Week 13 pulled my emotions all over the place. Holiday scheduling aside, last weekend’s NFL slate gave us great triumphs, like the Philadelphia Eagles taking down the Baltimore Ravens or the Buffalo Bills shellacking the San Francisco 49ers in prime time. It also made me ask, “What is wrong with you?” more than almost any other week this season.
In turn, this week’s column has a little bit of all that.
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold covered all the bases there with his performance against the Arizona Cardinals. Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie running back Bucky Irving continued his quietly fantastic rookie campaign. Bills quarterback Josh Allen once again made a (completely incomprehensible) play only he could make. And New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers gave us an exhausting performance that sums up his entire tenure in New York.
QB charting: Sam Darnold
Darnold is the toughest quarterback in the league to pin down right now.
In so many ways, he is still the Darnold of old. He takes sacks at a higher rate than most quarterbacks and puts the ball in harm’s way at least three times a week. Those are parts of his game that will never leave.
At the same time, Darnold’s risky throws have seldom been punished this year, and he has consistently stepped up in his team’s biggest moments. Darnold has three, four, sometimes five outrageous throws per game, many of which have come late to drive the offense into scoring range.
Last week’s game against the Cardinals covered all of that — good and bad.
Let’s start with some of Darnold’s struggles, because that’s the version of him we got for about three quarters.
Though Darnold’s numbers under pressure and versus the blitz looked solid when he got the ball out, he often did not do that. Darnold was sacked five times Sunday, many of those coming on third down. Cardinals defensive coordinator Nick Rallis found ways to confuse or overwhelm Darnold for a good chunk of this game, and the Vikings didn’t really adjust until the fourth quarter.
KYZIR WE SEE YOU 👏👏
📺: #AZvsMIN on FOX pic.twitter.com/xkJHHX6WPj
— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) December 1, 2024
Darnold also put the ball in danger a lot in this game, although he continues to get away with it. I charted five passes that were outright defended. At least a couple of them over the middle, including an overthrown seam route in the end zone, easily could have been picked off. Darnold was just 4-of-10 into those tight windows.
The flip side is that Darnold can make some absolutely nails throws into tight windows. Maybe he’s too willing to try it at times, but when it works, he throws some indefensible passes.
Sam Darnold's Week 13 numbers
| Comp | Att | TDs | WR Adj. | Pass Def. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total |
22 (1 drop) |
31 (1 throwaway) |
2 |
1 |
5 |
|
Under pressure |
5 (1 drop) |
8 (1 throwaway) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
|
Out of pocket |
2 |
4 (1 throwaway) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
|
5-plus pass rushers |
4 (1 drop) |
6 (1 throwaway) |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Man coverage |
3 (1 drop) |
4 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
|
Zone coverage |
16 |
24 (1 throwaway) |
1 |
1 |
4 |
|
Tight window |
4 (1 drop) |
10 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
|
Open window |
14 |
16 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
Darnold threw the ball through a car wash to find Justin Jefferson deep down the right side to open the fourth quarter. On his very next attempt, he feathered in an out-breaker to Jordan Addison, just over the fingertips of an underneath defender. Shortly after that, he threw a beautiful wheel route to Aaron Jones that Jones dropped in the end zone. When it’s good, there really aren’t many who throw a prettier ball.
Darnold, to his credit, also was good when the picture was clear for him. Head coach Kevin O’Connell makes it easy for Darnold more often than not, and Minnesota’s QB usually doesn’t squander those chances. Darnold “missed” just two open-window throws in this game, both of which were defended at the line of scrimmage. Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap to the opposing team’s big guys up front.
Sunday’s struggles and eventual comeback made for the full Darnold experience. There’s still a part of his success that feels flimsy to me, but O’Connell continues to enable Darnold in the right ways — and Darnold continues to step up when he is needed most.
Needle-mover: Bucs RB Bucky Irving
The Tampa Bay run game is one of this season’s quiet miracles.
In 2022 and 2023, this run game was firmly entrenched in the bottom of the league. The Bucs could not block a soul and could not find a core group of concepts out of which to build an identity. At a certain point last season, then offensive coordinator Dave Canales clearly treated the run game as a chore to keep defenses honest rather than as a serious part of the offense. I can’t say I blame him for it, either.
That has not been the case under Liam Coen this year, at all, and there are a few reasons for that. Coen comes from the Sean McVay coaching tree, so it’s hardly a surprise he’s more committed to — and affluent in — making the run game work. Bringing in free agent Ben Bredeson to play left guard and drafting Graham Barton to play center, as well as getting some natural second-year development from right guard Cody Mauch, also has helped fix what was arguably the NFL’s worst interior offensive line the past couple seasons.
