NFL Week 15 Takeaways: The Texans Are Building a Powerhouse

Fill-in QB Case Keenum says Houston is one of the best teams in the league and C.J. Stroud has a chance to be an all-time great. Plus, the Bills are coming, Kevin Stefanski should be Coach of the Year, info on the Chargers’ coaching search and more.

We got a fun early window and blowouts later in the day. We have a lot to recap in our Week 15 Takeaways …

If you feel like Sunday brought more signs that the Texans are on the verge of something big, just know you’re not alone. The team itself feels that way. In fact, 12-year vet Case Keenum is so bullish, he couldn’t help but show how he felt about the direction of the franchise right after leading the Texans to a 19–16 overtime win Sunday in Nashville.

The 35-year-old told CBS’s Aditi Kinkhabwala that he sees the Texans as “top to bottom, one of the best teams in the league.” That got my attention, so I got Keenum on the phone and asked him why he said something that would’ve been incomprehensible three months ago.

Schultz was one of several Texans to step up in big spots with some of the team’s key players out Sunday :: Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean/USA TODAY Network

“So one, I think it starts with C.J. [Stroud],” Keenum says. “Man, I’ll be honest. I think he’s got a chance to be one of the best of all time—I really do. I think [he’s a] generational talent. I’ll say that again. Man, the dude is a dog. Great vision, great pocket awareness, is athletic, can move, can make any throw on the field. Strong throws, touch throws, and he’s a great leader. He’s young, but, I mean, he’s mature for his age, and then the whole quarterback room in general can play. I’m confident in myself. I’m confident in Davis [Mills].

“And then you go around to the other rooms—like the receiver room. Yeah, we’ve had two injuries [to Tank Dell and Nico Collins] that have hurt a little bit, but, I mean, look at Noah [Brown]. He had a great game today. Robert Woods, man, he’s just this crafty vet that does everything and anything you ask of him. And he’s a big third-down weapon. And then you have some young guys that are proving themselves that are going to play hard.

“And then you look at the tight end room, Dalton Schultz is having a career year. I think some young guys in there are stepping up as well. And then defensively, man, it's just, it’s so much young talent over there, and the way DeMeco [Ryans] coaches them, it’s special. It’s really cool to see.”

The Texans needed all of that and then some to get past the Titans (5–8 coming in and on a short week). But where so many of the Texans’ seven other wins showcased the budding young talent that’s come into the organization, this one was more about the foundation that Ryans is building. And maybe that was best illustrated with a text Stroud sent to Keenum and Mills before the game—and after being ruled out for it with a concussion.

“We’re all in this together,” Stroud wrote.

“He said he was rooting for us,” Keenum said, “praying for us and that he was here with us.”

In spirit, maybe. But physically, the Texans would have to do without him, and without Dell and Collins, and this week without Will Anderson Jr., among others, on defense.

Sure enough, a game Titans team jumped to a 13–0 lead and held a 13–3 edge at the break. Through three and a half quarters, the Texans were held to 224 yards and three field goals.

But Ryans’s defense kept giving the offense chances.

Keenum’s crew finally took advantage halfway through the fourth quarter—down 16–9, they drove 79 yards in 10 plays to tie it, with the biggest play coming from Schultz, who more or less went Randy Moss on Titans DB Roger McCreary.

Four plays into overtime, Keenum found someone else to make a big play for him. This time, it was Devin Singletary—streaking free over the middle, then collecting the throw from Keenum for 41 yards, setting up Kai’imi Fairbairn for the game-winning kick.

“You can see how it’s going in San Fran, with that system and that culture that they’ve built,” says Keenum. “And you add a DeMeco, a C.J. to that, I think that’s the kind of culture you want. It’s the kind of powerhouse that I think the Texans are going to be for a while.”

And, as Keenum clearly sees it, the kind of powerhouse these Texans already are.

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The Bills are suddenly playing the way they were expected to coming into the season :: Jamie Germano/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle/USA TODAY Network

​​The Bills are coming. That urgency we wrote about a couple of weeks back, when Sean McDermott bounced Ken Dorsey and the makeup of an aging core was questioned?

