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The Bills offense is Genghis Khan, Tua Tagovailoa is troubling and 9 things we learned in Week 15

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For The Win (usatoday.com) 

Week 15 adjusted our scope for Super Bowl 59? A Kansas City Chiefs-Detroit Lions showdown? Sure, that would have been nice.

But we’re on a Buffalo Bills-Philadelphia Eagles timeline now.

Both the Bills and Eagles got emphatic wins over high profile conference interlopers Sunday. Philadelphia jump-started its passing game with a high efficiency collection of short passes en route to nearly 40 minutes of possession against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Buffalo was missing multiple starters on defense and gave up 42 points, but this did not matter because the Lions were missing more starters and gave up 48.

There’s more than just the top of the NFL’s food chain to discuss this week. Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up from there.

[Please bear with me for any Twitter embed issues. Our editing software has become a whole problem on that front the past couple weeks. Rest assured, if there’s a play alluded to in the text it’s worth clicking through to see if it didn’t make it into the article itself.]

1. Brian Thomas Jr. and Travon Walker are the only bright spots in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ dismal 2024

Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

From The Jaguars sure stink, but at least they’ve got Brian Thomas Jr.:

Those hopes have faded. Lawrence has shrunk from Pro Bowl status, struggling through 2024 before an injury cut his season short after 10 games and a 2-8 record. No defense in the NFL has been worse. Jacksonville has given up more yards than anyone else and its 0.275 expected points added (EPA) allowed per opponent dropback is the league’s worst mark since 2020.

via rbsdm.com and the author.

For reference, Lamar Jackson’s EPA/dropback this season is 0.262. This is all very bad. But silver linings exist at the edges of this swirling funnel of garbage. Let’s start with the most obvious one.

Brian Thomas Jr. is the WR1 for which Jacksonville has been searching.

The fact Thomas is able to thrive with Mac Jones as his quarterback is remarkable. Jones is operating with a better top wideout than he ever had in New England, but in his first seven games as a Jaguar he’s thrown 16 deep balls and completed five of them. All to opposing players.

He is, in his soul, a passer with the kind of lack of awareness to give up seven yards on second-and-goal instead of simply throwing the ball away.

Thomas’s ability to create separation is a facet in both phases of his passing game. He can accelerate through press coverage. He can snap off off-coverage with shifty lateral movement and clean routes. Once the ball is secure, he has the vision to maximize gains:

The rookie’s 6.5 yards after catch are tied for the team lead with Travis Etienne — who is, notably, a running back. Statistically, that puts him in line with Ja’Marr Chase, Nico Collins and Puka Nacua when it comes to generating yards. That’s a boon for any quarterback, and on Sunday it led to 78 of Thomas’s 105 receiving yards — nearly a quarter of Jones’s total output.

via nextgenstats.nfl.com

Thomas is a building block for the future. So is Travon Walker.

Walker didn’t hear his name called often in a terrible performance from the Jacksonville defense. He got to stare down a 41-year-old quarterback with fading mobility and led a pass rush that only sacked him once and hit him three times.

But Walker still finished the game with a tackle for loss. While it wasn’t his best showing, it fits into his portfolio as a growing force amidst a lost defense.

Walker has been asked to attack the quarterback more than ever in his career (from 85 percent to 97 percent this fall). He’s responded with 8.5 sacks in 14 games, allowing the opportunity to top last year’s 10 sack breakthrough. There’s been a bit of luck involved there — his time to sack is down from 4.8 seconds to 4.3 as Josh Hines-Allen has helped push quarterbacks in his direction — but his 44 pressures rank 21st in the NFL this fall.

Read the whole breakdown here.

2. The New York Jets did long-term damage with a short-term vision of what could have been

Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union

From The Jets did the worst thing they could possibly do (win a football game):

Rodgers has come alive in recent weeks. Between Week 13’s overtime loss to the Miami Dolphins and Sunday’s win, he’s thrown for 628 yards and four touchdowns. The last time he had as many yards and scoring plays in a two-week span was back in 2021. That’s the quarterback the Jets thought they were getting — particularly when paired with the All-Pro wideout who’d left Green Bay a year before he did.

Davante Adams had 344 receiving yards his first six games in New York. He has 307 the last two combined. He had nearly 200 yards in just 30 minutes of game play, a span in which Rodgers erased two different Jaguars leads and led a game-winning drive where Adams provided 92 percent of the yards needed for a go-ahead touchdown.

Even when he wasn’t the target he remained the main character. New York’s first touchdown of the day was made possible because the Jags zeroed in on Adams, leaving Garrett Wilson all by himself for an easy six points.

