Plus, Darius Leonard saves Indy, Dolphins gut one out, Trubisky has Bears back in it, Patriots eliminated, and much more.
Reacting and overreacting to everything that happened in the Week 15 Sunday afternoon games...
Things That Made Me Giddy
Brady, Bucs Back From the Brink: After a lifeless first half that saw them fall behind 17-0 in Atlanta, Brady led three third-quarter touchdown drives—facing just two third downs along the way—and putting up 31 second-half points in a comeback win. Brady ended up throwing for 390.
Darius Leonard Saves Christmas: With a game-clinching punchout on Keke Coutee on a play that would have, if not ended in a touchdown, set up a first-and-goal with the Colts clinging to a seven-point lead.
Dolphins Gut One Out: Tua was without any NFL-caliber receivers on the outside, relying on his tight ends and a lot of Lynn Bowden. He threw an unforgivable red-zone interception, but other than that managed the game properly, scrambled for a third-down red-zone TD later in the game, and let the run game do its thing to the tune of 250 yards on 42 attempts.
Mitchell Trubisky Putting Out Some Pretty Good Tape: The quarterback-coach marriage didn’t work in Chicago, and there’s no realistic scenario where Trubisky can return to Chicago. But it would be interesting to see him in a highly schemed Kubiak/Stefanski/Shanahan-style offense and, after a year or two as a backup, see if he can carve out a Tannehill-type career path in his second act.
Tony Pollard as Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer: This was while protecting a three-point lead, on second-and-4 with 2:36 left. Getting the fulltime role with Ezekiel Elliott out, Pollard went for 132 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns on 18 touches.
Cario Santos: Remember all this wackiness? Turns out all they had to do was find a good kicker and agree to pay him money in exchange for his services. Santos has made 22 field-goal attempts in a row and is 25-for-27 on the year.
Younghoe Koo Is the New King of 50-Plus: His 52-yarder to go ahead midway through the fourth quarter made it 8-for-8 on the season.
Adam Thielen in the Red Zone: His 12th red-zone TD of the season brings him within two of Randy Moss’s single-season red-zone TD catch record (14, with the 2007 Patriots). Will he get there? The world will be watching.
Dez Bryant Throws Up the X: He’s had a rough couple of weeks, so catching his first touchdown in more than three years is a nice moment for him, and the nostalgia of it all makes it a nice moment for us. And that’s the real meaning of Christmas.
Matthew Stafford, Still Doing His Thing: As has been the case for the past decade, he was the only thing keeping the Lions competitive as he threw for 252 and a touchdown in Nashville while playing with torn cartilage in his rib cage. Former Lions GM Bob Quinn, who dismantled this roster in a way that will take years to recover from, should volunteer to donate his full salary from his tenure to a charity of Stafford’s choice. It’s the right thing to do.
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Regrets
Falcons With a Lead, Part VIII: The combination of what they’ve done this season and the fact that it was Tom Brady on the other sideline… this 17-point second-half blown lead just felt a little too on-the-nose.
The Patriots’ Run Defense: Yes, they need to address the quarterback situation, but my goodness the way this defense has struggled after losing their linebacker. Ten days after allowing 186 rushing yards to the Rams, they gave up 250 in Miami, the most they’ve given up since November 2013 (280 to Denver) and the fourth-most a Belichick Patriots defense has ever given up.
Dwayne Haskins Does His Best Alex Smith Impression for Three Quarters: The Football Team has opted out of offensive football in the second half of the season; it has somehow worked out but it remains a narrow path to victory. On Sunday, against a historically bad defense, Haskins just checked it down, checked it down, checked it as their deficit grew and the defense was unable to deliver the game-altering plays they have provided the past few weeks. Playing the field position game doesn’t work when you’re down 17, but it’s hard to blame Haskins since they benched him in favor of the quarterback who does just that. If you’re going to choose that approach on offense that’s up to the coaching staff and the organization, but for his sake, send the talented young quarterback to another organization.
Pobody’s Nerfect, Even Jason Sanders: The Dolphins kicker proves that in some ways he’s just like us, actually missing a field goal from 50-plus yards. He had been 8-for-8 from that distance on the season before just pulling a 52-yarder wide left at the end of the first half.
Tua’s Red-Zone Interception: This is alarmingly bad quarterbacking. If this ball comes out on time it’s a touchdown—J.C. Jackson hesitates because of the traffic. I’m not sure if this is a matter of Tua not being able to see Lynn Bowden or not being able to find a throwing lane, but either way it’s a product of managing the pocket very, very poorly. That first mistake costs the Dolphins four points. Once he fails to get it out, that throw is no longer available—in no world would it ever be available that late in the down. So Tua makes things significantly worse by forcing a throw when there’s a 99% chance this will be the result, costing Miami the drive’s remaining three points. There are young quarterback mistakes you can live with, but this is not one of them.
Stephon Gilmore Goes Down: It was non-contact but also looked like it might have been a matter of a bad patch of turf. Either way, it’s an incredibly difficult break for a 30-year-old corner in what’s essentially a contract year.
Deshaun Watson as Sisyphus: For the second time in December, he took this crummy Texans team within two yards of an upset against the Colts, only to have a teammate’s mishap send the boulder tumbling back down the mountain. He threw for 373 and 9.1 yards per attempt in the narrow loss. For Watson’s sake, hopefully the owner awakens from his slumber soon.
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Moments We’ll Tell Our Grandkids About
Tyre Phillips Yards After Contact:
Tom Brady to Antonio Brown for the First Time in 15 Months: Two guys who have learned a valuable lesson on their journey together: Feel free to treat others however you want, because scoring points in football games is the only true measure of a man. A real feel-no-particular-emotion moment.
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What We’ll Be Talking About This Week
Now Are the Bucs Ready to Play?: After a humiliating first half in Atlanta, following up a series of lackluster performances, the offense got it going. We’ve seen them carve up defenses short on talent before, like when they scored at will in Carolina, only to disappear for long stretches afterward. They’ll get a January tune-up against a Detroit defense that can’t stop anyone, then Atlanta again.
Ravens Still Need Help: They’d be one of the best teams to ever miss the postseason—even more stunning in a year of playoff extension—but the Ravens will likely get to 11-5 with the Giants and at Cincinnati left on the schedule. Even in that scenario, they need the Colts (at PIT and vs. JAX), Dolphins (at LV, at BUF) or Browns (at NYG, at NYJ, vs. PIT) to trip up once.
Bears Alive: With back-to-back wins, they’re back to .500 with a trip to Jacksonville coming up. And they host the Packers Week 17, but it might be a heavy taste of Tim Boyle in that game as Green Bay might have nothing to play for.
A Patriots-Less Postseason: It’s official, with the loss in Miami knocking them out of postseason contention. Now we have three months to discuss how they’ll fix this defense and address the quarterback position and dearth of passing-game weapons.
Derrick Henry In the Year 2,000: He still needs 321 over the final two weeks, which is attainable but seems unwise considering January games are still to be played.
Carson Wentz’s Lack of Holiday Cheer: I’m not sure why it’s a headline that he didn’t like being benched less than a year after single-handedly dragging this lifeless corpse of an offense to the postseason. Or that he didn’t like being made to play behind an offensive line that can’t block, with receivers who can’t catch, in a unit full of players who didn’t know the plays. Or that he watched the coaching staff, after turning to Jalen Hurts, immediately pivot to the kind of run-heavy, read-option approach they should have gone to weeks ago. Wentz’s play in 2020 was indefensible, but we might never see a quarterback get less support from a coaching staff, front office and surrounding cast than he did the past two seasons.
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