Well, Week 10 of the NFL season has come and gone, and I know less than I did before it began. The Rams looked shaky against the Dolphins, the Lions and Chiefs both should have lost their games, the Steelers are still winning, and the Panthers have won successive matchups. Football is a silly, silly game.

Every Tuesday, I’ll spin the previous week of NFL football forward, looking at what the biggest storylines mean and what comes next. We’ll take a first look at the consequences of “Monday Night Football,” break down a major trend or two, and highlight some key individual players and plays. There will be film. There will be stats (a whole section of them). And there will be fun.

This week, we size up whether the surging Cardinals are for real, defend Caleb Williams and dive into a few moves that didn’t happen at last week’s trade deadline. Let’s jump in.

Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Are the Cardinals legit?
Deadline hindsight: Why didn’t my team …?
Second Take: Give Caleb a break
Mailbag: Answering questions from … you
Next Ben Stats: Wild Week 10 stats
“Monday Night Football” spin

The Big Thing: Are the Cardinals for real?

Every week, this column will kick off with one wide look at a key game, player or trend from the previous slate of NFL action. What does it mean for the rest of the season?

Coming out of Week 1 of the NFL season, I wrote this: “The Cardinals’ offense is going to be good. … While the passing game largely operated underneath, Kyler Murray looked as comfortable from the pocket operating with timing as I can remember him looking. The downfield reps will come, as will success for Marvin Harrison Jr. as their chemistry grows. I don’t trust this defense to stop anyone, but I trust this running game to keep good offenses on the sideline. And as the passing attack matures, the Cardinals will win a shootout or two.”

Then after Week 8, I wrote about teams that I just couldn’t figure out, and the Cardinals were right up there: “No matter which way you slice it, this is a good [offensive] unit. But I don’t understand why it vacillates between being so hard and so easy for the Cardinals to move the ball. … Any hope they have hinges on this offense ascending from a pretty good unit to a weekly juggernaut, and that ascension demands finding some consistency. If Arizona does what it did to the Dolphins for the next month, call me. Until then, I have my doubts about this team.”

Well, it hasn’t been a month. But in the past two games, the Cardinals have faced two really good defenses in the Bears and Jets, and they have looked excellent against both.

When the Cardinals faced the Bears in Week 9, Chicago hadn’t given up more than 21 points in its past 13 games, yet the Cardinals had 21 by halftime. They were dominant on the ground. James Conner had 18 carries for 107 yards, while Emari Demercado had a 53-yard touchdown run as time expired in the first half. It was a grind-it-out contest, as the Cardinals didn’t have many explosive plays but avoided the negative ones and stayed ahead of the sticks. They averaged 5.0 yards to go on third down; that ranks 27th of 302 performances for a team in a single game this season.

Against the Jets, the efficiency grew into something more. The Cardinals had 12 explosive plays (tied for their most in a single game this season) and consistently broke tackles. Arizona marched over the Jets with a whopping 57.6% success rate, the second-best number an offense has achieved against the Jets in the past five seasons. Efficiency and explosives are the platonic ideal for any NFL offense, and the Cardinals achieved it Sunday against what has been one of the best defenses in the league.

The run game

This offense has been long in the making, and now that it is fully realized, it is extremely cool to watch. It starts with the running game, which is the most unique in football. By ESPN’s charting numbers, the Cardinals pull an offensive lineman on 32% of their rush attempts, which is the most of any team. They also have at least two tight ends on the field on 49% of their snaps (only the Chiefs do it more frequently). That’s seven bodies to block in the running game before we even count wide receivers, and with all those pullers flying across the formation, there are now two problems for defenses to solve.

The first: Where is the ball going? The second: Are we even going to survive at the point of attack if we figure that out?

But what’s most cool about the Cardinals’ run game is that they use all those multi-tight-end sets and pullers from the shotgun. A truism of football is that the strength of a running game from the shotgun is capped. Because the back has to align on one side of the quarterback, you tip your hand to the opposing defense as to which direction a handoff might go. And because the back is stationary when he gets the handoff (as opposed to runs from under center, when he gets a runway), he arrives at the line of scrimmage with less velocity and is easier to bring down.