This was all great for Sunday and terrible for 2025. Week 15’s win pushed the Jets out of a potential top five draft pick. Home games against the Los Angeles Rams and Miami Dolphins linger on the schedule. There’s a chance New York suffers through a hopeless 2024 and doesn’t even get a top 10 draft selection for its troubles.

If that happens, the Jets will have one hell of a decision to make. New York can get out from Rodgers’s contract with a minimal $14 million dead salary cap space penalty in 2025. But would they have a better option than the inconsistent 41-year-old who is in the midst of his best football in years? Each Rodgers touchdown pass pulls the Jets further away from a top pick in a draft that seems to have two top tier quarterback prospects — Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders.

Would they bring the four-time MVP back, knowing he’ll bring a media circus with him and knowing, at some point, he’ll blame said media circus for his own shortcomings? The Jets have a below-average amount of salary cap space to spend next offseason, which suggests they may not be able to sign veteran stopgap solutions like Sam Darnold or Russell Wilson (neither of whom would be a slam dunk upgrade) while fixing other issues. Like, say, a defense that nearly gave up 300 passing yards to Mac Jones.

There’s logic behind drafting a good-not-great quarterback prospect and giving him a year to sit behind a legend. Rodgers has long been respected in the locker room and is an effective, if rigid teacher. Would he want to take on a mentor role as his career winds down? Would he see the Jets’ drafting of a first round quarterback over reinforcements elsewhere as a slight?

Does he see himself in the twilight of his career? Would he give New York a straight answer if asked? If he wants a trade, is he going to bring back a meaningful return? How are prospective head coaching candidates going to view his place (or absence) in the lineup?

Read the whole breakdown here.

3. Jayden Daniels is doing Patrick Mahomes stuff and the NFC East should be terrified (but maybe not in 2024)

Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

You don’t get much credit for squeezing past Jake Haener and Spencer Rattler. The New Orleans Saints are a pest with Derek Carr in the lineup, but facing two quarterbacks with a combined zero NFL passes before 2024 is a challenge a standard deviation below New Orleans’s usual level of annoying-ness.

You do, however, get credit for pulling off the kind of plays you’d write off as “unreasonable” if someone did them against you in a game of Madden.

Daniels came back from his bye and reminded the world why he’s the frontrunner for offensive rookie of the year honors… for two quarters. He pushed the Commanders out to a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter, then held on for dear life as a good-not-great Saints defense limited him significantly.

Let’s look at the splits:

Jayden Daniels, drives one through three vs. New Orleans:

  • 12-14, 116 yards, two touchdowns, zero interceptions, 140.8 rating

Jayden Daniels, drives one through three vs. New Orleans:

  • 13-17, 110 yards, zero touchdowns, zero interceptions, 93.5 rating

If Daniels was roughly the same passer as he was early, why weren’t the Commanders scoring touchdowns? Because Daniels, for the lingering moments of Mahomes in his game, did the thing Mahomes doesn’t do; he got sacked in big moments.

Daniels was sacked eight times Sunday against New Orleans’s 23rd-ranked pass rush (in terms of pressure rate). Half these sacks came on third down — understandable, since third downs are more likely to bring blitzes, but still frustrating. This included a sack on third-and-goal at the one-yard line and a pair of third-and-long situations that turned potential scoring drives into punts.

In some cases, this was a result of poor play design and execution.

In others, Daniels made the right read and was punished by bad blocking.

And some were the antithesis of the touchdown above — a touch of trying to do juuuuuust a little bit too much and moving backward in search of a home run ball.

Washington could live with that risk because the rewards were substantial Sunday. But the key to making Daniels a viable superstar depend on tilting that balance toward profit. The easiest way to do this is to upgrade the cast around him.

Terry McLaurin had a great day but was the only reliable threat in the Commanders passing game — he had 10 targets on a day where no one else had more than four. He had four of his seven catches in the first three drives of the game, including both his touchdowns, because New Orleans bracketed him after that and dared Daniels to beat them elsewhere. Pair that with an average pass blocking unit and you have the recipe that left Daniels dancing in the pocket as he progressed beyond his primary read.

Help is likely on the way. Washington will have the salary cap space of a team with a starting quarterback on a rookie contract. General manager Adam Peters will have nearly an estimated $100 million to spend on veteran receiving and blocking help this spring.

