak thought. Punting the ball would increase the odds for a tie, but it would guarantee nothing.
It would put the ball, perhaps, around the Kansas City 15-yard line. The Chiefs would have one timeout and maybe 62 seconds to drive 50 yards for a potential winning field goal by Cairo Santos.
McManus bombed balls in practice and before games, even in cold weather. “Brandon played with my son at Temple,” said Reid, whose son Britt was on the Temple staff in 2012. “He’s got a huge leg. No question in my mind he’d be capable of a kick that long.”
Reid thought for a minute. “Tough call,” he said. “There really is no right answer.”
Easy to say: Play it safe. What, exactly, would “safe” be? Punting, with a 70 percent chance (just a guess by me) of a tie? Going for it? Attempting the field goal, knowing that a miss sets up a short field for Santos?
Kubiak sent McManus on the field. The snap was good. The hold was good. It looked like McManus, in trying to get a little extra on the kick, hit the ground first, and the resulting line drive hooked left, long enough but nowhere near splitting the uprights.
As McManus told reporters after the game: “I kicked the ground. From that distance, if you kick the ground you probably have a five percent chance to make it.”
In the locker room, when Kubiak gathered his team, he said, “That’s my decision. I’m always going to coach aggressively with this team. I’ve got faith in this team. We’re always gonna try to win.”
Von Miller told reporters after the game: “What are we playing [for]? Are we going to play for a tie or are we trying to win the game? I’m 100-percent behind Kube right there. We have one of the best defenses in the National Football League. I wouldn’t just play for the tie, either. If we had to do it all over again, I would do it again.”
It’s not a crazy decision—at all. A tie would have left Denver 1-2-1 in the division with a Christmas night game at Kansas City and a Week 17 home game with Oakland remaining—and two wins to make up if the Broncos were to have a shot to win the division. A tie, likely, would make Denver’s best playoff chance a sixth and final seed in the AFC—though it’s silly to project so far into the future; so many things can happen in December.
If a tie was close to a lock, that’s one thing … but it wasn’t. Kansas City had driven 41 and 60 yards, respectively, on its previous two possessions. The risk was trusting a kicker in cold weather who hadn’t attempted one of these kicks, and it was a big risk. But as Reid said, there was no right answer here—just some options that weren’t as dangerous as others.
* * *
Great game. The Chiefs led 9-0. The Broncos led 10-9. The Chiefs led 16-10. The Broncos led 17-16. The Broncos led 24-16, with 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Kansas City had the ball at the Denver three with no timeouts left, knowing this might be the last play of the game. Reid called the best two-point-conversion play on his call sheet—a short incut from the left to rookie wideout Tyreek Hill—and Alex Smith fired a low strike that Hill caught.
But the line judge ruled him down just shy of the goal line, and the clock ticked down toward zero. On NBC, Mike Tirico said what America was thinking: “They’re not gonna get a play off and Denver is gonna get the win!” But with a second left, referee Peter Morelli announced the play was under review.
As Tirico deftly pointed out, it appeared Hill was bobbling the ball as he fell into the end zone, and if he didn’t have complete control and if the ball never hit the ground, then it was to his advantage to not have control until he hit the ground in the end zone—and that’s exactly what Morelli ruled. The two-point conversion sent it to overtime. McManus field goal, Santos field goal; 27-all. And then the drama with Kubiak’s decision, and then the drama with Chiefs driving to try to win.
With two seconds left and the ball on the Denver 16, Santos trotted onto the field.
How ironic. An extra point.
Not really, but Santos’ job would be to make the kind of kick almost every kicker has been struggling with all season. Placekickers missed 12 PATs in Week 11, a kick that in effect is a 33-yard field goal. This would be from 34. That’s it. Santos is 21 of 22 in the PAT business this season. But they were hardly gimmes. Bengals kicker Mike Nugent extended his streak of PAT misses to three straight on Sunday in Baltimore.
On the phone from the locker room afterward, Santos said, “I was probably too juiced up.”
Uh-oh. The ball was spotted at the 16, on the left hash. Snapper James Winchester (amazing this man is playing, two weeks after his father was murdered in Oklahoma) fired a perfect spiral to holder Dustin Colquitt, who made a perfect spot and hold.
“I hit the ball so clean off my foot, just right,” Santos said. “So I was shocked with what happened.”
The kick hooked and hooked and it was going straight for the left upright, and …
DOINK!
“My heart stopped a little bit,” Santos said.
“I wasn’t watching the kick,” said Reid. “I always watch the kicker. And I’m watching, and listening, and I think, ‘Something crazy just happened.’ I thought he missed. He missed.”
To the TV.
“OFF THE UPRIGHT! AND IN! AND IN! UNBELIEVABLE GAME-WINNER, KANSAS CITY!” Tirico pronounced. “You gotta be kidding me!”
NBC color analyst Cris Collinsworth: “The only way the game could end. Holy smokes! … That thing hit that post hard! How did it go through?!”
Fairly inconceivable, even in slo-mo. The ball caromed hard off the front inside of the left upright and shot to the right on a line, so quickly that you couldn’t tell right away whether it actually went behind the right upright. But a second camera view saw it go barely behind the right upright.
View: https://twitter.com/cairosantos19/status/803126206006595584
The only player in NFL born in Brazil knew the perfect way to put this strike of great good fortune.
“Where I come from,” said Cairo Fernandes Santos, “those are the prettiest goals.”
Santos was an exchange student in a Florida high school and knew nothing about American football eight years ago. But he started kicking a football and got good at it. He played soccer too. “I had a goal like this kick tonight,” Santos said. “In high school, I had a free kick that bent to the left and kept bending, and it hit the left post and just bounced in—like this kick. Those are the prettiest ones, like I said.” Then he went to Tulane on scholarship and landed with the Chiefs, undrafted, in 2014. He made the team.
Back to this kick. “I didn’t see it go through,” Santos said. “I was looking at the refs, and I didn’t see a signal. I knew it went in when the guys started saying to me, ‘You made it! You made it!’”
“Luck of the Irish,” said Reid. “Even though I’m Scottish, I’ll take it.”
Kansas City, 8-3, welcomes 9-2 Oakland to Arrowhead, on a short-week Thursday, in 10 days. The Chiefs have 7-4 Denver on Christmas night at Arrowhead. You make your own luck in this game, and on Sunday night and this season, the Chiefs are making a lot of it.
