This hasn't been anything resembling a normal year, but there's still plenty to learn from the strangest NFL season in recent memory. The rules of the game haven't changed, but amid the highest-scoring season in league history, there are both tried-and-true takeaways repeating themselves and new lessons to carry forward into 2021 and beyond.
Let's go through a few of the lessons I've learned from the 2020 season and how they popped up in Week 15. We'll start with something the league's worst team should have known from the start:
Jump to a topic:
There's no tank in Frank Gore
Coaching success is hard to predict
QBs really can improve (and decline)
Superstar QBs don't guarantee success
Poor QB play can break an offense
High ankle sprains are a disaster
Teams don't improve on linear paths
Lesson No. 1: There's no tank in Frank Gore
If Jets fans spend the next decade regretting their fate as quarterback Trevor Lawrence revitalizes the Jaguars, they'll have Adam Gase and his favorite veteran running back to thank. The Jets rode their customary opening-drive touchdown and a pair of field goals to a 13-0 lead over the Rams on Sunday and then mostly tried to kill clock on the back of their 37-year-old leading rusher.
Playing for a winless team whose fans wanted nothing more than to go 0-16, Gore rushed 23 times, the most for the veteran since his time with the Colts in 2017. Those runs produced only 59 yards, but he converted a fourth-and-goal for a touchdown and then picked up a pair of first downs on the final drive to seal New York's first victory of the season.
Of course, nobody is or should be suggesting that Gore did anything wrong. The Jets might be tanking and hoping for Lawrence and the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL draft, but Gore gains nothing from losing. This might be the final season of his legendary career, and while Gase probably should have been spending his final few weeks as the Jets coach putting quarterback Sam Darnold through his paces and giving the next staff more information about what to do with the quarterback it's about to inherit, that's not Gore's problem.
Jets fans, on the other hand, are understandably furious. By upsetting the Rams, Gang Green ceded the worst record in the league to the 1-13 Jaguars, who now hold the first overall pick by virtue of facing (and losing to) an easier schedule. Now the Jets need to lose out and hope that the Jaguars beat the Bears or Colts in one of their final two games. ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) gives New York just a 25.6% chance of finishing with the top pick, which might lead the team to continue with Darnold as their starting quarterback for another season. It seemed as if the one saving grace of the Gase era would be Lawrence in a Jets uniform, but Gase couldn't even deliver a loss when the fan base wanted one.
Lesson No. 2: Nobody knows anything about coaches or coordinators
It was hardly an obvious decision for the Browns to hire Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski a year ago. The organization had previously chosen Freddie Kitchens over the longtime Minnesota staffer, a move that set the franchise back a year and led to the firing of general manager John Dorsey. Stefanski's final act with the Vikings saw his offense get run over by the 49ers' defense in the playoffs, leading many to suggest that the Browns should have hired San Francisco defensive coordinator Robert Saleh as opposed to the 38-year-old Penn product.
ESPN Daily podcast: Bill Barnwell on the high-scoring offenses
Saleh might have turned out to be a great choice and deserves to be a head coach somewhere come this offseason, but Cleveland has to be thrilled with its decision to give Stefanski the job. A workmanlike 20-6 victory over the Giants on Sunday night sealed the franchise's first 10-win season since 2007; a win over the Jets next week would all but seal its first trip to the postseason in nearly 20 seasons.
It's no surprise that Stefanski and offensive line coach Bill Callahan were able to install an effective running game in Cleveland, but the resurgence of Baker Mayfield might qualify as a surprise. Over the past four games, he has thrown 10 touchdown passes against one pick. The 2018 first overall pick has completed more than 70% of his passes, averaged 8.7 yards per attempt and posted a passer rating of 117.7, the fourth-best mark in the league over that time. The Browns were winning ugly despite Mayfield at times earlier this season; now he's become a bigger part of the formula.
If Stefanski came out of nowhere, Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll came from somewhere even worse than the unknown: the reject bin. The longtime Patriots positional coach followed Eric Mangini to the Jets and then served as the offensive coordinator for Mangini's Browns in 2009 and 2010, the Tony Sparano-led Dolphins in 2011 and Romeo Crennel's Chiefs team in 2012. Those offenses all ranked 20th or worse in both DVOA and points per game and weren't anything enthralling on tape. It looked like Daboll was in over his head.