The trick now is nurturing Daniels’s instincts without giving in to the simple mistakes that drive him backward on big downs. Based on how his 2024 has gone, that’s not asking too much. But these are the Commanders, a franchise that has sucked the life from promising young quarterbacks repeatedly. We’ll have to wait and see, trusting the Josh Harris era of ownership is more competent than the flaming garbage barge that was Dan Snyder’s reign.

4. Joe Burrow is doing Joe Burrow stuff now and the AFC probably isn’t too worried

Cincinnati Enquirer

Let’s start with the good news. After a slow start, the Cincinnati Bengals avoided disaster. Their trip to Nashville ended the same way it has for everyone but the New England Patriots this season — with a road win over a team whose quarterback Will Levis is the human equivalent of a spilled bag of Superballs.

The hallmarks of Sunday’s win will be familiar to anyone who has watched the Bengals in 2024. Joe Burrow continued to play at an MVP level even though there’s almost no chance of him winning the award.

Burrow threw for 271 yards and three touchdowns, marking his sixth straight game with at least three trips to the end zone. He maximized his contributions from Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, who combined for 14 catches on 19 targets and 182 of Cincinnati’s passing yards. He extended plays with his legs and did the kind of things that would have been so much more impressive had he not been relegated to doing them against the Titans.

That touchdown only tied the game early on because coordinator Lou Anarumo’s once proud defense has crumbled into dust. The Tennessee Titans faced the Jaguars’ league-worst defense and failed to find the end zone even once. They’d scored two touchdowns in the first 11:02 Sunday vs. Cincinnati. In the span of two plays — a 40-yard run-after-catch and a 27-yard pass interference — Levis turned third-and-long in his own territory into first and goal.

Anarumo sent a cover-0 blitz against the league’s 30th-best pass blocking unit and came up empty. Levis stood in the pocket, stepped up and found former Bengal Tyler Boyd for a drive-saving gain.

That’s pretty much par for the course. Trey Hendrickson has 12.5 sacks this season, a number made even more impressive when you consider how little help he’s had. No one else on the roster has more than three. His 27 quarterback hits are 16 more than second-place Joseph Ossai. Hendrickson has 70 quarterback pressures; the next three guys in the team ranks have a combined total of 68.

This lack of pressure has shifted the onus to a rebuilt secondary. Geno Stone has been unable to replicate his 2023 breakthrough with the Baltimore Ravens. After leading the league in interceptions last fall he had only two this season and was giving up a 106.1 passer rating in coverage before Sunday’s pick-six.

Vonn Bell’s return has failed to be the spark Anarumo needed. Young corners Dax Hill and Cam Taylor-Britt have yet to meet their potential as former high value draft picks (and Hill has played only five games due to injury).

The defense isn’t the only problem. Burrow has a pressure rate 10 points higher than his blitz rate, showcasing how opponents have been able to get to him without sacrificing extra defenders in the secondary. So you wind up with four-man fronts capable of turning a 366-pound man into a an accidental (and awesome) running back.

Sunday’s 37-27 win was the Bengals’ second straight. At 6-8 their playoff odds sit at two percent. Three different AFC teams have already guaranteed themselves a better record than Cincinnati regardless of how they finish 2024.

This is a bummer, because changes are coming. Tee Higgins will be a free agent after playing this season on the franchise tag. The Bengals have about $50 million in effective cap space next spring, per Over the Cap, but have so many holes to fill before getting to Higgins or a potential extension for Hendrickson, who’ll be a free agent in 2026. This team is going to look different in 2025, whether that means moving Andrei Iosivas up to WR2 or bringing a cache of trustworthy defenders and blockers on a budget.

Cincinnati can’t afford to waste more years of Burrow’s prime. Sunday’s performance was another reminder of how special he can be, even against the backdrop of two interceptions on underthrown balls. The Bengals have to find away to evolve around him while potentially losing some of their biggest contributors.

That’s a wicked needle to thread. The good news, however, is that Cincinnati has one of the best selling points in the NFL — the chance to play alongside a perennial MVP candidate in Burrow.

5. Tua Tagovailoa shrank from the spotlight and took the Miami Dolphins’ playoff hopes with him

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

For a while, Tagovailoa’s value appeared clear. He’d gone 4-1 in his five starts leading up to Week 15, pushing Miami from 2-6 to the periphery of the playoff race in the process. The Dolphins offense averaged 25 points per game with him in the lineup and 10 points per game without him.

From a solely statistical standpoint, this was great. But it was reasonable to question how sustainable this all was. Three of his four victories since returning to the lineup were over teams that entered Week 15 with three wins or fewer. Stuck in the middle was an uncompetitive loss to the Green Bay Packers that merely furthered the idea Tagovailoa cannot thrive in cold environments.