* * *
More Week 12 highlights
Let me apologize in advance to the other 11 games on Sunday, for what I could have covered were it not for the Sunday-nighter that sucked so much of the attention out of the weekend. I owe:
• The Giants, who won their sixth in a row (27-13 over Cleveland) to move two wins ahead of Washington and stay two games behind Dallas. Now here comes the eight-day test everyone in Giantland’s been awaiting: at Pittsburgh next Sunday, home with Dallas the Sunday after that. New York’s six-game streak has come, in order, over Baltimore, the Rams, Philly, Cincinnati, Chicago and Cleveland. The Bengals, Bears and Browns are a combined 5-28-1.
• The Saints (5-6) may not make it to the playoffs, and in fact would have to run the table in the final five weeks, including games at Tampa Bay and Atlanta. But you knew how much putting up 49 points on ex-defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’ vaunted Ram defense meant to Asshole Face; Williams confirmed much of the information the league used to whack the Saints hard after the Bountygate investigation. Saints 49, Rams 21, including a wide receiver option TD pass from Willie Snead to rub it in when the outcome was long past decided.
• Arizona (4-6-1) and Carolina (4-7), last year’s NFC Championship Game foes, lost on the road Sunday, all but eliminating them from playoff contention. It’s amazing, really, how tenuous a hold even a good team has on success. But these two will have work to do—especially on the offensive line—to contend again in 2017.
• Another loss for the 1-10 Niners on Sunday (31-24 at Miami), but Colin Kaepernick was terrific in defeat, amassing his first 400-total-yard game in three seasons. Chip Kelly had to watch this game and think, “Maybe this guy can win again, and maybe we’ll be a match.”
Kaepernick threw for 296 yards, ran for 134, accounted for three touchdowns and generally looked like the kind of threat that made Ron Jaworski say three years ago he could be an all-timer. Kaepernick will need to be consistent in the last month, but suddenly his Niners future is a story instead of a fait accompli.
• I’ll have some stuff in my Wednesday column on the Raiders and Ravens, items I won’t get to today. Come back and see my column then for some things the Sunday night game elbowed out and I didn’t want to minimize.
* * *
Now about the two QBs who got singed in 2015
Photo: David Banks/Getty Images
Remember the skepticism surrounding both Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota before the 2015 draft? Winston was careless with the football and in his personal life. Mariota was a product of a system in which the quarterback didn’t think much, but rather simply followed orders—and ran a lot.
One NFL scout told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelthat a team “is going to make a horrible mistake” drafting Winston. And CBS’ Pete Prisco tweeted: “People think Winston is getting killed by scouts? Some personnel people I talked with think Mariota will be a flat out bust.”
So they went 1-2, Winston to Tampa Bay and Mariota to Tennessee, and long slogs to respectability were forecast—if the two quarterbacks ever reached it. Head coaches were fired in both places after their rookie seasons, setting back the timetables.
Let’s see where each is today.
Winston has the Bucs at 6-5 entering December; they’re a game in back of first-place Atlanta in the NFC South. He’s 10th in the league with 2,900 passing yards after Tampa’s 14-5 upset of NFC West-leading Seattle on Sunday, the second straight takedown of a playoff team (Bucs 19, Chiefs 17, in Week 11).
Winston, after Sunday’s game: “We were just talking about this game in the shower. We wish we could play it again right now. Just run it back, play it again. We played very tough. What I like about our team is we attack people. We respect Seattle a lot, but all week we were going to attack them. We came in expecting to make plays, not hoping to make plays.’’
“Russell Wilson, I’ve got such great admiration for him. He’s a true inspiration for what he has done for African-American quarterbacks and how he conducts himself.”
I asked Winston if he felt the Bucs were solid playoff contenders. “We’re just trying to be 1-0 every week. It’s so easy to think about the future, but it doesn’t help you. I am just trying to get better every single week, just like our team. The hardest thing about this league is, week after week, you’ve got to go out and start over and prove yourself. The best teams do that.”
Mariota and the Titans are 6-6 entering their late bye week. After a slow start, Mariota is 5-3 and one of the hottest quarterbacks in football over the last half-season. His rating in past eight games is 117.7; his touchdown-to-interception differential is 21-3. In Chicago on Sunday he continued his marvelous run of red zone play. In his year-and-two-thirds, he’s thrown 32 red zone touchdowns with zero interceptions.
He’s a quieter leader than Winston. Both are poised, but Winston will take charge on the field more. The Titans don’t mind; they knew Mariota was a leader by example, and that’s just what he’s been.
Mariota, after Sunday’s win in Chicago: “Throughout the offseason, our guys believed in what we were doing. I’m not necessarily surprised by where we are. Our coaches, to me, have done a great job of teaching us situational football. I’m confident in whatever comes up. [In the red zone] the message is, ‘No sacks, no turnovers, just make it to the next play. Don’t do too much.’”
He said he likes the run-based offense—Tennessee has been 47 percent run in the first two-thirds of the season. “All I want to do is win games,” he said. “I don’t care what they call, or what they ask me to do.” Mariota has made improvements in synthesizing plays and options quickly, seeing that at Oregon he didn’t have the kind of freedom an NFL quarterback has.
Brian Billick says the odds are about 50-50 for first-round quarterback success, and the stats bear him out. For every passer who makes it big, or fairly big, there’s a Johnny Manziel who doesn’t last. Maybe the 2015 crop will be the exception to the rule. Too early to tell, but Tampa Bay and Tennessee contending for the playoffs entering the last month of their young QBs’ second season is a sign the teams chose wisely—then coached their investments well.
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Photo: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Mark Ingram, running back, New Orleans. With apologies to the peerless Drew Brees (four touchdown passes, no picks) in the stunningly easy 49-21 rout of the Rams, Ingram came out of concussion protocol during the week to have the best Sunday of any back in football: 14 carries for 146 yards and a touchdown, and one reception for 21 yards and a TD. Running hard and making Rams miss, Ingram had 167 total yards, the best one by a back against a very good defense this year.
Saints TE Josh Hill. Hill might not be the first Saints tight end that comes to mind but his blocks were the key to some of the Saint’s bigger runs in their demolition of the Rams’ defense. Hill’s run blocking grade of 88.8 ranked second among all offensive players in Week 12. Hill was also a productive in the pass game, with six receptions on six targets and 51 yards after the catch. Drew Brees’s QB rating when throwing at Hill was 118.1.
