Pigskin Papers Take 2: 2022 Week 11
#11 and Friends Get it Done in Week 11
(Published November 22, 2022)
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Welcome to another edition of “Take Two”. I’m going to stick with the format from last week. Take One will be a series of takeaways and observations from Week 11, and Take Two will be an another edition of Fun Stats of the Week. Here we go!
*****See the Week 11 Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Column Here: https://www.thepigskinpapers.com/posts-1/pigskin-papers-2022-waiver-wire-week-12 *****
Hat Trick #1: Williams Restores the Roar
TAKE 1 - WEEK 11 TAKEAWAYS:
The Cowboys’ 40-3 demolition of the Vikings, on the road against an 8-1 team, was one of the most impressive performances by any team this season. Dallas dominated in every phase of the game and it was a great response after the team blew a 4th quarter lead in Green Bay. On the flip side, maybe Minnesota was spent after its dramatic OT win in Buffalo. This game had 2 things I don’t remember seeing before: (1) The refs icing a kicker, and (2) The network cutting away from a national TV audience game in the third quarter.
Aaron Rodgers is one of the most accurate QBs in NFL history. He wasn’t accurate on Thursday night. Yes, it was cold and a little breezy, but he missed throws all game, and once again his body language wasn’t encouraging. The win over the Cowboys a week ago may have been nothing more than an aberration for this struggling team, which at 4-7 has a big hill to climb to try to make the playoffs. Next stop - at Philadelphia.
I’ve written a lot this year about the second year QBs, and last week I discussed Zach Wilson’s troubling lack of development in year 2, and Mac Jones’s year 2 regression. I watched a lot of the Jets-Patriots game (which wasn’t easy on the eyes, trust me) and nothing I saw changed my opinion. This was another game with less than ideal weather, and these are 2 very good defenses, but that was just an awful display of offensive football for 60 minutes, and especially Wilson. See the stats section below for more on just how ludicrously bad the Jets’ offense was. Barring a dramatic turnaround, I can’t see the Jets going into next season with Wilson as the presumptive starter. The rest of the roster is good enough to make the playoffs. As for the Patriots, they dinked and dunked all day, and continue to show very little firepower. They also start games slowly. They’re tied with the Panthers for fewest first quarter points scored.
Good news for Broncos fans - Russell Wilson isn’t the worst starting QB named Wilson! But Denver’s bold offseason move has gone horribly wrong, and is starting to look like a historically disastrous sign-and-trade. They’ve scored just 13 offensive TDs in 10 games, while launching almost 6 punts per game. They now own the dubious distinction of being the only team to fail to score 20 points on Las Vegas this season. The more Denver loses, the better Seattle’s extra first round draft pick in 2023 gets. And that’s just a portion of what they gave up for Wilson.
I think that was an important game-winning drive for Jalen Hurts and the Eagles, coming off their first loss of the season, on the road against a pretty good defense.
Mahomes and Kelce are starting to resemble Brady and Gronk, and especially in the red zone. Derwin James is an excellent defender, and he simply couldn’t handle Kelce. And in case there was any doubt, Mahomes clearly holds the belt for “QB you’d most want for a must-score drive in the final minutes”. Or put another way, he’s the last guy you want to face in that situation. The assassin torch has passed from Brady to him.
What’s with the Lions? They’ve won 3 in a row, their defense is playing much better, Aidan Hutchinson is making huge plays each week, and they just dominated a 7-2 team, on the road. I’m actually interested in watching them play this Thanksgiving - a first since Calvin Johnson retired.
The Rams are bad. How bad, you ask? Very bad. I’ll go with “bottom 5 in the league” level-bad. They were built to win now, which they did last year. But mortgaging the future to build a very top-heavy roster left them very little margin for error, or injury. The check has come due. The 3-7 Rams are riding a 4 game losing streak, and with Kupp on IR and Stafford likely to miss more time, they might have the worst offense in the entire league. This could end up being not only one of the worst title defenses in NFL history, but across all 4 major sports. Their Week 12 matchup? The Chiefs. Goodnight, Irene.
Were the Giants and Vikings exposed as frauds this week? Not necessarily, but both teams have won a lot of one-score games, and despite what Bill Parcells would say, were definitely not as good as their records indicated. I don’t know which loss was worse, but I’m more worried about the Giants going forward given the additional injuries they suffered and a very difficult schedule ahead. Plus, the Vikings are in a much more secure spot, in terms of the playoffs. Both teams have tough games on Thanksgiving Day, which gives them very little time to regroup from a beatdown. We’ll see how that plays out.
The inconsistency in Delay of Game being called (or not called) drives me crazy. Sometimes you see all zeroes before the snap and they flag it, and at other times they don’t. Often, these close calls happen in the final minutes of a game. Why isn’t this automated like the 24-second clock in basketball? Why can’t the head ref have a buzzer in his or her pocket that goes off when the play clock hits zero - and if the ball hasn’t been snapped, out comes the flag? I don’t get it. Fix this please, NFL. It impacts games, and to the viewers it looks arbitrary.
