A lot of really wild things happened across the first three days of the NFL's Week 16. Saints running back Alvin Kamara started things off Friday by running for six touchdowns in what might have been the most clutch fantasy performance in football history. The Lions showed up Saturday against the Bucs missing most of their coaching staff and answered the question of what it might look like if Twitter got to call plays for a game. (It didn't go well.)
Sunday saw Aaron Rodgers move ahead of Patrick Mahomes in the MVP race, Mitchell Trubisky continue his second-half surge and the NFC East get even more complicated. Eighteen teams are still in the playoff hunt with one week to go, including 11 that haven't yet locked up their berth. A 6-10 team could win its division in the NFC, and an 11-5 team could miss the playoffs altogether in the AFC.
I wrote about six of the fascinating moments from Week 16 and what they mean for the rest of the season. Let's start with the thrilling ending from Saturday night, when the Dolphins knocked the Raiders out of the playoff race.
Jump to a topic:
The Dolphins' stunning comeback
The Cardinals' devastating collapse
The Rams' offense's dud in Seattle
The Browns' awful offense in New Jersey
The Steelers' shocking comeback
The Eagles' disastrous day (again)
The Dolphins came back twice in the final three minutes to beat the Raiders.
The final game of the Saturday slate wasn't all that exciting for most of the evening. Miami and Las Vegas were mostly content to punt and kick their way through a quiet evening until midway through the fourth quarter, when Dolphins coach Brian Flores decided to spark his offense by inserting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. The veteran immediately led a scoring drive to set up a tying field goal.
From there, the game turned into something out of Chiefs-Rams in 2018. Nelson Agholor caught an 85-yard touchdown pass from Derek Carr on the second play from scrimmage, with a missed extra point from Daniel Carlson giving the Raiders a 22-16 lead. It took the Dolphins all of three plays to respond when Myles Gaskin bounced off a tackle and took a short pass 59 yards to the house. With Miami leading 23-22, Agholor drew a 49-yard pass interference penalty and fullback Alec Ingold manufactured a neutral zone infraction on third-and-1, setting up the Raiders with first-and-goal from the 8-yard line.
Here's where the first bit of controversy comes into play. The Raiders forced the Dolphins to use their final timeout on first down. On second down, Josh Jacobs ran to the 1-yard line and slid down, turning down an invitation from the Dolphins to score a touchdown. Carr then kneeled on third down before the Raiders kicked a field goal on fourth down, taking a 25-23 lead.
Should the Raiders have gone for the touchdown given what happened next? I'm skeptical. Carlson boomed the ensuing kickoff for a touchback, meaning that the Dolphins took over on their own 25-yard line with 19 seconds to go. Down two points, they needed to move the ball a minimum of 35 yards with no timeouts to even set up for a 60-yard field goal. Their win expectancy in this situation was somewhere around 1%.
This was a better situation for the Raiders than either of their other scenarios. If they had scored a touchdown, they would have gone up 28-23 pending the extra point and likely gone for two. We don't know whether the Raiders would have succeeded on that 2-point try, but it doesn't really matter if we assume that the touchback happens after any touchdown.
If Jacobs had run the ball in and scored on second down, the Dolphins would have picked up the ball on their own 25-yard line with 1:40 to go. In that scenario, ESPN sports analytics specialist Brian Burke's model gives Miami a win expectancy range between 6% (if the Raiders make the 2-pointer and go up seven) and 10% (if they miss and go up only five). It's not clear whether the Dolphins would have let the Raiders score on third down, but if they had and the Dolphins had picked up the ball with 55 seconds to go, their win expectancy would have been between 2.2% (down seven) and 4.5% (down five). In either case, kicking on fourth down was the better call.
If you want to throw out the numbers or criticize Jacobs and the Raiders for playing it too cute, consider that the Dolphins were clearly trying to let the Raiders score on second down. They would have happily settled for a chance at stopping the 2-pointer and driving the length of the field for a touchdown with 100 seconds to go. In the end, they won because the Raiders blew a simple coverage and took a stupid penalty in one fell swoop:
New Raiders defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, whose team was putting on its best showing of the season for most of the game, called for the classic Tampa 2 shell that Tony Dungy called for years with the Bucs against four verts. Raiders cornerback Damon Arnette (20) is the flat defender, but with nobody threatening the flat and given the game situation, Arnette needed to sink with Mack Hollins to help take away the go route. Arnette backpedals for a few steps and then stops, leaving Hollins uncovered.