Daboll went back to the Patriots as a tight ends coach and then made a surprising move in 2017 to serve as Alabama's offensive coordinator for a season. When the Bills hired him to take over their offense in 2018, I wasn't expecting much more than we had seen in those prior stops, outside of maybe a few run-pass options.
I was wrong. Daboll's offense has continued to grow and thrive, both as a product of Josh Allen's improvement and as a driver of one of the league's most stunning developmental curves. Allen has taken major strides independent of the scheme, vastly improving his footwork and refining his mechanics, and Daboll has built one of the league's most modern, analytically friendly schemes.
The Bills rank in the top 10 in both play-action rate (fourth) and rate of motion at the snap (eighth). Daboll has been incredibly flexible with his game plans, shifting from weeks where the team focuses on the run to games like the win over the Seahawks, when the Bills threw the ball at what was likely the highest rate in NFL history in the first half.
Maybe most notably, his offense is just plain fun. Plenty of teams run a mesh concept near the goal line, but their two crossing receivers are typically slot receivers or athletic tight ends. On Saturday night against the Broncos, in the middle of what was Allen's best start as a pro by Total QBR, the Bills ran mesh with 260-pound blocking tight end Lee Smith running a crossing route past that of 300-pound reserve lineman Ryan Bates:
The biggest mesh in football history pic.twitter.com/rzzaaTEeSy
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) December 21, 2020
Bates was called for offensive pass interference, which should be outlawed when you have NFL-sized offensive linemen running core Air Raid pass concepts. It's no surprise that Allen has thrown touchdown passes to 11 different receivers or that the quarterback referred to Daboll as being like a best friend in talking to the commentators before Saturday's game. Daboll seemed like he might have been overmatched as a coordinator, but his work with Allen and this offense is probably going to net the 45-year-old a head-coaching opportunity this offseason.
Lesson No. 3: Everything we know about a quarterback can change in a season
Allen's emergence as an MVP candidate is probably the most surprising quarterback development of 2019. The second-most surprising development belongs to Carson Wentz. Imagine telling an Eagles fan over the summer that Wentz would be benched and looking for a trade out of Philadelphia before the end of the 2020 season. Even worse, imagine telling that same Eagles fan that they would be angry at coach Doug Pederson for not making the move earlier.
It's becoming clear that Wentz isn't about to get his starting job back this season. Rookie second-round pick Jalen Hurts had an uneven second start against the Cardinals, taking six sacks and getting lucky when the Eagles recovered each of his three fumbles, but the Philadelphia offense is unquestionably more explosive with the former Alabama and Oklahoma star at the helm. Hurts threw three touchdown passes in the first half to get Philly out of a 16-0 deficit, and while the Eagles eventually fell 33-26, he nearly converted a third-and-21 and fourth-and-21 to tie the game, only for Dallas Goedert to drop what would have been two game-tying touchdown passes.
The Eagles still have an 8.4% chance of making the playoffs after the Giants and Washington both lost on Sunday, according to FPI, and there would be a revolt in Philadelphia if Pederson handed the job back to Wentz. Unless Hurts gets injured over the final two weeks of the season, the former MVP candidate will be on the sideline. At the very least, it seems like he will be in a legitimate battle with Hurts next summer for the starting job.
If Wentz doesn't want to be in Philadelphia to back up Hurts, well, he might not have much of a choice. As we covered last week, the Eagles don't have any financial flexibility next year. They would be further cast into cap hell by cutting Wentz and only could make a trade work, really, before the start of the new league year, at which point they would be trading a guy they thought to be a franchise-caliber quarterback before 2020 at the absolute bottom of his value while creating no cap space.
While that sort of trade might be theoretically possible, the only reason a team would make that sort of deal would be if it wanted to move on from a malcontent. Wentz doesn't have that reputation, but we've seen players such as Antonio Brown and Jalen Ramsey force through deals when their teams initially didn't want to move on. Sunday was the first step in that process, but is he willing to follow up? If not, he has to be prepared for the possibility that he'll be holding a clipboard behind Hurts in 2021.
