We’re 13 weeks in, and now every team has at least two losses—and 31 of 32 have at least three. Which should make for a wide-open stretch run, so buckle up. Let’s get to my Ten Takeaways for the first weekend in December …
Tyreek Hill is even better than you think. And you probably already think he’s awesome. Thing is, what we’re seeing now is way past merely conventional awesome—and maybe headed for an area we haven’t seen before at Hill’s position.
The numbers are the numbers. Through the Dolphins’ 9–3 start, the 29-year-old, eighth-year pro has 93 catches for 1,481 yards and 12 touchdowns. For a full 17-game season, that projects to 132 catches, 2,098 yards and 17 touchdowns. Those would rank sixth, first, and sixth all-time for a single season, which would be remarkable, even by Hill’s lofty standards.
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But what’s really wild to me is how he keeps piling up these totals. Despite defenses doing anything and everything possible to rein in the threat Hill poses every week, he continually gets past corners, gets behind coverage and makes play after play. After play after play. And it happened again Sunday in the same way it’s happened forever, with a pair of long, striking touchdowns—one a 78-yarder caught in stride and turned into a footrace, the other a 60-yarder fielded like a pop fly, since Hill was far enough clear of coverage to get back to an underthrow.
So afterward, I reached out to Wes Welker, an authority as Hill’s position coach and a guy who was once a pretty dominant receiver in his own right, to ask, well, how this seems to keep happening, no matter what the defense tries to do. Because, of course, it’s not like the Commanders were looking to let Hill go bonkers, as Miami pulled away for a 45–15 win.
Welker’s answer was interesting. As he sees it, the home runs keep coming in large part because of Hill’s ability to hit to all fields.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he has such a full route tree,” Welker said, as he boarded the team plane Sunday night. “His ability to break down and his ability with his speed, he’s the fastest guy out there, and he’s as fast as he needs to be on any given play. He gets open. He just goes and finds it. The Willie Mays Hayes catch he made today was incredible. I was just kind of shaking my head at times.
“It’s not coaching—it’s just being that good. It’s impressive to see. I can’t really explain it. I know we’ve tried to put the defense in conflict and different things like that. But the reason why there’s so much conflict is mainly because of him.”
Welker then expounded that while, yes, Mike McDaniel’s offense has the library of routes and concepts that allow Hill to threaten a defensive back at every level, Hill’s ability to execute all of it (something Hill’s worked at tirelessly) is unique for someone with his speed and explosiveness, and it’s part of what makes his speed nearly impossible to neutralize.
Then, you add his know-how, with the experience he has, and it gets even more difficult.
“He is super smart,” Welker continues. “Whether it’s a walkthrough rep, as long as he sees it, walks through it, he’s got it. There are a lot of good players that you have to continue to remind, Hey, remember this. Remember that. With him, he hears it one time, and it’s there. He understands coverages. He understands how to attack leverages and understands what a presnap look and a postsnap look mean, all those things that are vital for a top receiver to understand. Along with the skill set to go along with it, it’s hard to come by what he has.”
The Commanders can attest to that, with the two long scores illustrating Welker’s points.
The first came 5:32 into the game, with Hill beating Jartavius Martin on a double-move out of the slot, then running away from veteran safety Kam Curl.
“The safety was cheated over toward the running back,” Welker says. “We liked our matchup with the running back and the linebacker. I think they kind of knew that. They cheated the safety over there. He had far outside leverage. He had a wide-and-go from the slot. He just inside releases a guy and then gets back to his landmark. Tua [Tagovailoa] puts it up there, and you’re not catching him once he gets behind you.”
The second score—the one Welker called the Willie Mays Hayes catch (a Major League reference)—came in the second quarter, from the Miami 40. Tagovailoa’s throw was short and too far inside, necessitating a wild adjustment from Hill while the ball was in the air.
“Next thing you know, he does his baseball turn and catches a touchdown—crazy,” Welker says. “It’s just the fact that a lot of times, you’re not taking your eyes off the ball once it’s in the air. As you're running full speed, all of a sudden the ball’s on the outside, a lot of times, you sit there and want to flip your hips, but you lose your speed when you do that. For him to have the presence of mind to flip his head around and go find the ball over his outside shoulder, that’s not easy.
“He made it look really easy, and I’m telling you, that is a hard, hard thing to do.”
