Week 16 NFL Takeaways: Commanders Have Built Program for Jayden Daniels to Succeed

The rookie has been excellent, and Sunday’s win over the Eagles was another big step forward. Plus, respect for the Vikings, the Rams are versatile, Raheem Morris talks about the switch to Michael Penix Jr. and more.

Daniels celebrates after throwing a touchdown against the Eagles in the Commanders’ 10th win of the year. / Peter Casey-Imagn Images

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1. Washington Commanders
2. Minnesota Vikings
3. Dallas Cowboys 
4. Los Angeles Rams
5. Atlanta Falcons
6. New York Giants
7. Carolina Panthers
8. Baltimore Ravens
9. Los Angeles Chargers
10. Quick-hitters 

Week 16 was … eh … light on drama, but heavy on revelations, and we’re about to dive into those.  As we’ve been doing all season, we’ll publish the takeaways Sunday and update them live through Monday morning. So come back again if not all 10 are here yet …

Washington Commanders

Jayden Daniels is really special, and the Washington Commanders’ program around him is showing signs that it can be, too. The rookie quarterback’s season has been excellent, no doubt. But it hasn’t been perfect. Like most first-year guys, Daniels has hit walls and been challenged to break them down as he fights through and adjusts to the grind of an NFL season.

Another one crumbled in Daniels’s presence Sunday.

To set the stage, Washington went down 14–0 almost right away to a Philadelphia Eagles team riding a 10-game win streak. Then, it was 21–7. Then, it was 27–14. And even if the Eagles were playing their backup quarterback after Jalen Hurts was concussed, the Commanders were fighting through a difficult circumstance of their own creation—they had five turnovers.

Yet, there Dan Quinn’s crew was, taking the lead in the final 10 minutes, at 28–27, then losing it again, with the fifth of those turnovers (a Daniels pick), sandwiching two field goals that put the home team down 33–28 at the two-minute warning.

“It just gave me another opportunity to go out there and win the game,” Daniels told me, as he wrapped up his day at the stadium. “There really weren’t any coaching points or anything. We were in four-down territory the whole way. Let’s go win the game.”

And they would, 36–33. Because of their rookie quarterback.

First, Washington covered 41 yards in five plays. From there, the fun started. And, if you get a closer look into what actually was happening in the huddle, Daniels’s mettle showed.

On second-and-3 from the Eagles’ 16 with 27 seconds left, OC Kliff Kingsbury called an RPO to Daniels’s right. Only the receivers to that side didn’t get the quarterback’s signal.

Panic time? Not exactly.

“I didn’t make the signal good enough,” Daniels says. “So I just followed the blocker, to see what I could get.”

Whether or not it was on him is (I’ve heard at least) up for debate, but he willingly took the bullet for it, and the hit—calmly running behind his linemen and falling just short of the first down, at the 14, forcing the Commanders to call their last timeout with 23 seconds left.

From there, Kingsbury called a run to convert third-and-1, Brian Robinson Jr. ground out five yards and Daniels rushed the offense to spike it with 11 seconds to go. The next call Kingsbury sent in was one that assistant quarterbacks coach David Blough added to the playbook at the end of the spring, specifically for end-of-game situations. And the Commanders have repped it in practice a ton since training camp, just for a situation like this.

The thing is, normally, what’s happened has been that coverage would follow Daniels’s first read in the progression, Jamison Crowder, and the quarterback would have to make the throw to the second guy in the pattern, Zach Ertz. But at practice Thursday, during a red zone period, Daniels hit Crowder wide open between levels of the scout team’s coverage.

So there was the call again Sunday. There was Crowder for Daniels, wide open. And there was the Commanders’ franchise quarterback, quick to the trigger with the game-winner.

“It set up perfectly,” Daniels says of Blough’s concept. “We did that same play in practice, same route, right behind the linebacker, in two-high coverage. That was my first read presnap from what I’ve seen—I’m going to go right here and trust in him to make a play.”

In doing so, he and his team did what no one else has been able to do in more than two months, and that’s send the mighty Eagles home with a loss.

