PITTSBURGH -- You can watch one exciting half of one football game, and it can convince you everything you've seen for the past month was wrong. This is what we do as NFL observers. It is the lifeblood of our weekly overreactions column.
Example: The Steelers were done. I mean, done. They looked done all through December, especially done when they lost to the Bengals last Monday and downright overdone Sunday afternoon when they trailed the Colts 24-7 late in the third quarter and couldn't get into the end zone on four straight tries from inside the 2-yard line. They had no run game. Ben Roethlisberger was making awful throw after awful throw. Done with a capital "D" and that rhymes with "E" and that stands for "early playoff exit."
And then, just like that, they weren't.
After the Colts' goal-line stand, the Steelers' defense stiffened and forced a punt, which the Steelers returned to the Colts' 39-yard line. And on the very next play, Roethlisberger found Diontae Johnson with an out-of-nowhere Picasso of a throw for a touchdown that cut the lead to 10 points.
A switch had flipped. Suddenly, the Colts could do nothing on offense and the Steelers, who had racked up just 95 yards in a sleepy first half, couldn't be stopped. Roethlisberger threw touchdown passes to Eric Ebron and JuJu Smith-Schuster in the fourth quarter and Pittsburgh came back to win 28-24, clinching its first AFC North title in three years.
When it was over, Smith-Schuster came over for his postgame interview with us and explained that Roethlisberger had given a halftime speech in which he told the team it didn't look as though they were having any fun. So they went out in the second half and had a bunch of it.
Sounds simple. And hey, this meshes with what we thought we were watching for the first three months of the season. The Steelers, you remember, were 11-0 before the three-game losing streak they lugged into Sunday's game. They are good -- maybe one of the best teams in the league. If their season had gone WWWW, L, WWWW, L, WWW, L, W instead of WWWWWWWWWWW, LLL, W, we'd just be talking about them as a 12-3 division champ that can rest its starters next week in preparation for a playoff run. To ignore the 11 in favor of the three is, for lack of a better term, an overreaction.
But what, then, are we to make of Sunday? How much does the Steelers' awakening in the final 20 minutes of one game erase what had gone on in the previous 3⅔ games? Who are the real Steelers? And whatever the answer is, why should we believe it when we've seen evidence to the contrary?
This, friends, is overreaction gold. We will definitely start this week with the Steelers.
The Steelers' problems are behind them and they're a serious threat in the AFC playoffs
This is what it's supposed to look like, right? Roethlisberger is a veteran, championship, Hall of Fame quarterback with a fleet of physically gifted receivers and an offensive line he trusts (even if this hasn't been a good year for that line). The Colts have a real defense -- one of the best in the NFL. What we saw in the second half Sunday was a Steelers team that should be able to score quickly and come back from just about any scenario against just about any team.
The Steelers weren't crowing after the game about everything being fixed, but you couldn't blame them if just a tiny part of them felt that way. They'd been waiting more than a month to play like this again. Rebuilt confidence combined with talent and experience can be pretty darn helpful this time of year.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. Make no mistake, the Steelers needed a game like this one. And the fact that they won the division and won't have to fight off the Browns next week to avoid a wild-card fate is important. But there were issues underneath that 11-0 start that haven't necessarily been solved.
ESPN's metrics show them as one of the worst offensive lines in the league this year in pass block win rate and run block win rate. They entered Sunday with the worst average rushing yards per carry as a team (3.7) and rushed for 20 yards on 14 carries against Indianapolis, which isn't going to help that average. The receivers, while brilliantly talented, are young and have had drop problems. The defense isn't getting back injured linebacker Devin Bush this season.
To their credit, the Steelers talked after the game about still needing to get some things corrected. But if you're betting they can based on the second half of Sunday's game, you're ignoring a lot of other evidence.
The Jaguars should hire Clemson's Dabo Swinney as coach
Doug Marrone still has the job, but no one would be surprised if the 1-14 Jaguars were looking to replace him this time next week. After Sunday's loss to the Bears, the Jags are locked into the No. 1 pick of the 2021 draft, and unless Earth freezes over and descends into the plot of "Snowpiercer" at some point in the next four months, they will use it on Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
It has to at least be tempting to consider a Cardinals-style pairing of college QB and college coach. Swinney would constitute a big splash in a market where the Jaguars are always trying to make one.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. Yeah, the Cardinals hired Kliff Kingsbury when they realized they'd be drafting Kyler Murray. But that was different. They were planning to change their offense to operate around Murray's unique skill set and believed Kingsbury was the right coach to oversee it. Lawrence is a different case. He has mobility, for sure, but not big-league-base-stealer mobility like Murray has. Teams don't have to build an offense specific to Lawrence. He's scheme-agnostic, so bringing in Swinney as a package deal with Lawrence isn't automatic or ever necessary.
The early, early returns on recent college coach hires in the NFL are encouraging with Kingsbury and Matt Rhule (Carolina), but neither has done anything yet to make us think college coaches are the wave of the NFL-coaching future. Would I be surprised if the Jaguars or some other NFL team reached out to Swinney to gauge his interest? Not at all. But I absolutely do not think drafting Lawrence means Jacksonville needs to go get Swinney to coach him.