Yet the Cardinals have built a run game that works out of shotgun. Forty-three percent of the Cardinals’ gun snaps have been designed runs (seventh), and they rank third in EPA on those shotgun-snap runs behind only the Buccaneers and Lions.

Here’s a great example from Arizona’s Week 4 loss to Washington of how this works. The Cardinals walk out in a two-tight-end set and motion wide receiver Michael Wilson so that their tight ends are alone on the left side of the formation. This is what we call a “nub” set, as the tight ends are just an additional nub at the end of the offensive line, and there’s no wide receiver outside of them. It pulls cornerback Mike Sainristil into the core of the formation as a second-level player with responsibilities against the run — that’s always an advantage for the offense.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) November 12, 2024

Now the Cardinals run pin-pull, a blocking scheme that changes relative to the defensive front. Left tackle Kelvin Beachum pins the defensive tackle down so left guard Evan Brown can pull to the boundary and lead the way for Conner. Look at the work that each tight end does, too: Travis Vokolek gets great initial leverage on the defensive end, while Tip Reiman is afforded an easy angle to the middle linebacker by play design.

Here’s another example, this one coming against the Jets and with a three-tight-end set on the outside. The Jets are blitzing the side of the back to get an extra body on Murray, should he keep the ball on some sort of zone read. But that just makes it all the easier for the left side of the line to build a huge wall, cutting off pursuit to create time and space for Trey Benson to follow his pullers into the secondary, where cornerback D.J. Reed is overmatched against big Hjalte Froholdt.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) November 12, 2024

The Cardinals’ run game tries to get offensive linemen pulling outside of the tackle box with a running back behind them, and there is no other running game in football designed quite like this. Even those teams that run from the gun with their mobile quarterbacks (Ravens, Commanders) do things differently. The Ravens usually have Lamar Jackson keeping the football and following the pullers, not the back. The Commanders run between the tackles way more because they want Jayden Daniels to pull the ball into space with nobody in front of him. So this dedication to getting the RB on the boundary with blockers in front of him belongs solely to the Cardinals.

If your secondary doesn’t bring hard hats against the Cardinals, the game is over before it starts. The defensive backs have to want to play the run despite being physically outclassed by the multiple tight ends, the pulling interior linemen and the sheer size of Conner. And even if they do all that — already a steep ask — they still have to deal with Murray.

The pass game

I’m not entirely sure Murray is playing much better this season than he has in past seasons. He was good then, and he’s good now. Yes, he’s having his best season by pretty much every metric we have for QB performance … but not by a significant margin.

So much of the Murray skepticism over the first five years of his career was misplaced criticism of his supporting cast and offensive environment. The change at playcaller from Kliff Kingsbury to Drew Petzing has been tectonic. Murray is taking about half as many snaps in empty formations, throwing 60% fewer screen passes and facing only 6.7 yards to go on third down this season (lowest in his career). He’s also dropping back against base defenses on a whopping 27.4% of his dropbacks and hitting a play-action fake on 30% of his dropbacks — both career highs.

While Murray’s numbers might look like a small improvement from his career to this point, his stats under pressure have leapt dramatically.

This is both good and bad news for the Cardinals. Murray profiles as the sort of quarterback who can be excellent when pressured. He has unbelievable escapability and experiences little to no accuracy or power drain when throwing on the move. But this is a small sample of pressured 2024 dropbacks (83), and play under pressure can be highly volatile. Among 2024 quarterbacks, Murray is first by EPA per dropback, second by success rate and fifth by first down/touchdown rate when pressured.

Even if Murray’s pressured performance regresses to the mean, the Cardinals need him to don the Superman cape less and less these days. They finally have another superhero playing alongside him in tight end Trey McBride.

McBride has become one of the best tight ends in football, full stop. He’s third among tight ends in yards per route run and second behind only George Kittle in receiving EPA generated — which is absolutely preposterous considering McBride has yet to score a touchdown this season. While the emergence of Harrison as a star pass catcher has been bumpier than expected, McBride has been Murray’s most reliable target. So long as Harrison keeps coming along, Murray will be throwing to the best room of pass catchers of his entire NFL career.