But the reality is that they accomplished more than just that Sunday, and really on a lot of Sundays this fall. Plenty of the guys in Commanders uniforms now were around the past few years. Those in the stands watching them know the score, too. For a quarter century in D.C., when something could go wrong, it usually did.

So the challenge for Quinn and his staff has been to flip that psychology on its head. And this situation unfolding was more evidence that that’s exactly what’s happening.

“One hundred percent,” Daniels affirms. “We believe that we can be in every game. We’re confident going in that we have an opportunity to win. It’s how we prepare, how our coaches bring confidence to us.”

Now, it’s how they’re playing, too, and Daniels is a big part of it as well.

Because, again, as good as he’s been, the bumps have been there. In mid-November, Washington lost three straight, and he didn’t play particularly well—with passer ratings of 68.5, 81.6 and 82.7 in those games. That was after he suffered a rib injury that was probably a little more serious than anyone let on.

But this is a 24-year-old who saw a lot, both football-wise and otherwise, through a five-year college career that encompassed 55 starts, and multiyear starting runs at two different historic programs in two different power conferences. He was there for an NCAA scandal at Arizona State. He had to transfer, and improve to win and keep the starting job at LSU. It takes a lot to shake him.

“The best teacher in life is experience,” Daniels says. “To be able to go out there and play as many snaps as I did in college, I knew it would translate to the league.”

And now he and the remade franchise he’s leading are full speed ahead, with a win that typified the growth the Commanders have undergone. Washington is 10–5. Quinn is the first coach in franchise history to win 10 games in his first season. Daniels is closing in on Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. They’re all on the verge of the playoffs.

Everything, seemingly, has changed.

“It means a lot for us, playing a team that’s been on a win streak and fighting for a No. 1 seed, that’s going to be in the playoffs,” Daniels says. “It means a lot to go compete and know that we can put up big-time wins against these guys.”

After Sunday, it’s fair to say that everyone else knows, too.

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It is long past time to give Darnold and the Vikings your respect. / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings are 13–2, and their quarterback deserves the respect we’d routinely give to others in his position. Sam Darnold has started 15 games this year and has posted a triple digit passer rating in 12 of them (that’s a franchise record). He’s riding a win streak so long that, when he wakes up Christmas morning, he’ll have gone two months without losing. He’s doing it in a division that is, arguably, football’s most competitive.

And in case you thought he was compiling stats, or riding a train conducted by the starry group of skill guys around him, Sunday brought a compelling case to move you off that spot.

With 3:58 left, the Vikings were in first-and-10 from the Seattle Seahawks’ 39-yard line. At the snap, Justin Jefferson got a clean release and, with the coach-given green light to break the route off in any direction at its stem, the All-Pro jammed on the gas, lifted his arm to signal to Darnold, and broke downfield. The quarterback saw it right away and dropped a hole shot, between the corner Jefferson had dusted and a safety breaking to the sideline, into his star’s hands.

Darnold took a big hit. Jefferson took one, too. And the decisive six points went up on the scoreboard in Minnesota’s 13th win of the year, 27–24 in Seattle.

“As Sam stepped up in the pocket and felt Justin making an adjustment to a route, Sam lays up a perfect throw on the road in Seattle in some elements,” coach Kevin O’Connell says from the tarmac in Seattle, getting ready to head home. “It was such a massive play, but it also speaks to all the work those guys have put in, the time on task that it takes to build that me-to-you factor, so that you can make those plays in those moments.

“Those guys play with a lot of confidence because of it.”

The play itself, to me, highlights two things.

The first is the subtle next step in Jefferson’s game. How does a guy who’s been an All-Pro since his rookie year get even better? You sharpen his mind—and use that element of his game to move him around, and make it tougher for the defense to take him away on every play.

“He’s gotten really good at understanding how he’s being defended, both pre- and postsnap,” O’Connell says. “He’s playing incredibly fast. He has the understanding to run the best route he possibly can. Sometimes, it’s a moving target. Sometimes, we give him the opportunity to make a play within a concept where we don’t want to lock him into one particular break because we don’t know what variation of coverage he’s going to see.