The NFL clearly did the right thing in moving the Browns-Bills game. I’ll give them that...
This week, and the Monday night game last week between the Commanders and Eagles, served as a reminder of how good, and hard to predict, division games often are. There were 5 division games this week. Raiders-Broncos went to OT, Jets-Pats came within a few seconds of going to OT, Chiefs-Chargers was decided in the final minute, and Bengals-Steelers was a pretty competitive game most of the way. Only one of the 5 wasn’t competitive - The 49ers routed the Cardinals in Mexico City on Monday night, and look like they’re once again one of the teams to beat in the NFC.
Hat Trick #2: Kelce Dominates the Bolts
TAKE 2 - FACTS AND STATS OF THE WEEK:
Patrick Mahomes has now won 25 straight starts in November and December.
Mahomes is a perfect 13-0 as a starter in road division games for his career.
Austin Ekeler has 31 TDs since the start of the 2021 season - that’s 6 more TDs than his closest pursuer.
Travis Kelce now has the most 100 yard games (33) by a tight end in NFL history. He had been tied at 32 with Rob Gronkowski.
Derrick Henry has 10+ rushing TDs in 5 straight seasons. Only 4 other RBs have done that: Tomlinson, Peterson, Shaun Alexander and Michael Turner. Henry only played in 8 games in 2021.
Davante Adams scored his third overtime TD on Sunday, and that’s tied for most all-time with LaDanian Tomlinson (OT for regular season games was introduced in 1974).
Derek Carr is 8-2 in OT games - that’s the best record among QBs with at least 10 OT games.
Joe Burrow has thrown 8 interceptions so far this season; 6 of them have come against the Steelers.
Cordarelle Patterson now holds sole possession of the record for most career kick return TDs, with 9. He had been tied with Josh Cribbs and Leon Washington.
Patterson now has 7 TDs of 100+ yards. Nobody else has more than 3.
Patterson’s kick return TD on Sunday was just the second kick return TD of the NFL season.
Marcus Jones’s game-winning punt return TD on Sunday was the first punt return TD of the NFL season. There had been 539 punts league-wide heading into Week 11.
Jamaal Williams leads the NFL with 12 TDs on the season, all of which have been rushing TDs. In the first 5 years of his career, he had 13 rushing TDs, total.
The Lions have won 3 straight games for the first time since 2017.
Every team in the AFC East and NFC East is not only over .500, they all have at least 6 wins.
No team in the NFC South is over .500, or has 6 wins.
Since 2000, only 2 players have amassed 5 or more TD catches on 20 or fewer career receptions: Christian Watson (5 TDs on 16 catches) and Titans’ HC Mike Vrabel (10 TDs on 10 catches).
The Rams have the worst point differential (-59) after 10 games of any defending Super Bowl champ.
The last defending Super Bowl Champ to have a losing record the following year was the 2003 Bucs. Move over, 2003 Bucs…
The Vikings are the first team in NFL history to have a negative point differential coupled with an 8-2 record (or better) through 10 games.
The Bills are playing 2 games in 5 days at Ford Field. They’ve now had to play 2 home games at Ford Field, due to weather.
For his career, Brett Maher is a perfect 4-4 from 60 yards and beyond, and he extended his own record for the most career FGs from 60 yards or longer. And to be fair, he’s really 5 for 5…
More kicker stuff - Daniel Carlson’s second quarter miss ended his consecutive FG streak at 41, just 3 shy of the NFL record held by Adam Vinatieri (44), and one shy of second place Mike Vanderjagt (42). Later in the game, Carlson hit from 57, a career long.
And more - before Sunday, Graham Gano was a perfect 39 for 39 on PATs since the start of the 2021 season. Gano missed both of his PAT attempts against the Lions, in a game where very little went right for Big Blue.
The Cowboys are the only team that has not allowed a first quarter TD this season.
Justin Fields has 5 straight games with at least one rushing TD and one passing TD - that’s tied with Kyler Murray for the longest such streak in NFL history.
Curtis Samuel is one of 4 WRs in the Super Bowl era to amass these totals in a career: 600+ rushing yards, 6+ rushing TDs, 2,500+ receiving yards, and 15+ receiving TDs (the others are Jerry Rice, Tyreek Hill, and Eric Metcalf). Deebo Samuel (no relation) needs 3 more receiving TDs to join this group.
The Jets-Pats game was such a display of offensive futility, it gets its own section. See if you can stomach these stats:
This was the first game in at least 40 years where the first TD of the game was a non-offensive TD, scored in the final minute
The game had 19 total first downs, and 17 punts
The Jets had more punts (10) than pass completions (9)
The Jets had 2 yards of offense in the second half, which comes out to .08 yards per play (.08 yards is a little less than 3 inches)
For the game, the Jets barely averaged 2 yards per play - no team in the NFL is averaging less than 4.75 yards per play for the season
The Jets made one first down in the entire second half, and it came via a defensive holding penalty which is an automatic first down
And….CUT!
Enjoy your turkey, stuffing, and Thanksgiving Day games, everyone.
DH
Many Happy Returns, CP84
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