The defense

I have never been more confident in the system that Petzing is deploying in Arizona — it’s unique, coached well and a headache to stop. This offense can win the Cardinals some games. But if the offense sets the floor, the defense sets the ceiling — and it’s the defense that has really taken me aback the past two Sundays. By success rate and EPA, the game against the Bears was the best defensive performance of the entire Cardinals season, and the Jets game was third best.

If you look at season-long numbers, this Cardinals defense is still an enormous liability. It is 30th in success rate and 23rd in EPA per play allowed, and 76.1% of opposing first downs end up generating a new set of downs or a touchdown (worse than every defense save for the Panthers). Opposing offenses average 2.3 points per drive (seventh worst in football), and no defense has forced fewer three-and-outs or fewer punts.

Look at the depth chart, and nothing gets rosier. The primary snap getters along the defensive line are Zaven Collins, L.J. Collier, Dante Stills and Roy Lopez. Of Cardinals with at least 100 pass-rush snaps, Collins has the best pressure rate — 10.7%, ranking 74th among pass rushers. The starting corners are Starling Thomas V and Garrett Williams, the latter of whom has actually played pretty well this season (only 13 catches on 31 targets).

The Cardinals are a quintessential bend-but-don’t-break defense. They’re allowing such a high success rate because they give up so many running lanes and short completions. Only the Chargers have lighter boxes against the run, and only seven teams have allowed fewer explosive completions. When the Cardinals get into the low red zone and no longer need to defend the deeper areas of the field, they tighten the screws. That same defense that’s 23rd in EPA per play allowed overall is suddenly 11th in the red zone. That same defense that creates fewer three-and-outs than any other team is 10th in red zone efficiency and eighth in goal-line efficiency. Just two of the 17 pass attempts thrown into the end zone against the Cardinals have been completed.

This news is unfortunately similar to Murray’s performance under pressure. Red zone performance is highly volatile, even if a defense intends to bend, bend, bend its way to the red area and force opposing offenses to score on 12-plus-play drives. It’s likely that the Cardinals’ red zone success regresses to the mean, especially given their thin defensive roster. Arizona hasn’t given up a touchdown in three consecutive home games. That simply isn’t going to hold.

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The bottom line

If the Cardinals were big preseason contenders with their eyes on a Super Bowl run, this would be tough news. I’d call them an incomplete team unlikely to make a deep playoff run, much like the Bengals or Rams. But imagine telling Cardinals fans before the season that they’d get mentioned with those teams — that it was unlikely but still possible that the team would make a postseason push.

ESPN’s Football Power Index gives the Cardinals a 62.5% chance to make the playoffs, and winning the NFC West is a coin flip. But this postseason push is less about the end result and more about the experience. It’s about teaching a young team what it’s like to play January football. Those are the lessons the Texans and Lions learned last season, which has helped propel them into maximizing their contending window this year.

So yes, the Cardinals are for real. But their realness is far more about the long term than the short term. They’re probably going to lose some divisional games — they have four in seven games coming out of their Week 11 bye — and need some help to secure the NFC West title. But more importantly, they’ve got great young players and a sharp coaching staff with a plan. They’re built the right way (through the draft) and have a ton of resources with which to continue building.

They might not be built for 2024 success, but that was never the plan. The plan was 2024 success and 2025 success and 2026 success and beyond. And that plan is perfectly on track.

Trade deadline hindsight: Why didn’t these seven things happen?

We already sized up the moves that did happen before last Tuesday’s trade deadline. I’m more interested now in the moves that didn’t happen.

Wait, why didn’t the Texans fix their offensive line with a move?

The response: It looks like they’re trying the in-house approach.

Houston has a pass protection problem. No quarterback has more dropbacks this season under pressure than C.J. Stroud, and his 34 sacks outpace all QBs save for Caleb Williams through the first 10 weeks of the season. The left guard spot was of particular interest when Kenyon Green struggled mightily against the Jets back in Week 9, before leaving with a shoulder injury that eventually landed him on injured reserve.

The Texans have bumped starting center Juice Scruggs to left guard, which is where he played during his rookie season in 2023. Stepping for Scruggs at center is Jarrett Patterson, who won the starting job out of camp last year and held it before breaking his ankle in Week 8 of that season.

