Free Monday: The Sunday Recaps (HOU-MIN, DAL-BAL)

Texans 7 at Vikings 34

The worst loss of the C.J. Stroud Era

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I don’t write “worst” to be flippant about the opponent — the Vikings are really good — but the only other times I saw the Texans get trounced this badly while starting Stroud were a) his first start against the Ravens and b) the loss to the Jets in Week 14 where he played with essentially zero healthy wide receivers. So context-wise, yeah, to me it was the worst loss the Texans have suffered since they drafted C.J. Stroud.

The underlying issues of the Texans offense in the first two games were a) Is The Offensive Line Good? and b) Can They Stop Committing Stupid Penalties? Both reared today. Laremy Tunsil will be the poster child for this loss after committing five penalties all on his own, some of which were obvious false starts and some of which were debatable illegal formations that he has to simply play as the refs want. Those penalties and down-and-distance situations made sustaining drives infeasible. And Stroud’s best throw of the day, a dart to Tank Dell on third-and-long, was cancelled out by a Tunsil penalty. This play is representative of the day’s struggles:

Cade Stover has failed to keep Greenard out of the backfield. Shaq Mason has failed to keep Jerry Tillery (!!) out of the backfield. Stroud is calm about the muddy pocket and finds Nico Collins downfield. Cool catch. It took holding to get there. Penalty, backwards.

I have long maintained a less-favorable view of Tunsil than many Texans fans. I think he’s a terrific one-on-one tackle in pass protection, but never thought he was worth the trade haul it took to get him. I never thought he was a premium run blocker, as evidenced by rushing success in games he missed when Deshaun Watson was quarterback that one time. I understand paying him, and I understand the leverage he has. He’s probably going to have a real Hall of Fame argument one day. But I don’t see how you can look at how he played today and feel good about him being the highest-paid tackle in the game.

That is dressing, though. The underlying bit here is that the Vikings were able to dial up pressure whenever or however they wanted, every designer blitz or fall-back worked. In a league where defense is becoming an absolute must while teams struggle to move the ball through the air and can’t reliably run, Brian Flores has been in pure Mad Scientist mode. The Texans got absolutely destroyed by unblocked rushers and had several run-throughs on blockers. Shaq Mason had a memorable one. Cade Stover simply cannot be trusted to block Jon Greenard. This was happening to some extent in Week 1 and Week 2 too, but not at the level it happened here. The game wasn’t really over at halftime as far as win percentage numbers go … but it was over at halftime. It doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is when he takes pressure on 44.7% of his dropbacks (per NFL Pro) — and eventually Stroud did break and throw a legitimately bad interception in the fourth quarter.

We won’t get Bobby Slowik until midweek, but the Stroud quotes were what you’d expect. Long-term thinking. “Once we fix the negatives, we're going to be rolling. I'm excited, man, because the only way we can go now is up, so I'm very grateful and blessed that we did get our tails whooped today and there's something to learn from. I'm glad it happened early. Now it's time to go to work.” I found it very interesting that Stroud also said the Vikings did what they expected. But the offensive line seemed to, as a unit, act baffled that the officials would call the game the way they did. It wasn’t just Tunsil not taking accountability, but it was also Juice Scruggs and Tytus Howard complaining about the officiating. C’mon.

Ultimately, a team-wide depantsing like this should lead to some soul-searching. I’m not panicking. I don’t think the Texans are doomed to wander the landscape and everybody needs to be fired. There are going to be (already have been) plenty of calls about how they’re “not elite” or whatever. They had built a two-game lead in the division the first two weeks. Now they have been punched in the mouth. And now we learn how the team grows — or doesn’t — from being punched in the mouth. They clearly need to take the offensive line issues more seriously. And with how this worked and how little has worked against Stroud so far, they better be prepared for imitators.

Flowers for Darnoldnon

I found myself in a weird place on Sunday, where I realized I was somewhat invested in Sam Darnold’s comeback when Danielle Hunter’s helmet banged into his knee and internally I felt bad.