“We just know that there’s going to be a major emphasis to defend him. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how we combat that and allow him to play fast postsnap no matter what way he’s defended."

The second is how, as good as the Vikings are—and they’ll be the NFC’s No. 1 seed if they beat the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions the next two weeks—Darnold deserves both credit for what he’s becoming and the right not to be weighed down by his past. That past, if you’re really watching, feels more distant by the week.

“When people have decided that you can’t play in their own minds, sometimes instead of it being a product of a guy deserving the credit for playing really good football, it’s always just, When’s it going to go the other way?” O’Connell says. “I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that’s fair to him. He came here for the opportunity. He came here to be a Minnesota Viking, play in our offense, with the players around him. And I have a blast coaching him.

“I’ve got a lot of confidence in him. There’s really not much more to it than that.”

Yes, there are big decisions looming ahead.

But for now? For now, the Vikings have a really good team, with a really good quarterback, and that showed Sunday, as it has all season. Like O’Connell said, when it comes to 2024,  there’s not a whole lot more to it than that.

With the team 13–2, the rest can wait.

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Dallas Cowboys 

Take a bow, Mike McCarthy. Your team’s got a ton of character. Not used to hearing someone say that about the Dallas Cowboys? In this case, it’s deserved.

On the night of Nov. 18, Dallas lost 34–10 to a Houston Texans team that didn’t play that well. With the Cowboys at 3–7, questions swirled on not if, but when, big changes were coming to America’s Team. With consecutive short weeks to follow the Texans rout, the idea that the McCarthy era could be down to its final days wasn’t far-fetched.

Well, McCarthy is still there, and his team is showing why.

Sunday’s rugged 26–24 win over the Buccaneers under the Sunday Night Football spotlight made the Cowboys 4–1 since the Houston game—and a properly handled blocked punt away from being 5–0 over that stretch—and proved, again, what McCarthy’s built in Dallas.

He hasn’t broken through the glass ceiling that’s hovered over Jerry Jones’s head since the Cowboys’ last appearance in the NFC title game, 29 years ago. But he and his staff have built a consistent winner, one that churned out 12-win regular seasons in 2021, ’22 and ’23, and one that, after falling on its face early this year, had the wherewithal to pick itself up off the canvas this season after losing quarterback Dak Prescott, among others, for the year.

And as McCarthy and I talked about it late Sunday night, he reminded me of how he talked about the team when we hung out at training camp over the summer.

“We’re a group that obviously went through a lot early in the year, had a lot of new faces, took a little longer to come together,” he says. “We talked about this up in Oxnard, it’s a good locker room, good leaders. And a lot of our leaders are now on IR. They were good examples, when young guys got to play a lot more football than, frankly, I’d have preferred them to play early. But it’s a team that was coming together, unfortunately, just one game too late. It’s a hell of a bunch. I admire their consistency. They just stay after it.”

Sunday, for sure, challenged that.

The Commanders’ wild win over the Eagles slammed the playoff door, one that had remained ajar the past couple of weeks, shut on this group of Cowboys. So just as guys were pulling into the players’ lot, climbing on the trainers’ table to get taped, or getting their pregame meal, their long-shot hope of returning to the playoffs died.

But you wouldn’t have known it once the game started. Faced with a Buccaneers team playing to maintain a division lead, the Cowboys jumped to a 10–0 lead and kept Tampa at an arm’s length for most of the night. Then, in the fourth quarter, Mike Zimmer’s once-maligned defense took control. Jourdan Lewis picked off Baker Mayfield in the end zone with 6:22 left. And after the Bucs pulled to within two points, at 26–24, ball-magnet corner DaRon Bland ripped the ball from Rachaad White and recovered the fumble to end it.

That sort of effort was unmistakable across the board all night, particularly at the end. And, while they may not have said it in as many words, it was a reflection of what the players think of their embattled coach. They’ve shown, for weeks now, that they have McCarthy’s back. For his part, the coach himself acknowledged that he can feel it.

“I mean, absolutely,” he says. “To be frank with you, if I didn’t feel that way, then I would leave. Where I am in my career, I’m fortunate enough to be in a place, and a space mentally and emotionally, where I can make that choice. But yeah, if I didn’t feel that I was connected [with the players] and putting us in the best position to win, then I would step aside.”