Now, as he carries a record pace into December, it’s obvious that what Hill’s doing hasn’t been, isn’t and won’t ever be easy. Which only makes it even more remarkable how simple he makes it all look.
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C.J. Stroud is great, but the Texans’ revival is about a lot more than just the rookie quarterback. Sunday, maybe more than any previous game, proved that in how it was DeMeco Ryans’s defense that carried the day when it mattered most, deep into the fourth quarter of a 22–17 win.
Yes, Stroud still threw for 274 yards, a touchdown and a triple-digit passer rating. But he and the offense also scored their final points just 44 seconds into the fourth quarter, picking up just two first downs from that point forward.
So, sure, while everyone absolutely should talk about Stroud after his Texans moved to 7–5, there was a lot more to reaching 7–5 on this particular Sunday than the quarterback alone. And for veteran safety Jimmie Ward, who came over from San Francisco with Ryans, that starts with how fast the program itself has coalesced, as the coach has put in his system and beliefs.
“Yes. I would be lying to you if I said that things were going to be moving this fast in the first year,” Ward told me postgame. “It just shows you how good of a coach DeMeco is and how great of a coaching staff that he went and got, some of the players that he got with it. They’re all doing a phenomenal job. The GM, Nick [Caserio], he did a great job, too.”
Ward’s acquisition was a little different—his came on a promise made last year. The Niners played Ward primarily as a slot corner, and he’d vented to Ryans, then the Niners’ DC, about it. Ryans, in turn, promised Ward that he’d sign the defensive back and let him compete to be a starting safety, if he landed a job. The coach did, and kept that promise, and so it was that Ward was in the middle of the most important situation of Sunday’s massive win.
Second-year corner Derek Stingley Jr. had the biggest pick of his young career with 9:33 left, and the Texans were able to churn out a couple of first downs thereafter to run the clock down to 4:36 before Denver got the ball back at its own 20. The Broncos drove the field, converting two fourth downs and getting into a goal-to-go spot from the 8 with 23 seconds left.
At that point, Ryans and defensive coordinator Matt Burke stuck to their guns—they’d told the players all week that Russell Wilson would scramble in the two-minute drill, and called zone defenses without extra pressure to make sure there were eyes on him the whole time. On third-and-goal from the 8, Ward had a set of those eyes on the quarterback, plus the instincts to anticipate where Wilson was going to go with the ball.
“We know Russell,” Ward says. “He likes to play backyard football. When he’s scrambling around, he eventually throws the ball up. That’s what he did. I did my job. I looked at the quarterback and he threw it, and I went and got it.”
Which effectively ended the game, giving the Texans a seventh win, and showing how Houston’s growing the sort of ability the Niners always had, to win games in different ways as the season goes on.
Now, for his part, Ward loves Stroud. “Stuff that C.J.’s been doing, how he’s been throwing that ball, that’s different,” he says. “For a rookie quarterback to come in here and sling that ball like how he’s doing is phenomenal.” But Ward’s been around long enough to win with different quarterbacks and understands that to build something lasting in Houston will take more than a guy who’s proficient in throwing the ball.
So the fact that Houston won when Stroud didn’t have his best meant something.
Potentially, a lot, if Ward is seeing it correctly.
“It’s all about the culture,” Ward says. “You can bring the right guys in there and have the young guys look at the older guys, they see that culture. They see it means something to the older guys. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been in the league, how many years you’ve been playing, how much money we made, it means something to us. That’s what DeMeco did. He came over here and built a culture.”
And with that culture coming ahead of schedule, a lot of things, both involving the quarterbacks and not, are coming to life early in Houston, too.
The Lions’ rookie class isn’t getting the attention it deserves—and the impact goes a little deeper than you may realize. The best illustration of that didn’t come with a Jahmyr Gibbs carry, Sam LaPorta catch or Brian Branch pass breakup Sunday in New Orleans.
The best illustration was probably inside Jack Campbell’s helmet.
Linebacker and captain Alex Anzalone was out, which meant the green dot—and coach-to-signal-caller radio that comes with it—had to go to someone else. That wound up being the first-round rookie from Iowa.
“It feels good that they trusted me,” Campbell said over the phone, following the team’s 33–28 win. “At the same time, I’m just continuing to look to improve and push this defense and this team, and put it in the best position to win—that's the ultimate goal.”
