5 things I care about

Philly’s D-line beats up on L.A.

One of the matchups I was most keen to watch in Week 12 was the Eagles defense against the Rams offense. Despite some of the gaudy efficiency numbers Los Angeles boasts when it has all its star skill-position players on the field together, there appeared to be some leaks in the warship. On paper, some of those cracks were problematic against a team featuring the Eagles’ defensive personnel.

The on-paper mismatches don’t always turn into on-field results. Unfortunately for the Rams, this one against a stifling Eagles defense played out precisely as the nightmare scenario forecasted.

That stats may not perfectly show it, but the pressure brought on by the Eagles defense was an issue all night. Philadephia only blitzed on 11.9% of Stafford’s dropbacks and still forced him to consistently adjust in the pocket. Pressure has been the Achilles heel for this Rams’ passing game, as Stafford has been one of the lowest-rated passers under pressure this season. When it mattered most, that reared its head in a big way. Stafford wasn’t “bad” in this game but he ended the night with five sacks and 4.8 yards per pass attempt. Entire drives cratered under waves of heat, as the Rams went 0-for-8 on third downs against the Eagles.

The Rams offense is typically a threatening unit over the course of an entire game. For massive sections of this contest, if Stafford wasn’t making a hero throw or Puka Nacua didn’t make a freaky play, this offense would be stuck in the mud when the game was even remotely close.

Stafford and the Rams offense will ultimately be fine. You won’t find another defense on the remaining schedule that can remotely dismantle a team like Philadelphia’s. However, this pressure issue is a matchup note to consider every week and will be what limits the team’s ceiling.

For the Eagles, their stop unit is certified as for-real as it gets. A defense like this, paired with an obnoxiously special running game and a passing game with an elite wide receiver, is the recipe for a Super Bowl run. Early in the season, there were doubts about whether Philadelphia could be that type of squad. It isn’t the same group as the September Eagles. The arrival of the defense as a top-of-the-league unit changed everything. This is a new team; a complete battleship that can sink any other craft in the sea.

Bucky Irving

When Bucky Irving has the ball in his hands, I have to check myself not to get too crazy with my enthusiasm for his future. He’s an exhilarating runner, the type of player who makes you want to assign some irresponsible praise and comparisons.

Irving is a smooth mover who is a handful for opponents to bring down in space. He knifes through open holes in the blocking scheme and then really gets cooking. Once he’s on the second level, the first defender rarely brings Irving down. He’s one of the most impressive pure runners league-wide in 2024. He gained 98 yards after contact against the Giants, per Next Gen Stats.

The Bucs were coming off their bye this week and it’s always critical to note any personnel changes in those moments. It could be a fluke, but Irving saw a significant bump in his passing-game usage in Week 12.

Liam Coen used the running backs in the passing game a ton during the absence of Chris Godwin and Mike Evans. With the latter back in action, some of the backs ceded receiving work, but not Irving. The rookie back ran more routes than Rachaad White and earned six targets, tied with Evans for second on the team behind Sterling Shepard.

White has been such a quality receiver; it would be a stunner if he’s phased out. However, Irving has proven to be so electric that this team should try to get the ball in his hands by any means necessary.

The 2023 Bucs offense featured one of the worst running games in the NFL. They’re a top-10 rushing team based on EPA and success rate this season. That isn’t all due to Bucky Irving, but his vision and explosiveness played a big role in that leap. The rookie has been a true revelation this year.

The Titans’ defensive line

If you can rush and rattle C.J. Stroud, you can beat the Texans. The Titans are not a great or complete football team, but their defensive line is a fantastic unit, especially on the interior. They were not an ideal matchup for Houston.

It’s gone under-discussed because of their record and the focus on the struggles of the offense amid Will Levis’ wild, turnover-filled season, but this Titans defense is good. The fact that they beat the best team in their division on a day when Levis — who admittedly threw some haymakers on Sunday — took eight sacks, tossed a pick-six and lost a fumble, is a testament to that side of the football.

The Titans pressured Stroud on a whopping 40% of his dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats. He averaged 4.1 yards per attempt on 11 passes and threw one of his two picks. It’s the same story every week. Not only did Jeffery Simmons and T’Vondre Sweat get in Stroud’s face all afternoon, they dominated the line of scrimmage against the run. Joe Mixon averaged a measly 1.8 yards per carry and was frustrated early on in the game.

