Sports

The biggest game of Week 11 was undoubtedly the matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and the Seattle Seahawks. Both teams came in with 7-2 records, and were seemingly evenly matched on both sides of the ball, with dynamic offenses and stingy defenses. In the end, it was a defensive battle that the Rams won, 21-19, by the skin of their teeth.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, who had played at a near-MVP level this season for the most part, did absolutely nothing to help his team – and plenty to hurt them. Darnold matched his career high with four interceptions, completing 29 of 44 passes for 279 yards, no touchdowns, those picks, and a passer rating of 45.5.

The last time Darnold faced the Rams it was when he was with the Minnesota Vikings in last season’s playoffs, and he endured a 60-minute nightmare. In the Minnesota Vikings’ 27-9 loss, Darnold was sacked nine times, pressured an incomprehensible 25 times, and completed 25 of 40 passes for 245 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 77.6.

On Sunday, it wasn’t necessarily pressure that doomed Darnold as much as it was the Rams dropping into coverage. The last time Darnold threw four picks in a game was in October 2019. In that game he was miked up, and probably wished he wasn’t – he uttered his infamous quote about “seeing ghosts”. Darnold wasn’t sacked once in this game, but he might have been better off taking a few takedowns as opposed to the ill-advised interceptions he threw.

Los Angeles’ defense didn’t blitz a lot because it didn’t have to – instead, defensive coordinator Chris Shula had his guys dropping into coverage six and seven at a time, blurring Darnold’s reads, and forcing him to process at a level that is above his station.

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So, how were the Seahawks still in this one until the end? Seattle’s defense played marvelously for the most part, limiting potential MVP Matthew Stafford to 15 completions on 28 attempts for 130 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 89.9. But when you’re facing a team of this caliber, you can’t expect to turn the ball over that often and bump up your win total.

That said, were it not for Ethan Evans’ 50-yard punt that put the Seahawks behind their own one-yard line with 1:50 left, Darnold and the Seahawks might have won. The Seahawks got to the Los Angeles 49-yard line with seconds remaining, which left kicker Jason Myers with a 61-yard field goal attempt he couldn’t quite make.

These two NFC West opponents face off again in Seattle on 18 December, and we expect that to garner similar “Game of the Year” hype. Because even at their worst, that’s how good these teams are, even without the intervention of the supernatural.

MVP of the week

Myles Garrett, edge, Cleveland Browns. Yes, the Browns lost 23-16 to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, primarily because Cleveland had Dillon Gabriel (until he suffered a concussion) and then Shedeur Sanders at quarterback. But if there’s one player who can end up as MVP on a losing side it’s Garrett, the best defensive player in football, the Browns would have been nowhere near a position to win. Garrett did what he usually does in this game – he shredded every blocking scheme, and made the quarterback’s life miserable. In this case, the quarterback was Lamar Jackson – not exactly an easy guy to bring down – who he sacked four times, adding one quarterback hit and three hurries in 27 pass-rushing snaps.

Over his last three games, Garrett has a preposterous 10 sacks and 17 total pressures, which adds up to one of the greatest stretches for a pass-rusher in history. The only other two players to match his sack total in a three-game period are Richard Dent in 1984, and Derrick Thomas in 1997-1998. Dent and Thomas are in the Hall of Fame, and Garrett may as well start getting his gold jacket tailored.

On Sunday, Garrett also became the only player in NFL annals with 12 or more sacks in six straight seasons since the sack became an official NFL statistic in 1982.

Video of the week

We’ll get into the vagaries of Minnesota Vikings quarterback JJ McCarthy’s overall game in a minute, but one of the two interceptions he threw in Minnesota’s 19-17 loss to the Chicago Bears had an emotional component to it. With 42 seconds left in the first half, McCarthy tried to connect with Jordan Addison in the end zone, but Chicago cornerback Nahshon Wright was having none of it.

Why was Wright so emotional after the interception? Because John Beam, his head coach at Laney College in 2018 before Wright transferred to Oregon State, was shot and killed last week. Clearly, Coach Beam left his mark in all the right ways.

Stat of the week

Three and three. The list of quarterbacks who have had three passing touchdowns and three rushing touchdowns in the same game is pretty short. In fact only two have done so in the entire history of the NFL. Otto Graham of the Cleveland Browns against the Detroit Lions in December 1954 to win the NFL championship in a 56-10 rout, and Josh Allen of the Buffalo BIlls … who has now achieved the feat twice. Allen’s first came last season against the Los Angeles Rams in a 44-42 Bills loss. And he did so again on Sunday in Buffalo’s 44-32 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a victory that kept the 7-3 Bills within fighting distance of the 9-2 New England Patriots in the AFC East.

At its most disorganized, the Bills’ offense relies too much on Allen, while everyone else waits around to do something … anything. But when you have a weapon like Allen, and you’re desperate to win, you tend to throw style points out the window. Allen’s performance was especially important because the Bills elected to make receiver Keon Coleman, the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 draft, a healthy scratch because he missed a team meeting this week. Coleman was supposed to be the missing piece in Buffalo’s offense as a big deep threat, but when he’s off missing other things, the Bills have to use the one weapon they know they can rely on. In Sunday’s game, Allen also tied Cam Newton for the most regular-season rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in NFL history, with 75.

