While the MVP candidate is clearly the engine, other players are doing their part. Plus, how the Commanders and Seahawks have rebounded from skids, the Bengals are 4–8, the Bills are AFC East champs again and more.
has one game left, and we’re here for you, recapping the weekend, and setting up Week 14 ahead. 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 …The Philadelphia Eagles keep coming, behind a powerful run game that’s more than just Saquon Barkley.
“You’re getting a full effort from everybody,” coach Nick Sirianni told me, as he drove back from the office, after returning from Baltimore with a 24–19 win. “Saquon’s gonna get talked about a ton and rightfully so, but the tight ends are blocking well. I thought C.J. came through the line of scrimmage, had some really good pulls, and we got some good plays on that.
. At the end of the day, football is about tackling, it’s about getting off blocks, it’s about beating blocks, it’s about blocking, it’s about catching the football, it’s about fundamentals.”Don’t believe it? Ask Barkley. It’s all unfolding before his eyes.The Washington Commanders got right Sunday, in large part because of their emphasis on the six days before their game against the Tennessee Titans.
That part was significant in itself, proving to Ertz that the energy the Commanders had played with earlier in the year was back. And the story on the latter really starts a few weeks back, when Seattle was on its bye, and had hit a real rough patch in Mike Macdonald’s first year, losing five of six after a 3–0 start.So Macdonald gave everyone a real chance to do both.
For both Geno Smith and Leonard Williams, there was, admittedly, a little extra about this one. Smith was drafted by the Jets in the second round of the 2013 draft, while Williams was picked with the No. 6 pick two years later. Sunday was the first time either have returned to the Meadowlands with an opposing team , and there was an unspoken motivation the two carried with them, but didn’t really mention to one another until this week.
But Williams was pretty excited in his own right. The Seahawks were, too, and with good reason after their third consecutive win, and sole possession of first in the NFC West. This one came with less than two minutes left in the third quarter, the Falcons clinging to a 10–9 lead and going for it on a fourth-and-5 from the Chargers’ 40. The snap before, the Chargers sent a zero blitz at Kirk Cousins to generate an incompletion. So on fourth down, DC Jesse Minter had a call that was married up with that one, to show the zero-blitz look again, before backing off it and trapping the flat to take away a hurried throw.
You can take Still’s rookie class and isolate it for proof. Right tackle Joe Alt, the fifth pick in the draft, is already operating like a Pro Bowler, to give the Chargers high-end bookends on the offensive line. Second-rounder Ladd McConkey, stepping into the considerably-well-sized shoes of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams at receiver, had another nine catches for 117 yards Sunday.
All of it showed up with the team coming off an emotional loss to Harbaugh’s brother last Monday, in how they locked back in with the 10 a.m. Pacific start on the other side of the country in Atlanta on Sunday. As they’d expect it to keep showing up going forward. Just knowing what I know about Burrow, he doesn’t care about any of that—all he cares about is the team’s record.
Now, because of his contract, things were always going to be a little more challenging for the Bengals from a roster-building standpoint. But the Chiefs, Bills and Ravens have navigated those challenges with their star quarterbacks without hitting this sort of roadblock. And I’d say that means this offseason is going to be on the Bengals to right a lot of the wrongs that cropped up this year.
The way Matt Eberflus’s firing went down is the perfect example of why the franchise needs a real agent of change, rather than just a football strategist. Whether you believe the staff failed them or not, Eberflus didn’t take accountability in the moment with the players, nor did it happen in his postgame press conference or morning-after Zoom call with local reporters. And that’s the kind of thing that’s tough to come back from as a coach, especially since it was part of a larger pattern, dating back to the Hail Mary loss in D.C.
Saying all this stuff isn’t related is, plainly, whistling by a graveyard that George Halas isn’t going to rise up to save his proud old franchise. Lovie Smith was the last coach to post consecutive winning seasons in Chicago, and that was two decades ago. The last guy to do it three years in a row was Mike Ditka. And right now, the rest of the NFC North is a collective 30–6, and each of the other three teams has a relatively young coach and healthy quarterback situation.
The first was on a fourth-and-14 after a shaky pass interference call on a heave of a throw from Williams bailed out the Bears. The second one, of course, Chicago helped out. The Buffalo Bills clinched their fifth consecutive AFC East title Sunday, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Meanwhile, Buffalo replaced veterans in the secondary, offensive line and receiving core, got younger all over the place as a result this year, and just won its fifth division title in a row, proving, again, that it has replaced New England as the division’s measuring stick.
“It was a dirty hit,” said veteran tight end Evan Engram, who got in Al-Shaair’s face shortly after the hit. “Obviously those hits are always in question. Trevor was going down, and I saw it out of my peripheral. I got a pretty clear view of it, and in that moment, just instincts. It just didn’t feel like a clean hit, so just go stick up for my quarterback.
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