Deep safety Isaiah Johnson (31) takes a step toward the middle of the field to try to take away Lynn Bowden's route, which gives Fitzpatrick an even bigger window to hit Hollins for a 34-yard catch. On top of all that, Arden Key attempts to rip off Fitzpatrick's helmet, adding 15 yards for roughing the passer in the process. You can make a case that the Raiders should have played a safer coverage, but if Arnette had run with Hollins, the window for that throw wouldn't be anywhere near as large. The Raiders didn't lose because they kicked a field goal. They lost because they made two critical mental mistakes and gave up 49 yards on one play.
As for the Dolphins, while I understand that they won the game, I'm not sure how this proves that their quarterback model is working. Their offense was painful to watch for most of the game with Tua Tagovailoa at quarterback. The Alabama star was 17-of-22 passing, but those throws gained only 93 yards, meaning he averaged just 4.3 yards per attempt. Just 18.2% of his pass attempts resulted in first downs, which is around half of the league average. That's an outlier, but Tagovailoa's 34.9% first-down rate ranks 28th in the NFL. The Dolphins don't have great weapons, but it was telling that the offense looked totally different once Fitzpatrick entered the game and started to take more aggressive shots downfield.
It's way too early to draw any meaningful conclusions about Tagovailoa's long-term viability, but the Dolphins have already announced that the rookie will start in Week 17. Flores pushed back against any criticism of that decision on Sunday, suggesting that the team has more information than the public and that Tagovailoa had played well in other games.
It's true that Flores has more information than we do, and I don't think Miami should bench Tagovailoa because of one game, but what does this plan hope to accomplish? If Tagovailoa is the best quarterback for the job and not about to get benched after one bad game, why did Flores bench him after three quarters on Saturday? If Fitzpatrick is their best option, why isn't he starting as opposed to sitting on the bench for most of the game until the Dolphins need to be bailed out? If the goal is long-term development, how is Tagovailoa coming out of the game the better move for the organization? Flores has generally done excellent work, but he's being lauded for his decision-making at quarterback because of an unlikely result on the final drive, not because of a logical process.
The Cardinals collapsed against the 49ers.
In the other competitive Saturday game, we saw the Cardinals sleepwalk through a 20-12 loss to the already-eliminated 49ers. Much as was the case with Tagovailoa, the guy at quarterback for the Cardinals just wasn't able to produce big passing plays. Kyler Murray threw 50 passes and generated 247 yards, averaging fewer than 5 yards per attempt while turning just 18% of those attempts into first downs. Murray hit two deep passes to Christian Kirk and KeeSean Johnson, but he also threw a critical interception on a fade to Kirk against Ahkello Witherspoon late in the fourth quarter.
That play and the subsequent two-minute drill that followed highlighted two of the critical flaws in Kliff Kingsbury's offense after two years in the league. Too often, the Cardinals are dependent on Murray improvising his way into a big play or DeAndre Hopkins doing something magical. They are great players, but Arizona doesn't have a Plan B when its two stars aren't able to conjure up a huge game.
The Cardinals have also been reluctant to move Hopkins around. As Smart Football's Chris Brown noted on Twitter, Air Raid offenses have a habit of keeping their receivers in the same pre-snap spots to make it easier to go faster, but other teams simply know where Hopkins is going to be too frequently. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Hopkins is split out wide to the left 81% of the time, and 85% of his targets and receptions come from that spot. He's split out wide right only 10% of the time, which produces 5% of his targets and 6% of his receiving yards. He took 11 snaps on the right side of the field on Sunday and wasn't targeted on any of those plays.
On the final drive, we saw another concern: This just isn't a very fast football team at receiver. Kingsbury dialed up Air Raid staples like mesh and all curls, but when the Cardinals tried to run four vertical routes like the Dolphins did for their big play, Murray hit an underneath crosser for a short gain on one attempt and failed on his one downfield attempt of the drive.
