Week 11: Taysom Hill's last laugh, magic hair, & great moments in subtweeting
Let's breakdown Sunday's NFL action.
Taysom Hill wasn’t as good as his numbers suggest (but he was still pretty good)
It seemed like a bad idea. Saints head coach Sean Payton, saddled with a future Hall of Fame quarterback sidelined by 11 (ELEVEN!) rib fractures, made a galaxy-brained decision. Jameis Winston, the backup quarterback who’d made 70 starts in his six-year NFL career, wasn’t Drew Brees’ understudy in Week 11. Taysom Hill, who’d thrown 18 total passes in his four seasons as a pro, was.
This was a bold move. The Saints loved the 30-year-old Hill’s potential enough to sign him to a two-year, $21 million contract after three years of gadget plays in New Orleans. They’d also signed Winston to be their next Teddy Bridgewater — a former starter who could rehabilitate his value in place of an injured Brees. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for Winston to outperform the $1.1 million deal he signed with Payton’s team.
Instead, Hill got the call and lived up to his salary … for at least one game. The box score indicates not only proficiency, but domination of the team’s biggest rival.
Hill outdueled a former MVP, more than doubling Matt Ryan’s passer rating while adding 51 rushing yards and a pair of touchdown runs to his resume. New Orleans continued its march to the postseason with a 24-9 win, replacing Green Bay atop the NFC in the process. Atlanta’s broken and confused football satellite, on the other hand, continued careening through space with no frame of reference for which direction it was heading or just how far from earth it had traveled.
Hill put up efficient numbers. He revitalized Michael Thomas, who had his best game of the season in a nine-catch, 104-yard day. After some early unease, he looked comfortable in the pocket and against pressure, stepping up to make strong throws downfield.
A deeper look into Sunday’s game suggests the Saints may not have found their next franchise passer just yet. Hill was able to progress down his route tree and find open receivers when his targets were left in man coverage or dealt with safety help, but he struggled to identify linebackers dropping into coverage to clog his passing lanes:
Hill may have adjusted his pass above juuuuuust in time to prevent this from being an interception — an on-target pass there would have hit linebacker Mykal Walker directly in the numbers — or maybe it was just a fortunately misplaced throw. Either way, the chance for success on this play peaked around 1%.
The good news is he either completed or drew pass interference penalties on all five of his throws of 15+ yards (gaining 163 yards before an offensive hold took a 57-yard Emmanuel Sanders catch off the board). The bad news is that this may not have been much of an accomplishment, as the Falcons were fully aware of Michael Thomas’s hole as Hill’s huckleberry yet remained powerless to stop it. This is a good throw under pressure, but it doesn’t entirely prove the veteran backup could make it against competent coverage:
His longest completion of the day was, well, a total clusterf***.
Hill spends a little too much time in the pocket assessing his situations. While he mostly made the right decisions (throwing to Michael Thomas is almost always the correct decision), it’s an area that bears watching as pressure increases. This wasn’t too big a problem against a team that had only 14 sacks in nine games before Sunday — and Hill’s mobility further mitigates that concern — but it may be in the future.
His arm strength is … fine. The question is whether he’ll be able to connect on long, tightly contested out patterns that require zip and accuracy (fortunately for him, he’s already playing for an offense built around protecting a quarterback who favors shorter checkdowns). Teams with viable starting cornerbacks — in other words, the opposite of a Falcons secondary that allowed opposing QBs to average a 105.8 passer rating against them in 2020 — will force him to fit those passes inside tiny, rapidly closing windows rather than gaping, well-lit hallways.
Hill carved up a bad defense. This is great news for New Orleans, since its next three games will come against the Broncos (ranked 12th in defensive passing DVOA, per Football Outsiders), Falcons again (28th), and Eagles (21st). In fact, the only top 10 aerial defense that remains on the team’s regular season schedule belongs to the Chiefs.
That gives the Saints hope that Brees can take a few extra weeks to heal his tremendously battered chest. Hill passed his first test as an NFL starting quarterback. Of course, the Falcons aren’t the SAT; they’re more like Billy Madison successfully spelling “couch” to escape the third grade.
New Orleans set Hill up for success by taking advantage of both a weak defense and the All-Pro wideout who’d been waiting months for his breakout. Payton helped buy him time with a steady diet of play-action passes that allowed his wideouts the opportunity to create a little extra space downfield. And, as expected, he gave him the freedom to pull the ball down and absolutely roast Atlanta with his legs when advantageous.
The game went roughly as well as the Saints could have hoped after pivoting away from Winston and rolling with a 30-year-old who’d played 26 percent of the team’s special teams snaps this fall. Hill conquered the Falcons, which sounds great until you realize that’s the same team that allowed extended bouts of competency from Drew Lock, Nick Foles, and Kirk Cousins this fall. If the in-control scrambler we saw Sunday persists, Payton will look like a genius. If he turns into the player who’d completed just six of 13 pass attempts before 2020, well, at least Drew Brees will be healthy at some point. — CD
Week 11 results, in five words or fewer
Browns 22, Eagles 17
Browns’ best record since Belichick
Texans 27, Patriots 20
Saints 24, Falcons 9
Washington 20, Bengals 9
Panthers 20, Lions 0
How is Patricia still employed?
Steelers 27, Jaguars 3
Titans 30, Ravens 24 (OT)
Ravens can’t avenge playoff loss
Chargers 34, Jets 28
Chargers don’t collapse … because Jets
Broncos 20, Dolphins 13
Cowboys 31, Vikings 28
Colts 34, Packers 31 (OT)
Chiefs 35, Raiders 31
The tragicomedy of the Bengals
Here’s a play that could’ve only happened in a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Washington Football Team:
Still confused? Here’s the ref’s explanation:
Still confused? Here’s the box score:
tl; dr: The most hilarious touchback we’ve seen in the NFL this season.