He accomplished that much Sunday, and he wasn’t alone among the guys in his draft class. That trust Campbell referenced is one that, evidently, just about his entire class has earned quickly. And, as a result, those guys are already shaping up as key pillars of the team’s foundation going forward—something Campbell himself, truth be told, could see coming pretty early on.
It’s not that he was assessing LaPorta’s red zone value, Gibbs’s explosion or Branch’s versatility so much as he saw the way each guy could be relied upon. Of course he knew coming in that his approach was a lot like LaPorta’s, given they played together at Iowa. He found out quickly the other guys were just like that, too.
“I’m not a genie or anything, but just what they do, how they handle their business, I knew they’d be great players as well,” Campbell says. “When we came in, everybody had that approach, the whole rookie class. I feel like there was something special with everyone. It’s just that improvement mindset. We’re always looking to grow. We’re always looking to clean up stuff.”
Campbell was solid in directing the defense and finished second on the team in tackles. His classmates were more than just that, keying an early flurry of scoring that made the difference in a five-point win. Gibbs kicked it off with a 36-yard burst on the game’s first series to put the Lions on the 2-yard line and set up David Montgomery’s touchdown on the next play. On the play to follow that, Branch picked off Derek Carr. Three plays after that, LaPorta cashed in with a 13-yard touchdown catch.
Just like that, the class of 2023 generated a 14-point swing in a game won by five. And by the end, LaPorta and Gibbs had combined for nearly 200 yards from scrimmage; and Branch had seven tackles, a pass defensed and that pick.
“The impact that they’ve had on me has been great,” Campbell says. “We’re just going to continue to push each other.”
And that, of course, is great for a Lions operation that was on the upswing even before these guys arrived.
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The Chargers’ season is on the line every week, and one of the most underappreciated players of the last decade, Keenan Allen, may hold their fate in his hands. Allen’s longtime bookend, Mike Williams, is out. So is Josh Palmer. The tight end situation is still muddled. Austin Ekeler’s been banged up and is averaging 3.5 yards per carry. Even Justin Herbert’s had inconsistencies.
That leaves the 11-year vet, now 31 years old, to carry the burden—and maybe even the weight of the Chargers’ season, and a lot of folks’ jobs, in his hands.
How’s he responded? On Sunday, he hit 100 catches for the fifth time in his career, and he did it with five games left. He’s at 102 catches, 1,175 yards and seven touchdowns for the year—he could pass career marks for receptions (106) and scores (eight) next week, with his personal yardage mark (1,393) probably a few weeks away. And it’s happened mostly because the Chargers have needed it to.
Which is why, when I asked what it meant for him to hit 100 catches this fast after his team shut out the Patriots 6–0 on Sunday, his answer was succinct: “It’s just committing to the grind in the offseason, then coming out ready to go. And obviously we had two of our guys go down for the season with Mike and Josh. It’s [also] being ready to take on that extra role of helping the offense perform.”
OC Kellen Moore has moved Allen around more—he’s playing every receiver spot and even some in the backfield—and that’s added to his mental grind, while also making it harder for defenses to focus on taking him away. In this game, the impact came on sustained drives that helped pin a hapless Patriots offense deep in its own territory (the 100th catch was a diving grab that converted a third-and-9, gained 16 yards and set up a punt that pinned New England at its own 2). Going forward, in less messy, rain-drenched games, the asks will be different.
In general, for the Chargers, it’s going to have to be better than it was in Foxborough on Sunday. Allen knows that, and his teammates do, too. Yet, Brandon Staley’s message from Saturday night’s team meeting did resonate with the group. Staley showed the guys things they’d done wrong and things they’d done right, then gave examples of how they’d closed games in the past. And less than 24 hours, they did close out the Patriots.
So Sunday was a step.
If the Chargers are going to take more, it’ll likely be on Allen’s back.
The officiating is still a story, and that’s a problem. In the closing minutes of the Sunday night game, we had a number of questionable calls. There was the Isiah Pacheco ejection. There was the flag thrown for unnecessary roughness on Jonathan Owens, when the Packers’ safety seemed to contact Patrick Mahomes before he went out of bounds (his feet clearly appeared to be in the field of play). There was the missed pass interference downfield, when Carrington Valentine appeared to be riding Marquez Valdes-Scantling piggy-back style. There was the call to stop the clock after Valdes-Scantling’s progress was stopped inbounds. And you can decide for yourself whether there should have been PI on the Hail Mary.