It has arrived, and in a very big way.

After the Bills lost to the Broncos on Nov. 13 and fell to 5–5, it was easy to look ahead at the five games to follow—against the Jets, Eagles, Chiefs, Cowboys and Chargers—and think their season was on the brink. At the time, really, it was. Four weeks later, they’re 3–1 since the Denver debacle, the one loss came in overtime and that Chargers team will be coached by Giff Smith and quarterbacked by Easton Stick.

Even better, they’ve ascended along the way, with the team’s best game of the stretch being its last one, Sunday’s 31–10 destruction of a red-hot Cowboys team in rainy Orchard Park.

And now, even if they’ll still be without Tre’Davious White, Matt Milano and DaQuan Jones, et al., they can look forward to games against the depleted Chargers and the sad-sack Patriots leading into a Week 18 showdown with the Dolphins.

“A lot of these guys have been together for a long time,” said safety Jordan Poyer, a Bill from McDermott’s first year, over the phone. “Those guys being out of the game, it’s tough. It does make it a little harder. But we prepare extremely well. We’ve got some extremely good guys on our team, and particularly on our side of the football. [From there,] it’s just being able to prepare well and not worrying about what’s happened in the past. The past is the past.”

The past does, though, help provide context to this afternoon for the Bills.

First and foremost, while Josh Allen was really good when he needed to be Sunday, Buffalo dominated with its franchise quarterback throwing for 94 yards and running for 24. The Bills were content to lean on James Cook (221 scrimmage yards) as the offense’s focal point, and the defense (115 yards, three points allowed before Dallas’s final, garbage-time drive) to carry the day, and that should make the Bills more dangerous.

Second, the Bills themselves don’t seem to think it's a coincidence that it flipped after things blew up around McDermott at the end of their bye, heading into Kansas City in Week 14.

“That’s just what we’re about,” Poyer says. “We’ve been sticking together throughout all the ups and downs. We understand we live in a bubble out here with the media. The media’s going to take everything and run with it and make it into something bigger than it needs to be. Nobody on our football team thought it was an issue. We understand who Sean is as a person.”

And now, we’re seeing, as we did in September, what the Bills can be as a team.

The kind other teams probably won’t want to run into in January.

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Stefanski has the Browns in playoff position, despite being a long list of talented players landing on IR :: Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports

Kevin Stefanski is the Coach of the Year. Yes, Joe Flacco saved him, and the Browns, to a degree over the past couple of weeks. But guess who was stumping for Stefanski on Sunday afternoon?

That’s right, ol’ No. 15 himself.

“Yeah, I think he’s done unbelievable,” Flacco said over the cell, after the Browns’ rock fight with the Bears on the Cleveland lakefront. “I think he’s the first guy you should look at. Look at what he’s dealt with all year, how many different quarterbacks and linemen and whatever else you can name. He’s done an incredible job.”

We’re going to give you a lot more on Cleveland’s scintillating 20–17 win over the Bears in the MMQB Lead on the site later Monday.

But for now, I think it’s worth highlighting exactly what Stefanski has dealt with.

Flacco is his fourth starting quarterback. On Sunday, the team started Geron Christian at left tackle and James Hudson III at right tackle—with Jedrick Wills Jr., Jack Conklin and Dawand Jones all done for the year. Jerome Ford was in at tailback, with Nick Chubb long gone. And of shorter-term concern, linebacker Anthony Walker Jr. and safety Juan Thornhill were out on defense, and Denzel Ward was being paced a bit coming back from a shoulder injury.

How has all this worked? Well, for one, Flacco says, Stefanski only asks what every player is capable of, and confident in. The quarterback explained that one of the first things Stefanski had him do was leaf through the playbook and circle concepts and plays he was comfortable with. From there, Stefanski would build his game plan, with the idea being the same as it is at every position, simply to take advantage of what his players are best at.

“They have awesome heads on their shoulders,” Flacco says of the staff. “You get to see Kevin every day lead a team in a calm but forceful way, and then [offensive coordinator] A.V.P. [Alex Van Pelt], same thing. Just the way he delivers the message, you can just tell that these guys have been around the block a little bit. They make everybody feel comfortable and confident. I think the team feels confident when these guys go up and speak because these guys are able to instill that in them.”