View: https://twitter.com/WillBrinson/status/802964863869825024
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Fitting. Three best edge players sharing the best defensive player award in a crucial week.
Von Miller, linebacker, Denver. Ten tackles, three sacks and two more significant pressures, and a tackle of Tyreek Hill behind the line, a tipped pass on the last-gasp Kansas City drive in the final minute of regulation … in a game in which the Broncos needed Miller desperately. Denver was in this thanks in large part to one of the best games Miller has played for them.
Justin Houston, linebacker, Kansas City. Entering Sunday night in Denver, Houston had played 12 mostly ineffective games (due to a knee injury) since his monster 22.5-sack season of 2014. Finally, for the first time since a four-sack finale against San Diego 23 months ago, Houston was the feared defensive force he hasn’t been in so long. With three first-half sacks and a continued fearsome presence in the second half and overtime despite leaving for a few plays with a banged shoulder, Houston was a vital factor in the Chiefs’ win in Denver.
Khalil Mack, linebacker, Oakland. So Houston, if he can stay healthy, may be a factor in the conversation of the best edge player in football. But for now, based on what we’ve seen over the past couple of years, Von Miller and this man, third-year rusher Mack, are the most dangerous edge players in the NFL.
Mack was masterful against the Panthers in Oakland’s 35-32 win, picking a pass out of the sky against Cam Newton late in the first half and running it in for a touchdown (complete with a Lambeau Leap into the Black Hole). On the Panthers’ last gasp to make this a game—and to make this a season, quite frankly—Mack strip-sacked Newton on fourth down in the last minute to clinch a 35-32 win. What a fearsome player.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Justin Tucker, kicker, Baltimore. It’s notable that the snapper (Morgan Cox) and holder (Sam Koch) are fabulous and really consistent. Tucker won this before halftime, with field goals from 52, 57 and 54 yards in the first half against Cincinnati. So he had the wind with him.
Watching this game, the kick from 57 would have been good from 65, easy, and the kick from 54, would have been good from 70, easy. Tucker is the best kicker in football right now (18 for 18 beyond 40 yards), perfect on 42 PATs and field goals. It’s not up for debate.
Tyreek Hill, punt returner/wide receiver, Kansas City. Hill became the first player with a rushing TD, receiving TD and kick return TD in a single game since Gale Sayers (1965 Bears against Vikings). The fifth-round rookie from that football power West Alabama (don’t tell Malcolm Butler) returned a free kick after a safety 86 yards for a second-quarter touchdown in Denver; had a three-yard TD run with 30 seconds left in the third quarter to give the Chiefs the lead; and caught a touchdown pass at the goal-line to help push the game to overtime. Hill is a dangerous Chief, with the speed and shiftiness reminiscent of Dante Hall.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Mike Mularkey, head coach, Tennessee. So Mularkey was roundly second-guessed (that's putting it nicely) for his 1993 approach to offensive football before the season—namely, for deciding the Titans would be a running team more than a passing team. He built up the offensive line and drafted a running back high, planning to plow the ball and keep it out of the hands of the opposing offense. Hey, whatever works.
The Titans struggled to a 1-3 start, but the Titans have won five of eight to move to a half-game out of first in the weak AFC South. It helps that Mularkey has a precocious quarterback who doesn't make many mistakes. But it also helps, as in games such as Tennessee's 27-21 win at Chicago on Sunday, that he sticks to the plan he made for this team when the Titans gave him the full-time gig.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Mike Nugent, kicker, Cincinnati. In a 16-12 loss to Buffalo last week, Nugent missed his only two extra point tries. On the Bengals’ first touchdown of the day at Baltimore on Sunday, with Baltimore up 16-9, Nugent went wide right. Three extra-point misses in a row. Three 33-yard kicks in a row, missed. It’s not about the fact that Nugent missed a game-winner or game-decider either week. It’s just missing three straight PATs. Inexcusable.
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Stats of the Week
In the span of 12 days, Kirk Cousins has ensured that he’s going to get paid. That’s how long it took (against Minnesota on Nov. 13; Green Bay on Nov. 20; and Dallas on Nov. 24) against three teams in the NFC playoff race to show he really should be liked now. The numbers over the three-games-in-12-days span:
Comp/Pct...... Yards/Game........... TD-INT................. Rating
.724......................... 362.0.......................8-0..................... 124.4
“I can’t say enough about how good he has played,” said Washington coach Jay Gruden. “To go 41-for-51, I think it was, for 430 yards and three touchdowns, no picks, and no sacks, and then on Sunday night to put up the performance that he did. And then not really getting any practice reps against the Cowboys defense throughout the week and go out and do that, that’s really unheard of in a short week against a good team on the road.”
So where will Cousins end up on the spectrum when he’s paid in 2017? Andrew Luck’s average deal ($24.6 million) and Drew Brees’ ($24.3 million) are at the top, followed in a cluster by Joe Flacco, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Ben Roethlisberger, all between $21.8 million and $22.2 million. Then come six veterans between $20 million and $21 million annually, and then Cousins’ one-yard deal at $19.95 million. Cousins’ average is 13th now. It won’t be lower than third whenever he signs for the long-term in 2017.
Since he won the Washington starting job to open the 2015 season, Cousins is second among all NFL quarterbacks in accuracy (69.18 percent passing), fourth in passing yards (7,706) and fourth in passer rating (101.5).
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Photo: Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The first-place team in the NFC North, Detroit, has played 11 games. In those 11 games, Detroit has, in order:
• Trailed by one with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by one with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 14 with 4:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 11 with 2:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by two with 1:30 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by seven with 6:30 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by four with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 10 with 3:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 10:10 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 1:50 left in the fourth quarter.
In each of its 11 games, Detroit has trailed at some point in the final 11 minutes. Detroit won the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, 10th and 11th of those games.
All 11 games have been decided by seven points or less.