Elsewhere around the league

– Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell may be wondering about his offseason quarterback plans. The Vikings selected McCarthy with the 10th overall pick last year, and they’re still waiting to see on the field what they imagined in the pre-draft process. McCarthy’s college tape often brought a second- or third-round grade to mind, but as O’Connell is perhaps the NFL’s pre-eminent quarterback developer, most were inclined to give him – and McCarthy – the benefit of the doubt. McCarthy missed last season with a knee injury, which gave O’Connell the opportunity to resuscitate the careers of Darnold and Daniel Jones. The Vikings were going to be committed to McCarthy on a no-matter-what basis, leaving Darnold and Jones to find homes elsewhere, and the second-year player has done little to justify his team’s faith at this point. He engineered an amazing comeback against the Chicago Bears in Week 1 despite an unimpressive stat line, fell to earth against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 2, then missed the next five games with a high ankle sprain.

“I think adversity is one of the greatest things for individual growth, collective growth, whatever it is,” McCarthy said postgame. “I think it [can] really separate teams, or bring them tighter together. And I feel like this team’s being brought tighter and tighter together each and every week.”

Unless you gave O’Connell some powerful truth serum, he’d never admit that he’d rather roll with Darnold (well, maybe not this Sunday’s Darnold) or Jones. But a certain level of buyer’s remorse would be appropriate.

– The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants 27-20 to push their record to 6-3-1 on the season, which keeps them in the NFC North race, along with the Bears and Lions. But can this team be taken seriously as a Super Bowl contender? The variance in performance can be maddening. Green Bay came into this game having lost their last two, and Jordan Love was less than impressive in each of those contests. Love wasn’t much better in this win, completing 13 of 24 passes for 174 yards, but his two second-half touchdown passes made the difference against a Giants team resetting after the firing of head coach Brian Daboll, and starting Jameis Winston at quarterback in place of the injured Jaxson Dart.

Had Winston not thrown a back-breaking interception in the end zone with 40 seconds left in the game, the Packers may have struggled to climb back against a team they should be able to beat handily. Something to remember when the postseason comes along: High variance doesn’t generally get things done.

– It was a bad day for Cam Newton and records. Not only did Allen tie Newton’s rushing touchdown mark, but Bryce Young dusted Newton’s single-game Carolina Panthers record for passing yards – though Young needed overtime to do so. Newton had the mark with 432 yards in a 30-23 loss to the Packers back in 2011, and he threw three interceptions in that game. In Carolina’s 30-27 overtime win over the Atlanta Falcons, Young completed 31 of 45 passes for 448 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 123.2 – the best and most complete game the 2023 first overall pick has played so far in his NFL career. The Panthers (who won a total of five games in 2024) are now 6-5, and they have two upcoming games against NFC South rivals the Buccaneers, who lead the division at 6-4.

– The Chiefs have been 6-4 twice in the Andy Reid/Patrick Mahomes era – in 2019 and 2021. In each of those cases, they recovered to win the Super Bowl. What they’ll do with this 5-5 mark after their 22-19 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday remains to be seen. But this is the biggest hole any Chiefs team under current management has found itself in, and neither the 9-2 Broncos nor the 7-4 Los Angeles Chargers are going to disappear as postseason contenders. The Chiefs have a long history of playing with their food until the games really count, but as Yogi Berra once said, it gets late early out there.

– The Lions thought they were going to get the ball back and with it a final attempt to tie the game when they trailed 16-9 late in the fourth quarter against the Eagles on Sunday Night Football after Jalen Hurts failed to complete on third down. But the Lions were the subject of a very dubious pass interference call, helping the Eagles to run out the clock. That call aside, the Eagles defense looks brilliant as the playoffs approach and Jared Goff was given very little time to set himself all night.

– Finally, in an appealing bit of miscellany, Jacoby Brissett of the Arizona Cardinals set the NFL’s regular season record with 47 completions in the Cardinals’ 41-22 loss to the San Francisco 49ers. Brissett passed the regular-season mark of 45, set by Drew Bledsoe of the New England Patriots in 1994, and Jared Goff of the Los Angeles Rams in 2019, and tied Ben Roethlisberger’s 47 completions in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 47-38 playoff loss to the Cleveland Browns in January 2021.

In a week of game-planning that wasn’t designed for him.

In a season he hasn’t taken practice reps with the first-team offense.

For a head coach who would still have him as the No. 3 quarterback if Joe Flacco hadn’t been traded.

Shedeur Sanders finally got some regular season snaps on Sunday for the Cleveland Browns. Predictably, he looked like a fifth-round rookie quarterback who was pressed into an opportunity rather than prepared for it. Next week, that might be different. Now the Browns have to strike the uneasy balance of both ramping up Sanders as the potential Week 12 starter while monitoring the health of Dillon Gabriel in the concussion protocol. And how this next week goes could tell us what the remainder of the season is going to look like for Sanders.