That, and Flacco, are why the Browns could look so listless on offense for chunks of the first three quarters (162 yards, seven points), and come alive for 215 yards and 13 points in the fourth quarter alone. It’s why, in a place where the sky’s seemed to be falling on the NFL team for decades, a group of players expects good things, not bad things, when it counts.

It’s also why, at this point, I have to agree with Flacco. Stefanski’s done a better job than any of his peers in 2023.

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Bengals-Vikings was a real barnburner Saturday—and that’s a credit to both teams. If anyone had told you, three months ago, that Nick Mullens and Jake Browning would play in a stand-alone game in December, your response might’ve been, “Who?” Hell, if I said that game would be one of the best of Week 15 three days ago, you may have looked at me like I had three heads.

But after the Vikings raced to a 17–3 lead, Browning converted a third-and-21 that led to one touchdown, then made a throw which Tee Higgins, somehow, turned into one of more amazing touchdowns you’ll ever see to tie it up. The teams went back-and-forth. The Bengals made a fourth-down stop, then Browning and Tyler Boyd made magic on another third-and-long to set up the game-winning field goal in overtime.

All of it, to me, says a lot about where the Bengals are … and where the Vikings are going.

And I got the sense that, as I talked to him while he rode home from the game, Bengals coach Zac Taylor implicitly agreed with that idea, as he took me through the team’s 27–24 win.

“In football, character matters,” Taylor says. “When you hit December 15th, that’s that time of year where you better love it—you better love it. Our guys love the grind. They love playing in games like this. They expect to win in December and January. The experience matters. We’ve been in enough games where things didn’t look great in the first half, over the last three years even. The guys know that someone’s going to step up and make plays.

“That’s what a bunch of guys on our team did today. We’re right back in it and found a way to win and just love that about these guys.”

It was Browning making plays in Joe Burrow’s absence. It was Higgins and Boyd making the biggest plays after Ja’Marr Chase went down. It was the defense bowing up on fourth-and-1 after D.J Reader went down.

All the same, it’s how the Vikings could turn to their fourth starting quarterback of the year and play like they did on the road. And how they developed Jordan Addison, in Justin Jefferson’s absence, to have the kind of afternoon he did (6-111-2), with a lot still on the line for a Minnesota team chasing a division title (at least going in).

It all said a lot about both teams, and just as much about the programs Taylor and Kevin O’Connell are leading.

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The week the Eagles just had is the first sign of a price paid not just for last year’s success, but also the ascension of Nick Sirianni’s team over the past three years. And that price came with the team unconventionally (when does a 10–3 team whack a key assistant?) dismounting from a defensive coordinator, in Sean Desai, ahead of Monday night’s game with the Seattle, and turning to former Patriots DC and Lions head coach Matt Patricia to replace him.

Now, if you remember, it wasn’t until the run-up to the Super Bowl that things crystallized between DC Johnathan Gannon and his new team, the Cardinals—and that timing kept the Philadelphia from doing what it needed to do to keep Vic Fangio, who’d served as a consultant for the team, to replace Gannon.

So essentially, the Eagles lost their top two choices for defensive coordinator in 2023.

Gannon often drew criticism in Philly, but he’s been missed, and the way his Cardinals have played over their heads all year has shown the guy can coach. And Fangio, who’d given the Dolphins his word before the Eagles’ job came open, and got north of $4.5 million for his trouble, has certainly shown his value down in Miami.

If the Eagles had lost in, say, the divisional round, they probably wouldn’t have this problem. If the correct narrative—that Nick Sirianni’s staff had built the kind of chemistry that every team would want to model—hadn’t gotten out there during the Super Bowl run, maybe Gannon wouldn’t have been as attractive a candidate. If they were ousted early, maybe the timing would have worked out with Fangio.

