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Saturday Takeaways: Josh Allen Brings AFC East Crown to Buffalo, Packers Survive Panthers

Also previewing Sunday's games, including Tua’s big test against Belichick, Vance Joseph’s heroics in Arizona, Washington looks to win ugly again, and Brees returns but Saints defense is the key. Plus, musical guest: Dead Boys!

Gary Gramling

Due to Saturday football, we once again combine Football Things and the Sunday FreakOut in the style of your favorite TV crossovers, like when the Jetsons traveled back in time and met the Flintstones, or the time Perfect Stranger Balki ended up in Twin Peaks, where he was trapped in the black lodge after the interdimensional spirit Bob possessed Cousin Larry and brutally murd—well, you’ve seen the episode.

We begin with the Sunday FreakOut: Saturday Edition. Reacting and overreacting to everything that happened in the Week 15 Saturday games...

Things That Made Me Giddy

The AFC East Crown Returns to Its Rightful Home: Just as the prophecy I saw in my Alpha-Bits this morning foretold.

Bills Celebrate an Opening Coin-Toss Win: Is this a thing that they do? They should make it a thing.

Matt Rhule’s Clock Management: He went with the first-down red-zone field goal with 2:08 left and just one timeout. It was the right move; had they worked to the other side of two minutes and got a touchdown, they would have had to recover an onside kick. If not, they would have been getting the ball back needing only a field goal, but having only about 15 seconds to work with.

Krys Barnes Goes Serge Ibaka at the Goal Line: He’s not as impossibly handsome as Serge Ibaka, but I’ve been waiting for the day when a defensive player does this to a QB trying to reach it over the top.

What Velocity Can Do for You: This isn’t played well, but it’s not played terrible by Denver’s split safeties. The ball is just there before anyone can react.

The Panthers’ Young Defense: The pass rush is just about there (Brian Burns is a stud) and the back end is coming together—Donte Jackson had one of his best games as a pro on Saturday. It’s a dangerous game trying to project year-to-year development, but the Panthers might be ready for a big Year 2 under Phil Snow.

Regrets

Another Uneven Packers Performance in Lambeau: Not sure why this team has come out flat a few times at home—they’ll be playing there at least once, probably twice, in January—but they were lucky to get away with one on Saturday night.

Tre’Davious White Down: It’s unclear what the severity is (it seems Stefon Diggs’s injury was much less serious), but losing their top corner going into January would ruin many of Christmas across Western New York.

Drew Lock Has Had a Bummer of a Summer: (Summer is what I call autumn and winter.) It was out of his hands to land with a team that would force him into two offenses under two different coordinators in his first two seasons, but this thing doesn’t look like it’s going to work. The Broncos will likely have a shot at one of the three second-tier quarterbacks in April (Ohio State’s Justin Fields, North Dakota State’s Trey Lance or BYU’s Zach Wilson) and they should take it.

Moments We’ll Tell Our Grandkids About

This Breathtaking Throw: This is the least consistent part of Josh Allen’s game, these over-the-top throws.

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What We’ll Be Talking About This Week

The MVP Runner-Up Race Heats Up: Josh Allen overtook Aaron Rodgers on Saturday, but can he hold him off over the final two weeks? And how many times will Patrick Mahomes, healthy for a full season, win the award before the NFL decides they had better start honoring second place to create some kind of drama?

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NFL Week 15 Preview
USA Today Sports (5)

Now, please join me for this week’s Football Things, previewing the rest of Week 15…

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1. It’s going to be a big three weeks for Tua Tagovailoa, who has a chance to lift the Dolphins to a surprising playoff berth while shushing those second-guessers who set their clocks to Ryan Fitzpatrick meltdowns this time of year. And the biggest of the remaining tests will be Sunday when Tua gets his first taste of a Bill Belichick defense.

Belichick has a history of devouring young quarterbacks’ souls, as evidenced by a Week 13 shutout of the Chargers during which New England held Justin Herbert to 3.9 yards per attempt, intercepted him twice and midway through the third quarter put him in a headlock at midfield as Belichick shaved the rookie’s head while chuckling, “yeah… you ain’t beautiful no more.”

One week ago, Tua had a rocky start against a Chiefs defense heavy on disguised coverages, though he did a better job as the game went on. The Patriots secondary’s calling card has been man coverage and a better understanding of help than any unit in the league, but Belichick is certainly capable at throwing something unexpected at a young quarterback.

However, more worrisome than what the Patriots do in the secondary is the fact that they can turn their young edge rushers loose against a Miami team that’s really lacking in the run game. A week ago the Rams shoved it down New England’s throat with Cam Akers, which meant Chase Winovich—a force in the pass rush but a liability against the run—and rookie speed rusher Josh Uche were spectators. In the Chargers victory, both Winovich and Uche harassed Herbert all afternoon, and stayed on the field as the Chargers were forced to go pass-heavy while playing from behind.

Tua has been bothered more by interior pressure more than edge heat, and his numbers when pressured are solid, but even a cursory glance at his 2020 tape shows a young quarterback who has issues when the pocket gets muddy. If the Dolphins don’t trust the run game enough to keep New England honest, and the Patriots feel free to use their younger, more disruptive edge players, that poses much bigger problems for Tua.