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Things I Think I Think
I think these are my quick notes of analysis of Week 12:
a. Dallas is the best team in the NFC, but the potential 5 or 6 seed with the best shot of running the table in the postseason looks like explosive Washington.
b. No player in the past three weeks has burst onto the scene as impressively as Miami wideout DeVante Parker. And I doubt any team has a better under-25 1-2-3 at the receiver position right now than the Dolphins: Jarvis Landry is 24, Kenny Stills is 24 and Parker is 23.
c. I don’t have any solid evidence to suggest this will happen, but I’m just making a pre-emptive statement: If Washington GM Scot McCloughan is thinking of playing hardball with Kirk Cousins in 2017 negotiations, and not paying him market value for a top-10 quarterback, I think he is making a serious error.
d. Perfect example of the wrong call of unnecessary roughness in Cincinnati-Baltimore. Steve Smith Sr. was in a small row with Vontaze Burfict (imagine that!). Smith bumped him, and Burfict flopped like he’d been shot by firing squad. And the officials flagged Smith, not the diving Burfict.
e. I loved Atlanta offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s wrinkles against Arizona, which included a direct snap to Mohamed Sanu and the Sanu keeper on an option route.
f. There’s a reason Houston cornerback A.J. Bouye will be a very rich free agent in March 2017, and it’s more than just his clinging coverage ability. He continued to show against San Diego that he’s an excellent physical open-field tackler.
g. The exclamation point on Houston being officially worried about Brock Osweiler came Sunday. He finished with zero touchdowns and three picks against San Diego, and now has 12 TDs and 13 interceptions on the season.
h. When I see Marcell Dareus have the kind of game he had Sunday—two sacks, eight tackles in the 28-21 must-win over Jacksonville for the 6-5 Bills—I think: How great would he have been for his first five seasons if he hadn’t had his myriad off-field problems?
i. Sometimes, I bet Sam Bradford wishes this NFL season lasted five games.
2. I think, after 12 weeks, my MVP ballot, one through five, would go this way: 1. Ezekiel Elliott; 2, Derek Carr; 3, Russell Wilson; 4, Dak Prescott; 5, Matthew Stafford. Any ordering of the top four right now wouldn’t get much of an argument from me, even after Wilson got pillaged by the marauding Buccaneers. It's about a season, not a Sunday.
3. I think I’m respectful of the Dallas-offensive-line-as-collective-MVP candidate, and it’s not a thoughtless alternative. But tackle Tyron Smith, center Travis Frederick and guard Zack Martin are deserving all-pro candidates, while the other two starters—guard Ronald Leary and tackle Doug Free—are not. In the same way you honor the best line in football by naming them co-MVPs (or however you’d word it), you’d also dilute the award by including two men who, while good players, are not on the level of their all-pro peers.
4. I think the most amazing inactive of this season happened Sunday in New Orleans: The Rams benched and made inactive the second pick in the 2014 draft, left tackle Greg Robinson. He was awful against the Dolphins last week, and he’s been a prime culprit in the poor season of franchise back Todd Gurley. Stunning stat from Pro Football Focus: Of the 77 tackles who have played enough to earn grades this season, Robinson’s run-blocking grade is dead last.
5. I think, for those who pooh-poohed the election’s effect on NFL TV ratings, this is either a big coincidence or dumb scheduling luck, or the reality of the fact that the strangest, most intense presidential election of our time was this fall. But three of the highest-rated games this year have been played since the election: 16 days after it (Dallas-Washington, 35.1 million viewers; and Detroit-Minnesota, 27.6 million), and five days after it (Dallas-Pittsburgh, 28 million viewers).
There’s still no disguising the fact that ratings were down 12 percent across the board, with prime time down more than Sunday afternoon. And it’s unlikely the number will be sliced significantly from here on out, barring a tightening of the races involving two of the biggest teams in TV games; Dallas and New England both enter the final six weeks with two-game leads in their divisions and looking like playoff locks. But we’ll see.
6. I think, watching 90 percent of the Carolina-Oakland game Sunday, it stuns me that the Panthers have lost seven games. That is one scary team, with weapons on both sides of the ball.
7. I think I have no use for these NFL Next Gen Stats. What good does it do to tell me LeSean McCoy was the fastest player in football Sunday, at 21.87 mph? What does it mean? On NFL RedZone, Scott Hanson told us that McCoy was the only player to run over 20 mph Sunday, and the fastest guy this season was Xavier Rhodes, at 22.40 on an interception return last week.
I am all for progress, and all for new and illuminating statistics. But telling me someone runs 21 mph, or 19 mph, or 22.40 mph, adds nothing to my knowledge of football or my enjoyment of the game.
8. I think you have to wonder if Michael Oher’s future is in question in Charlotte. He’s 30. He played but three games all season before being placed on IR with concussion symptoms Friday … and is owed $13 million over the next three years. He was the league’s 24th-rated left tackle last season, per Pro Football Focus. He wants to continue playing, but the Panthers may decide to look elsewhere unless he comes back strong early in the offseason.
9. I think this is not a stat anyone who loves the Browns will like reading: Cleveland used three draft choices while passing on Russell Wilson (75th pick overall) in 2012, three draft choices while passing on Derek Carr (36th) in 2014, and eight draft choices while passing on Dak Prescott in 2016. The Browns weren’t alone. The Bears passed on Prescott six times, the Jets four times (while picking the inactive Christian Hackenberg), and the 49ers four times.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/11/28/...-city-chiefs-overtime-field-goal-decision-nfl
The Decision and the Doink
The Chiefs-Broncos game had it all Sunday, from a coach’s impossible dilemma to a kicker’s ‘prettiest goal.’ A breakdown of the OT thriller plus the rest of Week 12, including Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston and more
By Peter King
Photo: Aaron Ontiveroz/Getty Images
It’s a fascinating decision to face, one that every sports talk-show host in America will discuss for the next few days. Analytic equations will be proffered. A former player on ESPN will adamantly say Denver coach Gary Kubiak made the right call as the clock ticked past midnight on the East Coast. A former player on ESPN will adamantly say Kubiak made the wrong call. Kubiak will be a dunce, or he will be a Seal Team 6 sergeant.
Sunday night, Kansas City at Denver. Overtime, 68 seconds to play, Broncos’ ball, fourth-and-10, K.C. 44-yard line. The game is already 3 hours, 46 minutes old. Players are dragging. America’s on the edge of its seat. If it’s not the game of the year, this AFC West duel to the end is its first cousin.
Kubiak, the Denver coach, has one timeout left. He uses it. He needs to think.
* * *
There’s plenty to write about today, but there’s one thing to write about today: Kubiak’s call. Across the field, Andy Reid talked to his coaches about it.
“I said to our guys, ‘Gary’s got a big decision to make,’” Reid said from the Chiefs locker room early this morning. “If they punt, they’ll punt it out of bounds so [dangerous Tyreek Hill] can’t return it. If he goes for it and doesn’t make it, he’s got a problem with field position. If he goes for the field goal, it’s a long kick, and they risk giving us the ball in good field position. Then he kept his offensive line out there, so I’m thinking, ‘What is he going to do?’”