As you might have heard, in a few weeks, whether he does or not won’t be up to him.

With his contract up, the Cowboys would have to draw up a whole new deal to bring him back as the team’s coach in 2025. Whether they’ll be willing to remains to be seen.

But I’d say the players have shown everyone, with their actions, what they want.

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Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams can be whatever they need to be to win. Sunday’s win won’t be shown at the ESPYs next summer as any sort of defining moment of 2024. But I think it’s a shining example of how this year’s Los Angeles crew is about as versatile, and capable of winning in different ways, as any Sean McVay’s had in his eight years.

I didn’t say it’s his best team, to be clear. But it’s one no one will want to play.

Two weeks ago, the Rams welcomed in the Buffalo Bills, and Matthew Stafford had to throw for 320 yards for the home team to come away with a win. Conversely, the past two weeks, in the elements against the San Francisco 49ers and New York Jets, he threw for 270 yards—that’s not an average, that’s his total for the two games—and the Rams won all the same. Because, in those spots, they could lean on the team’s Energizer Bunny, Kyren Williams, to key 274 yards on the ground between those two games.

Meanwhile, they have a defensive front, with young guys Jared Verse, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske and Byron Young leading the charge, that’s remained fearsome, after Aaron Donald’s retirement, and a strong, deep coaching staff full of institutional knowledge of McVay’s program.

At one point, the Rams were 1–4. They’re now 9–6, and wins over the Arizona Cardinals and Seahawks from winning the NFC West and getting a home playoff game.

And because they’re that hot, and relying on ascending young players, and have McVay and Stafford still, they’re shaping up as a team no one in the NFC is going to want to play in January. They outscored Buffalo, then held the Niners and Jets to 15 points combined in consecutive weeks.

However you want to fight, they can fight you. Meaning they’re probably still the grand old champion that you don’t want to fight in January or February.

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Penix had a low-stress debut as a starter, but he didn’t need to carry the Falcons against the Giants / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

Atlanta Falcons

This was a tough week for Raheem Morris—but he did what the Atlanta Falcons needed him to, and the team responded in kind Sunday. And they did it by making it so Michael Penix Jr. didn’t need to feel the weight of the world on his shoulders in his first NFL start.

Beating the New York Giants, even if it’s a billion, isn’t some league-altering feat in December 2024.

That said, the Falcons didn’t make it any harder than it needed to be.

The Atlanta defense started the game with a three-and-out, then scored the team’s first touchdown, with Jessie Bates III picking off Drew Lock down the left sideline and running it back 55 yards for a touchdown midway through the second quarter. Another pick-six came on the second play of the second half, Matthew Judon did the honors on that occasion, to make it 24–7, giving the Falcons’ rookie a relatively stress-free first full afternoon.

“When you go out there and your defense plays as well as they did today, able to score two touchdowns, and get the ball back and a bunch of short fields, that’s always going to set up success for the quarterback,” Morris said, on his drive home. “What Bijan [Robinson] and Tyler [Allgeier] have been doing with our O-line? It’s what we talked about earlier. We talked about supporting this kid.

“The ultimate sign of support is when the guys go out there and do their job at a high level.”

It’s also a good sign for how Morris’s program made it out of its first big in-season watershed moment.

The reality is this one was months in the making. In September, it was clear Kirk Cousins was struggling to drive the ball down the field, an issue common with older quarterbacks coming off Achilles injuries to the plant foot. In October, that started to resolve itself. Then, in November, in a game against the New Orleans Saints, Cousins nicked his throwing shoulder and elbow, and it became more of a challenge to game plan and call plays around his limitations.

Things came to a head the first three weeks of December, with Cousins throwing for one touchdown against seven picks—and clearly losing confidence, as evidenced in how he’d hold the ball and hesitate to pull the trigger in a way he hadn’t before.

