There's a lot of dumpster diving to do this week, and it also includes a division race that's probably already over and a quarterback who was telling on himself.
Week 6 of the NFL season saw some brutal performances on the field and at the microphone, and also the first head coaching firing of the season. There’s a lot of dumpster diving to do in this week’s Four Verts, which naturally takes us to the AFC South to start off.
Brian Callahan’s tenure in Tennessee was a total waste of time
As quickly as it began, it was over. After 23 games as the Titans’ head coach, Brian Callahan was relieved from his duties following the latest loss for arguably the worst team in the NFL. This was as rudderless a ship that we’ve seen in the past few years in the league, making essentially no progress over the course of his tenure. In fact, they’ve played significantly worse in several areas of their offense despite spending on the offensive line and drafting Cam Ward first overall at quarterback. Firing Callahan and promoting Mike McCoy to be the head coach might not really do all that much to change their fortunes for the season, but at some point, the Titans need to start looking like a football team.
Tennessee was 4-19 over the 23 games that Callahan was their head coach and easily could have been 3-20 had the Cardinals not fumbled their own interception a few weeks ago. They were rarely ever able to play a competitive game for a full four quarters and struggled to even get past the low benchmark of 250 total yards gained per game. With the development of Ward being the most important thing for this organization, they need to get a head start on that as soon as possible. There were plenty of people suggesting that Callahan should’ve been a one-and-done head coach, and he narrowly escaped that designation with the six games he was able to coach this season.
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Despite all the losing and disorganization of the past couple years, this is still an attractive landing spot for NFL head coaching candidates. Ward is an incredibly promising quarterback prospect who still flashes big time skill in the chaos around him and the defense has some pieces in the front seven. The right coach should be able to make this a competitive, respectable team with a quality offseason and another step from Ward.
It will be interesting to see where the Titans go from here because Callahan was supposed to be the offensive-minded guy that could put together an offense for a young quarterback, but he was just completely overwhelmed. Sticking to a certain style of coach means less than finding the right one; just look at the machine Dan Campbell continues to orchestrate in Detroit. Tennessee is still really far away, but if Ward takes some steps this season there will be legitimate reason for optimism next year.
Just gotta thug it out for 11 more games, Titans fans.
Jets pulled off an incredibly rare feat in London
What happened to Brian Callahan in Tennessee ultimately had to happen given the totality of what their situation has been. But no unit in football had a more feeble attempt at executing their role Sunday than the Jets’ offense.
The NFL exported one of the worst offensive games in its history overseas as Justin Fields and the players around him put up a performance so abysmal that it has completely made people forget the good things they’ve done up to this point in the season. Normally, overreactions aren’t really populating this column, but it is completely fair to react in a visceral way to the complete atrocity that was shamelessly displayed on international land. It was that bad. Don’t go look at a box score. Don’t leave this page. Walk with me. We are going on a journey.
A 13-11 final score, from afar, looks like any other NFL game. Most of these games are decided within a possession of each other, so the Jets and Broncos playing a close game isn’t noteworthy by itself. What is noteworthy is that the score differential in this game — two — was nearly 40% higher than the Jets’ yard-per-play figure. No, that is not a typo. Over 57 offensive plays, the Jets gained 82 yards for a dread 1.4 yards per play. Less than two yards per play. Less than 1.5 yards per play. It would have taken them about 70 plays to reach 100 yards for the day. Like, this is impressive. The way that outliers on the positive end of the spectrum are viewed should be applied here. It’s legitimately difficult to be this bad over the course of an entire NFL game.
The Jets became the 30th team since the 1970 merger to average fewer than 1.5 yards per play. There have been more than 12,500 NFL games played since 1970. That is roughly 0.0023% of all NFL results. This is truly a historic performance from the Jets in the worst possible way. The 1.4 yards per play is bad enough, but even a quick glance at the rest of numbers from this game is really startling, because there just aren’t performances like this very often in the NFL.
There are so many horrible data points to dive into, but Fields’ performance leads the charge. Fields dropped back to pass 29 times. He had as many sacks (nine) as completions (also nine), and finished the game with -10 net passing yards when including the sacks. He did scramble three times for 17 yards, giving him seven total yards over his 29 dropbacks. That’s 0.24 yards per dropback. According to TruMedia, Fields’ nine sacks cost the Jets a little over 10 points’ worth of expected scoring. Those nine sacks gave him a sack rate of 34.6% for the game, and a whopping 52.9% of the plays where he was pressured turned into a sack.
The amount of pressure he faced, a large chunk of it being his own fault, was simply an insurmountable problem for the Jets to overcome. On the 17 dropbacks Fields was pressured, he only attempted five passes, completing one of those throws for -1 yard. The other 12 plays were the nine sacks and three scrambles and they averaged -2.29 yards per dropback under center. Since the 2004 NFL rule changes benefitted passing games, only three quarterbacks have played a game in which they had 20 or dropbacks while averaging fewer than 0.25 yards per dropback — Fields this weekend, Jay Cutler in 2010 and David Carr in 2004.