Timeout. I didn’t talk to Kubiak after the game, but in cases like this he always asks his trusted special-teams coach, Joe DeCamillis, if kicker Brandon McManus has the range for a kick this far. Kubiak and DeCamillis certainly would know that McManus hadn’t attempted a 62-yard field goal in his pro career. His long: 57, which he made last year.
They would also know that 62 yards is within his range; he’d made a 70-yard kick when he was competing for the job in training camp in 2015; but kicking in temperate Denver is different from kicking the harder football in 38-degree Denver, which is what Sunday evening was. Kubiak and DeCamillis knew that too.
The other issue, frankly, was Denver’s position in this weird AFC West pennant race. As Kubiak pondered the decision, Oakland (9-2) was 1.5 games up on Denver and Kansas City (both 7-3), and the Broncos had the worst division tiebreaker situation, at just 1-2 in the division. Among the three teams, a tie between the Chiefs and Broncos would help Oakland the most and hurt Denver the most. A loss, obviously, would hurt more than a tie.
Denver could go for the first down, but it seemed a long shot to make 10 yards against this ferocious pass rush, though the Broncos had much better luck moving the ball after halftime. Making the field goal seemed more likely than making 10 yards, Kubiak thought. Punting the ball would increase the odds for a tie, but it would guarantee nothing.
It would put the ball, perhaps, around the Kansas City 15-yard line. The Chiefs would have one timeout and maybe 62 seconds to drive 50 yards for a potential winning field goal by Cairo Santos.
McManus bombed balls in practice and before games, even in cold weather. “Brandon played with my son at Temple,” said Reid, whose son Britt was on the Temple staff in 2012. “He’s got a huge leg. No question in my mind he’d be capable of a kick that long.”
Reid thought for a minute. “Tough call,” he said. “There really is no right answer.”
Easy to say: Play it safe. What, exactly, would “safe” be? Punting, with a 70 percent chance (just a guess by me) of a tie? Going for it? Attempting the field goal, knowing that a miss sets up a short field for Santos?
Kubiak sent McManus on the field. The snap was good. The hold was good. It looked like McManus, in trying to get a little extra on the kick, hit the ground first, and the resulting line drive hooked left, long enough but nowhere near splitting the uprights.
As McManus told reporters after the game: “I kicked the ground. From that distance, if you kick the ground you probably have a five percent chance to make it.”
In the locker room, when Kubiak gathered his team, he said, “That’s my decision. I’m always going to coach aggressively with this team. I’ve got faith in this team. We’re always gonna try to win.”
Von Miller told reporters after the game: “What are we playing [for]? Are we going to play for a tie or are we trying to win the game? I’m 100-percent behind Kube right there. We have one of the best defenses in the National Football League. I wouldn’t just play for the tie, either. If we had to do it all over again, I would do it again.”
It’s not a crazy decision—at all. A tie would have left Denver 1-2-1 in the division with a Christmas night game at Kansas City and a Week 17 home game with Oakland remaining—and two wins to make up if the Broncos were to have a shot to win the division. A tie, likely, would make Denver’s best playoff chance a sixth and final seed in the AFC—though it’s silly to project so far into the future; so many things can happen in December.
If a tie was close to a lock, that’s one thing … but it wasn’t. Kansas City had driven 41 and 60 yards, respectively, on its previous two possessions. The risk was trusting a kicker in cold weather who hadn’t attempted one of these kicks, and it was a big risk. But as Reid said, there was no right answer here—just some options that weren’t as dangerous as others.
* * *
Great game. The Chiefs led 9-0. The Broncos led 10-9. The Chiefs led 16-10. The Broncos led 17-16. The Broncos led 24-16, with 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Kansas City had the ball at the Denver three with no timeouts left, knowing this might be the last play of the game. Reid called the best two-point-conversion play on his call sheet—a short incut from the left to rookie wideout Tyreek Hill—and Alex Smith fired a low strike that Hill caught.
But the line judge ruled him down just shy of the goal line, and the clock ticked down toward zero. On NBC, Mike Tirico said what America was thinking: “They’re not gonna get a play off and Denver is gonna get the win!” But with a second left, referee Peter Morelli announced the play was under review.
As Tirico deftly pointed out, it appeared Hill was bobbling the ball as he fell into the end zone, and if he didn’t have complete control and if the ball never hit the ground, then it was to his advantage to not have control until he hit the ground in the end zone—and that’s exactly what Morelli ruled. The two-point conversion sent it to overtime. McManus field goal, Santos field goal; 27-all. And then the drama with Kubiak’s decision, and then the drama with Chiefs driving to try to win.
With two seconds left and the ball on the Denver 16, Santos trotted onto the field.
How ironic. An extra point.
Not really, but Santos’ job would be to make the kind of kick almost every kicker has been struggling with all season. Placekickers missed 12 PATs in Week 11, a kick that in effect is a 33-yard field goal. This would be from 34. That’s it. Santos is 21 of 22 in the PAT business this season. But they were hardly gimmes. Bengals kicker Mike Nugent extended his streak of PAT misses to three straight on Sunday in Baltimore.
On the phone from the locker room afterward, Santos said, “I was probably too juiced up.”
Uh-oh. The ball was spotted at the 16, on the left hash. Snapper James Winchester (amazing this man is playing, two weeks after his father was murdered in Oklahoma) fired a perfect spiral to holder Dustin Colquitt, who made a perfect spot and hold.
“I hit the ball so clean off my foot, just right,” Santos said. “So I was shocked with what happened.”
The kick hooked and hooked and it was going straight for the left upright, and …
DOINK!
“My heart stopped a little bit,” Santos said.
“I wasn’t watching the kick,” said Reid. “I always watch the kicker. And I’m watching, and listening, and I think, ‘Something crazy just happened.’ I thought he missed. He missed.”
To the TV.
“OFF THE UPRIGHT! AND IN! AND IN! UNBELIEVABLE GAME-WINNER, KANSAS CITY!” Tirico pronounced. “You gotta be kidding me!”
NBC color analyst Cris Collinsworth: “The only way the game could end. Holy smokes! … That thing hit that post hard! How did it go through?!”
