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It's time to worry about C.J. Stroud, Kliff Kingsbury is having a Kliff Kingsbury winter and 9 things we learned in Week 12

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For The Win (usatoday.com) 

Week 12 was a launching pad for moral victories. Both Caleb Williams and Bryce Young, the last two first overall picks in the NFL Draft, led fourth quarter comebacks en route to last-second losses.

It was also a breeding ground for momentum crushing defeat. The Houston Texans found a way to lose to the lowly Tennessee Titans. The New England Patriots vacated any lingering goodwill in a blowout loss to the Miami Dolphins. The San Francisco 49ers accidentally proved how valuable Brock Purdy is to head coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense.

What else did we learn in Week 12? Let’s talk about it.

[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.]

Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

1. Maybe all Caleb Williams needed was a new offensive coordinator

Caleb Williams has gone through expected growing pains as a rookie quarterback. I’m not sure anyone thought his debut season would be this much of a roller coaster two-thirds of the way through 2024.

Williams got off to a slow start to begin his career, throwing a pair of touchdowns against four interceptions in the Chicago Bears’ 1-2 start. Then, signs of life. Williams cut his sack rate, found open targets downfield and threw seven touchdowns in a three-game winning streak that made the Bears a sudden playoff threat.

We know what happened next. The first overall pick in last spring’s draft struggled against the Washington Commanders and lost to the second overall pick on a Hail Mary. That malaise lasted three games, settled Williams in as a bottom-10 quarterback and made 2024 look like every other disappointing season the Bears have had the last four decades.

Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was fired. This led to a Week 11 directive for Williams to get rid of the ball quickly and run more. His Week 12 instruction, presumably, was to stand up to the Minnesota Vikings’ perpetual blitz machine. Well, good news:

Williams found multiple ways to break the Vikings’ top-ranked defense. He escaped pressure and lofted deep throws to the sideline. He stood in the pocket and uncorked lasers downfield.

He utilized that perfect placement as chaos unrolled around him. This third down conversion would have been his third-straight on a scoring drive Sunday. Instead, it ended in zero points because Keenan Allen was out of bounds by a toenail and Cairo Santos only knows how to kick line drives, but STILL.

This is the crux Williams’s rookie season. If we track his passer rating on a week-by-week basis, you get this janky roller coaster of occasional greatness and troubling slumps:

If advanced stats are more your style, here’s that chart in terms of expected points added (EPA) per game:

That’s four awesome games, five very bad ones and a single neutral performance. At his best, Williams is a flat-out headache (complimentary). He can throw frozen ropes through tight coverage up the seam. He can float perfect rainbows to streaking targets down the sideline. He can escape pressure in clutch situations to give his team new life.

Problems persist, mostly in the way you’d expect from a young passer. There are overthrows on the run and the occasional happy feet that breed inaccuracy. There are also moments where the adjustment from college to pros is apparent and he merely underestimates the athleticism of an edge rusher or cornerback.

On Sunday, he was great.

The Bears aren’t doing anything revolutionary to make Williams a viable franchise quarterback. They’re building an offense around the limitations in front of him. Where Waldron’s game plan emphasized composure in the pocket and entirely too much time dancing and waiting for routes to develop, interim OC Thomas Brown has simplified the game plan.

In came a litany of quick routes and an edict to take off running once things got uncomfortable. Williams’s average target distance in Weeks 1-10 was eight yards downfield. It was 6.6 in Week 11 and 7.2 in Week 12 as his time to throw plummeted in step. His 2.42 seconds between snap and throw last week was a career low. On Sunday it was right back at the same number again.

This doesn’t mean he’s merely a pop-a-shot savant. When given the opportunity to read a defense, he’s understands exactly where to find quarter and create game-changing gains.

Removing Waldron from the equation and creating a simple-but-devastating playbook has been a boon for Chicago. The Bears always had the talent to generate plays downfield but lacked the blocking to properly set them up. Brown has found ways to create that space, whether it’s been unlocking his quarterback’s legs and turning potential blitzers into QB spies or simply resorting to more play-action handoffs to buy time after Waldron’s offense couldn’t even crack the top 25 when it came to these fakes.

The Bears have made a concerted effort to treat Williams both like a rookie quarterback and as a truly special playmaker. He’s been given more passing plays with simple reads and quick-ditch options. He’s also been given the freedom to lean into his instincts and take off where appropriate, harnessing the off-script wizardry that won him a Heisman Trophy.