Much of the discussion coming out of this game will center around more rounds of “What’s wrong with the Texans?” Enough already; the Texans are what they have been for months now.

We should be talking about the painfully underrated Titans defense in the wake of their big Week 12 upset.

Josh Jacobs’ touchdowns

At one point this season, Josh Jacobs made his way into The People’s Panic meter segment on The Yahoo Fantasy Forecast. The production hadn’t been there on a weekly basis. Certain sections of the fantasy football community even called him washed during his Week 1 debut with Green Bay. What a bunch of certified non-ball-knowers. Tell me you aren’t watching the games without telling me you aren’t watching the games. Perhaps it’s better expressed by saying you simply don’t know what you’re watching.

What a shame for those folks, because they’ve missed a really enjoyable product all season.

The Packers running game has been great all season and Jacobs, in particular, has played great football. At times this year, the fantasy stats just didn’t live up to the tape, as Jacobs didn’t clear 16 points until Week 7. Sometimes solving that divide requires a deep dive to uncover the reasoning behind it. This is not one of those moments.

Jacobs only found the end zone once between Weeks 1 to 7, as the Packers offense lived in several different identities due to Jordan Love’s health and Jacobs himself had a run of bad luck. The universe is now in the middle of healing. Jacobs has found the end-zone a whopping seven times in their last five games, including three scores against the 49ers on Sunday. Now, he looks like one of the best backs in fantasy football. Funny how that works.

The fun could only now just be getting started for Jacobs, if the last two weeks are any indication. Since coming back from their bye, the Packers have leaned heavily into the run game and particularly the type of gap-scheme runs that Jacobs thrives under. For all the fun players in the Green Bay passing game, Matt LaFleur has built the game plans around what makes Jacobs tick the last two weeks.

My guess as to why the Packers let go of the beloved and still effective Aaron Jones to sign Jacobs in the offseason was the latter’s ability to thrive in multiple and varied run schemes. We’ve seen that come to play in the last month, and LaFleur isn’t about to let up on the run-game hammer.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba being schemed up to thrive

We might look back at DK Metcalf’s injury this season as the moment everything changed for Jaxon Smith-Njigba. At times, it takes a bit of chaos to shake up a coaching staff and force them to reimagine usage. What JSN showed Mike MacDonald and Ryan Grubb during those couple of games seems to have opened the door to new heights for the 2023 first-rounder.

Smith-Njigba once again led the team in target share with 25% against the Cardinals. He only averaged 1.9 air yards per target but that’s not the important result. What matters much more than the air yards is how those looks were designed. JSN was targeted as the primary read on quick-hitting passes on the back of routes where other wide receivers helped clear out space. That’s the type of purposeful usage that signals the new prestige this wideout holds in the minds of this coaching staff.

JSN repaid the coaches’ faith in those designed plays. The talented receiver averaged 11 yards after the catch per reception and 67% of his catches resulted in a first down or touchdown.

Geno Smith completed 20 of 24 passes under 10 air yards in Week 12, per Next Gen Stats, for 207 yards. This was a great way to attack a Cardinals defense that pressured Seattle with some success and plays some funky coverage looks on the back end. But that plan doesn’t succeed without Smith-Njigba.

Smith is a great starting quarterback but his aggression can get the best of him when he’s exclusively hunting big plays. Having these designed layups in place helps settle Smith, and JSN being so excellent with the ball in his hands incentivizes the quarterback to take those throws.

Despite some advanced stats painting a pretty negative play on JSN’s rookie year and the start of 2024, film showed he was fine as a rookie and fine early this season. Well, since Seattle has removed some of the artificial limitations on his deployment, he’s been much more than fine the last few weeks.

Right now, he looks like the Seahawks’ most important skill-position option on offense and an answer to much of what ails other players on the unit.

5 things I don’t care about

MVP debates about Saquon Barkley

The only reason I don’t care about these debates is that almost no one participating in the exercise is going to bring anything new to the table. Most people who don’t think Saqoun Barkley is one of the most valuable players to his individual team have dug their heels in and are ready to cling to long-held dogma.

However, discussing the impact of Barkley on this Eagles team and the value he provides is endlessly fascinating.