The musical chairs along the Texans’ interior has been frustrating for Stroud’s entire career, though the protection issues seem worse this season as the tackle play has regressed. A move for a plug-and-play center or guard could have been justifiable, but given the experience of Scruggs and Patterson at their new spots, I understand why this felt like the safest play for the Texans.

Wait, why didn’t the Colts trade Anthony Richardson?

The response: Oh, didn’t you hear? They still think he’s good … or going to be good … or something.

Let this be a lesson in sunk cost for you young kids out there. The Colts are clearly out on the Richardson experiment, and if you’re out, you got to get out while the getting is good. I strongly believe the Colts could have gotten a top-70ish draft pick for Richardson had they traded him this past week. The Cardinals got a second-rounder for Josh Rosen in 2019 after they’d already drafted Kyler Murray, for Pete’s sake!

Sure, it hurts to take a guy with the fourth overall pick and flip him for, say, the 68th pick less than two years later. But if the Colts aren’t going to develop Richardson, they should trade him while he’s still developable. And they refused to do it. It beats me what the plan is from here.

Wait, why didn’t the Ravens add a pass rusher?

The response: It wasn’t going to solve the problem anyway.

Pass rush is a team effort. Ask the Bengals, who have one of the league’s best pass rushers in Trey Hendrickson, how much his individual effort helps the defense overall. Ask the Lions, who lost a star edge rusher in Aidan Hutchinson but are still producing on defense despite the diminished pressure rate. We often view pass rush as a panacea to defensive failure, and while that occasionally happens on the game level, it doesn’t happen on the season level.

The Ravens have the tools in-house to solve their pass defense problems. I firmly believe that. Rookie corner Nate Wiggins is playing better every week and needs a bigger role. Slot corner Arthur Maulet, back from a knee injury, is getting up to speed. The Ravens should get better in coverage outright, and when they do, they’ll buy a little more time for players such as Nnamdi Madubuike, Kyle Van Noy and Odafe Oweh (in whom I’m still holding out some hope) to get to the quarterback.

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Short of Maxx Crosby, there was never going to be a defensive end on the market who could fix the pass defense problems in one fell swoop. This is a coaching problem that must get solved by coaches.

Wait, why didn’t the Packers add a pass rusher?

The response: They did the opposite!

One of the more surprising moves of deadline day came when the Packers sent Preston Smith‘s contract to the Steelers (who needed another edge rusher for … some reason?) for a measly seventh-round pick. I understand the accounting aspect of it, but were the Packers and their 32.2% pressure rate (ninth worst in football) really in a position to send edge rusher snaps away?

We don’t know what the new rotation up front will be for Green Bay, as it was on bye in Week 10. Presumably more snaps will trickle down to Kingsley Enagbare, a late-drafted young player who has had some flashes, and Lukas Van Ness, a very-early-drafted young player who could charitably be described as “having some flashes.” I could also see defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley cranking up the blitz rates with Quay Walker and Isaiah McDuffie, who have struggled as off-ball linebackers but could find more success closer to the line of scrimmage.

When the Packers made the Smith trade, I was certain another domino was going to fall. Trading for Azeez Ojulari or Jadeveon Clowney … something. As it stands, I have deep suspicions about the Packers as an NFC contender until I see something from their pass rush I have yet to through 10 weeks of the season.

Wait, why didn’t the Eagles do … anything?

The response: Never let them know your next move, I suppose?

It’s a spooky trade deadline that passes with no Howie Roseman deal. For the first time since 2020, the Eagles’ GM stood pat at the deadline, which tells me one of two things: The Eagles think they are absolutely loaded, or they don’t think they are actually one player away. I lean toward the former.

Usually the Eagles are snagging some sort of veteran help — Robert Quinn, Kevin Byard III, Jay Ajayi — to power a playoff push. Where are the spots for a veteran to get snaps on this team, though? The No. 3 receiver role could still contribute more, as Jahan Dotson hasn’t been what the Eagles bargained for when they traded for him in August, but they paid a hefty price to acquire him, so he’ll likely keep his spot in the rotation. Their offensive line depth has been tested and responded well. Their rookie defensive backs are playing unbelievable football.