Meanwhile, Penix showed the readiness of a guy who spent six seasons in college and was a multi-year starter in both the Big 10 and the Pac-12. The coaches felt if they needed him Week 1, they easily could’ve started him then. As the season wore on, Penix kept showing why in practice (he’d take about 10 reps with the Falcons’ first team per week, and run the scout team), doing enough to at least make the idea of a switch linger in staffers’ heads.

“The decision had to be made just based off of pure football performance,” Morris says. “We weren’t playing well enough. At the same time, I was also thankful to him for putting us in position to be where we’re at right now, to be competitive, to be in a playoff race. This guy got us up to 6–3, really got us going, and for whatever reason couldn’t keep up that play that he had at the beginning of the season. I had to make the change.”

To the credit of both Cousins and Penix, the way the two have handled it has eased the awkwardness of making such a call. Morris told Cousins of his decision, and that it really wasn’t all the quarterback’s fault. Cousins, according to Morris, responded by telling his coach he planned on “being the best backup in the National Football League.”

From there, Cousins went to support Penix, who genuinely looks up to the old veteran.

“For those guys to be able to go out there and work together, even through [Cousins’s] tough time this week, I thought it was outstanding,” Morris says, “all the way up until right before the game praying together.”

The cameras caught that, but there was plenty more happening away from the public, too.

And while Penix’s impact was limited this week—he finished with 202 yards and a pick on 18-of-27 passing—he flashed like the Falcons hoped he would. Morris mentioned one throw to Darnell Mooney where the rookie went through his progressions and got to the receiver on the back side of a concept as an example of how advanced he is for a guy who just got to the league. Just as big was how, with his arm and his legs, he opened the playbook for coordinator Zac Robinson and his staff and, in doing so, raised the ceiling for the team, too.

“He is a very special talent, and it’s especially his arm talent,” Morris says. “When you have that, anything can happen. For us, when we drafted him, we figured he was our future and he could take us places. So I can’t wait to come in and prepare for next week and watch him play again.”

Locked into the race with the Buccaneers in NFC South—Atlanta actually took over first place thanks to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football—they’d hope he can show just a little more next week than he did this week. And they’d also hope they don’t need it any more than they did on Sunday.

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The Giants lost their 10th consecutive game Sunday, setting a new franchise record and keeping the pressure on Daboll. / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

New York Giants

It’s going to be hard for the Giants to stick with the status quo in two weeks. New York is now at a franchise record 10 consecutive losses. Daniel Jones has been wearing a ballcap on the Vikings’ sideline. Saquon Barkley has a legit shot at Eric Dickerson’s single-season record in Philly. And some form of change seems inevitable, especially when you dig deeper into the ugly streak’s details.

Sunday’s noncompetitive 34–7 loss to the Falcons was just the latest hit in two-plus months full of them …

• Five of the 10 losses have come by double digits.

• In six of the 10 losses, the Giants have scored 14 or fewer points.

• There have been losses to a backup quarterback (Cowboys) and interim coach (Saints).

• The benching and subsequent release of Jones, $82 million later, was at the midway point of the streak.

• There was a home no-show coming out of a bye (they were down 23–0 to the Buccaneers at the half).

• There have been Fire everyone banners overhead, and scores of empty seats.

Now, I still believe Brian Daboll has a high ceiling as a coach, and the same goes for Joe Schoen as a GM. But the team I saw Sunday looked disengaged and lifeless, and it’s been that way far too often since the Giants last won a game. And while I know John Mara doesn’t want to blow it up again—if he fired those two guys, he’d be into his fifth head coach and third GM in less than a decade, which is unbecoming of the NFL’s Tiffany franchise—the facts are the facts, and narratives have slowly become reality.

If Daboll and Schoen make it to next season, they’d very clearly go in fighting for their jobs, and in a market where the environment has already gotten toxic. You saw what that looked like with Matt Rhule (Carolina Panthers) in 2022, and Dan Quinn (Falcons) and Doug Marrone (Jacksonville Jaguars) in 2020. It rarely works out.

Of course, one example of a stay-of-execution bringing results happened in New York. Tom Coughlin was given another year after his 2006 team collapsed, finishing 2–6 after a 6–2 start, and he won a Super Bowl the next year. So it’s not always a disaster.

