NFL Week 7: That was ... intense
As we recover from a stressful sports weekend, let's talk about how there's no fixing the Cowboys, the Falcons pulling a Penn State, and the Seahawks getting a taste of their own medicine.
Dallas came into the season with playoff aspirations. Jerry Jones’ team had a top 10 quarterback, a diverse array of explosive skill players, and the fortune of playing in a rebuilding division that would allow multiple games against the Giants and Washington Football Team (™). A return to the postseason was forthcoming; sportsbooks across the country confirmed as much.
The football gods saw these plans. They laughed.
The Cowboys had problems from Week 1. A god-awful defense was graham cracker dam against the oncoming stream of opposing offenses. Their only win in a 1-3 start was the product of Atlanta’s inability to do anything but Falcon so hard it eventually got Dan Quinn fired.
Then came the cruelest blow. Dak Prescott was barrelling toward a likely big-money contract extension after playing his 2020 season on the franchise tag. The young quarterback had thrown for more than 370 yards per game before a Logan Ryan tackle in Week 5 dislocated his ankle and cost him the remainder of the season. Suddenly the fate of the offense was in the hands of a quarterback who’d gone 20-35-1 the past four seasons as a Bengal.
Then Andy Dalton got hurt, too.
That brutal, absolutely dirty hit from Jon Bostic took the backup quarterback off the field in Week 7. Though Dalton was able to walk off the field under his own power, there’s a good chance he misses extended time.
If that’s the case, the Dallas offense will either be in the command of rookie seventh-round pick Ben DiNucci (2-of-3, 39 passing yards in relief Sunday, but also sacked three times), Garrett Gilbert (six NFL pass attempts since being drafted in 2014), or a midseason signing from a market of available talent like Devlin Hodges, Josh Rosen, DeShone Kizer, Cody Kessler, and old friend Cooper Rush (Colin Kaepernick is available as well. We know Jerry Jones will not do that).
This is not unfamiliar territory. The Cowboys have had high expectations done in by unexpected bad quarterback play before. Tony Romo’s broken collarbone in 2015 — and the rush back to the lineup that resulted in further injury — left the team in the completely incapable hands of Matt Cassel, Brandon Weeden, and current offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. A 12-win NFC East champion the season before was reduced to a 4-12 record, and while that led to the draft capital that allowed the franchise to bring Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott, and Jaylon Smith on board, it was still a massive step backward.
Dallas is headed toward another top 10 pick, even if DiNucci or Gilbert or whomever exceeds expectations behind center. The Cowboys’ defense, a lingering problem in 2019, is a fatal flaw in 2020. No team in the league had given up more touchdowns than Dallas through six weeks. Every opponent that’s matched up against Jones’ team has come away with either a season-high for points scored or been held to merely their second-best performance.
The Washington Football Team (™), Week 7’s opponent, stopped at 25 mostly because a 22-3 halftime lead made any kind of second-half effort feel like salting the earth of a garden that produced nothing but rotten onions to begin with. Washington came into Sunday averaging 82 rushing yards per game, then exceeded that total in roughly 11 minutes of game time. That offense ranked 30th in the NFL after converting only 28 of its 82 third downs (34 percent). Against the Cowboys they went nine of 15 (60 percent).
If the Football Team (™) can do that, imagine what the Ravens or Steelers will do when see Mike McCarthy’s team later in the season.
Dallas is only half a game out of first place in the NFC East, but it feels like it may as well be the Bengals staring up at the rest of the AFC North. So what comes next?
The Cowboys can embrace their latent crappiness and effectively punt on the season, but tanking in 2020 isn’t a simple proposition. The Jets (more on them later) have tightened their grip on the top pick in next season’s draft. Other teams like the Jaguars, Falcons, Texans (who will cede their pick to the Dolphins as a result of the Laremy Tunsil trade), Vikings, Bengals, Giants, and Football Team (™) will also gum up the slide to a prosperous draft slot. As much as Jones would like to win his contract standoff with Prescott by simply replacing him with Trevor Lawrence, it’s not going to happen.
If the season ended today, Dallas would be saddled with the ninth overall pick. That’s a crapshoot for passing talent; recent QBs taken outside the top five but before the 16th pick include Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes (good!), Rosen, Daniel Jones, and Dwayne Haskins (bad!) and Josh Allen (I’m … not sure right now). The simplest solution would be to re-sign Prescott this offseason assuming he’s got a clean bill of health, but a market value deal would eat up all of the team’s expected $26 million in 2021 salary cap space and then some.
That leaves little room to fix a cheesecloth defense, especially under a head coach whose defenses his final eight seasons in Green Bay were middling and uninspired. No matter what the answer is at quarterback, Jones is going to have to absolutely nail this year’s draft when it comes to rebuilding his roster with instant impact starters who can play out their rookie contracts on below-market salaries. Reinforcements are needed on all three levels of the defense, including at inside linebacker now that Leighton Vander Esch has proven himself Sean Lee’s perfect successor in both skill and penchant for landing on injured reserve.
A jammed-up salary cap leaves few easy answers for a Cowboys team whose best-case scenario — either in 2020 or 2021 — is a division crown and a subsequent 0-1 playoff record. Jones bet heavily that a highly paid offensive line and massive cap hits from Amari Cooper and Elliott would be enough to paper over Dallas’s weaknesses elsewhere. That hasn’t been the case, and things go from bad to worse without Prescott behind center.