That hasn’t led to wins for Chicago. Given head coach Matt Eberflus’s uninspired coaching and seemingly inevitable firing, that may be a good thing. What’s important is that Williams looks not only like a quarterback worthy of being the top overall draft pick but the kind of franchise-altering headache that could haunt the NFC North for years to come.

USA Today Sports

2. The New York Giants do not want to be here

Swapping out Daniel Jones for Tommy DeVito was never going to make the Giants better. It was a futile attempt to put the Jones era in storage, locked away in an attic where no one could find it and get back to the relative sunshine of a young mobile quarterback who wasn’t very good but was occasionally fun.

DeVito was a fun story in last year’s lost season. The novelty has already worn off in this one. Head coach Brian Daboll didn’t think highly enough of the former Rutgers and Illinois QB to prevent him from signing experienced backup Drew Lock last offseason. In one game, Daboll proved that judgment right and his own decision to start DeVito over Lock in Week 12 wrong.

DeVito’s mobility was supposed to be a benefit behind a cheesecloth offensive line. Instead, pressure limited him to a steady diet of short-range targets that led to easy completions that had no impact on the final outcome of the game.

The second-year QB completed 21 of his 31 passes for a reasonable 67.7 percent completion rate. All but four of those completions came within seven yards of the line of scrimmage.

via habitatring.com

Sunday’s game was every bit as much of a mess as you’d expect a 23-point defeat to a team on a four-game losing streak could be. I’m not sure what the god of missed tackles and terrible angles looks like, but I know he had a candle lit in his honor by the end of this run — a run where BAKER MAYFIELD made a key block some 40 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

The difference in effort here is stark. This, amazingly, may not have been New York’s most embarrassing moment against Mayfield Sunday afternoon.

Things weren’t better on the other side of the trenches. DeVito was sacked or hit 13 times in 35 dropbacks. Instead of creating him the kind of quick-hit gameplan that could mitigate this pressure, the young quarterback struggled in the pocket, eating time before dump off throws. That is, assuming, he was able to get rid of it at all.

This all led to the most obvious outcome imaginable. The Giants, having waved the white flag on both the Jones era and 2024 as a whole, played uninspired football and got their brakes beaten off as a result. Even Tyrone Tracy and Malik Nabers, two bright notes in a dirge of a season, managed to fumble in Week 12.

There’s no reason to keep watching New York. At best, it will be a meme factory for vague DeVito Italian-isms. At worst it will be a painful slog through terrible football. Based on what we saw Sunday, expect more of the latter.

Peter Casey-Imagn Images

3. Kliff Kingsbury’s magic is wearing off (again)

Kingsbury, offensive coordinator of the Washington Commanders, is a cycle unto himself. He burns from “rising innovative young(ish) coaching star” to “poorly chosen password” levels of figured out with relative quickness. He burned through relatively hot starts at Texas Tech and the Arizona Cardinals en route to firings.

He’s breaching the latter category with unexpected quickness in 2024.

Kingsbury’s play-action heavy playbook utilized motion and unique formations to create space for Jayden Daniels alongside a fairly simple target list. This maximized the Commanders’ limited core of proven playmakers while pushing Daniels to the forefront of rookie of the year conversations and even into the MVP discussion.

But, like before, opponents have figured it out. This was understandable when it happened in Weeks 10 and 11 against the swarming defenses of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles. It’s something else entirely against the Dallas Cowboys’ 30th-ranked defense.

That’s what happened in Week 12.

Like the Eagles before them, the Cowboys slapped the clamps on Terry McLaurin and dared Washington’s targets to make them pay elsewhere. McLaurin had only four catches for 16 yards before breaking free for an 86-yard touchdown late in the fourth quarter to cut into Dallas’s 10-point lead. It was also one of only two deep completions in Daniels’ stat line in seven attempts.

In Week 10, this was an anomaly; standard rookie struggles in an otherwise remarkable season. After Week 12, it’s a troubling trend. Let’s look at the Washington offense over this span:

In three weeks, Daniels has gone from the league’s most efficient quarterback to pre-injury, crisis mode Dak Prescott (-4.2 EPA/game this fall). In that stretch, he’s attempted 15 passes that traveled at least 15 yards downfield, completed five and has twice as many interceptions (two) as touchdowns.