One way or another, it’s got to improve from the 23-16 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. A game that will be pointed to by Sanders critics as proof positive that some of his roughest traits — taking sacks, running backward to escape pockets, getting mechanically loose on throws, holding the ball too long — are still front and center. In two quarters of work, Sanders went 4 for 16 for 47 passing yards with one interception and no offensive points. The result was the Browns squandering a 16-10 halftime lead and falling to 2-8.

In some respects, Sanders’ numbers could have been worse, with Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton dropping an interception that was thrown into his chest, and the Browns recovering a fumble that Sanders lost. In other respects, it also could have been better, with a 30-yard touchdown pass to wideout Gage Larvadain getting broken up at the last moment in the end zone. That throw, along with a 25-yard completion to tight end Harold Fannin, were two bright spots in an otherwise bleak half of football.

So what does one half of football mean when Sanders wasn’t the quarterback prepped for this chance? Well, at least two things.

First, it gives you a snapshot of why the initial plan going into the regular season was to have Flacco on the roster and backing up Gabriel once he ascended to the starting job. The staff didn’t want Sanders pressed into action like he was against the Ravens, largely because it was going to look like what it ended up looking like — a rookie who has a long way to go with his development, and a coaching staff that is already pouring every opportunity into Gabriel. It’s hard enough trying to hone one rookie quarterback who is starting, a quarterback who needs all the practice reps and live action snaps he can get. But now you put a second rookie behind him and there is virtually no way to operate without starving one or both of them.

This is part of the flawed idea that Sanders should have been taking snaps with the first-team offense all along. That’s not how you develop a rookie quarterback to be a starter. You don’t split up those reps between two rookies, because then neither is getting what they fully need at the position. Again, this is why the initial plan was to have Flacco as Gabriel’s backup. Because he doesn’t need reps. Gabriel could eat all the practice reps and then if he were injured in a game, Flacco could step in with a wealth of experience that made him instantly ready for the moment. But when Flacco went out the door and Sanders was promoted to the No. 2 spot, it created a problem. Now you had Gabriel, who needs all the time with the first-team offense to develop as a starter … and you also had Sanders, who needs time with the first team offense to develop as a player. Trying to balance practice reps between both would be doing a disservice to both.

The Browns chose to stick to their plan entering the season and develop one rookie. And when Gabriel went down, it made for a difficult opportunity for Sanders. Whether it was Week 11 or Week 13 or Week 18, he was going play his first NFL snaps at a disadvantage, because he was always going to be a very distant second priority for the team. No amount of bellyaching from the media or sports talk radio or the fan base was going to change that. And the result was what we saw from Sanders on Sunday: a player who was not ready for the moment because he was not prepared for the moment. The mystery of what it would look like when the moment finally came is now gone. We know.

The second thing that Sunday provided is an answer to what this changes for the Browns and Sanders. In a word? Nothing. Gabriel went down with a concussion, but that didn’t knock him out of the starting job. Stefanski made that clear after the loss. When Gabriel clears the concussion protocol, he will once again be the starting quarterback. If he can’t pass the protocols before the Week 12 game against the Las Vegas Raiders, then it will be Shedeur who steps into the job — temporarily.

That declaration should wake up some of the people who are still frustratingly hoping (dreaming?) that the Browns are open to grooming Sanders to be the starting quarterback. They’re not. They haven’t been since the season began. And realistically they were never in that mindset from the moment training camp began. Sanders getting a second-half crash course against the Ravens wasn’t the Browns suddenly changing their tune. It was the coaching staff having no other option on the table. And nothing about Sanders’ performance is going to make Stefanski suddenly think he’s been going about this all wrong. If anything, it’s the opposite. Now the coaching staff has tape to point at and justifiably say, “He’s not ready.”

Can that change? It’s the same answer that has resonated all the way back to Sanders getting snaps in exhibition games: If he absolutely lights it up, that won’t be ignored. Let’s project that out over the course of next week. If Gabriel remains in the concussion protocol and Sanders gets a full week of practice as the No. 1 QB … then he takes that week of practice and translates it to a eyebrow-raising performance against the Raiders … then he’s got a tangible argument. Then he can say “here are the results when you pour 100 percent of these practice opportunities into me”.

Because right now, the primary argument of his supporters is just a theory: Sanders is struggling with development because he’s not getting reps with the first-team offense and not getting attention he needs from the staff. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe his skill set in college — being hyper-accurate and poised in the face of pressure — are born out of an offense system that will never translate on the NFL level. Maybe the speed of the game on this level is too much for him. A vast ocean of wildly successful college quarterbacks have never made it in this league simply because the game never slows down for them.

That might be Sanders. For that matter, it might be Gabriel, too. There are seven more starts to find out. Next week suddenly looms large. Either as Sanders’ first week of being treated like he might be the future of the Browns’ quarterback position, or as the moment he once again got shuffled back to backup role for now and maybe forever.