It is hard to find a franchise quarterback. It is also hard to find the kind of playcaller that can touch the right buttons to get a quarterback to play above his tools. And most of the time, when you have a quarterback with the kind of tools that Darnold has, and he makes his way to one of the offensive minds who can salvage him, it fails. The quarterback either has flaws that his tools can’t overcome or the playcaller cannot juggle quite enough things in the air to keep it going.

Darnold looked fantastic on Sunday, every bit the level of a franchise quarterback. I stress that his throws to Justin Jefferson were mostly wide-open and not tight-window, but his pocket presence was much improved from the “seeing ghosts” years. (The Johnny Mundt touchdown throw, of course, was as tight window as it gets.)

When you combine the pocket presence, remove a lot of the “wtf?” from Darnold’s game, and then mix in a pass protection unit that knows exactly what it is doing, the recipe becomes tough even for the Texans. Houston’s defense was mostly — one Aaron Jones near-touchdown run aside — able to bottle the running game. They were able to generate pressures and four sacks. What they could not do was make life miserable for Darnold. On Justin Jefferson’s touchdown catch to open scoring, the defense simply had to hold on too long because Darnold scrambled into extra time.

Jefferson had an average of 4.49 yards of separation per target, which, I would say, is bad if you are the defense.

I don’t know what you do with this kind of lightning in a bottle from a long-term NFL perspective. It sort of feels like the Case Keenum bit from 2017, which Vikings fans are familiar with, where someone who the NFL established as Afterthought decides “I’m a guy!” But … Darnold is way more naturally talented than Keenum ever was. I think we could absolutely see someone fool themselves into thinking there’s more here than there was. I also think the Vikings probably — should this continue — just slap the franchise tag on him and see if any of the offers bowl them over. Why mess with this unless you have to? Why rush J.J. McCarthy to the starting role?

But they currently have found the lightning, and there’s not a place in the NFL where you have more fun than when you have the lightning.

Baltimore 28 at Dallas 25

The end of Mark Andrews

I don’t know what you guys did to the Ravens while I was in Mexico, but you’re telling me they lost a game to the Raiders. Gross!

(Watches second half of game.)

I see, I see. I can see how this team would do that, yeah. Becoming the first team to allow a successful onside kick. Missing a field goal that would put you up 31-6. I don’t know why the Ravens have such a flare for the dramatic this year, but here we are.

What fascinates me about the Ravens so far this year (forgive me for not focusing on the running game, I have an obligation elsewhere with this) is that Mark Andrews has seemingly disappeared. He has eight targets in three games. His playing time has suffered, falling from 73% of the snaps in Week 1 to 64% in Week 2 to just 20(!) snaps today with one target.

It’s one thing for the Ravens to pull the general plan of “Isaiah Likely breakout season” on us. OK. But you can play 12-personnel with two good pass-catching tight ends and they’re just choosing not to? I can’t find a single Harbaugh quote on the terrible site that is now X: The Everything App about this. If the idea is that Mark Andrews isn’t one of your best run blocking tight ends and you’re gonna run the piss outta the ball, okay, but … he has a history of being one of the best receiving tight ends in the NFL and you can’t line him up wide or something? You’re content to just try to bleed the clock with four touchdowns even though you might need even more points?

I’m just puzzled. I am not a Mark Andrews fantasy football investor or anything, I understand Todd Monken uses tight ends in the passing attack less than Greg Roman did. I’m not banging the table here to fulfil a prior gone wrong. But it’s not often you have a 29-year-old, seemingly healthy franchise tight end just absolutely disappear from an offensive game plan.

Dak Prescott Attempts A Pass To His Offensive Lineman

Prescott had a nice near-comeback yesterday in which he performed pretty well despite Ceedee Lamb dropping a bunch of passes and his underwhelming supporting cast struggling to fit the brief against a game Ravens defense. This is standard Prescott stuff. But what I want to talk about is this play:

So look, you can’t tell me he’s targeting Hunter Luepke. I know Hunter Luepke is technically “somewhere down there” in the sense that a wide receiver at the end of a Hail Mary is technically a targeted receiver. But even in the box score, this is listed as targeting Tyler Smith. So what we have here is a play that legitimately is a safety, should have been a safety, but Prescott threw it to an offensive lineman and instead it is illegal touching, which carries no real penalty in this instance.