At receiver, the Cardinals were running out Hopkins, who ran a 4.57 at the combine in 2013. He is a great player and an incredible weapon on contested catches, but he's not a downfield burner. Christian Kirk is a little faster at 4.47, but Larry Fitzgerald is 37 years old. Johnson might be faster than his combine 40 time of 4.6, but there was nobody to reliably stretch teams vertically in situations in which they have to throw deep.
Arizona has that player on its roster in Andy Isabella, but the 2019 second-rounder has been a healthy scratch in recent weeks. The Cardinals drafted Isabella two picks ahead of DK Metcalf and one round ahead of Diontae Johnson and Terry McLaurin. If Arizona has given up on the UMass product, it needs to address its receiving corps again this offseason and add a vertical weapon. The spacing will help the Cardinals' run game and provide them with the sort of weapon they need to complement Hopkins and Kirk.
The Rams lost to the Seahawks and might be without their quarterback.
Next in our series of collapsing offenses, Sean McVay & Co. were shut down in a 20-9 loss in Seattle. Playing for a shot at the division title, the Rams failed to score a touchdown for the first time all season, settling for three field goals. They came away pointless on a series that started on a first-and-goal from the 2-yard line, in part because quarterback Jared Goff was stuffed on a sneak. The 2016 first overall pick had a brutal day, completing just 55.8% of his passes while averaging 5.4 yards per attempt. His completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) was minus-5.9%, and the play-action magnate went 4-of-9 for 34 yards with an interception off play-fakes.
To be fair, some of Goff's struggles later in the game came because he suffered what appeared to be a broken thumb in the third quarter. Nobody can doubt Goff's toughness -- he popped the thumb back into place and finished the game -- but the injury is expected to keep him out of next week's game against the Cardinals, which will now grant the winner a playoff berth. The Rams will need to beat the Cardinals or have the Bears lose to the Packers to make it back into the postseason, and they might be in that must-win game against Murray and Arizona with John Wolford at quarterback.
Wolford, who was arguably the best quarterback in the AAF before posting a 95.8 passer rating in the 2019 preseason, has never thrown a regular-season pass. That would normally be disconcerting, but given how the Rams played Sunday, I'm not sure the offense would project to play significantly worse with the relative unknown under center. Even before the injury, Goff wasn't playing well. And while McVay is almost always supportive of his quarterback, it didn't look as if he had much faith in his starter.
Goff earned that skepticism. He threw behind Van Jefferson on third down, holding the Rams to an early field goal. Two drives later, he had Tyler Higbee streaking up the seam for a touchdown, only to badly underthrow the pass, with Jamal Adams dropping what should have been an interception. His next two passes were also uncatchable. On the next drive, Goff scrambled and made an unconscionable decision to throw back toward the middle of the field, handing Quandre Diggs an easy pick. It was telling that McVay ran the ball later in the game on third-and-17 from the Seattle 23 in lieu of even trying a screen or trusting Goff to pick up a first down. It was an ugly performance, and the injury only made it worse.
Nominally, the Cardinals should be a great matchup for the Rams. Goff was 37-of-47 passing for 351 yards against Arizona last time out, and McVay's ability to exploit opposing linebackers with motion and shifts should play up against the Cardinals. This time, things might not be that simple. Although the Rams under McVay are known for their passing, the young coach has repeatedly preached that his team should be known for its physicality and ability to run the football over the past few years. Now, with Goff likely out Sunday, the Rams might have no choice but to believe their own hype.
The Browns went splat against the Jets.
It was simple. All the Browns needed to do to get into the postseason was beat a one-win Jets team with nothing to play for. Even after the Browns lost most of their receiving corps to the reserve/COVID-19 list on Saturday, Cleveland was a heavy favorite. A Jets team without star defensive lineman Quinnen Williams was supposed to be an easy target. With the Browns riding a wave of positive momentum after winning five of their previous six games, this was supposed to be the day the pain ended.
Instead, the Browns were awful. They fell down 20-3 in the third quarter to Sam Darnold & Co. before launching a comeback. For the second straight week, Cody Parkey hit the upright, this time with an extra point try. A red-hot Baker Mayfield could do little against one of the league's worst pass defenses, going 28-of-53 for just 285 yards. He was strip-sacked in the fourth quarter to set the Jets up with a field goal and then fumbled on a fourth-and-1 sneak to end the game.