The weather wasn’t a factor in the domed environment of NRG Stadium. But the Houston Texans’ top-six passing defense was.

That was one of two Derek Stingley interceptions on a day where Tagovailoa turned it over four times — three interceptions and a fumble. The pick above is reasonable; single coverage on Tyreek Hill in the final two minutes. Sure, the All-Pro wideout is extremely covered, but it’s the kind of risk you can live with.

Stingley’s first interception, however, was not.

Tagovailoa had a sterling 11:0 touchdown:interception ratio his previous four games. On Sunday, his mistakes were absolutely fatal. He fumbled as Miami neared midfield. His first two interceptions came either inside or at the brink of field goal range. His third gave Houston the latitude to kneel out the clock. The Texans scored 10 points off turnovers in a game they won 20-12.

The old standby of “default to Tyreek” is no longer viable. The wideout who’d helped the left-handed QB put up prolific numbers was shut down by Stingley and company Sunday. Hill had just two catches on seven targets, continuing a trend where his per-game yardage has been cut nearly in half from 2023’s ridiculous campaign.

Instead, Hill’s ineffectiveness and an injury to Jaylen Waddle forced the action down to Tagovailoa’s short range targets. The Dolphins had 29 completions Sunday. All but three came within eight yards of the line of scrimmage. He had as many completions on throws that went 10-plus yards downfield as interceptions.

via nextgenstats.nfl.com

This is troubling. Tagovailoa has thrived in stretches as a pro, but the bulk of his big performances have come with Hill as a cheat code downfield. With the five-time All-Pro locked down, Houston put the onus on Tagovailoa to elevate the rest of his receiving corps. This culminated in a touchdown throw to Jonnu Smith (11 targets, 48 yards), seven completions to Devon Achane and not much else.

The Dolphins have to fix this. Tagovailoa is owed $50 million in guarantees in 2025, though afterward his contract could be dumped with minimal salary cap repercussions.

They would like to avoid that, obviously, but Sunday’s inability to execute could only accelerate the franchise’s development of a plan B. Miami was already preparing for a world in which Tagovailoa couldn’t be its quarterback of the future thanks to a history of head injuries. Week 15’s defeat suggests they could also be planning for a universe in which he can’t be the difference between a win and a loss without an All-Pro supporting cast around him.

6. The Philadelphia Eagles got exactly what they needed from Jalen Hurts to quiet their critics

Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

Jalen Hurts was having a bit of a letdown season as a passer coming into Week 15. In his previous three games he’d thrown for only 405 total yards. This wasn’t as issue since it capped what had been a nine-game winning streak, but it sewed minor discontent with top wideout A.J. Brown.

So on Sunday, Philadelphia won its 10th straight game and the Pennsylvania state championship by dispatching a 10-win Pittsburgh Steelers team with 290 passing yards.

Week 15 was a stark reminder how dangerous Philadelphia can be. The defense that’s been flying since a Week 5 bye shut down Russell Wilson, limiting his offense to 4.5 yards per dropback.

via rbsdm.com and the author

But while the Steelers invested skill points in slowing a hobbled Saquon Barkley (who crushed the fantasy owners who rode him to the playoffs with just 74 total yards), the Eagles blew them away through the air. Hurts rallied behind the two wideouts acquired to lift him up. 23 of his 32 passes went to Brown or DeVonta Smith. Together they combined for 219 of Philly’s 290 passing yards and both the team’s non-Tush Push touchdowns.

If there’s a concern it’s that this revitalized passing game failed to stretch the field vertically. Only seven of Hurts’s attempts — less than a quarter — traveled more than 10 yards downfield. Part of that is thanks to a stingy Pittsburgh secondary that has allowed the second-lowest passer rating in coverage this season (79.2).

But it does further a concerning trend. In 2023, Hurts completed just 22 of 64 deep throws. That 34 percent completion rate was the lowest of his career. He’s been slightly better this fall but still completed just 13 deep balls in 35 attempts. If Philly needs big chunk plays to execute a comeback, it could be a tall order.

That’s not what these Eagles are built for. Instead, they’re a jackhammer, a machine of kinetic energy meant to rattle opponents apart and prevent them from ever getting themselves back together. Philadelphia’s strength is in its ability to eat every spare second from the game clock and keep opponents from evolving their comeback hopes beyond the planning stage.