More often than not, it goes the other way. Pressure’s on. Every other story from January to Week 1 is about job security. The coach struggles to get through September intact.

So these are the tough conversations that Mara has to have: Realistically, what’s the upshot of staying the course? And if you do stay the course, what sort of changes can you make to give the current regime some semblance of a shot at breaking through in 2025?

I may be in the minority in thinking a decent core for next year is in place (Andrew Thomas, Malik Nabers, Dexter Lawrence, Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux). The question is whether the guys in charge now are the right ones to augment it, and find the quarterback to get it back off the mat, after backsliding from 9-7-1 in 2022 to 6–11 last season to this year’s abject disaster.

I think they can be. But it most certainly won’t be easy.

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Carolina Panthers

The Panthers haven’t won a lot, so Sundays like this one are significant. And that’s not to say there weren’t gains made in losing to the Kansas City Chiefs by three, to the Buccaneers in overtime, or the Eagles by six while dropping a would-be, go-ahead touchdown in the waning moments.

All those things prove this to be a more competitive Carolina team than the past few.

But at some point, Dave Canales knew he’d have to validate his players' effort with a win or two, without having gotten one since Veteran’s Day. And that point came this week, with a tough, well-coached Cardinals team, fresh off a rout of the New England Patriots, coming into town.

That it didn’t come easy might’ve made it even better. The Panthers jumped all over their visitors early—going up 20–3 in the second quarter. After Arizona cut the lead to 20–17, the Panthers got it back to 30–20 in the fourth quarter, before Kyler Murray & Co. fought back in the final 10 points of regulation to force overtime. And in overtime, it took every phase to pull out a 36–30 win, the Panthers’ fourth of the season.

“It’s huge, we talk about those games where we’re within reach,” Canales says. “It was a defensive play. It was an offensive fumble. It was a special teams penalty. Everybody ‘doing right longer’ has kind of been the message. For it to work out to where everyone just did their job, and we knocked balls down, we made sacks, we executed our blocking in our run game, we took care of the ball, Chuba [Hubbard] finishes in the end zone, no turnovers …

“All the critical things that we harp on all the time—for the guys to grasp it and to feel like this is what it feels like to ‘do right longer,’ to show we can finish this way, it was huge.”

Most of all, it was the way overtime played out that illustrated it best.

After losing the aforementioned leads, and having overtime forced by a 58-yard Chad Ryland field goal at the gun, it would’ve been really easy for a 3–11 team to fold up the tent.

Carolina did the opposite—rallying from all corners of the roster. First, it was the special teams, with Johnny Hekker booming a 57-yard punt after a three-and-out to pin Arizona at its own 10. Second, it was the defense forcing what could have been a three-and-out, only for the Cardinals to convert fourth-and-2, then getting three more stops to get off the field. Third, it was the offense, lining up and covering 49 yards on two Hubbard runs, the second one a 21-yard touchdown that landed Canales his fourth win in charge.

“Absolutely, it gives us something to celebrate,” he says. “Culture is what you celebrate—and we can point to the guys doing right in critical situations. That’s where we can capture our group and capture the mentality of just keep doing right longer to finish. That’s how we finish. It does give me the ability to point to those things in the coaching staff as well.”

Indeed, how Carolina outlasted Arizona, brought Canales’s credo to life.

And with two weeks left, it gives the Panthers something to build on. Bryce Young is back up and running, having fought through his early-season benching. The line and Hubbard have given the offense an identity. Ejiro Evero’s defense has been steady.

They aren’t winning the Super Bowl. But the same way Canales once saw his mentor Pete Carroll lay a foundation in Seattle, all the way back in 2010, the concrete under the Panthers’ feet is starting to harden. And while it’s a different time, and different team, the similarities Canales sees are another reason why the optimism he seems to carry perpetually comes across as pretty genuine in how he talks about his team.

“Honestly, it’s caring about the same things—caring about the ball, caring about playing really good football in situations, making smart decisions and then finish,”Canales says.  “Finish is a habit, it looked like a daily thing. Those are the things that impressed me the most as I was able to be with Pete for a really long time. To not try to replicate what he did but just seek what he sought, which was the toughness, the mentality, the effort, the ball awareness and all those things. That’s what I hope for.