One of the first things that popped up in the postmortems of the Browns' loss is that number of pass attempts. Why on earth did a team starting unknowns and waiver-wire acquisitions at wide receiver throw the ball 53 times? In part, it was because the Browns did nothing running the football in this game. Missing starting linemen Jedrick Wills Jr. and Wyatt Teller, they ran the ball 18 times for just 45 yards, including nine carries for a mere 4 yards in the first half.
When I went to look at the numbers, my assumption was that the Jets sold out to stop the run and dared the Browns to throw, with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt struggling against loaded defensive boxes. That also wasn't the case. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, the Browns didn't run into a single box all game where they had more defenders than blockers, the only team in the league in Week 16 to avoid doing so. The Jets, meanwhile, ran into boxes with a numbers disadvantage a league-high 64.7% of the time.
The Browns just weren't good at creating running lanes Sunday. Mayfield also wasn't very accurate, posting a minus-12.1% CPOE across his 53 pass attempts. Cleveland was a mess on early downs and ended up in third-and-9 or more eight times. Only one of those third downs produced a conversion, when Marvin Hall drew a pass interference penalty. Mayfield was strip-sacked for the second time in the game on one of those third-and-longs, with those turnovers producing 10 Jets points. The Browns aren't built to win on third-and-long, and they're really not going to do so when they're down Odell Beckham Jr., Jarvis Landry and most of their wideout depth chart.
As a result, the Browns find themselves in a vulnerable position. Near-locks a week ago, their playoff odds have fallen to 53%, per ESPN's Football Power Index. They can get in by beating the Steelers in Week 17, but if they lose, things get messy. Cleveland would need the Jaguars to beat the Colts to win in one scenario. If that doesn't happen, the Texans would need to beat the Titans while the Dolphins beat the Bills and the Ravens beat the Bengals. The organization's first 10-win season since 2007 suddenly seems much less appealing.
The Steelers turned around their season.
Earlier on Sunday, it looked as if the Browns might have a shot to compete for the division title in Week 17. A Steelers team that started 11-0 had lost three straight and appeared to be on the way to a fourth consecutive defeat. Midway through the third quarter, the Colts were up 24-7 and took back the ball after a massive goal-line stand, stopping the Steelers cold on four tries from inside the 2-yard line. ESPN's win expectancy for the Steelers stood at just 5.6%, and given how dismal the Pittsburgh offense had looked for weeks, those chances seemed optimistic.
And then, in four deep passes, Ben Roethlisberger turned around Pittsburgh's season. He came into Week 16 ranked near the bottom of the league in completion percentage (33rd) and yards per attempt (32nd) on passes traveling 20 or more yards downfield. He failed on his only 20-plus air-yard attempt in the first half, which came on a throwaway final drive. The Steelers were so disinterested in getting the ball back that they didn't bother calling timeout with 1:05 to go and the Colts facing a third-and-18 from their own 11-yard line.
In the second half, Roethlisberger went deep six times. Five were successes. He hit Chase Claypool for a 34-yard completion on the drive that ended near the goal line. The Colts went three-and-out after the goal-line stand, and after the Steelers took over, he immediately fired downfield and tossed a perfectly thrown touchdown pass over Rock Ya-Sin to Diontae Johnson:
After another Colts three-and-out, Roethlisberger drew pass interference penalties of 21 and 24 yards, both on throws to Johnson. A 5-yard touchdown pass to Eric Ebron brought the Steelers within four points. Roethlisberger couldn't hook up on a back-shoulder attempt with Johnson on the next drive, but after an illegal contact netted a first down, the veteran hit JuJu Smith-Schuster for a 25-yard score to take the lead. Watch Roethlisberger set this up the whole way, using his eyes and a pump fake to draw in the deep safety before tossing the go route over his head to Smith-Schuster for a touchdown. The Steelers won 28-24.
Now, Roethlisberger wasn't the only problem with the Steelers' offense. His receivers have been struggling to catch passes at an astronomical rate, and while Claypool dropped a would-be score in short yardage, they came up with the big catches downfield here. Given that Pittsburgh has been a disaster running the ball and ran it 14 times for just 20 yards Sunday, though, it needs something else besides the short passing game to fuel this offense. The Steelers finally got that going in the second half, and it might be the thing that gets them looking like a contender again.