Fairly inconceivable, even in slo-mo. The ball caromed hard off the front inside of the left upright and shot to the right on a line, so quickly that you couldn’t tell right away whether it actually went behind the right upright. But a second camera view saw it go barely behind the right upright.
View: https://twitter.com/cairosantos19/status/803126206006595584
The only player in NFL born in Brazil knew the perfect way to put this strike of great good fortune.
“Where I come from,” said Cairo Fernandes Santos, “those are the prettiest goals.”
Santos was an exchange student in a Florida high school and knew nothing about American football eight years ago. But he started kicking a football and got good at it. He played soccer too. “I had a goal like this kick tonight,” Santos said. “In high school, I had a free kick that bent to the left and kept bending, and it hit the left post and just bounced in—like this kick. Those are the prettiest ones, like I said.” Then he went to Tulane on scholarship and landed with the Chiefs, undrafted, in 2014. He made the team.
Back to this kick. “I didn’t see it go through,” Santos said. “I was looking at the refs, and I didn’t see a signal. I knew it went in when the guys started saying to me, ‘You made it! You made it!’”
“Luck of the Irish,” said Reid. “Even though I’m Scottish, I’ll take it.”
Kansas City, 8-3, welcomes 9-2 Oakland to Arrowhead, on a short-week Thursday, in 10 days. The Chiefs have 7-4 Denver on Christmas night at Arrowhead. You make your own luck in this game, and on Sunday night and this season, the Chiefs are making a lot of it.
* * *
More Week 12 highlights
Let me apologize in advance to the other 11 games on Sunday, for what I could have covered were it not for the Sunday-nighter that sucked so much of the attention out of the weekend. I owe:
• The Giants, who won their sixth in a row (27-13 over Cleveland) to move two wins ahead of Washington and stay two games behind Dallas. Now here comes the eight-day test everyone in Giantland’s been awaiting: at Pittsburgh next Sunday, home with Dallas the Sunday after that. New York’s six-game streak has come, in order, over Baltimore, the Rams, Philly, Cincinnati, Chicago and Cleveland. The Bengals, Bears and Browns are a combined 5-28-1.
• The Saints (5-6) may not make it to the playoffs, and in fact would have to run the table in the final five weeks, including games at Tampa Bay and Atlanta. But you knew how much putting up 49 points on ex-defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’ vaunted Ram defense meant to Asshole Face; Williams confirmed much of the information the league used to whack the Saints hard after the Bountygate investigation. Saints 49, Rams 21, including a wide receiver option TD pass from Willie Snead to rub it in when the outcome was long past decided.
• Arizona (4-6-1) and Carolina (4-7), last year’s NFC Championship Game foes, lost on the road Sunday, all but eliminating them from playoff contention. It’s amazing, really, how tenuous a hold even a good team has on success. But these two will have work to do—especially on the offensive line—to contend again in 2017.
• Another loss for the 1-10 Niners on Sunday (31-24 at Miami), but Colin Kaepernick was terrific in defeat, amassing his first 400-total-yard game in three seasons. Chip Kelly had to watch this game and think, “Maybe this guy can win again, and maybe we’ll be a match.”
Kaepernick threw for 296 yards, ran for 134, accounted for three touchdowns and generally looked like the kind of threat that made Ron Jaworski say three years ago he could be an all-timer. Kaepernick will need to be consistent in the last month, but suddenly his Niners future is a story instead of a fait accompli.
• I’ll have some stuff in my Wednesday column on the Raiders and Ravens, items I won’t get to today. Come back and see my column then for some things the Sunday night game elbowed out and I didn’t want to minimize.
* * *
Now about the two QBs who got singed in 2015
Photo: David Banks/Getty Images
Remember the skepticism surrounding both Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota before the 2015 draft? Winston was careless with the football and in his personal life. Mariota was a product of a system in which the quarterback didn’t think much, but rather simply followed orders—and ran a lot.
One NFL scout told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelthat a team “is going to make a horrible mistake” drafting Winston. And CBS’ Pete Prisco tweeted: “People think Winston is getting killed by scouts? Some personnel people I talked with think Mariota will be a flat out bust.”
So they went 1-2, Winston to Tampa Bay and Mariota to Tennessee, and long slogs to respectability were forecast—if the two quarterbacks ever reached it. Head coaches were fired in both places after their rookie seasons, setting back the timetables.
Let’s see where each is today.
Winston has the Bucs at 6-5 entering December; they’re a game in back of first-place Atlanta in the NFC South. He’s 10th in the league with 2,900 passing yards after Tampa’s 14-5 upset of NFC West-leading Seattle on Sunday, the second straight takedown of a playoff team (Bucs 19, Chiefs 17, in Week 11).
Winston, after Sunday’s game: “We were just talking about this game in the shower. We wish we could play it again right now. Just run it back, play it again. We played very tough. What I like about our team is we attack people. We respect Seattle a lot, but all week we were going to attack them. We came in expecting to make plays, not hoping to make plays.’’
“Russell Wilson, I’ve got such great admiration for him. He’s a true inspiration for what he has done for African-American quarterbacks and how he conducts himself.”
I asked Winston if he felt the Bucs were solid playoff contenders. “We’re just trying to be 1-0 every week. It’s so easy to think about the future, but it doesn’t help you. I am just trying to get better every single week, just like our team. The hardest thing about this league is, week after week, you’ve got to go out and start over and prove yourself. The best teams do that.”
Mariota and the Titans are 6-6 entering their late bye week. After a slow start, Mariota is 5-3 and one of the hottest quarterbacks in football over the last half-season. His rating in past eight games is 117.7; his touchdown-to-interception differential is 21-3. In Chicago on Sunday he continued his marvelous run of red zone play. In his year-and-two-thirds, he’s thrown 32 red zone touchdowns with zero interceptions.
He’s a quieter leader than Winston. Both are poised, but Winston will take charge on the field more. The Titans don’t mind; they knew Mariota was a leader by example, and that’s just what he’s been.
Mariota, after Sunday’s win in Chicago: “Throughout the offseason, our guys believed in what we were doing. I’m not necessarily surprised by where we are. Our coaches, to me, have done a great job of teaching us situational football. I’m confident in whatever comes up. [In the red zone] the message is, ‘No sacks, no turnovers, just make it to the next play. Don’t do too much.’”