Having a healthy roster wouldn’t fully preclude Roseman from making a move if he wanted, so presumably Roseman had no interest in overpaying without an immediate need. But still, I’m not even sure the deadline has truly passed, in that the Eagles have yet to make a move.

Wait, why didn’t the Bears get any help at all?

The response: It’s tough to make acquisitions when you don’t know what your 2025 coaching staff wants.

That’s the long and short of it. We’ve quickly entered lame duck territory for the current Bears coaching staff on both sides of the ball. If offensive coordinator Shane Waldron (who was fired Tuesday) and coach Matt Eberflus came to me asking for one offensive lineman deal to save the offense, I also would have shut the door on them.

Wait, why didn’t the Bengals add any defensive help?

The response: Yeah, you’re right on this one …

Imagine what one defensive stop would have done for Cincinnati in the second half against the Ravens on Thursday night. Oddly enough, even with the loss, the Bengals still have a 34.5% chance to make the playoffs, per ESPN’s Football Power Index. That’s how bad the race for the AFC’s No. 7 seed is right now. But they desperately needed help on the defensive side of the ball and knew it.

There were reports that the Bengals were searching for defensive tackle help at the deadline, and with the recent veteran visit from cornerback Xavien Howard, I imagine they were calling about cornerbacks, as well. While the impact of midseason trade acquisitions is often overstated, the Bengals are so thin at both positions that any sort of addition — maybe a seventh-round pick for a veteran, as they did for running back Khalil Herbert — would have meaningfully contributed to the rotation.

By failing to add anyone to the defensive tackle or cornerback rooms, the Bengals left the climb uphill just as steep as it was before for Joe Burrow and the offense. Even if they work their way into the postseason, it’s tough to imagine this team running right through the entire AFC playoff field.

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Second Take: Yes, Caleb Williams struggled, but it says more about the team than the player

ESPN’s “First Take” is known for, well, providing the first take on things — the instant reactions. Second Take is not a place for instant reactions but rather the spot where I’ll let the dust settle before taking perhaps a bit of a contrarian view.

Anyone who wants to critique Williams’ play from the 19-3 embarrassment against the Patriots on Sunday needs to look at the six Bears offensive linemen who played in that game: Matt Pryor, Coleman Shelton, Ryan Bates, Larry Borom, Doug Kramer Jr. and Teven Jenkins.

Pryor has mostly played at right guard following an injury to Nate Davis, but he filled in for the injured Darnell Wright at right tackle Sunday, his first time playing the position this season. Bates, who was active for the first time this season off injured reserve, replaced Pryor at right guard. On the other side, Borom was playing at left tackle in the stead of Kiran Amegadjie, the rookie who was playing in the stead of Braxton Jones (both Jones and Amegadjie were injured, too). Kramer stepped in at left guard for Jenkins, who got hurt 19 snaps into the game.

You follow all that? You feeling good? Eleven offensive linemen have taken at least 20 snaps for the Bears this season, which is tied for the most in the league with the Rams, Saints and Cardinals.

Now, we’ve gotten smarter as a football-consuming public over the past decade or so. Publicly available film and data have hugely improved the conversation around the game. And one of the important truths that has entered the popular discourse is that the quarterback has a much greater control on his pressure rate and sack rate than we used to acknowledge. By holding the football and failing to manage the pocket, a QB can make an offensive line look far worse than it is.

Williams is unquestionably doing this right now. There were several reps against the Patriots (and against the Cardinals in Week 9, as this two game stretch has seen 15 Williams sacks) in which he held the football for too long behind serviceable protection, which then created a pressure. And then he failed to escape that pressure, which then created a sack.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) November 12, 2024

It is good that football discourse has become wiser and we can see that a quarterback has greater control over his sack rate than we once believed. But it is also important to remember two things here.

The first is that sacks happen. They are an inescapable part of playing quarterback, and while they are a bad play, the inverse — taking absolutely zero sacks — is often the sign of a QB who is too willing to throw the football away and has no interest in creating big plays.