Let’s make this much clear before diving in deeper: The flags probably evened out, and the Packers earned that 27–19 win, and none of this takes away from that.
Now, if you’re not asking bigger questions coming out of this one, I’d ask what you’re watching, because this mess was the only point of discussion Sunday night at an hour when we all probably should’ve been talking mostly about how the Packers have come back to life and gotten Jordan Love right on a torrid three-game run.
Instead, we had head referee Brad Allen answering questions from pool reporter Calvin Watkins.
One concerned that roughing call on Owens, and Allen’s response really said it all: “Internal conversations happen on every play, and the covering official was certain that the call had been made correctly.”
That defiance only makes it worse, and gets the officials further from their stated goal of not wanting to be part of the NFL story on Mondays and Tuesdays. They will be this week, as they have been a lot of other weeks. And they’ll be again over the next couple of weeks if things don’t change dramatically.
Which is a shame, especially since an easy answer—one that carries the coaches’ support—has been sitting out there forever.
Neither Trevor Siemian nor Tim Boyle are the answer for the Jets, and I’m not sure Aaron Rodgers would be at this point, either. Rodgers got back on the practice field last week to much fanfare, and, to me, it was a fun story all the way around. Being able to move like Rodgers can now, much less practice, within three months of Achilles surgery is pretty mind-blowing, and good for him for pulling it off. If it means there have been advances medically in fixing the injury, one that’ll help more athletes come back faster from it, then that’s phenomenal.
But no one I ever spoke with in the Jets’ building was counting on Rodgers coming back.
And for his own good, it might be best if he doesn’t—because the Jets’ offensive line is enough of a mess right now that it hardly matters who’s taking the snaps. It’s the root of the four sacks yielded to a merely O.K. Atlanta pass rush, a rushing attack that averaged just 2.5 yards per carry, a day for the two quarterbacks where half the passes were completed, with a pick and no touchdowns.
As a result, a good crew of skill-position players has crashed into irrelevance, with the offensive line and quarterback play sabotaging everything else.
“I love this game,” star receiver Garrett Wilson told reporters afterward. “I want to prove something every time I’m out there. My legacy is on the line, my family’s legacy is on the line, every time I take the field. Every rep. That’s how I’ve got to look at it.”
Of course, this is Rodgers’s, and his doctors’, decision. I’m not here to tell him what to do and if, at 40, he feels like he needs to give it a go, more power to him.
But at this point, where we have star players grousing about legacies being ruined, and we have quarterbacks being hit at an alarming rate, with no reinforcements anywhere to be found, I wouldn’t blame Rodgers for not coming back this year—with some of his coaches having considered a comeback unlikely—so we get a full-speed version in 2024.
It seems like that might be what’s best for everyone.
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We’re going to have a lot more on the 49ers coming up later Monday, but for now, just know, this is my presumptive best team in the NFL (until I change my mind again). And there was a six-drive stretch that really encapsulated my take on it Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.
The 49ers fell behind 6–0 early. They had minus-6 yards to the Eagles’ 120. They had no first downs to the Eagles’ seven. It was raining. It was on the road. It was in the place where Brock Purdy blew out his shoulder in January.
And then, you all got to see again why, after Week 1, I declared San Francisco to have the very best roster in all of football. Because, from that point on, San Francisco completely overwhelmed a loaded, tough, experienced Eagles team. On their next six possessions, the Niners ran 47 plays and ran up 449 yards. They outscored the Eagles 42–13. They came in waves and showed what they are at their best—better than everyone else, with room to grow.
“We’re not too caught up in [the win’s significance],” Purdy told me, from the locker room postgame. “It’s more about playing Niner football and being the best versions of ourselves. And it takes care of who we’re playing. This definitely created some momentum for us moving forward. We’re going to build off of it.”
Like I said, we’ll have more on what this big red machine is building toward in The MMQB Lead on Monday morning.
The Rams and Packers are both back to .500, and I’d look out going forward. Remember how old these two teams were a couple of years ago, when they were in the NFC title mix? They aren’t anymore. Both rosters have been gradually reset. The Packers got really young on offense. The Rams got really young, well, everywhere around veteran tentpoles Matthew Stafford, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp.