He said he likes the run-based offense—Tennessee has been 47 percent run in the first two-thirds of the season. “All I want to do is win games,” he said. “I don’t care what they call, or what they ask me to do.” Mariota has made improvements in synthesizing plays and options quickly, seeing that at Oregon he didn’t have the kind of freedom an NFL quarterback has.
Brian Billick says the odds are about 50-50 for first-round quarterback success, and the stats bear him out. For every passer who makes it big, or fairly big, there’s a Johnny Manziel who doesn’t last. Maybe the 2015 crop will be the exception to the rule. Too early to tell, but Tampa Bay and Tennessee contending for the playoffs entering the last month of their young QBs’ second season is a sign the teams chose wisely—then coached their investments well.
* * *
Photo: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Mark Ingram, running back, New Orleans. With apologies to the peerless Drew Brees (four touchdown passes, no picks) in the stunningly easy 49-21 rout of the Rams, Ingram came out of concussion protocol during the week to have the best Sunday of any back in football: 14 carries for 146 yards and a touchdown, and one reception for 21 yards and a TD. Running hard and making Rams miss, Ingram had 167 total yards, the best one by a back against a very good defense this year.
Saints TE Josh Hill. Hill might not be the first Saints tight end that comes to mind but his blocks were the key to some of the Saint’s bigger runs in their demolition of the Rams’ defense. Hill’s run blocking grade of 88.8 ranked second among all offensive players in Week 12. Hill was also a productive in the pass game, with six receptions on six targets and 51 yards after the catch. Drew Brees’s QB rating when throwing at Hill was 118.1.
View: https://twitter.com/WillBrinson/status/802964863869825024
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Fitting. Three best edge players sharing the best defensive player award in a crucial week.
Von Miller, linebacker, Denver. Ten tackles, three sacks and two more significant pressures, and a tackle of Tyreek Hill behind the line, a tipped pass on the last-gasp Kansas City drive in the final minute of regulation … in a game in which the Broncos needed Miller desperately. Denver was in this thanks in large part to one of the best games Miller has played for them.
Justin Houston, linebacker, Kansas City. Entering Sunday night in Denver, Houston had played 12 mostly ineffective games (due to a knee injury) since his monster 22.5-sack season of 2014. Finally, for the first time since a four-sack finale against San Diego 23 months ago, Houston was the feared defensive force he hasn’t been in so long. With three first-half sacks and a continued fearsome presence in the second half and overtime despite leaving for a few plays with a banged shoulder, Houston was a vital factor in the Chiefs’ win in Denver.
Khalil Mack, linebacker, Oakland. So Houston, if he can stay healthy, may be a factor in the conversation of the best edge player in football. But for now, based on what we’ve seen over the past couple of years, Von Miller and this man, third-year rusher Mack, are the most dangerous edge players in the NFL.
Mack was masterful against the Panthers in Oakland’s 35-32 win, picking a pass out of the sky against Cam Newton late in the first half and running it in for a touchdown (complete with a Lambeau Leap into the Black Hole). On the Panthers’ last gasp to make this a game—and to make this a season, quite frankly—Mack strip-sacked Newton on fourth down in the last minute to clinch a 35-32 win. What a fearsome player.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Justin Tucker, kicker, Baltimore. It’s notable that the snapper (Morgan Cox) and holder (Sam Koch) are fabulous and really consistent. Tucker won this before halftime, with field goals from 52, 57 and 54 yards in the first half against Cincinnati. So he had the wind with him.
Watching this game, the kick from 57 would have been good from 65, easy, and the kick from 54, would have been good from 70, easy. Tucker is the best kicker in football right now (18 for 18 beyond 40 yards), perfect on 42 PATs and field goals. It’s not up for debate.
Tyreek Hill, punt returner/wide receiver, Kansas City. Hill became the first player with a rushing TD, receiving TD and kick return TD in a single game since Gale Sayers (1965 Bears against Vikings). The fifth-round rookie from that football power West Alabama (don’t tell Malcolm Butler) returned a free kick after a safety 86 yards for a second-quarter touchdown in Denver; had a three-yard TD run with 30 seconds left in the third quarter to give the Chiefs the lead; and caught a touchdown pass at the goal-line to help push the game to overtime. Hill is a dangerous Chief, with the speed and shiftiness reminiscent of Dante Hall.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Mike Mularkey, head coach, Tennessee. So Mularkey was roundly second-guessed (that's putting it nicely) for his 1993 approach to offensive football before the season—namely, for deciding the Titans would be a running team more than a passing team. He built up the offensive line and drafted a running back high, planning to plow the ball and keep it out of the hands of the opposing offense. Hey, whatever works.
The Titans struggled to a 1-3 start, but the Titans have won five of eight to move to a half-game out of first in the weak AFC South. It helps that Mularkey has a precocious quarterback who doesn't make many mistakes. But it also helps, as in games such as Tennessee's 27-21 win at Chicago on Sunday, that he sticks to the plan he made for this team when the Titans gave him the full-time gig.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Mike Nugent, kicker, Cincinnati. In a 16-12 loss to Buffalo last week, Nugent missed his only two extra point tries. On the Bengals’ first touchdown of the day at Baltimore on Sunday, with Baltimore up 16-9, Nugent went wide right. Three extra-point misses in a row. Three 33-yard kicks in a row, missed. It’s not about the fact that Nugent missed a game-winner or game-decider either week. It’s just missing three straight PATs. Inexcusable.
* * *
Stats of the Week
In the span of 12 days, Kirk Cousins has ensured that he’s going to get paid. That’s how long it took (against Minnesota on Nov. 13; Green Bay on Nov. 20; and Dallas on Nov. 24) against three teams in the NFC playoff race to show he really should be liked now. The numbers over the three-games-in-12-days span:
Comp/Pct...... Yards/Game........... TD-INT................. Rating
.724......................... 362.0.......................8-0..................... 124.4
“I can’t say enough about how good he has played,” said Washington coach Jay Gruden. “To go 41-for-51, I think it was, for 430 yards and three touchdowns, no picks, and no sacks, and then on Sunday night to put up the performance that he did. And then not really getting any practice reps against the Cowboys defense throughout the week and go out and do that, that’s really unheard of in a short week against a good team on the road.”
So where will Cousins end up on the spectrum when he’s paid in 2017? Andrew Luck’s average deal ($24.6 million) and Drew Brees’ ($24.3 million) are at the top, followed in a cluster by Joe Flacco, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Ben Roethlisberger, all between $21.8 million and $22.2 million. Then come six veterans between $20 million and $21 million annually, and then Cousins’ one-yard deal at $19.95 million. Cousins’ average is 13th now. It won’t be lower than third whenever he signs for the long-term in 2017.