So what’s the clear answer for the Cowboys? There isn’t one. Dallas has too many commitments to tear down and not enough talent to compete. This team now exists in the in-between. Without a clear-cut plan for the future, some willing trade partners, and a little draft luck, the Cowboys’ days as a contender are over. — CD
Week 7 results, in five words or fewer
Saints 27, Panthers 24
Washington 25, Cowboys 3
Packers 35, Texans 20
Bills 18, Jets 10
Steelers 27, Titans 24
Steelers perfect because Gostkowski’s not
Lions 23, Falcons 22
Todd Gurley shouldn’t have scored
Browns 37, Bengals 34
Buccaneers 45, Raiders 20
Brady, Bucs look like contenders
Chiefs 43, Broncos 16
Chiefs' 10th straight over Broncos
49ers 33, Patriots 6
Chargers 39, Jaguars 29
Chargers blow lead, still win(!)
Cardinals 37, Seahawks 34 (OT)
Cardinals-Seahawks is never normal
The 2020 Jets, a season in three tweets
fin.
The 2020 Texans, a season in one tweet
Poor Deshaun :(
The Week 7 Pain Index
How’s everyone doing right now? Because if you’re feeling a hangover effect from what was an exhilarating, but also a little draining, sports weekend, just know you’re not alone. Starting Saturday afternoon, we went on an intense ride that gave us one unbelievable ending after another, all the way through Sunday night.
Phew. While it was a euphoric weekend for the general sports fan — almost NCAA tournament-like with its engrossing, nonstop action — the same can’t be said for fans of the teams that lost in brutal fashion. And there were many!
Focusing just on the NFL, there were three teams that brought their fans the most pain in Week 7, even if all three fanbases are used to them toying with their emotions.
3. Bengals
Joe Burrow is trying his damnedest to drag the Bengals out of the pit of despair that’s defined the franchise for most of its life. On Sunday, he became the first rookie quarterback to throw for 400 yards and total three passing touchdowns and a rushing touchdown in the same game. He’s already posted five games with at least 300 passing yards — one more and he ties Andrew Luck’s record. He orchestrated two late touchdown drives to give his team a (temporary) lead over the Browns. Burrow did all of that without No. 1 running back Joe Mixon and with three of his starting offensive linemen leaving the game with injuries.
And it still wasn’t enough because Cincinnati’s defense stinks like a dumpster outside of a daycare center.
Burrow’s final touchdown pass came on fourth-and-goal with just over a minute to go. That left the Browns with not much time, and zero timeouts, to try to win the game. Baker Mayfield, who shook off a horrible start, needed just five plays to do it. Mayfield found sixth-round rookie Donovan Peoples-Jones (zero catches coming into Week 7) for the game-winning score with 11 seconds remaining.
The Bengals have now lost four one-score games this season, two of which came against their in-state rivals. If that weren’t bad enough, factor in the messy situation with longtime Bengal Carlos Dunlap, which escalated during and after the game.
Sorry, Joe. I still think better days are ahead; it just might take some time to get there.
2. Seahawks
The Seahawks only know how to play in one mode: nothing but pure, unadulterated chaos. Usually, the bounces go their way, through a mix of talent and sheer luck. That appeared to be the case for most of their Sunday Night Football matchup against the Cardinals, best exemplified by alien/cheetah hybrid DK Metcalf chasing down Budda Baker after an interception:
Four downs later, the Cardinals came away with zero points.
But it’s never that easy with the Seahawks, is it? Despite holding a 10-point lead in the final three minutes of the game, Seattle couldn’t close the door. Arizona tied it at the end of regulation in the type of improbable manner normally reserved for, well, the Seahawks:
There was still overtime, though, and surely this would set the Seahawks for their weekly overdramatic, angina-causing victory. It looked that way when they won the coin toss. But nope, the Cardinals sacked Russell Wilson for a big loss on third down, forcing Seattle to punt.
It looked that way when the Cardinals missed a game-winning field goal, right after Zane Gonzalez had made one that didn’t count because Kliff Kingsbury had called timeout to avoid a delay-of-game penalty. It really looked that way when six plays later, Metcalf raced down the sideline for a 48-yard touchdown. But nope, a holding penalty nullified the touchdown and Wilson was intercepted on the next play by rookie Isaiah Simmons, who was taking just his fifth defensive snap of the night.
OK, then surely this would set us up for another Seahawks-Cardinals tie, almost four years to the day of their infamous 6-6 Sunday night game? But nope, Gonzalez made up for his earlier miss and nailed his field goal.
The Seahawks were overdue for a loss like this, their first of the season. However, that it came against an up-and-coming division foe had to make it that much tougher to swallow. The Seahawks could’ve treated the Cardinals the same way the Steelers treated the Browns last week, like “Sorry kid, but you’re not ready to beat your big brother yet.” Yet instead of crushing their dreams, they made them a very real player in the NFC West race.
1. Falcons
Falcons, we meet in the pain index once again. In entirely predictable fashion, too.
I can’t even brag about being prescient. When I wrote on Friday about how the Falcons-Lions game would end stupidly, it was based completely in logic. This is just who these two teams are.
Midway through the fourth quarter, both teams traded miscues (missed FG for the Lions, fumble for the Falcons) before the Lions retook the lead with a field goal. The Falcons, only trailing by two points, had three minutes to score. By the time they got down to the 10-yard line, they had forced the Lions to use up all their timeouts. All they needed to do was run down the clock and kick the field goal.
And then Todd Gurley accidentally scored. At that point, we were all psychic and knew exactly what would happen in the final minute of the game. Not just because of the Falcons’ cursed existence, but because we saw the same thing happen the day before to Penn State:
Sure enough, Matthew Stafford hit T.J. Hockenson for the game-winning touchdown with zeros on the clock for the win.
I can’t lay too much of the blame on Gurley, though. He said momentum carried him into the end zone, and he proved time and again with the Rams that he’s a heads-up player who knows when not to score (including once against the Lions). Mostly, I blame the Falcons organization, which is paying the price for letting a Batman villain run the team:
Until next time, Falcons. Same bat time, same bat channel. — SH