What’s the problem? Kingsbury’s offense has been more efficient when laying a proper ground attack, but lead back Brian Robinson has been slowed by injuries and RB2 Austin Ekeler has been unable to turn more handoffs into sustainable success. His yards per carry have dropped from 6.2 the first eight weeks of the season to 3.3 the last four weeks.

On Sunday, the Commanders’ 44 percent success rate on run plays was significantly higher than their 36 percent on passing plays. That value was almost entirely derived from Daniels’ scrambles and designed runs, which created more than half the team’s rushing yards. Washington had nothing doing with handoffs and, as such, little room to operate the play-action fakes endemic to the team’s early rise.

Now, Kingsbury is asking the young quarterback who thrived early under pressure to progress further down his route tree with less space to operate. Daniels thrived against the blitz early in his career, but on Sunday he completed a single pass for four yards when pressured.

Some of this is natural regression; no matter how good Daniels is, it was always unlikely he’d sustain a better passer rating when blitzed or pressured compared to when he’s not. Some of this is a familiar tale of opponents picking up what Kingsbury is laying down. In his last three seasons with the Cardinals, for example, he was 15-8 before the calendar flipped to November and 7-20 afterward.

The Commanders are locked in that Kingsbury spiral. They’ve got six weeks left — and, thankfully, a bye — to figure out how to straighten out those kinks.

Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

4. Daniel Jones, YOU are a Las Vegas Raider

Jones was released by the Giants this week. He would reportedly like to join a contender for the rest of the 2024 season when he clears waivers. But while he’d be a useful backup for a playoff team, he could be an immediate upgrade for the Raiders.

This is not a compliment to Jones. This is a testament to the sheer crapulence of Gardner Minshew II.

Minshew left Sunday’s game with a shoulder injury, turning the reins to Desmond Ridder in the process and leaving a wide berth for a live body to come in and take over QB1 duties. Jones would get the chance to be an immediate starter for a Las Vegas team with little to lose and tremendous interest in finding a redemption project like Baker Mayfield’s revival in Tampa Bay.

https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1860839027353526426

On one hand, he’d be stuck with the league’s worst rushing offense — anathema to the Saquon Barkley-led attack that made him a bonafide playoff game winner in 2022. On the other, he’d have some solid run-after-catch threats capable of making his short targets more dynamic on the field and much nicer on the stat sheet.

The Raiders 5.2 yards after catch is slightly below average, but also significantly better than New York’s bottom-five 4.4 YAC. Jones could spend a few weeks throwing 20 passes per game to Brock Bowers and Jakobi Meyers in an open audition away from the Giants. Or he could struggle behind an offensive line that has allowed significantly more pressure in 2024 than the flawed unit he left behind.

Either way, opportunity awaits in the desert. It’s hard to imagine the bar being much lower than where Minshew has set it this fall.

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

5. It’s officially time to worry about C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans’ offense

In 2023, the Jacksonville Jaguars were the defending AFC South champions. Then they faded down the stretch as their young franchise quarterback struggled. The Texans took advantage and rallied to a division title and playoff win. The future was bright.

In 2024, however, it’s Houston’s turn to fumble a hot start. The Texans have gone from 5-1 to 7-5. While there’s no hungry up-and-coming team behind them — the 5-7 Indianapolis Colts are the closest competitor — there’s plenty of reason to worry. Unlike Trevor Lawrence’s injury-aided 2023 dropoff, there’s no easy excuse to hand-wave away how bad C.J. Stroud has been.

Stroud has regressed in nearly every facet of his game. After throwing five interceptions in 2023 he already has nine in 2024. After averaging 2.4 expected points added (EPA) per game as a rookie he’s at -1.6 this fall, including a -7 EPA performance against Tennessee and its 20th-ranked passing defense in Week 12. Facing long odds for a comeback, he nearly Dan Orlovsky’ed himself out the back of the end zone en route to a game-sealing safety in a game where Houston was an eight-point favorite.

That illustrates at least part of the problem. Stroud’s blocking has been an issue. His pressure rate has climbed from 35.5 percent as a rookie to 41.1 this fall thanks to a combination of more blitzes and shoddy offensive line play. Stroud’s 2.94 seconds from snap to throw is one of the 10 longest times to throw in the league.

Despite this, offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik hasn’t appreciably changed much of his game plan. Stroud is rolling through play fakes at roughly the same rate as 2023 despite an objectively more impactful run game behind Joe Mixon. His receivers are running the same routes as the year prior with similar effects; his 3.5 average yards of separation per target is dead on his 2023 mark.

Instead of prioritizing a quick-hit offense like the Bears or Panthers have done for their young quarterbacks, Slowik appears content to wait and see if a healthy Nico Collins/Tank Dell combination can lift this offense. That hasn’t been the case and there are few signs of things changing in Houston. So Stroud is left to dance in the pocket, waiting for routes to develop and, incredibly, leaving himself vulnerable to being sacked by a 366-pound man who runs a 5.3-second 40.

This is untenable. Stroud had six games with multiple touchdown passes and zero interceptions as a rookie. He has two this season, none since Week 4. He’s beaten one team that currently has a winning record; a 23-20 victory over the Buffalo Bills that doubles as the last time he threw for more than 300 yards in a game. He’s been more efficient as a scrambler this fall, but that’s more of a “practice makes perfect” situation than anything because, again, his line is shoddy and Slowik’s playbook offers little by way of quick-release salvation.

What’s going to fix this? Well, Slowik could take a look at how the Bears have revitalized Williams, though Stroud isn’t the same kind of take-off-and-run threat as the Bears young QB. He could lean into Mixon’s revival and incorporate more play action into the game plan. He could give Tank Dell more snaps out of the slot, where he’s a more efficient receiver and where he could be a boon on downs that need the ball fired quickly from the pocket.

Those are all surface level fixes. Slowik will have to dive deep to maintain his reputation as a rising young playcaller. If he can’t, Stroud may be doomed to mediocrity and Slowik may be left to linger at the assistant level through the rest of his coaching career.

Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

6. The Carolina Panthers may have signed up for another season of the Bryce Young experiment

For four quarters, Bryce Young stood toe to toe with Patrick Mahomes and nearly out-dueled the two-time NFL MVP. This was an absolutely ludicrous departure from the quarterback who’d been benched for Andy Dalton after a pair of uninspiring starts to begin his second season as a pro.

It wasn’t always pretty. It was the product of entirely too many toss-and-bail happy-footed throws among pressure in the pocket. But Young battled back from multiple two-possession deficits to tie Sunday’s game with the Kansas City Chiefs. Only a Mahomes two-minute drill could tip the scales back in the Chiefs’ favor at the buzzer in a 30-27 win.

At his best, you could see how Young can shine in an NFL offense. When asked to make quick-twitch throws, he made solid reads and zipped the ball into tight windows.

That’s Young, elevating journeyman wideout David Moore into a WR1 against a championship caliber offense. Moore had five total receptions between 2021 and 2023. On Sunday against a Steve Spagnuolo defense, he had six catches for 81 yards and the touchdown above. 34-year-old Adam Thielen returned to the lineup and averaged 19 yards per catch. All of this was made possible by Young’s belief in his downfield passing.

At the same time, you can also see how it could collapse. Young was only sacked twice on 37 dropbacks, but was pressured repeatedly by a Kansas City defense that blitzed him a season high 40 percent of the time, per NFL Pro. While his placement downfield against incoming defenders worked out, it’s not a stretch to think throws like these:

could float away from him and create turnover-worthy plays. Still, Young completed just 23 percent of his deep throws as a rookie. After Sunday’s performance he’s doubled that rate in 2024 (seven of 15). Carolina isn’t looking to him for superstar performances, but for a proof of concept he can execute an NFL gameplan without collapsing in upon himself like a dying star.

That’s what he gave us vs. the Chiefs, elevating Moore and Thielen, his top two wideouts, along the way. Young isn’t fixed yet, but he’s shown signs that he’s fixable. For the Panthers and head coach Dave Canales, that’s enough.

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7. Tua Tagovailoa is proving he can do this without Tyreek Hill (but it was against the Patriots, so it doesn’t all-the-way count)

Through two quarters, Tyreek Hill had just 37 receiving yards on five targets in Week 12. Typically, this has been a bad omen for the Miami Dolphins. They’re 8-11 in games where he has fewer than 75 receiving yards. Instead, they led the New England Patriots 24-0 at the half.

In 30 minutes, Tua Tagovailoa had thrown for more than 250 passing yards and three touchdowns. He’d completed five of six passes that traveled at least 15 yards downfield. Only one of those went to Hill.

The main benefactor of Tagovailoa’s downfield success? Jaylen Waddle. Waddle had 146 receiving yards in his prior five games combined. He had 118 yards in the first half alone. De’Von Achane took a couple short red zone targets to the end zone. Jonnu Smith continued his rise by torturing his former team in Miami Gardens.