Lesson No. 4: Even a superstar quarterback doesn't guarantee a playoff berth
When you have one of the league's truly transcendent quarterbacks and he stays healthy all season, you expect to make it to the playoffs. The floor for those teams seems like nine or 10 wins. The 2020 Texans are a heartbreaking exception to that rule. Deshaun Watson is a borderline MVP candidate and has stayed healthy all season. Fired coach Bill O'Brien sold out the team's future to build a Super Bowl contender around Watson in 2019 and 2020. The Texans are 4-10 and don't have their first- or second-round picks in April's draft.
Of course, take a closer look and the Texans aren't that much worse than they were in 2019. They've just been less lucky in key situations. Last year's Texans were 8-3 in games decided by seven points or fewer. This season, the Texans are 2-5 in that same situation. They've now lost twice to the Colts in spectacularly heartbreaking fashion in three weeks. Watson fumbled away a low snap on the 2-yard line with 1:24 to go to seal a 26-20 loss in Week 13. Sunday's loss might have been even worse; it looked like Watson had converted a fourth-and-5 throw to Keke Coutee for a game-tying touchdown, only for Coutee to fumble the ball at the 3-yard line, with the Colts falling on the fumble for a 27-20 victory.
Watson threw for 373 yards and two touchdowns in the loss. He is eighth in the league in QBR at 72.2, and the seven quarterbacks ahead of him are all going to the postseason. Watson's 110.6 passer rating is the league's second-best mark. It seems almost unprecedented that a quarterback as good as Watson could end up with a record this bad. Is that true?
Through Week 14, Watson had posted an adjusted yards per attempt index (AY/A+) of 128 at Pro Football Reference. Adjusted yards per attempt is a better all-in-one stat than passer rating, and the index stat normalizes performance against league average, so it's easier to compare quarterbacks across eras. Does a quarterback with this level of performance ever have the sort of win-loss record Watson's dealing with?
The answer is no. There have been 180 quarterbacks since 1969 who have thrown 300 pass attempts in a year with an AY/A+ of 120 or better. Those quarterbacks have combined to win a little more than 70.5% of their games. Just 11 of those passers have failed to post a winning record, and after Sunday's loss, Watson's .286 winning percentage is the second worst of the last 51 years. Only Jeff George's 4-12 mark with the 1997 Raiders is worse, and that was with a 121 AY/A+. No quarterback has ever been as good as Watson, stayed healthy for most or all of the season, and gotten fewer wins for his money. He's a superstar stuck in a nightmare.
Lesson No. 5: All the playcalling genius and weapons in the world don't matter much if your quarterback isn't up to the task
Watson might prove that teams can't win with a great quarterback alone, but Sunday's 49ers-Cowboys game was a reminder that they still typically need one of those star passers to look like a genius. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan already had a reputation as a playcalling wizard before joining San Francisco, and after two uneven seasons, he burnished that rep with a run to the Super Bowl behind Jimmy Garoppolo in 2019. Rookie Cowboys offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, meanwhile, took over an inconsistent Dallas attack and led Dak Prescott & Co. to the league's second-place spot in offensive DVOA. Both playcallers had high hopes coming into 2020.
As you know, neither offense has lived up to expectations, in part because of injuries to their passers. Prescott broke his ankle in Week 5 after three consecutive 450-yard games and is done for the year. Garoppolo has been waylaid by a pair of high ankle sprains, forcing the 49ers to give way to former undrafted free agent Nick Mullens. The Cowboys have simultaneously been hit by injuries to their line, while the 49ers have had to deal with virtually every one of their weapons going down at one point or another.
Unsurprisingly, these offenses haven't been as dynamic as we would have expected. Sunday's 41-33 Cowboys win might have seemed like a shootout by the final score, but it was mostly a product of sloppy play and late-game magic. Mullens threw two interceptions as part of a four-takeaway day for the Cowboys, who turned those four short fields into 24 of their 41 points. They added another touchdown when CeeDee Lamb returned an onside kick for a touchdown, while C.J. Beathard came in for Mullens and completed a Hail Mary to Kendrick Bourne for a touchdown on the game's final play.