As it was, the Eagles basically chose to go with Fangio Lite, in hiring one of his closest disciples, Desai, who’s very well-respected and was valuable on the Seahawks’ staff last year. And for whatever reason, it hasn’t worked out. Philly’s defense crumbled in losses to the 49ers and Cowboys, and wasn’t a ton better before those games against the Bills, with problems on third down serving as a deciding factor in the move happening now.

The idea from here is that Patricia, who’s been intimately involved on defense, can bring a greater volume schematically to what the Eagles are doing on those third downs, along with all the experience he has, going back to 2010, as a defensive play-caller.

Of course, that isn’t how anyone there drew it up. But it is the price that every sustained winner has to pay. It just happened to work out better (and more naturally) for Philly on offense—with Brian Johnson ascending to the top role after being QBs coach, and Kevin Patullo on hand too.

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The Panthers got to celebrate their second win of the season on a walk-off field goal :: Jamie Germano/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle/USA TODAY NETWORK

I want to say something nice about Panthers interim coach Chris Tabor. The special teams coordinator by trade is 52 years old. He’s been coaching for more than three decades, and all 16 of his NFL seasons have been spent coaching the third phase of football.

Which is a nice way of saying this is likely the only shot he’ll get at being an NFL head coach.

Tabor knows it, like most special teams coaches do. So when he got the chance to do it, after his old boss, Frank Reich, was fired, Tabor was going to do all he could to make the most of it—and most of all, try to help all the players who were caught in the middle of the same unfortunate situation the coaches were.

So upon taking the reins three weeks ago, he gave them three rules—be a pro, be on time, do what’s right. After that, he just wanted to be as real as he could with them.

“You can either handle it with character or compromise,” Tabor told me after his first win. “These are facts. We are in tough times, and every guy has a different contract situation. The only thing that matters is your tape. Let’s say that your contract’s up. You’re still playing for something. You can’t make a business decision, because if you want to go on somewhere else, 31 other teams are looking at you and saying, How did you play when adversity hit? That goes to the character part. The guys that elect to go the other way, that’s the compromise part.

“I think everybody has a decision to make. Our guys, I think they’ve gone with character. That’s what they did today.”

Indeed.

In a rainstorm and in front of a friends-and-family sort of crowd, circumstances that added up to perfect conditions for a compromise, the Panthers showed their character.

In all three of Tabor’s games in charge, the Panthers have taken their opponent into the fourth quarter. The difference, this week against the Falcons, was being able to close things out—and Carolina did that in emphatic fashion, taking the ball from their own 5 with 7:35 left, driving 90 yards on 17 plays and draining the clock all the way down to set up Eddy Pineiro for a 23-yard game-winner as time expired.

In the end, it may not mean much. But for Tabor, it meant a lot. And he deserves credit for keeping engaged a team that very easily could be setting tee times and booking flights to Mexico for January, and doing so by being honest with them.

“I just want to keep it real with them,” he says. “I’m not here to paint some fuzzy picture. I’ve acknowledged what the year is. I’ve acknowledged how the year has been going. That’s real, that’s fine, but what do we want to do about it? To me, that goes back to trying to win the daily process. I think the guys have done that.”

As for what it means to Tabor himself, he laughed and said, “It means I’m not 0-fer.” Truth is, for his players, come the offseason, it could mean a lot more—and, to Tabor, that’d be the real reward from this shot he got from a lost season.

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The Buccaneers might not be the wild-card round lay-up the Cowboys or Eagles are counting on. It’s weird that we already have an idea, a month out, on what a particular first-round game will look like, but that’s the case in the NFC—with it seeming to be a fait accompli that the East runner-up (Dallas or Philly) will be traveling to play the South champ (Tampa Bay, Atlanta or New Orleans). Similarly certain has seemed the idea that the Cowboys or Eagles would make it out of that matchup and into the divisional round.

Well, the last we’ve seen of the Eagles and Cowboys hasn’t been great. And there’s a certain team in the NFC South that now looks, to borrow its quarterback’s favorite word, dangerous.

