Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-11-28 12:30PM Chicago Bears @ Detroit Lions
Thu 2024-11-28 4:30PM New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys
Thu 2024-11-28 8:20PM Miami Dolphins @ Green Bay Packers
Fri 2024-11-29 3:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Kansas City Chiefs
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Arizona Cardinals @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-12-01 4:05PM Los Angeles Rams @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-12-01 4:05PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-12-01 4:25PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 2024-12-01 8:20PM San Francisco 49ers @ Buffalo Bills
Mon 2024-12-02 8:15PM Cleveland Browns @ Denver Broncos
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Notes -
Tremendous week for the Eagles. With any luck they have the NFC East sewn up after beating the Rams, with the Redskins dropping a sloppy game to a scrappy Dallas team.
Saquon is the truth. You can't stop Barkley you can only hope to contain him. Next week is going to be key for his MVP and OPOY narrative, if he has a great game and the defense stuffs Lamar and Henry, then Saquon will emerge in a two horse race with Josh Allen. He'll still probably lose to Allen, non-QBs rarely win, but he'll have a puncher's chance down the stretch.
Hurts and the rest of the offense looked OK at best. I was hoping to see Hurts spread the ball around more, but he stuck to AJ Brown and Dallas Goedert. He just never has the processing speed to run through his other receiving options. If he could, he'd be unstoppable. He'll need to find it against a weak Ravens pass defense next week if they're going to outshoot Lamar.
The Eagles' D finally managed to beat a competent QB in an unassailably well executed way. Stafford looked good, but didn't have enough. Unfortunately, they lost Brandon Graham to a season ending triceps injury. That leaves the team dangerously thin at Edge, relying on Josh Sweat, second year development project Nolan Smith, and developmental rookie Jalyx Hunt. All three will need to step up if the team is going to make any noise down the stretch.
Luckily for the Eagles, the Redskins fell apart against a shorthanded Dallas team. Three up in the loss column with six to play puts them in a position where if they just beat the Panthers, Giants, and Cowboys at home, then the skins need to win out in order to get a tie. The dallas game was hilarious, I listened to the radio broadcast doing chores, and I turned it off after the kick return touchdown figuring the game was over. Missing two more touchdowns and a field goal that were still left in the game. Daniels is Good, and will be trouble for the rest of his rookie contract for the Eagles. Dallas is bad, but still has enough star power that if they all decide to pull the wagon together they can make it tough for any team. Hopefully by Christmas they are so far out of it that they have little motivation to play spoiler in Philly, and if you put your arm on their throat they'll fold.
Elsewhere in the NFL: Can Pat Mahomes keep getting away with it? Is Russell Wilson cooked? How much tanking is too much tanking in New Jersey?
He's looked good the past several weeks, but the rushing defenses the Eagles have been playing against are dogshit. The last time they played a team ranked in the top 20 they were 2–2 and everyone was talking about whether the bye week would be a good time to fire Sirianni. I am, of course, only mentioning this so I can say that I think the Steelers defense has a decent shot of stopping him. The Eagles have an RPO-heavy offense, and the Steelers have done a good job of against the RPO. If they blitz at Barkley with Highsmith off the strong side they'll make Hurts beat them himself. Derrick Henry only had 65 yards against the Steelers, half of which came on one play.
Yeah, probably.
No reason to think so. He looked fine in the second half of the Browns game, and the Ravens game was bound to be close since they've been playing the exact same game since Jackson entered the league.
I was wondering about this but I couldn't get a good answer. Was there some kind of cap reason that made it more advantageous for the Giants to bench Jones than release him? It's a moot point now, but nakedly benching your best quarterback for cap reasons should trigger some kind of penalty for blatant cap manipulation. Kind of like how an arbitrator flat-out rejected the deal Ilya Kovalchuk signed with the Devils back in 2010. There was a trend at the time to circumvent the salary cap by signing long, front-loaded deals. The league eventually put an end to the practice, but the Kovalchuk deal was so blatant that it was rejected outright (though the deal he ended up signing was only slightly less ridiculous).
It was to avoid the possibility of his injury guarantees kicking in on his contract. If he got hurt (on the metlife turf for that matter) he'd be owed more money. It'll never happen, but I think the league needs to work out some "for the sake of being classy" CBA rules in the future that will allow teams to get cap relief in spots where the alternative strategies indicated harm the public image of the NFL. Danny Dimes, Russell Wilson, Tua Taigovailoa, Deshaun Watson. We have these conversations where it would all feel so much nicer if the salary cap weren't involved, but the salary cap is such an important part of the team building process that one can't afford to ignore it.
I'm deeply ambivalent on the topic of tanking. On the one hand I prefer cyclical contention to the brutal oligarchy of the European leagues, where it's understood that the only way a team really goes from worst to first is if it gets purchased by some evil billionaire. I love to watch a homegrown team turn it around. On the other, I see so many teams tank and never really get out of it. Even a team like the Process Sixers, that achieved drafting a perennial MVP candidate, ultimately never got over the hump and built a real stable likeable team with a winning culture. Losing for the sake of losing is often a cul-de-sac.
This is why I will never stop stumping for the idea of redistributing draft picks based on bottom 5-10 teams at the trade deadline, which then turns into a new league table where the best team out of that group gets the #1 pick, and so on and so forth. Incentivize winning, even after the a team is out of the playoff race. Today there are only a couple teams outside the bottom ten who aren't looking at any shot at the playoffs, maybe Dallas and Indy and Chicago feel a little left out. Replace #TankForTravis with #WinForTravis. Strictly speaking, it wouldn't be impossible for Jacksonville or the Giants to outplay the Bengals down the stretch, especially if they were incentivized to actually try.
I'm excited for the Eagles-Steelers, they're likely to get stumped by Pittsburgh. But the more important games are against the Ravens, who seem to have a bit of choker to them. Beat the Ravens, and all they have to do the rest of the season is beat the teams they're supposed to beat.
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