Unfortunately, that bit of levity was soon followed by one of the most dispiriting injuries this season. Bengals rookie quarterback Joe Burrow, the top pick in the draft and a ray of hope for an otherwise dystopian franchise, was carted off in the third quarter, though not before he got a little encouragement from his former Ohio State teammates on the WFT:
The Bengals weren’t going anywhere this year anyway, but Burrow was the one reason to pay attention to them. Now that he’s out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL, we can probably ignore them again, at least until next year:
— SH
Justin Herbert, the anti-Samson
Entering Week 11, Justin Herbert had been having a successful rookie season, stats-wise. He ranked in the top 10 among qualified quarterbacks in several categories, including passing yards per game (291.6), adjusted yards per attempt (8.12), passer rating (102.8), passing touchdowns (19), and touchdown rate (6.3%). He already held the rookie record for most consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes. He was a favorite for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.
The only thing missing? Wins. Herbert was just 1-7 through eight starts with the Chargers, a worse record than fellow first-round rookies Joe Burrow (2-6-1) and Tua Tagovailoa (3-0).
So, like Felicity after her breakup with Ben sophomore year, Herbert decided he needed a change and got a haircut.
Gone were his well-conditioned West Coast golden waves. In was this buzzcut, courtesy of Chargers strength coach John Lott:
And just like the freshly shorn Felicity, Herbert was relentlessly mocked for his new ‘do, drawing comparisons to all your least favorite pimply preteen bullies.
However, if you thought Herbert’s hair contained all his powers, you’d be mistaken. On Sunday, he went out and had his best game yet: 37-of-49 passing for 366 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions. (This is where I note that Season 2 of Felicity was actually the show’s peak, despite the hair backlash.)
He’s now on pace for the top rookie numbers ever:
More importantly for the Chargers, they got the win.
The caveat here is that this performance came against the Jets, who fell to 0-10 and became the first team to be eliminated from playoff contention. Still, Herbert, no longer weighed down by his chin-length shag, played a great game and solidified himself as the OROTY frontrunner. Of course, his competition also foundered. Burrow’s season is over, while Tagovailoa was benched during a poor outing against the Broncos.
Come to think of it, maybe Herbert’s hair wasn’t just holding him back. Maybe it was also protecting the other rookie quarterbacks, and now that he cut most of it off, he freed himself and cursed the rest of the class.
Or Herbert asked haircut twin Derek Carr to put the curse on them because I’m pretty sure, based on this screenshot, that he’s into witchcraft (like Felicity’s roommate Meghan!):
— SH
The Week 11 Pain Index
Let’s get right to it, shall we?
3. Lions
Good job, Lions. Even Jim Caldwell is subtweeting you — or, more specifically, Matt Patricia — after the team’s first shutout loss since 2009.
This was a complete breakdown by the Lions. Matt Patricia’s team was clearly unprepared and, at best, confused about how it was supposed to administer the most basic components of a game. Some lowlights include: 1) Having their one scoring opportunity, a 51-yard shot to Marvin Jones, erased by an illegal formation penalty; 2) The defense got taken apart by an XFL quarterback; 3) Three-for-14 on third downs; 4) Patricia punted on fourth-and-3 from the Carolina 45, with the score still 0-7.
Even hot take-averse sports writers in Detroit are calling for Patricia to be fired this morning. And for good reason. This dead branch from the Belichick coaching tree has dragged the Lions further into failure every year since he took the job in 2018. Contrast that with Caldwell, who in four years as head coach took the Lions to the playoffs twice and finished over .500 in three of those seasons, including 9-7 in his last two years. Patricia was hired to push the Lions over the hump of acceptable mediocrity, which in and of itself is no small achievement for the post-Barry Sanders Lions.
And now Jim Caldwell is getting the last laugh.
2. Packers
Marquez Valdez-Scantling is getting death threats for the overtime fumble that set up the Colts’ game-winning field goal.
(Sidebar: from athletes to health officials to elected leaders, threatening someone’s life has become a disturbingly acceptable way of expressing frustration. Whether it’s the internet or coarse politicians — it’s a combination of those and other factors — it’s pretty clear that we’ve crossed a line in our public discourse from which there is no return.)
It’s like people forgot that without MVS’ 47-yard reception from Aaron Rodgers the Packers wouldn’t have needed overtime to lose. Of course, they also could have put it away before the end of regulation, if only Rodgers had seen a VERY WIDE OPEN Robert Tonyan in the end zone.
See, there’s plenty of blame to go around; there usually is in a three-point loss. And no need to threaten everyone with capital crimes.
1. Ravens
Baltimore is a good team playing poorly, versus some of the usual characters on here that have a knack for throwing games away with bad coaching or a tradition of suckitude (or both if you’re the Lions.) But it’s a pretty fine line. They’re record in one-score games is now 1-3 this season; the one win is from barely fending off a fourth-quarter comeback by the Eagles in Week 6.
Blowing an 11-point third quarter lead is going to put the focus this week on the defense, but don’t lose sight of the big picture here — the Ravens offense is as bland as that turkey you’re going to roast this week. They wouldn’t have been in a blown lead situation if they’d scored on more than one of their four trips to the red zone. The simplest fix might be making the offense more complex, pushing the ball downfield more rather than relying on the same running game opponents have now seen since the start of last season.
This one sets up Baltimore for a do-or-die game on Thanksgiving against the Steelers. The Ravens opened as 3.5-point underdogs, something they haven’t been since Week 3 last season. —rvb