The Eagles cultivate such a great rushing ecosystem for any running back to work. We’ve seen multiple different backs have career-best years in Philly alongside Jalen Hurts and behind this offensive line the last three seasons. Even backup Kenneth Gainwell had some productive touches on Sunday Night Football. The current-era Eagles have never employed a running back like Saquon Barkley, who can take over a game and launch this ecosystem into the stratosphere.

There are so many plays where a typical running back would go down for a short gain that Barkley turns into an explosive. He makes the team right when the scheme is wrong. I just don’t know how we’re still having the same conversations about running back value when we’ve seen an elite back like this weaponize an already great rushing attack. He’s not even the only one doing it; look at 2022-2023 Christian McCaffrey in San Francisco and Derrick Henry in Baltimore.

Week 12 was the first time Barkley cleared 200 yards from scrimmage since his second year in the NFL (2019). He smashed that number and cleared 300 yards. His 44.2 half-PPR fantasy points are the most by a running back this season thus far.

Would he have this statistical success level back in New York or a similarly poor environment? Of course not.

But can we please stop acting like this is exclusively a running back reality? Former draft busts at quarterbacks resurrect their careers when they get paired with sharp play-callers and quality skill-position players. Wide receivers suffer in the box score on bad offense with subpar passers. Running back statistics are not unique in this regard.

Saquon Barkley MVP debates are probably worthless for several reasons, not to mention that non-December discussions about the award don’t actually matter. However, there is no denying his arrival in Philly will go down as one of the most impactful developments of the 2024 NFL season. Elite running backs like him still have the cache to lift the ceiling of their offenses.

What the 49ers should be

As a football collective, we are slow to let go of our priors. That’s not always a bad thing. The NFL is such a small sample-size game that a couple of outlier performances can cause massive overreactions to variables that might be nothing but noise. Other times, it causes us to be far too late to believe the new reality the games are begging us to accept.

We are so well beyond that moment for the San Francisco 49ers, who at no point have looked like the team we expected them to be this season. The Week 12 version of the 49ers was nothing short of a zombie team.

When the 49ers suffered multiple injuries in the offseason, had their first-round pick get shot in August and had to navigate multiple contract holdouts deep into training camp with two of their superstar players, it just felt like this wasn’t going to be their year. Well, it is absolutely not their year. They don’t have enough good players on offense and the defense isn’t the type of unit to carry a squad.

Throw the names out, and just look at the current play. Nothing we’ve seen from Deebo Samuel or Christian McCaffrey when they’ve been available looks like their peak versions. The wide receiver room is being led by a good, useful player in Jauan Jennings but he doesn’t create big plays on his own. I don’t care what any per-route stat tells you; he doesn’t come close to providing the same elite play Brandon Aiyuk brought to the X-receiver position last season.

The 2024 San Francisco 49ers have been living on the edge all year. There’s nothing like a quarterback injury to give you that final push across the cliff. The moment Brock Purdy was ruled out Friday evening, it was over for this team. Given how Kyle Shanahan and co. handled certain injuries this year, I don’t believe a word of hope coming out of that building that Purdy’s shoulder injury is not a multi-week issue.

Perhaps the theoretical version of the 49ers could survive a few games with Brandon Allen under center. It’s past time we accept that interpretation of this team died before the season even kicked off. Week 12 gave us all the proof we needed.

Panthers’ last-minute loss

The Panthers lost to the defending champs on a closing-seconds field goal after a two-minute drill that featured a back-breaking Patrick Mahomes scramble.

What do you want from them? Add Carolina to a long list of qualifying teams for that honor.

Beyond the loss, there are many positive takeaways from Carolina’s performance off their bye week. No development is more critical than Bryce Young’s play, which I thought was excellent against Kansas City.

The two biggest issues that haunted Young as a rookie: plays were dead if he faced additional pressure, and he never threatened defenses down the field. His 2023 teammates didn’t help him in either area but Young’s own play wasn’t good enough. He reversed course on both issues in Week 12.

The Chiefs blitzed Young on 40% of his dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats, showing little respect for the Panthers’ passing game. He made them pay. Young completed 11 of 14 attempts against the blitz and averaged a beefy 9.6 yards per attempt. He never wilted in the face of the Chiefs rush and was quick to diagnose coverages.

Young was also more aggressive pushing the ball downfield than we’re used to seeing from the Panthers passer. He averaged 8.1 air yards per attempt and posted a career-high completion percentage over expected of +14.0% on throws of 10-plus air yards, per Next Gen Stats. Young attacked all three areas of the field with confidence.

This Week 12 output from Young is not a fluke. He’s quietly played solid football since returning from his stint on the bench and,’ most importantly, you can map game-by-game improvement each week.

It feels like Young has a strong command and understanding of Dave Canales’ offense. The Panthers’ run game is fantastic behind an underrated offensive line and the pass-catchers are significantly better than the league-worst 2023 crew. Young finally has the type of environment around him to succeed and his own play is growing every week.

We’ll see if he ever plays up to a first-overall-quarterback ceiling but he looks to have established himself as a starter in the league.

Over-analysis of Kliff Kingsbury

When the Cowboys-Commanders game was 10-9 midway through the fourth quarter, the Kliff Kingsbury slump and Jayden Daniels fantasy-panic headlines were ready to write themselves.

This game broke open in an extremely strange fashion from that point on to end in a 34-26 final score.

Perhaps that sequence will quiet the criticism of Kingsbury. However, if that does become the talking point, I think that’s misplaced and just a convenient narrative based on Kingsbury’s history in Arizona.

Over the previous two weeks, I didn’t see anything conceptually or play-sequencing-related that would lead me to raise an eyebrow at the offensive coordinator. This is still a unit that’s trying to push the right buttons; they just ran into two of the best defenses in the NFL in the Steelers and Eagles. Also, those two have just the right type of schemes to limit a scrambling quarterback like Daniels, who might not even be 100% healthy.

While it was tempting to write this in as an obvious bounce-back spot, given that Dallas lives at the other end of the defensive rankings, it wasn’t quite that simple.

While the Cowboys defense has been porous for most of the year, their pass rush has improved in recent weeks with Micah Parsons back in the mix. No. 11 is that kind of unit-defining game-wrecker. His presence proved to be a difference in this matchup. Daniels was a disaster when under pressure in Week 12, taking four sacks, completing just one of his nine pass attempts and throwing both of his interceptions. He was excellent when he was kept clean, mostly in the fourth quarter.

As we’re discussing the Commanders’ recent slide, we need to remember not only Daniels’ rib injury from about a month ago but also the talent level of this offense. This was rightly panned as a roster that could lead to the first overall pick in 2025. The team is, and their leading power players are, much better than advertised but there are still significant holes.

The offensive line has played above expectations and the scheme has helped elevate some spots but the tackles can still be overwhelmed in tough matchups.

Throw out production. Outside of Terry McLaurin, no other wide receiver or tight end truly scares opposing defenses. Kingsbury and Daniels are still working around a hampered offense.

We’ll continue to monitor this Washington offense which has outkicked expectations, no matter what happens during the rest of the season. Kingsbury is a popular punching bag, but I don’t think he will be a problem for this team down the stretch.

Justin Jefferson’s fantasy dud

I’m sure readers and listeners will demand much discussion over Justin Jefferson this week but I’m not going to be able to muster much concern on the subject.

Despite scoring as the WR3 this year, it has been a slightly slower fantasy campaign than the overall numbers would suggest. Jefferson’s been a steady-eddy type of producer more than a week-winner, and he has only scored one touchdown since we flipped the calendar to October. Week 12 was the bottoming-out moment with just two catches for 27 yards.

There are a few reasons I don’t care too much about it.

For starters, the Bears have been more vulnerable to secondary pass-catchers than primaries. So, while we never expect Jefferson to turn in a stat line like this, it’s not totally out of nowhere. The fact that guys like Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockenson dominated this game is important signal. Too often this season, there’s been a missing second pitch in Minnesota’s passing attack. Addison hasn’t popped up for many productive games and Hockenson hasn’t been available. Addison’s 162-yard outing in Week 12 marks the first time he’s cleared 80 yards in a game. Hockenson’s 84% route participation is the highest since he returned from his ACL recovery. Even Aaron Jones had his best rushing output in months.

Having other threats look dangerous in this offense is a good thing for the entire unit and can help Jefferson get lighter matchups in the future.

It was clear just from the broadcast angle that the Bears were dedicating extra attention to Jefferson, which isn’t unusual. I’d venture to guess that when Josh Oliver was the starting tight end and Addison was consistently quiet, teams were even more ready to double Jefferson. They weren’t scared of other pass-catchers.

Perhaps they now think twice about selling out to solely stop Jefferson.