Since he won the Washington starting job to open the 2015 season, Cousins is second among all NFL quarterbacks in accuracy (69.18 percent passing), fourth in passing yards (7,706) and fourth in passer rating (101.5).
* * *
Photo: Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The first-place team in the NFC North, Detroit, has played 11 games. In those 11 games, Detroit has, in order:
• Trailed by one with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by one with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 14 with 4:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 11 with 2:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by two with 1:30 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by seven with 6:30 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by four with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by 10 with 3:00 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 10:10 left in the fourth quarter.
• Trailed by three with 1:50 left in the fourth quarter.
In each of its 11 games, Detroit has trailed at some point in the final 11 minutes. Detroit won the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, 10th and 11th of those games.
All 11 games have been decided by seven points or less.
* * *
Things I Think I Think
I think these are my quick notes of analysis of Week 12:
a. Dallas is the best team in the NFC, but the potential 5 or 6 seed with the best shot of running the table in the postseason looks like explosive Washington.
b. No player in the past three weeks has burst onto the scene as impressively as Miami wideout DeVante Parker. And I doubt any team has a better under-25 1-2-3 at the receiver position right now than the Dolphins: Jarvis Landry is 24, Kenny Stills is 24 and Parker is 23.
c. I don’t have any solid evidence to suggest this will happen, but I’m just making a pre-emptive statement: If Washington GM Scot McCloughan is thinking of playing hardball with Kirk Cousins in 2017 negotiations, and not paying him market value for a top-10 quarterback, I think he is making a serious error.
d. Perfect example of the wrong call of unnecessary roughness in Cincinnati-Baltimore. Steve Smith Sr. was in a small row with Vontaze Burfict (imagine that!). Smith bumped him, and Burfict flopped like he’d been shot by firing squad. And the officials flagged Smith, not the diving Burfict.
e. I loved Atlanta offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s wrinkles against Arizona, which included a direct snap to Mohamed Sanu and the Sanu keeper on an option route.
f. There’s a reason Houston cornerback A.J. Bouye will be a very rich free agent in March 2017, and it’s more than just his clinging coverage ability. He continued to show against San Diego that he’s an excellent physical open-field tackler.
g. The exclamation point on Houston being officially worried about Brock Osweiler came Sunday. He finished with zero touchdowns and three picks against San Diego, and now has 12 TDs and 13 interceptions on the season.
h. When I see Marcell Dareus have the kind of game he had Sunday—two sacks, eight tackles in the 28-21 must-win over Jacksonville for the 6-5 Bills—I think: How great would he have been for his first five seasons if he hadn’t had his myriad off-field problems?
i. Sometimes, I bet Sam Bradford wishes this NFL season lasted five games.
2. I think, after 12 weeks, my MVP ballot, one through five, would go this way: 1. Ezekiel Elliott; 2, Derek Carr; 3, Russell Wilson; 4, Dak Prescott; 5, Matthew Stafford. Any ordering of the top four right now wouldn’t get much of an argument from me, even after Wilson got pillaged by the marauding Buccaneers. It's about a season, not a Sunday.
3. I think I’m respectful of the Dallas-offensive-line-as-collective-MVP candidate, and it’s not a thoughtless alternative. But tackle Tyron Smith, center Travis Frederick and guard Zack Martin are deserving all-pro candidates, while the other two starters—guard Ronald Leary and tackle Doug Free—are not. In the same way you honor the best line in football by naming them co-MVPs (or however you’d word it), you’d also dilute the award by including two men who, while good players, are not on the level of their all-pro peers.
4. I think the most amazing inactive of this season happened Sunday in New Orleans: The Rams benched and made inactive the second pick in the 2014 draft, left tackle Greg Robinson. He was awful against the Dolphins last week, and he’s been a prime culprit in the poor season of franchise back Todd Gurley. Stunning stat from Pro Football Focus: Of the 77 tackles who have played enough to earn grades this season, Robinson’s run-blocking grade is dead last.
5. I think, for those who pooh-poohed the election’s effect on NFL TV ratings, this is either a big coincidence or dumb scheduling luck, or the reality of the fact that the strangest, most intense presidential election of our time was this fall. But three of the highest-rated games this year have been played since the election: 16 days after it (Dallas-Washington, 35.1 million viewers; and Detroit-Minnesota, 27.6 million), and five days after it (Dallas-Pittsburgh, 28 million viewers).
There’s still no disguising the fact that ratings were down 12 percent across the board, with prime time down more than Sunday afternoon. And it’s unlikely the number will be sliced significantly from here on out, barring a tightening of the races involving two of the biggest teams in TV games; Dallas and New England both enter the final six weeks with two-game leads in their divisions and looking like playoff locks. But we’ll see.
6. I think, watching 90 percent of the Carolina-Oakland game Sunday, it stuns me that the Panthers have lost seven games. That is one scary team, with weapons on both sides of the ball.
7. I think I have no use for these NFL Next Gen Stats. What good does it do to tell me LeSean McCoy was the fastest player in football Sunday, at 21.87 mph? What does it mean? On NFL RedZone, Scott Hanson told us that McCoy was the only player to run over 20 mph Sunday, and the fastest guy this season was Xavier Rhodes, at 22.40 on an interception return last week.
I am all for progress, and all for new and illuminating statistics. But telling me someone runs 21 mph, or 19 mph, or 22.40 mph, adds nothing to my knowledge of football or my enjoyment of the game.
8. I think you have to wonder if Michael Oher’s future is in question in Charlotte. He’s 30. He played but three games all season before being placed on IR with concussion symptoms Friday … and is owed $13 million over the next three years. He was the league’s 24th-rated left tackle last season, per Pro Football Focus. He wants to continue playing, but the Panthers may decide to look elsewhere unless he comes back strong early in the offseason.
9. I think this is not a stat anyone who loves the Browns will like reading: Cleveland used three draft choices while passing on Russell Wilson (75th pick overall) in 2012, three draft choices while passing on Derek Carr (36th) in 2014, and eight draft choices while passing on Dak Prescott in 2016. The Browns weren’t alone. The Bears passed on Prescott six times, the Jets four times (while picking the inactive Christian Hackenberg), and the 49ers four times.
:homercrawl:
