When you're a fan of a team, you always enjoy watching your team win. Right?
Like, if you're a fan of the Jets, and you've been watching every game this season while they lost and lost and lost, sometimes in inexplicable ways, and rolled into Week 15 with an 0-13 record, you must have absolutely loved watching them beat the Rams on Sunday. Right???
It was a dominant win. A historic win. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Jets are the second 0-13 team in NFL history to win a game in which they never trailed. The other was the 1962 Raiders, who beat the Patriots in Week 15 of that season, and if you Google the 1962 Raiders, you learn the wonderful fact that their quarterback's name was Cotton Davidson. So that's awesome too, right? Right??????
You can see where I'm going with this. Jets fans, or at least a meaningful percentage of them, might in fact not be happy their team won Sunday. Having suffered this long through a brutal, winless season, the fan base had begun to take comfort in knowing, at least, that they would be rewarded with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft and a shot at superstar Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. The Jaguars entered Sunday with a 1-12 record and got waxed by the Ravens in the early Sunday window. So Jets fans knew their team needed to lose to stay "ahead" of Jacksonville in the race for Lawrence.
Cue the clichés. The Jets don't even know how to lose right, etc. It might be unconventional to lead our Week 15 overreactions with the two worst teams in the league, but hey, it has been an unconventional year:
The Jets' win was their most disappointing game of the season
Both teams are now 1-13 with two games to play, but the tiebreaker for draft position is strength of schedule -- i.e., if two teams are tied, the team with the "easier" schedule, or lower opponents' winning percentage, gets the higher pick. The idea is that a 1-15 record against "easier" competition is less impressive than a 1-15 record against "tougher" competition.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, the Jaguars already have clinched the draft tiebreaker based on strength of schedule, which means Jacksonville would have the No. 1 overall pick and surely swipe Lawrence away from the Jets if both teams lose out.
The Jets' win was unquestionably great for Jacksonville. Even the fact that it was against the Rams was helpful, since the Jags have the Rams' first-round pick as a result of the Jalen Ramsey trade. (Hat tip to For The Win's Steven Ruiz for picking up on that tidbit.)
The verdict: OVERREACTION. There is no disputing the consequences: The Jets had a line on the No. 1 overall pick and now do not. If you believe this is the be-all, end-all, then you can certainly paint the Jets' loss as the latest in a long line of depressing disasters. But you can also spin it differently: They drafted Sam Darnold No. 3 overall in 2018, and there are plenty of people who still believe the 23-year-old Darnold (a half-year younger than Joe Burrow, by the way) has the talent to be a franchise quarterback in the NFL.
The Jets have two first-round picks and six picks in the first 100 to kick-start a rebuild around Darnold if they want. If they don't, they could use the No. 2 pick on a quarterback such as Ohio State's Justin Fields. If they don't like Fields, they could trade the pick to a team that does and get even more early-round picks.
New York will surely have a new coach and it already has a treasure trove of picks. Yes, you'd rather have the first pick than the second, but I don't think it's entirely right to paint Sunday's win as some sort of disappointing failure by the Jets. For the Rams, maybe. Not for the Jets.
Doug Pederson blew the Eagles' season by waiting so long to start Jalen Hurts
The Eagles lost Sunday, a breathless 33-26 defeat at the hands of the playoff-contending Cardinals. But Hurts, the second-round rookie making his second start in place of the ineffective Carson Wentz, was a revelation. He was 24-for-44 for 338 yards and three touchdowns through the air. He had 63 rushing yards and another touchdown on the ground.
He wasn't perfect. He took six sacks and fumbled three times. But he threw good passes to the end zone on third and fourth downs on Philly's second-to-last drive that were broken up by Arizona defenders, and he had the Eagles a Hail Mary away from tying the score on the final drive.
When Pederson announced Hurts as the starter for his Week 14 game against the Saints (which the Eagles would end up winning), he said he was trying to give his team a "spark." It is inarguable that Hurts has done that.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. First off, Hurts was a second-round pick who came into the league as something of a project. There's no guarantee that he'd have been ready to play like this if they'd made the move a month or two weeks earlier than they did. Plus, the Eagles' problems go well beyond the quarterback position. The offensive line has crumbled because of injuries. (Hence the six sacks Hurts took Sunday and the 50 Wentz took in the first 12 games.) The receiving corps has been an injury-riddled mess as well.
Overall, Philadelphia's roster did not turn out to be what the Eagles and many others believed it would be this year. Wentz, the $32 million-a-year man who was tasked with elevating them in spite of it all, absolutely failed to do so. He has performed like one of the very worst quarterbacks in the league by many statistical measures and has a lot of nerve to suggest, as ESPN's Adam Schefter reported Sunday morning, that he'd like to go elsewhere if he's not going to be a starter.
But it's an overreaction to say that benching him sooner and promoting the rookie would have made a major difference. Even in a season in which it might take only seven or eight wins to capture the division title. The question for the Eagles is what to do now, since Wentz's contract is inescapable and Hurts deserves to keep starting. Should be an absolutely fascinating offseason in Philadelphia.
Matt Nagy blew the Bears' season by benching Mitchell Trubisky for Nick Foles after Week 3
At the time, this decision was met with either shrugs or reluctant nods. The Bears were 3-0, but Foles had just rescued that third game with a fourth-quarter comeback after a game in which Trubisky struggled. It's Trubisky's fourth season in Chicago, the problems appeared to be the same as ever, and Foles was the veteran who was brought in to at least steady things at the QB position, even if they knew he wasn't going to offer anything spectacular.
But the Bears went 2-5 in Foles' seven starts, and after he got hurt, they put Trubisky back in as the starter following their bye week. They're 2-2 since, and Sunday's victory over the Vikings kept their playoff hopes alive.
Trubisky and second-year running back David Montgomery have the offense humming like it hasn't all season. And it's fair to wonder whether the team might have been better off, if choosing between two less-than-desirable options at QB, going with the option that offered more mobility as the line and the run game muddled through the middle part of the season.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Yes, it's different from the Eagles' one, because Trubisky isn't a rookie and Foles, outside of one incredible postseason run with the Eagles three years ago, hasn't shown anything to indicate he can be any team's long-term answer at the position.
The move to Foles, and the decision to keep running him out there while the team averaged 17 points a game, felt like Nagy trying to justify the decision to acquire Foles in the offseason. The reason for that move was that Foles had familiarity with the Chicago coaching staff from his previous stops, so communication would be easy and the offense would operate smoothly. It's possible those things happened, but what the offense didn't do under Foles was (A) score or (B) win much. Trubisky is no savior, but look at it this way: The Bears played the Vikings twice in the past six weeks. The first game, with Foles starting, they lost 19-11. The second one, with Trubisky starting, they won 33-27.
The only reason this might be an overreaction is that the Bears' season is not yet sunk. But it's not at all an overreaction to say they might have been in a better position than they are now if Nagy had stuck with his starter after a 3-0 start or moved off a clearly ineffective Foles sooner than he did.
Josh Allen is the league's MVP so far
No team in the NFL has looked more impressive over the past eight days than the Bills, who thumped the Steelers in prime time last Sunday night and then rolled the Broncos late Saturday afternoon to clinch their first division title since 1995.
Allen, their third-year quarterback, has been one of the stories of the season, ironing out his mechanics and elevating his play to a point where dominant passing performances are now expected of him weekly. It's fair to say that Allen was the biggest question mark for the Bills coming into the season. But they obviously built an excellent roster around him, and the way he's playing has taken them from a could-they-factor-in team to a could-they-beat-the-Chiefs-in-the-playoffs team.
He has completed 68.7% of his passes for 4,000 yards, 30 touchdowns and just nine interceptions. He has eight rushing touchdowns, too.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Stay with me here. I am not saying I think Allen is the MVP. If the season ended right now, I would vote for Patrick Mahomes, who I am not certain is playing the same game everyone else is playing. But if you want to tell me you voted for Allen, I could not sit here and say you made a mistake. The current MVP conversation has to include Allen, along with Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Derrick Henry. Deshaun Watson would be in it too if his team had a winning record.
I believe Mahomes is the best player in the league -- possibly the best player I've ever seen -- and if you took him off the Chiefs and put him on any other team, he would instantly be that team's most valuable player. But in the context of the 2020 season, and based on the value of Allen's ascension to a Buffalo team that is absolutely one of the very best in the league, Allen is a perfectly legit pick for someone who, for some reason, doesn't want to give it to Mahomes.
The Buccaneers' slow starts are going to cost them in the postseason
The Bucs looked horrendous for the entire first half Sunday, and as a result, they trailed the Falcons 17-0 at halftime. In the second half, Tom Brady threw for 320 yards -- the most by any quarterback in the second half of a game this season -- and Tampa Bay came back to win 31-27.
It was a great win, the Bucs' second in a row since their bye. It improved their record to 9-5. They almost certainly will be in the playoffs as a wild-card team, and who knows? If they win their last two games and the Saints lose their last two, the Bucs would actually win the NFC South. Not likely, but also not impossible.
Tampa Bay is, compared to the majority of teams in the league, in an absolutely fine position. A win is a win, but you have to wonder how long this team can continue to play with fire.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. They came back and beat the Vikings in Week 14, leading to a bombastic postgame news conference by coach Bruce Arians, who proclaimed, "We can do any damn thing we want." Evidently, that includes "fall behind by 17 at halftime and come back to win."
But they aren't going to play the Falcons in the postseason. The Falcons in the second half are like grandparents who come to babysit over holiday break: They'll let you do pretty much whatever you want. Entering Sunday's action, Atlanta was allowing a league-worst 213.2 yards on average in the second half and overtime. They are wired for collapse, and as great as Brady and the Tampa Bay offense looked in the second half Sunday, it has to be pointed out that they needed every bit of that to win. Fall behind the Saints (149.4 yards on average in the second half and overtime), the Rams (123.1), the Cardinals (169.6) -- heck, even Washington (132.1) and they might not be so fortunate.
The Bucs can look like one of the best teams in the league and they can look like a confused mess, sometimes in the same game, as Sunday showed. I believe they have a good team and can be a threat in the playoffs. But I still do not like them to win three games in a row against playoff competition to get to the Super Bowl -- not until they look more consistent.