The win places Mike Tomlin in an impossible situation. The Steelers clinched the AFC North with their victory, but with the Chiefs clinching the top spot in the conference, Pittsburgh can't get a first-round bye. It'll be either the second or third seed. With a veteran team that has gone 16 weeks without a real bye while looking exhausted for most of the past month, does Tomlin sit his key players in Week 17 against the Browns? Or, given their inconsistency, does Tomlin try to ride that second-half performance in Week 16 to get them back into their early-season form?
The last time the Steelers made the playoffs, Tomlin sat his starters in Week 17 and then lost in the divisional round to the Jags 45-42. I don't think there's enough evidence to draw any meaningful conclusions about whether it's better to rest your players in Week 17 or play them, but I wouldn't want to be the one who has to make that decision here.
The Eagles summed up what went wrong with their season.
The one team eliminated from the NFC East hunt is the team that had looked like the prohibitive favorite earlier in the season. If you had told an Eagles fan this past summer about selective bits and pieces from their Week 16 game, they might have been very excited. An 81-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson! A Darius Slay interception! The Cowboys have Andy Dalton at quarterback, and they're 5-9! Grease up the lampposts! Everything we dreamed of is coming true!
Well, you know what happened to the Eagles, and everything else that happened Sunday just reiterated how flawed this team looks. Rookie quarterback Jalen Hurts hit Jackson for an 81-yard touchdown to go up 14-3 on their second possession of the game, but Philly's 11 ensuing drives produced as many giveaways (three) as points. Dalton threw an interception to Slay, but the Cowboys had their way with an overmatched Eagles defense after Fletcher Cox left the game. Ezekiel Elliott ran for 105 yards on 19 carries, while Dalton was otherwise 22-of-29 for 377 yards with three touchdowns. Dallas won 37-17.
The game highlighted how the decisions from the past two offseasons have gone wrong. The Eagles counted on a healthier Jackson, but his return was just his eighth appearance over the past two years and his first touchdown since Week 1 of 2019. Javon Hargrave had been better over the past month after a rough start to his Eagles career, but he was anonymous without Cox against backup Cowboys linemen on Sunday. Slay hasn't been great this season, and while he came up with his first pick on Sunday, the money the Eagles spent on the cornerback kept them from investing elsewhere.
All of this led to cornerback Michael Jacquet making his second career start. Things did not go well for the undrafted rookie. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, the Cowboys targeted Jacquet eight times and generated seven catches for 182 yards and two scores, plus a 26-yard pass interference penalty. Only Carlton Davis (222 against the Chiefs) allowed more yards in one game this season. Jacquet wasn't the only problem in the Philly secondary, as the Cowboys were also able to take advantage of players such as Marcus Epps and Nickell Robey-Coleman. Slay was targeted only twice all game.
As for Hurts, this was a more frustrating performance. He made several very impressive plays, most notably that touchdown pass to Jackson. He finished the day with 411 combined passing and rushing yards. He also turned the ball over three times, including a brutal interception in the third quarter. Hurts' fumble was a questionable call, and his other interception came on the next-to-last play of the game, but he also took three sacks.
Hurts was flawless for the first 58 minutes of the win over the Saints, but he has otherwise fumbled five times, thrown three interceptions and taken 12 sacks in about two and a half games' worth of action. Those kinds of negative plays were what led the Eagles to bench Carson Wentz in the first place. Hurts has looked better than Wentz since taking over, and I wish the Eagles had made the switch earlier, but after Sunday, Wentz actually has the better Total QBR. The former MVP contender will finish the year with a 49.4 mark, well ahead of Hurts' 40.3 figure. A genuine quarterback competition is in their future.
Philly's loss leads to a chaotic Week 17. Washington laid an egg at home in Week 16 against Carolina and benched cornerback Dwayne Haskins; there's a chance it could start Taylor Heinicke, the fourth quarterback of the year, in a win-and-in game against the Eagles on Sunday. If Washington loses, the winner of the Cowboys-Giants game would get in. Some team is going to win this division with a losing record. It just won't be the Eagles.