Williams is clearly trying to extend plays and find downfield throws, just as he did in college. And because of that, he’s also creating unnecessary sacks, as he did in college. Things move faster in the NFL, and eventually, he’ll grow out of it … to a degree. But Williams’ play style is probably always going to yield a high sack rate, similar to Jalen Hurts and Geno Smith. That’s the cost of doing business with some of these playmakers.

The second thing to remember? While it is true that signal-callers have control over their sack rate, it can also be simultaneously true that the offensive line is just untenable in pass protection. Watch this collection of sacks and pressures from the game against the Patriots …

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) November 12, 2024

While we’re on the topic of simultaneous truths, there’s also the comparison among other rookies. Jayden Daniels has played better than Williams this season, but that doesn’t mean that (1) Williams is bad, (2) Williams will be bad or (3) the Bears regret drafting Williams over Daniels. Because the NFL draft is inherently ordinal, we always act like it’s this terrible failure when a better quarterback is selected later in the first round. But that happens in almost every single draft at almost every single position. Of course the Bears tried to draft the best QB in the class, but the odds that they would actually get that guy were always pretty low.

And despite the fact that Daniels has looked better than Williams (and I would argue that same for Drake Maye, as well), basically anyone would have had a terrible day behind this line Sunday. Sure, you probably get more than three points, and you probably do better than 120 passing yards, but it wasn’t going to be good.

Evaluating this young Bears quarterback is going just about the same as evaluating the young Bears quarterback who came before him did. When Justin Fields joined the Bears, he got stuck throwing in a stale passing game behind a bad offensive line and developed bad sack-taking, scramble-chasing habits. Then-coach Matt Nagy had no solutions when problems arose. Fields looked inept in games in which he chased big gains because his offense had no shot of scoring unless he strung together a couple of explosive plays.

Williams is playing for a coach (Eberflus) and offensive coordinator (Waldron) on the hot seat — Waldron was fired Tuesday morning — and behind an unplayable offensive line. Even the receiver room, which was supposed to be strong, has looked poor. DJ Moore seems disinterested in playing, and Keenan Allen can’t separate. The Patriots played man coverage on 61% of dropbacks and blitzed on 49% of dropbacks. Those are the third- and 22nd-highest rates of any game this season, respectively. Do you know how little respect you have to have for an opposing set of receivers to play that way?

The Bears are going down the same road with a different player. They believed that they were equipped to develop a rookie signal-caller, but they severely overestimated their offensive line, and now they’ve lost a handle on their receiver room. Again, this doesn’t abdicate Williams of his responsibility; there are plays in which the pressure and resulting sack are his fault. But it takes a full team collapse to be pressured on 53%, 46% and 44% of dropbacks over three successive weeks. That’s what we’re watching. It’s not the inevitable busting of a No. 1 pick. It’s total team failure.

Maybe Williams will end up terrible (I’d be shocked). Maybe Daniels will forever be better than him (that certainly seems possible). But we should never make sweeping conclusions on the basis of one game, and doubly so when an offensive line was as beat-up as this one. Give Williams a break. (Don’t give one to the Bears, though.)

From y’all

The best part of writing this column is hearing from all of you. Hit me on X (@BenjaminSolak) or by email (benjamin.solak@espn.com) anytime — but especially on Monday each week — to ask a question and potentially get it answered here.

From Pratik: “I can’t figure out what happened to Shane Steichen in Year 2. His playcalling took the Colts to the edge of the playoffs with Gardner Minshew, and yet in the last two games with Joe Flacco, the Colts’ offense looks like it has no answers. Is it just a question of execution, or has the league just figured him out?”

This is a matter of elevated expectation. It was wild how much offensive success Steichen got out of Minshew, especially with running back Jonathan Taylor missing some time. It creates the bar that Steichen should be able to win games with any sort of backup quarterback, especially because Flacco won several games in this spot with the Browns last season.

But the Colts’ defense is not the Browns’ defense, so it’s much harder to win games than it was for Flacco last season — and for the Colts last season, who had a much better pass rush in 2023 than they’ve had in 2024. They’ve also played the Vikings and Bills, two of the better defenses in football, and they’ve had offensive line and pass catcher injuries to contend with over the first half.