Each team struggled earlier in the year. Each has gotten better as the year has gone on.
We can start with Green Bay. Jordan Love was fantastic for a third straight week, with 267 yards, three touchdown passes and a 118.6 passer rating. His top six receivers were first- and second-year players. The team’s leading rusher was AJ Dillon, not Aaron Jones. And a veteran defense had young stars such as Rashan Gary, Devonte Wyatt and Quay Walker taking steps. The Packers will have three picks in the first two rounds in April.
Meanwhile, the Rams saw rookie Puka Nacua go more than 1,000 yards on the season Sunday, second-year back Kyren Williams serve as the workhorse, and first-year defenders Byron Young and Kobie Turner flash up front. L.A. will have a first-round pick for the first time in eight years come this spring, and it expects to carry around $75 million in cap space into the offseason.
And the really impressive thing, to me, is how quick these supposed rebuilds are taking shape. Go back to 2021. The Packers were the top seed in the NFC playoffs, and the Rams won the Super Bowl. The two rosters from that year to this one aren’t recognizable. Yet, both teams now look like they could be back on the upswing.
Good for Sean McVay and Les Snead, and good for Matt LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst.
Kudos to Mike Evans. The Buccaneers’ star hit 1,000 yards receiving in Sunday’s win over the Panthers, becoming just the second player ever to reach that milestone 10 years in a row. The other is the greatest receiver of all time, Jerry Rice.
“I don’t know how much more you can say. He’s been like this for 10 years now—60 catches 10 years in a row, 1,000 yards 10 years in a row,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles told reporters after the game. “You know he’s getting the ball. Everybody’s trying to stop him, and he makes plays over and over. It’s a credit to him, his work ethic and the way he approaches the game.”
Evans came out of Texas A&M in 2014 and was the first draft pick of then new GM Jason Licht. You may remember, too, that he happened to be overshadowed a bit back then by a college teammate of his who liked to have a good time, and let that good time drive him out of football. Meanwhile, Johnny Manziel’s top target from A&M put his head down, and worked, and worked and worked.
And his amazing accomplishment is a nice testament to all that work—you don’t achieve that kind of longevity in the league without it.
Congrats, Mike.
We have a quick-hitters coming … right now.
• I know this probably isn’t too hot a take (our Conor Orr wrote it last week), but Shane Steichen deserves a spot in the Coach of the Year discussion for the work he’s done in Indianapolis. The Colts, again, pulled rabbits from hats in an overtime win against the Titans. Gardner Minshew made two huge throws, one to Alec Pierce, the other to Michael Pittman Jr., to score the 31–28 win.
• I checked in with a defensive coordinator on Justin Herbert’s recent slump and asked him whether he saw more to it than a tough few weeks. His answer, from late Sunday night: “No. He absolutely is an incredible talent. Smart, athletic, huge arm. I totally believe he’s the complete package.” And for what it’s worth, most NFL folks I’ve asked about this would concur with that opinion.
• While we’re there, it is interesting that in the Mike McCarthy–Kellen Moore split, it appears that McCarthy is the one emerging cleaner. We’ll see whether it holds up, but I don’t know that a lot of folks would’ve predicted that.
• The Cardinals keep coming. Jonathan Gannon’s team has played with great effort and intensity all year. I was particularly impressed with how Arizona ran the ball at the end of their twice-delayed game in Pittsburgh—and specifically for that 29-yarder James Conner ripped off at the start of the afternoon’s last possession, with everyone in the building knowing the Cardinals would run it.
• I know they lost, but that was another solid showing for Rashee Rice (eight catches, 64 yards), which is great news for the Chiefs going forward.
• The Falcons are going to win the NFC South. And what they do at quarterback after that is going to be one of the more interesting stories of 2024.
• The Patriots’ best offensive player right now is Zeke Elliott, and that’s not an exaggeration. The former Cowboy has had a bit of a rebirth. As for everyone else on that side of the ball in New England? Well …
• Speaking of New England, big Bailey Zappe–Mitchell Trubisky showdown coming Thursday.
• Dak Prescott absolutely deserves to be in the MVP discussion.
• Florida State got hosed. The faster we acknowledge it, the faster we move on!