Even the Ravens defenders were confused. Here’s one for the NFL rulebook crew to remember next offseason. If you are a quarterback and you don’t want to take a sack for some reason, just throw it at an offensive lineman.

The Sunday Rundown

Shadow Realm of the Week: Bryce Young after watching Andy Dalton take the same supposedly crappy supporting cast he had to the increasingly-rare 300-yard, three touchdown stat line. A rare shadow realm by omission! Diontae Johnson set a career-high with 122 receiving yards, and man I feel terrible for Diontae Johnson based on his career-high being just 122 receiving yards.

Torch Passing of the Week: Justin Tucker missing another field goal as Brandon Aubrey detonated the only two field goals he attempted in Baltimore’s win. I, in fact, do believe we should talk about it. (Not earnestly, though, but boy Tucker has been struggling.)

Thing I realized as I was watching two huge blowouts — okay, one blowout and one almost comeback — today: Here’s the thing — there are five or six real categories of commercials today when I watch an NFL broadcast. One of them is for men who either are already divorced or are in the process of getting divorced. (I count Tom Brady’s FOX commercial as one of these.)

Matt LaFleur deserves real credit for what he’s done with Malik Willis

Is this, by the letter of the law, a great throw? No. It is a ball that is thrown up as if to say “Christian Watson, you are a badass and you will catch this.” But he was and is, and the Packers are somehow 2-0 without Jordan Love despite starting someone they acquired at last cuts at quarterback. You know how we do that typical schlock about “oh they want someone familiar in the building?” Well if LaFleur is able to generate a fairly good offense around someone like Willis, maybe we need to bury the schlock. The Titans paid an extremely high cost in draft picks and free agency acquisitions to try to make Will Levis look this good.

If you played this game 100 times, you’d never again generate the final score: Eagles 15, Saints 12

Actually completing their choke job of the Week: The 49ers, missing all their skill position players except (checking notes) superstar Jauan Jennings, lost to the Rams, missing all their skill position players. I think this means Matthew Stafford is better than Brock Purdy. (Please do not take me seriously.)

…I’m curious how you blow a 14-point team to a team that was using Tutu Atwell as a No. 1 receiver. I know they missed a field goal, I know there was a drop or missed pass by Purdy here or there. I gotta watch the other side of the ball. Maybe that’s a mid-week post for you.

If every offense sucks, doesn’t that mean what we all should be thinking it means?: AFC No. 1 seed Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s time to watch Justin Fields destroy the entire NFL snoberatti by simply winning every game 17-10.

Keeping me sane currently: Against all odds after how it was trending in the middle of the season, Edwin Diaz? (Sorry, sorry, trying to remove my baseball from your football.)

Covering the poor, underserved New York Media Market: Your quarterback stinks. Every time you give him the chance to throw a ball, the ball winds up looking like it should be picked off or intercepted. But … you drafted Malik Nabers.

So interceptions become catches.

And incomplete passes out of the back of the end zone become touchdowns.

Good work if you can get it, Daniel Jones.

Dink and dunk quarterbacking update: If you watched any of their games and/or followed any of the Kliff Kingsbury memes, you probably correctly guessed that Jayden Daniels was one of the leaders in NFL Pro’s percentage of passes that didn’t go deep. Daniels has thrown just 3.8% of his passes deep, second-lowest in the league.

Baker Mayfield is No. 1 (3.7%). Patrick Mahomes is No. 3 (4.3%). I don’t want to make Xavier Worthy a meme, but perhaps if you draft a field-stretcher you find a way to use said field-stretcher to stretch a field or two?

The play you absolutely must run when it is fourth-and-short for the game: Well, the first thing you have to do is put both of your running backs on the field. Running backs, the most versatile chess pieces in football, so obviously putting more of them on the field will definitely help.

You have one wideout on the field and the immobile Kirk Cousins, Your tight ends are practically chomping at the bit to broadcast run by holding hands. The entire left side of the line gets handled, the defense saw the play coming the entire time, and it’s game over.

Other than that, though, good work Zac Robinson.

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