Hill’s quiet performance wasn’t anything new. He’s been a contributor, but not a star, since Tagovailoa returned from the head injury that cost him four starts earlier in the season. Over his last three games, Hill has 15 catches (good!) for only 125 yards (less good!).

He hasn’t had a 100-yard receiving performance since Week 1 — a 10-game stretch that’s his longest since 2020 (and even that was spread across two seasons). He’s averaging 60 fewer receiving yards per game than he did in 2023, when he finished second in offensive player of the year voting. Despite this, Tagovailoa is 4-2 in games he’s started and finished and Miami is riding a three-game winning streak that’s left the Dolphins on the periphery of the 2024 playoff race.

Part of this can be chalked up to Mike McDaniel’s offense and cache of playmakers. Acquiring elite athletes like Waddle and Achane ensured this would never be a Cheetah-only show. Buttressing them with athletic veterans like Smith and Raheen Mostert only further fleshed out Tagovailoa’s arsenal.

But credit is due to the man behind it all. Tagovailoa has completed 10 deep balls in 19 attempts across those six-plus games. That’s as many as Patrick Mahomes has in 11 games and 27 attempts. In the past, it would have been easy to hand-wave this away as Hill’s mastery shining through. Instead, Tagovailoa is elevating everyone in his offense.

Miami isn’t fixed. It has yet to beat a team with a record better than .500 and, depending on how the Los Angeles Rams do on Sunday night, may have built its resume solely against teams with losing records. But Tagovailoa’s 2024 is proof he’s not merely the benefactor of a future Hall of Famer running deep routes all day.

He maximized his talent in Week 12 vs. the Patriots. If he can get Hill to thrive amidst the downfield chaos of McDaniel’s playbook, he can make the Dolphins an absolute nightmare for someone in the AFC side of the bracket this postseason.

Steven Bisig-Imagn Images

8. Devon Witherspoon is the Seahawks’ secret ace

It’s tough for a player selected with a top 10 draft pick to be overlooked. But that’s roughly where Seattle Seahawks’ defensive back Devon Witherspoon has landed. The Seahawks’ ability to play like less than the sum of their parts helped him become a cog in a forgettable, occasionally frustrating defense.

Witherspoon doesn’t have an interception this season. He’s only got six passes defensed, five of which came over the last two weeks. He took a backseat Sunday to teammate Leonard Williams’s 2.5 sacks and nine quarterback pressures.

But watch him create a touchdown out of thin air in a play that won’t be reflected in his stat line:

On fourth-and-1, Witherspoon is the difference between Kyler Murray scrambling for a fresh set of downs and launching the ball. When Coby Bryant settles under his last-ditch heave, Witherspoon is there to escort him to the end zone. His block keeps James Conner from potentially catching up for a touchdown-saving tackle.

This was an enormous swing in a 7-3 game. It’s a familiar effort from a player who is asked to handle several duties from his place in the slot. Witherspoon’s raw numbers aren’t great. He misses too many tackles (11 in 10 games, per Pro Football Reference). He’s allowed two-thirds of his targets to be caught this season.

But when he identifies a play, he’s a high effort eraser who’ll chase down the ball or clear a path for the teammate behind him. Witherspoon will not be a Pro Bowler this season, but he’s one of the most important pieces in Mike MacDonald’s effort to carry on Pete Carroll’s legacy in Seattle.

Jason Miller/Getty Images

9. Fantasy team you absolutely didn’t want to field in Week 12

  • QB: Kyler Murray, Cardinals (285 passing yards, one interception, 9 rushing yards, five sacks, 13.6 fantasy points)
  • RB: Javonte Williams, Broncos (-2 rushing yards, two catches, six receiving yards, 2.4 fantasy points)
  • RB: Rhamondre Stevenson, Patriots (13 rushing yards, one two-point conversion, 3.3 fantasy points)
  • WR: Deebo Samuel, 49ers (one catch, 21 yards, 3.1 fantasy points)
  • WR: Justin Jefferson, Vikings (two catches, 27 yards, 4.7 fantasy points)
  • WR: Christian Watson, Packers (one catch, four yards, one dropped walk-in touchdown, 1.4 fantasy points)

  • TE: David Njoku, Browns (one catch, nine yards, one two-point conversion 3.9 fantasy points)
  • D/ST: San Francisco 49ers (38 points allowed, two sacks, -6.0 fantasy points)

Total: 26.4 points