Steichen still is a great offensive coach. He has been hamstrung by the quarterback situation, as I still believe those decisions are being made above his pay grade. He might get blamed for the fallout of this season, but that would be learning the wrong lesson from the success he had in 2023. He isn’t a wizard; he’s just a good coach.

From Brandon: “What’re the odds Ben Johnson, (1) accepts a head-coaching job, and (2) accepts the Bears job? I get the Bears and Lions are in the same division, but working with Caleb would be a great opportunity for him.”

87% and 9%, respectively.

From Alex: “Is it time to have a conversation about Stroud, or is the O-line really just that bad?”

It’s the offensive line. Stroud is excellent. He threw a bad pick Sunday night, but that doesn’t erase 1½ years’ body of work. I know it can feel like the sky is falling, but it rarely is.

From Kyle: “What does the data say about offensive EPA per drive at AT&T Stadium during the first half of games in the 4 o’clock slot?”

Great question. Potentially the best question of the mailbag this season.

Sadly, there’s nothing that I see right away, though. The late afternoon window has 0.14 EPA per dropback, a 49.3% success rate, 7.1 adjusted net yards per pass attempt and a 16.5% explosive pass rate — all average to above average for the stadium. There might be some selection bias here, as the Cowboys likely got more 4 p.m. ET games when they were a better team, and played better teams in the 4 p.m. games than they would in the 1 p.m. games.

But in general, our argument for curtains is largely anecdotal. (Which should still be a strong enough argument to make it happen! Not only do we know where the sun is going to be, we also know how to block it!)

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Next Ben Stats

NFL Next Gen Stats are unique and insightful nuggets of data that are gleaned from tracking chips and massive databases. Next Ben Stats are usually numbers I made up. Both are below.

minus-10.9%: That’s how much win probability DeMeco Ryans lost for the Texans when he elected to attempt a field goal on fourth-and-4 from the Lions’ 40-yard line, according to the NFL Next Gen Stats model. Houston kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn missed the 58-yard try, and the Lions won the game on the ensuing possession 26-23.

Now, every model is calibrated differently and will spit out different numbers. It’s also true that Fairbairn is one of the best kickers in the NFL from 50-plus yards out. But this was about as clear of a “go” situation as there can be at the end of a game.

There were three options here: go, field goal attempt or punt. The Lions had their three timeouts, there was 1:56 remaining, and the ball was on the 40. Punting was potentially viable — with a good punt, Houston is forcing the Lions to drive about 50 yards to get into field goal range. But that’d also mean giving the Lions the ball last, with all three timeouts and in a situation where a field goal wins the game. Had the Texans punted, Next Gen Stats had their win probability at 41%. Advantage Lions.

So you’re realistically choosing between a field goal attempt and a fourth-down attempt. It’s hard to convert on fourth-and-4 but not as hard as you might think. Next Gen Stats gave the Texans a 45.9% chance of converting. This season, exactly 50% of fourth-and-4 attempts outside the red zone (11-of-22) have been successful. In the past five years, it’s 49.7%. For comparison, Next Gen Stats has the likelihood of hitting a 58-yarder at only 27.7%. (If that seems low, it’s because there’s an inherent selection bias to those long field goal numbers; only the guys who are likely to hit them actually get to try them.) We can quibble about the hit rate on 58-yarders all day — Fairbairn, for what it’s worth, has hit 53% in his career from 55-plus — but that isn’t actually the point.

No, this decision wasn’t so much about the likelihood of converting the fourth down against the likelihood of converting the field goal so much as it is the value of converting the fourth down against that of converting the field goal. When Houston attempted the field goal, it was guaranteeing the Lions another possession. Sure, Detroit might start at the 48-yard line if the kick misses or the 30 if it hits. And Detroit might need three points to win or three to tie. But regardless, another Lions possession becomes guaranteed, and the game is far from over.

However, attempting the fourth down means another Lions possession would not be guaranteed. Convert, and the Texans have the ability to end the game with the football, possibly kicking the winning field goal as time expires (and from much closer to the goal posts). Even if they don’t pick up another first down, they can force the Lions to use all of their timeouts or allow time to run from the clock. That’s burning all the resources the Lions would need to make another possession successful.