On Sunday, that meant turning a 20-13 lead with five-plus minutes left in the third quarter into a 27-13 win across just two possessions and 34 (!) plays. There was no room for a Russell Wilson moonball to get Pittsburgh back in this game. Just grinding runs and an uber-efficient short passing game that drained the clock and the Steelers’ hope in equal measure.

7. The Buffalo Bills made an absolute statement to smother the Detroit Lions

David Reginek-Imagn Images

Buffalo was stuck playing the NFC’s top team on the road. Even worse, the Bills had to do this without either of their starting safeties against the league’s most efficient quarterback and an offense that’s scored more points than anyone in the NFL.

This did not matter, because the Bills have Josh Allen. And Josh Allen can do this.

That play didn’t count because of an iffy holding call, but four other Allen touchdowns did — two passing and two rushing to make it three games this season where he’s had multiple touchdowns both on the ground and through the air to decimate an opponent. Detroit came into Week 15 with the league’s second-most efficient defense.

Allen came out and led the Bills to 559 total yards anyway. He averaged better than eight yards per play. He had Lions head coach Dan Campbell so spooked he called for an onside kick down by 10 points with more than 12 minutes to play.

It’s difficult to fathom just how destructive Allen was. He ran for 68 yards on 11 carries, some by design and others by necessity, including a third-and-five pickup in the red zone that effectively ensured the Lions wouldn’t have a chance to come back from a two-possession deficit late. He moved the chains with perfectly placed high-arching tosses:

He moved them with absolute lasers:

He threw 12 passes that traveled at least 15 yards downfield and completed eight of them for 251 yards. When Allen considered throwing long against one of the league’s top defenses it resulted in an average gain of more than 20 yards.

On a day where Lamar Jackson threw more touchdown passes than incompletions Allen still managed to widen his lead in the MVP race with a massive win on the road. Buffalo came to Detroit with a depleted defense and gave up 42 points. It did not matter because they have a Ford F-150 made human by a lesser trickster god, and they feed him enough treats to have earned his loyalty.

Allen has scored 36 touchdowns in 14 games — 25 through the air and 11 on the ground. He is impossible to stop because seemingly only his own targets know what he’s going to do next. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year in western New York and instead, oops, the Bills claimed the AFC East title with plenty of shopping days left before Christmas.

Week 15 was a statement. Buffalo can do this to anybody. Allen is an arsenal unto himself. His offense has scored 90 points the last two weeks, and while defense may win championships so do incredible quarterbacks.

Turns out, Josh Allen is an incredible quarterback.

As for the Lions, they’ve been able to slap together a string of impressive defensive performances despite a litany of injuries. But losing Alim McNeill and Carlton Davis means seven of their 11 opening night starters are now hurt and may not return for the postseason. If having an incredible season derailed by terrible injury luck isn’t the most Detroit thing that could happen, I don’t know what is.

/remembers Dan Orlovsky running out the back of the end zone in an 0-16 season.

OK, that’s actually the most Detroit thing that could happen.

8. Too many dang folks don’t know where the goal line is

Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

If you had a nickel for every time a player was walking nearly untouched into the end zone Sunday just to drop the ball before the goal line and have it subsequently roll out of bounds, you’d have two nickels. That’s not much money, but it’s still weird it happened twice.

First it was Jordan Battle, who turned a scoop-n-score into a mere -47 yards of field position with a poorly timed touchback:

But you know what? That’s OK. That’s fine. He’s a defensive player. He’d never scored a pro touchdown before.

Jonathan Taylor, on the other hand, has scored 52 career NFL touchdowns. Which makes this:

Entirely unacceptable. Just babytown frolics. Well, at least the Bengals won.

9. Fantasy team you absolutely didn’t want to field in Week 15

Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

  • QB: Brock Purdy, 49ers (142 passing yards, one interception, three rushing yards, three sacks, 6.28 fantasy points)
  • RB: Najee Harris, Steelers (14 rushing yards, one catch, seven receiving yards, 3.1 fantasy points)
  • RB: Jaylen Warren, Steelers (12 rushing yards, one catch, three receiving yards, 2.5 fantasy points)
  • WR: Amari Cooper, Bills (zero targets, zero catches, 0.0 fantasy points)
  • WR: Cooper Kupp, Rams (three targers, zero catches, 0.0 fantasy points)
  • WR: Deebo Samuel, 49ers (three catches, 16 yards, three rushing yards, 4.9 fantasy points)
  • TE: Jake Ferguson, Cowboys (two catches, 23 yards, 4.3 fantasy points)
  • D/ST: Detroit Lions (48 points allowed, -8.0 fantasy points)

Total: 13.08 points (a new record low!)