After all that, the Cowboys are going to win the NFC East
The Cowboys' victory over the Eagles eliminated Philadelphia from the division race, but each of the other three teams is alive. Washington still controls its destiny, as it has a 6-9 record and the tiebreaker advantage over the Cowboys, whom it beat twice. If Washington beats the Eagles next week, it is the division champ at 7-9, no matter what happens in the Cowboys-Giants game. But if Washington loses and Dallas wins, Dallas would be the only seven-win team in the division and would be its champion.
If Washington loses and the Giants beat Dallas, then all three of those teams would be 6-10 and the Giants would be division champs because they'd have the best record in games between the three teams (they would be 2-0 against Washington and 1-1 against Dallas for a 3-1 total; Washington would be 2-0 against Dallas and 0-2 against the Giants for a 2-2 total; Dallas would be 1-1 against the Giants and 0-2 against Washington for a 1-3 total).
Anyway, all that would have to happen for the Cowboys to claim the division title is for the Eagles to beat Washington and for them to beat the Giants in Week 17.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Look, you want to tell me you know what's going to happen in the NFC East this season? Other than that it'll be ugly? I don't believe you. The Cowboys, who lost starting quarterback Dak Prescott to a broken ankle in Week 5, actually might go into Week 17 with the best quarterback situation of any team in the division, with Andy Dalton playing well.
Washington doesn't know whether Alex Smith will be healthy enough to play. The Giants' Daniel Jones looked healthier Sunday than he did the last time he played, but he has been fighting through some stuff. Dalton once quarterbacked five straight Bengals teams to the postseason, so it's not as if he hasn't been here before.
The Cowboys looked the best of any NFC East team by far Sunday. It's no stretch to believe they could be the team that comes out on top this coming Sunday.
Brian Flores should win Coach of the Year for his handling of the Dolphins' QB situation alone
What Flores is doing with his quarterbacks defies every trusted cliché we have about the position. If you're going to play the rookie, you have to stick with him no matter what, right? Nope. If you're going to replace the veteran with the rookie even though the veteran is playing well, the veteran is going to want out? Nope. If you pull the starter and the replacement brings you back and saves the game, you have to stick with the replacement next week? Nope.
Flores has made it clear that rookie Tua Tagovailoa is the starter. He also has made it clear that, when Tagovailoa encounters the types of growing-pain issues that young quarterbacks inevitably encounter, that he'll sit him and let Ryan Fitzpatrick finish the game. This is what happened Saturday in a 26-25 win over the Raiders.
This is the second time it has happened since Tagovailoa became the starter. It resulted in a critical win that kept the Dolphins alive in the AFC playoff race. Tagovailoa is starting Miami's season finale at Buffalo, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll finish the game. And the most amazing part is, both quarterbacks appear to be fine with the arrangement.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. This is Flores' second season as Miami's coach and it's abundantly clear that he has succeeded in the critical task of getting his players to buy in. Not only are Tagovailoa and Fitzpatrick on board with his "relief pitcher" plan, but the rest of the locker room appears to get it, too. As much as the team loves Fitzpatrick, there's been no bellyaching or open revolt about Tagovailoa taking his spot.
The two quarterbacks seem to have a strong relationship and a mutual respect, and it appears the team likes them both and feels good about whichever one of them is on the field. This is baffling to many on the outside who are used to NFL QB situations being handled in a certain, homogenous way, but outside opinion is irrelevant when your whole building is on board with your vision and your plan. This is the case right now in Miami, which appears to have hit a home run with Flores.
Is he the Coach of the Year? Tough call. He hasn't made the playoffs yet and guys like Sean McDermott and Sean Payton and Matt LaFleur, who already have, belong in the discussion. Andy Reid always does. Kevin Stefanski has 10 wins in his first season with the Browns, for goodness' sake. How do you ignore that? Mike Vrabel? Frank Reich? Ron Rivera? It's a close, crowded race, but there's no doubt Flores is in it.
This award is often the award for the team that most outpaces expectations. The Dolphins might be that team, but Flores' case doesn't rest on that. Coaching is leading and getting guys to believe in what you're selling. He's checking all of those boxes.
We should be worried about the Chiefs
Man, did they look wobbly Sunday against one of the worst teams in the league. The Falcons, whose defense sometimes forgets to even take the field in the second half, held the defending Super Bowl champs to 17 points. Atlanta actually scored to take the lead with 4:33 left in the game only to see Patrick Mahomes lead Kansas City down the field for a game-winning touchdown pass of his own.
The Chiefs are 14-1 and locked in as the No. 1 seed in the AFC, but their average margin of victory in their past seven games is 3.9 points, and their largest margin of victory in that span is six. They are cutting it close every week, and while they never lose, they aren't playing like the dominant team we believe they should be.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. My theory is that the Chiefs are bored. That this regular-season football means little to them as long as they get their first-round bye. That they would like us to wake them when it's time for their first playoff game, and to let them sleep until then. As long as you win, who cares by how much?
Mahomes saw trouble late in the fourth quarter Sunday and he just ... overcame it. This team is a defending champion with a Hall of Fame coach on the sideline, the fastest and most skilled set of receivers in the league and the best player of at least the past 20 years at quarterback. Is the offensive line as healthy as they'd like it to be? No, but it could get there in the next three weeks. Would they like to have Clyde Edwards-Helaire healthy for the playoffs? Sure, and they very well might.
Fact is, once the playoff games start, we know from last year there's no scarier or more prepared team than the Chiefs. Every team in the league would trade for their problems. Move along. Nothing to see here.