“That’s my hope for our team, that we can grasp a style of football that we can be proud of.”

They have done that for a few weeks now, truth be told.

It’s just that this week, the scoreboard showed it, too.

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Baltimore Ravens

The Baltimore Ravens are rounding into form, and that’s a credit, again, to John Harbaugh’s people development pipeline. Obviously, and rightfully so, a big part of the story coming out of Saturday’s 34–17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers will center on the Baltimore offense. Lamar Jackson kept pace with Josh Allen in the MVP race with a tidy 207-yard effort that bore out three touchdown passes and a 115.4 passer rating. The Ravens churned out 220 yards on the ground, at a 5.8-per-carry clip. And, yes, all of that is impressive.

But what I continue to see here is how this year’s Ravens, rather than just running back last year’s AFC finalist, turned the page in 2024 and did it with belief in their own farm system.

We’ve been over this before. They said goodbye to three starting linemen, and have leaned on younger developmental guys such as Daniel Faalele and Roger Rosengarten. Ditto at linebacker, where they let Patrick Queen go, with the idea Trenton Simpson would, in time, be just as good—and when they had to sit him down, they had Malik Harrison (similar to Patrick Mekari on the line) as a young, homegrown vet who was ready to go.

And it’s also apparent in an area where the Ravens really didn’t have a choice. Part of the price of winning can be coaching attrition, and Baltimore felt that in January with the loss of its outstanding young defensive coordinator, with Mike Macdonald off to Seattle to become the Seahawks’ head coach. Harbaugh picked 31-year-old Zach Orr to replace him, even with guys such as Dennard Wilson and Anthony Weaver, who become coordinators for the Tennessee Titans and Miami Dolphins, respectively, on hand.

It didn’t look great out of the gate for Orr, the same way Macdonald’s defense stumbled a bit at first. Of late, though, that’s flipped. Sandwiching their bye, the Ravens held three straight opponents under 300 yards, something they did only once in their first 11 games, to help get the team to 9–5 heading into Saturday’s showdown.

Things in that showdown were by no means perfect. The defense gave up a field goal inside two minutes at the end of the first half that kept the Steelers in the game, then yielded a 44-yard back-shoulder throw from Russell Wilson to Calvin Austin III that keyed an 88-yard drive to tie it with 20 minutes to go. And from that point forward, you saw the fast, nasty, edgy defense Orr has been trying to get a handle on deploying the past three months.

So the Ravens secured a fourth-down stop on the first play of the fourth quarter. Then, when Jackson was picked off two plays later, the defense’s old stalwart, Marlon Humphrey, responded with a 37-yard pick-six—the first of his career.

When it mattered most, the defense was at its best.

In the fourth quarter, Orr’s unit stood tall, allowing just 34 yards, three first downs and one third-down conversion, suffocating the Steelers to make the idea of a second consecutive AFC North title and a home playoff game real. And perhaps serving notice to the rest of the conference what a tough out this team will be, come January.

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Los Angeles Chargers

While we’re on defensive coordinators, John Harbaugh’s brother, Jim, has a really good one. On the Amazon Thursday night broadcast (which I’m a part of), we kept showing a statistic on the Los Angeles Chargers’ defense—and how a collapse in the second half against the Buccaneers in Week 15 seemed to bleed over into the start of Thursday’s game against the Denver Broncos.

The numbers, in case you missed them, weren’t flattering. Over that four-quarter stretch, first-year Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter’s unit gave up 48 points, 534 yards and 7.7 yards per play. Heading into the second half, there was a ton on the line for everyone wearing powder blue. With a loss, Denver would be in the playoffs, and the Chargers’ once-solid postseason position would be shaken.

Thanks to Minter’s group, they don’t have to worry about that anymore. They allowed just 119 yards and six first downs after halftime. Denver’s five second-half possessions ended with three punts and two field goals.