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2. Vance Joseph probably won’t get another shot at a head-coaching job. But consider that, of the 13 coaches who have won the Super Bowl since the league expanded to 32 teams, seven of them were retreads, and of those seven retreads, four were defensive coaches (in simpler terms, nine of the last 18 Super Bowls have been won by a retread defensive coach). Also consider that Joseph’s biggest issues in Denver were the lack of a starting-caliber quarterback (not his fault) and a struggle with in-game management (correctable over time). And finally, consider that in 2020, Joseph is overseeing a shorthanded unit that is absolutely dragging the Cardinals’ high-profile offense into the postseason.

Since Kyler Murray’s highlight scrambles started drying up—a combination of opponents adjusting and a reluctance by Murray due to his injured shoulder—the Cardinals have been exposed as an ordinary unit on the offensive side of the ball. They’re fine. But when you scrap a head coach after one season to hire a young offensive coach who just got fired from a collegiate program, spend the No. 1 overall pick on a quarterback one year after trading up for one in the first round, and acquire the best receiver in football, you expect something transcendent, not middling.

While the Kliff-Kyler part of the equation has struggled, Joseph has created a pass rush despite losing All-Pro Chandler Jones, taking heat off a rickety secondary in which long-time stud Patrick Peterson is very much showing his age at times. Budda Baker has become a Tyrann Mathieu sequel, and Joseph is figuring out uses for Isaiah Simmons’s unique and, in some ways, flawed skillset.

Joseph’s unit was dominant in a must-win game at East Rutherford last week, but you might have missed his other hits. They gave up a lot of yards to the Seahawks in a Week 7 overtime win—their second post-Chandler Jones game—but it was Joseph’s relentless blitzing that frazzled Russell Wilson late, so much so that the Seahawks retreated to a run-heavy approach in their rematch four weeks later. They also effectively knocked Josh Allen off his game in Week 10. At the moment, Arizona’s defensive DVOA has climbed to ninth in the NFL, while their offensive DVOA has fallen to 14th, unfathomable considering the disproportionate investments made in the two units. Coaching is about teaching and solving problems, and Joseph has done both at a high level this season.

Unfortunately, there are too many head-coaching candidates who are so young and handsome—frightfully handsome—and new—frightfully new—and don’t coach the defensive side of the ball like some kind of weirdo. Joseph won’t get legitimate consideration for a second chance as a head coach, but he should.

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3. This is the part of the column where I write that, while I don’t think either of the NFC East front-runners will pull off big upsets on Sunday, they might. And if they do, I’ll raise me hand and proclaim that I predicted it, secure in the belief that not a single one of you has the courage to call me out. With those pleasantries out of the way, a look at what’s ahead for the Football Team and the Giants…

a. In Washington, the Football Team will be without Alex Smith and his complete disdain for moving the ball forward, turning to Dwayne Haskins and his mild disdain for moving the ball forward along with a tendency to put the ball in danger once or twice a game, when they face Seattle. However, we saw a certain NFC East team upset the Seahawks using that tack two weeks ago, when the Colt McCoy Giants went to Seattle and steamrolled that defense with the power run game.

But of those 79 words, that’s about 76 too many to devote to an offense that has barely factored into the four-game win streak that launched Washington to the top of the NFC East (the three words I’d keep: “the,” “mild” and “tack”—I love the word “tack”). The Football Team’s defense has dominated, and the team is winning in the very precise, narrow, outdated manner in which they’re built to win. Adding to that low-scoring, defense-first approach, Sunday’s game will be further equalized by morning rain on the infamous turf of FedExField, which is not traditional turf but actually a mixture of loose gravel and runoff from the Prince George County recycling plant (fun fact: the field looks green—rather than its actual dull gray hue—due to the reflective properties of aurora borealis). This has a chance to be a sloppy mess of a game that barely resembles organized football, which is what the Football Team aims for.

b. As the Browns close in on a chance to get to 10 wins—in primetime!—the only way it can go wrong is if a sometimes leaky run defense fails to contain Wayne Gallman. Cleveland’s run defense has had issues at times this season—most notably in the Week 8 home loss to the Raiders when they gave up 209 on the ground in the muck and lost the kind of game they’re built to win. The fact that it’s a short week, after an emotionally exhausting home loss, won’t help. But the thought of a Colt McCoy-led (or one-legged Daniel Jones-led) foe foiling their plans is a bit too much. Or, perhaps, a bit too on-the-nose considering the franchise history.

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4. Hey, it’s Drew Brees! And he’s doing stuff! Brees makes his return in Sunday’s marquee game as the Saints host the Chiefs, coming back just as Michael Thomas goes out again. In Brees’s six full games without Thomas, he put up 289.7passing yards per game and the Saints averaged 28.7 points, each of which would rank top-five if extrapolated over a full season. Thus, the Saints should be able to keep up if this is a shootout.

It will be more interesting to see how their defense, which played at an elite level in the second half of the season until last week in Philadelphia, fares against Patrick Mahomes and Co. Dennis Allen’s group seemed legitimately caught by surprise when the Eagles went heavy on read-option plays, despite the fact that it was really Philly’s only option with Jalen Hurts under center. The Saints allowed just one run of more than 15 yards over the previous five games going into last week, then gave up runs of 82, 24, 19 and 16 yards against Philly as their fast-flowing linebackers looked lost throughout. We’ve seen Mahomes and Andy Reid dissect undisciplined linebackers with RPOs in the past, and this Saints defense might be ripe for an afternoon of papercuts.

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5. Ladies and gentlemen . . . Dead Boys!

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Gary Gramling
GARY GRAMLING

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