The Buccaneers went into Lambeau on Sunday to play a Packers team on the fringe of the playoff picture, that really needed this one, and beat them by two touchdowns, 34–20. But more than just that, Tampa beat Green Bay when it mattered most—with a long touchdown (52 yards from Baker Mayfield to David Moore) to push the lead to 14, a sack on fourth down to end the Packers’ final possession and six Rachaad White runs that churned out two first downs and put the Bucs in victory formation.

The underlying theme of the whole thing? There are still a lot of guys on the roster who have played in a lot of big games the past four years—and they’ll be heard from.

“We’re improving at the right time,” Mayfield told me postgame. “All we have to do is get into the playoffs. After that, anything can happen. I think our guys are realizing that. We’re really improving on offense, and we’re making the plays that we need to. That’s what you really look for. Finding a way to win these late-season games is really all it comes down to.”

The Bucs have the Jaguars, Saints and Panthers left, and sit tied with New Orleans (which kept pace Sunday with a win over the Giants) atop the NFC South. They still have guys such as Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Tristan Wirfs, Antoine Winfield Jr., Shaq Barrett and Lavonte David.

So, yeah, Mayfield’s right. If they get in, they’re not gonna be anyone’s sacrificial lamb.

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The Chargers’ search is wide open. So you, I and everyone else saw what happened Thursday night. We know what happened Friday, with Giff Smith replacing coach Brandon Staley and JoJo Wooden replacing GM Tom Telesco for the rest of the season. You also may have come across what I think Los Angeles should do.

What will they do?

Here are a few things I know, at this early juncture …

1) The Spanos family will close ranks to discuss the next steps, set a search strategy and start background work on the options over the next couple of weeks. They see it as a silver lining in a really crappy situation. No one wanted to sneak around to lay groundwork for a coaching or GM search before the guys in those roles were gone. Now they won’t have to.

2) The Chargers generally haven’t used search firms to look for their coaches. While nothing is off the table right now, I’d say the likelihood is they won’t use one this time around either.

3) Owner Dean Spanos used the word “reimagining” in his statement, and I was told to pay attention to that one. It represents how the plan, for now, is to be really open-minded. So the idea that it could be Jim Harbaugh or Bill Belichick shouldn’t be dismissed, nor should the concept of trying to catch the offensive guru or former player trend (neither of which applied to Staley in 2021). For now, at least, they’re planning to cast a wide net, though it could always narrow if there’s agreement on a target.

4) On the GM side, one thing the Chargers will look at is whether they need to find a more aggressive approach in personnel—and be a team that’s more active with in-season trades and in dealing off picks.

5) The Chargers are sensitive to the idea they won’t spend, so I’d expect that they’ll show a willingness to go big-game hunting here if that’s where the search leads them. They’re right, too, to point out that they’re opening a nine-figure practice facility in El Segundo and have a raft of massive contracts on their books. In that context, a big contract for a coach really isn’t a big deal. And the presence of Justin Herbert and a talented core, plus geography, should be enough to entice top guys.

And so this one will, for sure, be interesting to follow.

Another thing that was pointed out to me in digging through the rubble from this lost season was how, while the Chargers have been pretty good over the past 11 years, they’ve only made the playoffs three times. The reality is in L.A., it’s tough to gain a foothold if you’re not truly in the race every year—and so what the Chargers will be looking for is someone who can sell them on giving Herbert a shot every year, the way Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes or now Trevor Lawrence seem to have that shot every year.

For now, who that’ll be is anyone’s guess. But the Chargers at least have some time to figure all of it out.

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Tua Tagovailoa made a decent case for MVP on Sunday. When I conducted my midseason execs’ awards poll, I circled back with a Tyreek Hill MVP voter and asked him for his logic. The NFC exec texted, “Would you rather play the Dolphins with no Tyreek or no Tua?”

It was a fair question, and I think one a lot of teams would answer by taking the first option, rather than facing a backup quarterback with Hill on the field.

But Sunday might make some of them (and me) rethink that a little bit.

Tagovailoa was borderline perfect in the first half Sunday, against a worn-down but still very proud Jets defense—going 15-of-17 for 168 yards, a touchdown and a 127.5 rating through 30 minutes. With the lead 24–0 at the break, and the two head coaches sharing a close relationship, Miami’s Mike McDaniel took his foot off the pedal a bit in the second half, and Tagovailoa only threw it seven times (completing six of those for another 56 yards).