The difference, really, wasn’t anyone waving a magic wand. Khalil Mack and Derwin James’s leadership was felt—Mack by example, and James both in that way and through a message he gave his teammates at the half, that the defense hadn’t been good enough and they had to pull together to dig out of the rut. And then, the Chargers started winning on first down, which put the Broncos and rookie Bo Nix in more long-yardage situations, which led to better pressure.

On the Broncos’ first four possessions, they were in first-down situations seven times and compiled a total of minus-2 yards on those seven plays. A big part of it was defending the run better (the Broncos rushed for 89 yards in the first half and 21 yards in the second half), which led to similar improvement on third down (Denver was 3-of-5 in the first half, and 2-of-8 in the second half).

All that sounds simple. But it’s not, and not after a unit might be at risk of losing its confidence.

Minter’s done a fantastic job on balance all year—the Chargers, with an aging front and a lot of youth playing at corner and inside linebacker, are near the top of the NFL in a lot of defensive categories. His vision to have a defense that would play a complementary style, highlighting its rush ability while hiding its lack of elite cover guys, has come to life with a group that stops the run, plays zone, rushes its butt off and changes the picture on passers.

But, to me, regardless of what a guy’s vision is for his group, this was the sort of spot where a young coach gets challenged in a serious way. Minter passed the test with flying colors.

Maybe, in a month, we’ll see teams take notice, if anyone’s interested in going the route Seattle did in hiring Mike Macdonald.

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Quick-hitters 

Christmas is coming, and so are the quick-hitters, with just 33 regular-season games left. Let’s not waste any more time …

• We’re going to cover the Cincinnati Bengals extensively Monday morning—but that’s a team that’s going to be a problem if they get in the AFC bracket. Joe Burrow is, it goes without saying, alongside Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, comfortably in the elite category at his position.

• The Chiefs could keep their arch nemesis out of the playoff picture. If Kansas City wins on Wednesday, they’ll clinch the AFC’s No. 1 seed, meaning they could choose to sit guys in Week 18 against the Broncos. But the Bengals would need a Denver loss (combined with a Week 17 win over the Broncos themselves) to get in.

• Hollywood Brown already looks like a difference maker for the Chiefs. He could allow them to go back to their original plan for 2024 on offense—lining him and Xavier Worthy up on the outside to stretch defenses vertically and open up everything for the other guys underneath.

• Jonathan Taylor, who rushed for 218 yards in the Indianapolis Colts’ win over the Jaguars, remains criminally underrated. And it does make you wonder if he switched teams like Saquon Barkley did, if something similar would happen.

• Speaking of Barkley, he’s now at 1,838 rushing yards on the season. That puts him 162 yards shy of 2,000, and 267 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s 40-year-old all-time rushing record. Tough, but doable. The scrimmage yards record (2,509 by Chris Johnson in 2009) is a lot less likely now, with Barkley at 2,114 in that category.

• With questions swirling, the Patriots certainly fought for Jerod Mayo on Sunday, jumping to a 14–0 lead in Buffalo and fighting valiantly, if a bit sloppily, in a 24–21 loss. Also, Drake Maye is going to be a star, so long as New England can fix some things (most things?) around him.

• Amazing fact, with the Niners now eliminated: Since 2003, a span that encompasses 22 seasons, San Francisco has either missed the playoffs (15 times) or made the NFC title game (seven times) every year. The biggest injury loss contributing to this year’s failure in Santa Clara, by the way, is definitely left tackle Trent Williams.

• The Chicago Bears have faced a 20-point deficit in four straight games. If that’s not a precursor for sweeping football change, I don’t know what is.

• Dan Campbell’s Lions winning 13 games is a franchise first. So, too, is Kevin O’Connell’s second 13-win season as Vikings coach. Both are reasons (Matt LaFleur’s in this category as well) why the NFC North looks like it’s going to be a war for the foreseeable future.

• I don’t have a lot to take from Raiders-Jaguars. Outside of the fact that the players do seem to still be playing for Antonio Pierce in Las Vegas. And Jacksonville’s now one five teams knotted at 3–12, a game back of the Giants in the race for the No. 1 pick, and a couple weeks (or days) away from big organizational changes.