Because the fourth-down decision should be obvious, it then trickles up into previous decision-making. On third-and-4, when the Texans threw the football, they were trying to pick up the first down. But if they knew they were going for a fourth-down try, they could have spent third down running the football to make the fourth down closer (with the added benefit of making the Lions use a timeout). Fourth-and-2 is much less daunting than fourth-and-4.

This was a coaching error from Ryans and the Texans, plain and simple. It’s not why they lost a game they should have won — it took a total team collapse for that — but it’s a big part of it.

minus-0.18: That was the 49ers’ EPA per rush Sunday against the Buccaneers, almost the worst number of their season.

The return of running back Christian McCaffrey to the starting lineup did not suddenly heal the offense. Yes, it was a good day overall (0.23 EPA per play and a season-best 53.8% success rate), but the same issues reared their ugly heads at the end of the 49ers’ drives. San Francisco is 29th in red zone efficiency and 32nd in goal-line efficiency on the season, and in McCaffrey’s first game back, none of those issues went away. The Niners failed to score a touchdown on their lone drive that got inside the 10-yard line and scored only one touchdown on three drives that ended up in the red zone.

McCaffrey, who was such a reliable touchdown scorer for the 49ers last season, is certainly not to blame for the 49ers’ red zone ills. He has been back for only one game! But the hope was that his return would solve the scoring problem. He was on the field for eight red zone snaps and got only one carry (on first-and-10) and one target (a third-and-5 conversion).

It’s not a surprise that the 49ers were so pass heavy in the red zone or so generally unsuccessful on carries in this game, because the Bucs are an excellent run defense and a woeful pass defense. But it is worth noting that one game into the McCaffrey return, and the same issues that ailed the 49ers pre-McCaffrey are still present.

67: That’s how many receiving yards Broncos receiver Courtland Sutton had Sunday when Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie was the nearest defender in coverage. It’s the most yardage McDuffie has ever given up to one receiver in a game in his career.

Sutton, a perennially underappreciated throwback X receiver, is the exact sort of guy who can give McDuffie fits. He’s too big for the scrappy McDuffie to out physical, but he’s also fast enough that McDuffie can’t stick with him eternally.

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Why fantasy managers can trust Courtland Sutton as a flex option

Eric Karabell explains why fantasy managers can trust Courtland Sutton as a flex option due to his chemistry with Broncos QB Bo Nix.

The Broncos and Bo Nix showed no fear of McDuffie, a star slot corner who now mans the outside for the Chiefs after the departure of L’Jarius Sneed. They schemed up one-on-one opportunities for Sutton, and Nix looked his way even when coverage was tight — and Sutton paid him off. If not for another magic Chiefs win, this would have been a deserved coming out party for one of the league’s best receivers.

Monday Night Messes

Each week, we will pick out one or two of the biggest storylines from “Monday Night Football” and break down what it means for the rest of the season.

The 4-4 Rams hosted the 2-6 Dolphins with so much to gain and lost it all instead. Dropping a winnable game in the NFC playoff race is an enormous blow to the now 4-5 Rams, who have an 9.8% chance to make the playoffs, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index projections.

Against a stingy Dolphins defense, every Rams drive died on the vine, including the three that made it to the red zone. They attempted six field goals and hit five of them, failing to score a touchdown for only the second time ever with Matthew Stafford at quarterback. Their 327 yards of offense were their second-most in a touchdown-less game under coach Sean McVay, as well.

Stafford has failed to throw a touchdown in four games this season, which ties the most such games for him in a season. I don’t think that means too much, but it is worth wondering how much this Rams passing attack, which is very reliant on motion, suffers in the red zone where coverage shells are so different. On throws into the end zone this season, Stafford has a completion percentage of 26.9% and an off-target rate of 50%, worse than everyone in the NFL except for Caleb Williams.

Hats off to the Dolphins’ defense, and the offense seems to be functioning again under Tua Tagovailoa. The Dolphins have two easy opponents in upcoming weeks (home games against the Raiders and Patriots) and should be 5-6 entering a Thanksgiving night game in Green Bay. The season will hang on that one.