The foundation of a good run game is nothing without the players to make good on it, though. Rachaad White, who was already on the roster, has played admirably with better surroundings. But it’s really Irving who has been responsible for taking things to the next level.
He’s been more than “good for a rookie.” He has been straight-up good.
THERE GOES THAT MAN 💨
📺: #TBvsCAR on FOX pic.twitter.com/jhN0XGuXns
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) December 2, 2024
Through 13 weeks, Irving ranks ninth in the league in rushing yards over expected (+121) among running backs, per NFL Pro. He ranks seventh in RYOE per attempt (+0.9), if you sort by runners with at least 100 carries. Similarly, Irving is second only to Jacksonville Jaguars RB Tank Bigsby in yards after contact per carry (4.4) among runners with triple-digit rushing attempts.
Irving’s pop and springy footwork are exactly what has been missing from the Bucs’ run game for years. White is good as a battering ram, but he does not get the offensive line out of jams or pop explosive runs as consistently as Irving can.
Irving has been a spark of electricity for a room that desperately needed it. He is going to give the Bucs a dangerous 200 or so touches a season for the next half-decade. That’s a home run of a fourth-round pick by GM Jason Licht.
Anatomy of a highlight: Josh Allen throwing a TD to himself (sort of)
Coming into Sunday, there wasn’t a whole lot left for Allen to do on his path to MVP other than stay the course. He’s been arguably the best quarterback in the league, alongside Lamar Jackson, and the Bills are firmly in the race for the AFC’s top seed. Keeping up the pace could’ve been enough.
Allen, instead, decided his MVP case could use a little flare — a “Heisman moment,” if you will. That’s how we all ended up watching him throw and catch his own touchdown pass in a whirling snowstorm Sunday night.
THIS IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING WE HAVE EVER SEEN.
📺: @SNFonNBC pic.twitter.com/LzaOt3MDLj
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 2, 2024
Perhaps the funniest part of Allen’s highlight is that the play is not a called pass at all. The Bills have a called run to the right with a backside bullet slant from Amari Cooper as a pre-snap “alert” — Allen can abort the run play and throw the slant if he likes the look. But the play is a called run at its core.
Allen makes the fine decision of throwing the bullet slant versus off coverage by the cornerback. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The play begins its descent into madness, however, when Allen puts the ball on Cooper’s back hip, allowing the defensive back to corral him well short of the goal line without any forward momentum.
For almost any other team and quarterback, that’s a dead play. Allen, of course, operates in his own way.
I don’t know if Allen is shuffling over there in case of a fumble or genuinely looking for a pitch opportunity. In either case, he opens himself up to the opportunity of a lifetime, and Cooper responds by putting trust in his one-of-a-kind quarterback.
A play call that could have easily ended with a rushing touchdown instead became the statistical anomaly of a quarterback both throwing and catching a touchdown pass on the same play. If that’s not Josh Allen in a nutshell, I’m not sure what is.
Scramble drill: Aaron Rodgers spamming isolated vertical throws sums up the Jets’ season
Few quarterbacks wear their exasperation as openly as Rodgers. Any time his offense is stuck in the mud, he goes straight into go-ball and back-shoulder mode — they become the only routes he sees and wants to throw. “Davante Adams or Garrett Wilson are down there somewhere, right?”
Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks was Rodgers’ latest foray into that mode.
Rodgers threw the ball 39 times. According to TruMedia, nine of those attempts were both outside the numbers and beyond 12 yards. The only one of those attempts that was not a straight vertical shot or back-shoulder attempt was a rollout sail route to tight end Jeremy Ruckert.
If it had been working, there’d be no reason to knock Rodgers for spamming isolated vertical shots. Sometimes picking on shaky one-on-one matchups is all you need to do to put up points — just ask the Cincinnati Bengals.
It was not working on Sunday, though. Rodgers completed just one of those nine attempts. Adams and Wilson each had a drop in the first quarter, to be fair, but Rodgers took that a little too strongly as evidence that all he needed to do was make those throws and eventually they would be caught.
The repeated vertical shots outside the numbers aren’t inherently bad on their own, but they are frustrating considering the rest of Rodgers’ target map — those nine throws deep outside the numbers were his only attempts beyond 12 yards. He did not target the intermediate middle of the field. Everything was either a quick-game concept or a fade. It’s hard to piece together a passing game that only lives on either end of the spectrum and seldom in the middle, especially without the support of a dynamic run game.
Performances like that stick out because Rodgers’ “beating your head against the wall” play style is emblematic of the course the Jets have taken the last two seasons. They told themselves they were a quarterback away, invested everything in the offense to the whims of said quarterback, and doubled and tripled down on all of those ideas when they hit roadblocks.
Now, this is a 3-9 team coming off a loss to a Seahawks squad that fumbled or muffed three separate kick returns in the first half. The light at the end of the tunnel has gone out.