That said, it sure seemed satisfying for the guys in that organization that it came the week that former NFL MVP Cam Newton grouped Tagovailoa with Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott and Jared Goff in his own personal “game manager” category.

“We don’t talk about it,” McDaniel said at his postgame presser. “But noise is loud.”

So, yes, they heard it, and Tagovailoa’s response on the field was louder. Loud enough to put him in the MVP chase, on a day in which Prescott took a step back and Lamar Jackson was good but not spectacular? I’m starting to wonder why not.

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It’s the end of the week, and time for the quick-hitters going into Monday. Here’s what we’ve got for you with Eagles-Seahawks still to come …

• In the MVP race, the Niners’ stars seem to be canceling each other out. Which is a great sign of just how good that roster is. Christian McCaffrey is up to 1,801 scrimmage yards (2,509 is the record), Brock Purdy is leading the league in passer rating, and (as the team’s midseason swoon might indicate) that offense’s most indispensable player might be left tackle Trent Williams. Then, there’s Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk …

• While we’re there, after cruising past the Cardinals, the Niners are 11–3, NFC West champs and control their own destiny for the first seed, playoff bye and home-field advantage through the playoffs. Their game with the Ravens on Christmas night is shaping up to be a massive one.

• The Ravens are at the winning-boring phase of their season, after grinding the Jaguars into submission and leaving Florida with a 23–7 win. It’s tough not to like how they rushed for 251 yards, or how Lamar Jackson found seven different receivers (and targeted nine) or how the defense forced timely turnovers. They deserved the Sunday night stage.

• Kadarius Toney had another gaffe Sunday—a bad drop popped into the hands of Patriots linebacker Jahlani Tavai for a pick—and you have to wonder how much more patience Chiefs coach Andy Reid is gonna have with the guy. On the flip side, it really does look like rookie Rashee Rice has earned Mahomes’s trust. He led the team with nine catches and 91 yards, and scored the team’s first touchdown of the day (on a nifty counter type of run, with the wrinkle that it came off a shovel pass and counted as a catch).

• The Saints have hung in and hung in and hung in, and now they’re 7–7 and heading to Los Angeles to play the Rams on Thursday night. And on the other side of that, they’ll play their NFC South co-leader in Tampa. The winner of that will likely go to the playoffs. For the loser? My guess would be that could lead to some level of change.

• I do wish we could’ve seen whether Aaron Rodgers could really pull it off. But with the Jets officially eliminated, and the team’s offensive line a sieve, it doesn’t make much sense to roll him back out there.

• Mike Vrabel’s cowboy hat might’ve been the best part of Sunday.

• Matthew Stafford is quietly putting together a phenomenal season. He’s had a triple-digit passer rating in four straight games, he’s brought Puka Nacua along and he’s helped show the potential the Rams have for 2024, given some luck with health. Remember, they’ll have a first-round pick (presumably … and I know I shouldn’t presume … for the first time in eight years), around $75 million in cap space, and Los Angeles to sell. And based on the past five weeks (the Rams are 4–1 over that stretch), they’ll have a pretty good football situation to sell, too, with Stafford right in the middle of it.

• Watching George Pickens check out on a run play (that clip went viral), the same way Diontae Johnson did a few weeks ago, makes me wonder what the heck is going on in that Steelers receivers room. Frisman Jackson is a good coach, but he clearly hasn’t been able to get those two going. Not that I’m sure anyone else could. The question now, as I see it, is whether this will lead to larger changes in the organization, which might be on the table with the way this season is circling the drain.

• The Lions’ rookies, man. Sam LaPorta had five catches for 56 yards and three touchdown, and played 63 snaps on offense (95%). Jahmyr Gibbs had 108 scrimmage yards on 13 touches, while playing 32 snaps (48%). And linebacker Jack Campbell (33 snaps) and safety Brian Branch (46 snaps) again played a ton. It’s because of this that the Lions’ bounceback Saturday night against the Broncos should be a surprise to no one. This is still an ascending team.