Mullens and Andy Dalton, the two starting quarterbacks in this game, combined to complete just under 58% of their passes while averaging 6.2 yards per attempt. The two rushing attacks produced one 40-yard run by Tony Pollard and combined to average 3.5 yards per carry across their other 57 attempts. All of the wrinkles and preternatural instincts we vouched for a year ago mostly resulted in sloppy football and mistakes Sunday. Those guys are great coaches, but great coaching is going to get a team only so far.
Lesson No. 6: High ankle sprains are a disaster
The first round of 2020 fantasy football drafts was full of land mines, and one injury sank arguably the league's best players at two different positions. Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 1, and Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey followed up with his own the next week. Both players initially hoped to return without missing much time, but the history of high ankle sprains told us more. The injuries have essentially ruined their seasons.
In addition to being a wildly frustrating injury in their own right, high ankle sprains seem to have a habit of either reoccurring or leading to other injuries. Garoppolo came back for four inconsistent starts before suffering another high ankle sprain, and he has yet to return. McCaffrey said that he hoped to return before the standard four-to-six-week timeline, but he missed six games. It's hard to blame the shoulder injury McCaffrey suffered at the end of his first game back on the ankle, but he then injured his thigh in a private workout and hasn't been able to return. After he didn't miss a single game across his first three seasons, his 2020 might be done after three tilts.
Thomas was suspended for a game by the Saints after fighting a teammate, which doesn't appear to be related to any ankle injury. On the other hand, he also picked up a hamstring injury while rehabbing and then aggravated the ankle either during or after the loss to the Eagles. The Saints placed him on injured reserve before Sunday's loss to the Chiefs, ending his regular season with 40 catches for 408 yards. These weren't season-ending injuries on paper, but they were season-altering ones for some of the league's best players. We probably need to start approaching high ankle sprains that way.
Lesson No. 7: Teams don't improve on linear paths
The Dolphins started last season 0-7, with their seventh loss coming to the Steelers in a game in which they were accused of deliberately trying to lose for sending an eight-man blitz on third-and-20 at the end of the half. Miami got to 2-9 before winning three of their final five games, including upset victories over the Eagles and Patriots. The wins hinted at the idea that coach Brian Flores was on the right track, and the Dolphins followed things up by drafting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and making huge investments in free agency this past offseason.
Most of the projections I saw for the Dolphins heading into the season had them somewhere between 5-11 and 7-9, which seemed reasonable enough. Miami had unquestionably made strides, and it had built one of the league's best cornerback tandems in Xavien Howard and Byron Jones, but this was still going to be a work in progress. Teams don't typically turn over this much of their roster and make another huge leap overnight. A gradual improvement followed by a possible major stride forward in 2021, when Tagovailoa would have a full season under his belt, seemed like the more common path for a rebuilding team.
Well, the Dolphins are the latest reminder that teams don't improve linearly. After dropping their first two games to the Patriots and Bills, Flores' team has gone 9-3. The former Patriots assistant has built a terrifying defense, one that forced four takeaways from the Chiefs last week before forcing three Patriots fumbles Sunday. Howard came within a bad bounce of turning one fumble recovery into a long defensive touchdown and forced a second, which was recovered by Elandon Roberts. Howard, who was missing for most of last season, has 10 takeaways this season and will likely be a first-team All-Pro.
The offense hasn't been consistent on Tagovailoa's watch, but it hasn't been a problem. He averaged only 5.6 yards per attempt Sunday, but the rookie protected the football and got out of the way for the running game to dominate. In knocking the Patriots out of playoff contention for the first time since 2008, Matt Breida & Co. ran the ball 42 times for 250 yards and three touchdowns, including a pair of short conversions from Tagovailoa. Miami ran for 15 first downs and held the ball for more than 37 minutes.
Just over a year removed from their nadir, the Dolphins are on the precipice of the postseason. Most projection models have them as the eighth team in the race for seven playoff spots as a result of their remaining schedule, but at 9-5, they also control their own destiny. Wins on the road against the Raiders and Bills would get them in, and if they get there, they have the sort of ball-hawking defense capable of winning them games in January. It seems like it's too early for Tagovailoa and this offense to hold up their end of the bargain and go on a long postseason run, but after what the Dolphins have accomplished over their past 19 games, it's foolish to count them out.