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What’s funny about this game is that the Jets still could have won it despite 42% of their plays failing to gain a single yard. The defense had their best performance of the season, stifling a quality Broncos offense to set their own offense up with good field position, and even earning a brief lead on their own by drawing a holding penalty for a safety. If the Jets had any hope of winning the war of attrition in this one, their defense was going to have to score a touchdown — which is actually a scenario that Jets head coach Aaron Glenn has found himself in before.
Yes! Jets head coach Aaron Glenn has participated in two of the 30 games since the merger featuring a team averaging fewer than 1.5 yards per play. Not only that, but he was a part of the only win in this set of games while playing for the inaugural Texans in 2002. (Yeah, it’s really surprising that teams are 1-29 averaging 18 inches a play, right?) To take it a step further, while the Texans’ offense managed 47 yards and THREE first downs against the playoff-bound Steelers, Glenn got his hands on two interceptions for 135 return yards and two touchdowns in a 24-6 win. It’s one of the most baffling box scores to glance at, but the only way to win a game while putting forward that little offensive production is to have the defense score touchdowns, not safeties.
And in that one specific aspect, the Jets’ defense failed its putrid offense and was unable to score again following the safety. An 0-6 record has never felt so bad — and I would like to personally apologize on behalf of America for sending that game to a different country. We need to wear our mistakes to make change.
AFC North race is probably already over
The rash of injuries and inconsistent play has been a theme across the league this year, but there isn’t a division that’s been hit harder with those than the AFC North. Just six games into the season, this divisional race feels like it’s completely over. At 4-1, the Steelers have as many wins as the rest of the division combined. Technically, the Bengals are only two games behind them in the AFC North race, but realistically they are light years away from each other in terms of what is possible this season. The first (and maybe only?) year of the Aaron Rodgers-Mike Tomlin union appears to be headed to hosting a home playoff, and there are still two weeks until Halloween!
This was supposed to be one of the most electric divisions in football, until football things started happening. Baltimore, which was projected to win the division and perhaps the conference, has just fallen off a cliff from last year with a slew of injuries to key players and completely ineffective, embarrassing play from the defense. The Ravens gave up 44 points to the Texans. The Rams didn’t have the cleanest game against them last week, but it’s just hard to imagine that this defense will be able to rebound in a way that matters before the end of the season. Throw in Lamar Jackson being out with a hamstring injury and Derrick Henry (even before Jackson was injured) having a much less consistent season than last year, and Baltimore has plummeted to the bottom of the league. And might stay there.
Their only hope is that Jackson just goes supernova when he returns, but even that likely won’t be enough. 1-5 is a deep hole to climb out of, but the Ravens have the slimmest of chances if Jackson is effective right away upon his return. That’s more than the Bengals can say, who will be missing Joe Burrow until December. If they keep playing in a manner that makes them feel like they need to trade for the Joe Flaccos of the world, activating him when he’s healthy would be pointless. They’ll be well out of the playoff race by then based on what they’ve shown so far. Cincinnati’s defense is just too porous to supplement the offense and this season is already done for the Bengals.
Then there’s Cleveland. The defense is cool sometimes, but unfortunately whatever plan the team sold Myles Garrett on involves a rotating door of journeyman veterans and non-first round rookie quarterbacks. Not sure how he’s surprised that they’re still losing, but he certainly had the chance to leave. They’re just floating around until they can get their hands on a quarterback, if that’s even possible for this franchise at this point.
The Steelers are in a much more competitive spot than those teams, even though their own team is flawed as well. Still, a home playoff game is nothing to sneeze at and perhaps they can pull themselves together enough to win a game or two in the postseason. The process of elimination still counts as a win!
Tua Tagovailoa’s worst forced mistake this season happened off the field
Tua. How was this the plan?
He has not been the Dolphins’ biggest problem when it comes to their 1-5 start to the season. He and the offense have had moments and games where they look like a competent squad and are able to score points, only to be let down by the defense on the final drive like the last two weeks. Tagovailoa also has not been nearly good enough to pull what he did after their most recent loss against the Chargers.
Tagovailoa doubled down on the crummy vibe by saying that part of the reason the Dolphins are here … is because guys are showing up late to players-only meetings or skipping them outright.
OK. There’s a lot going on here. There’s a chance Tagovailoa was talking about weekly position group meetings, which happen with coaches and without. But if he’s not, then anyone who’s followed or played any team sport at any level knows: Players-only meetings only happen when things are going extremely poorly.
The Jets had one before the season and it’s hard to say that that was helpful or significant in anyway at all. These meetings, or practices or whatever the players decide for it to be, are an attempt for the players to try and regain control over a spiraling season. As ultimately inconsequential as they can be, it’s still not necessarily a bad idea to try and gather without the supervision of the coaches (read: employers) to hash things out.
The one thing Tagovailoa probably didn’t realize he was admitting during his media conference is that his teammates, at the very least, don’t care what he has to say. No one has publicly put their name to the idea of disliking Tagovailoa, but that does feel like a natural inference to make from afar. The starting quarterback making $50+ million a year can’t command the respect of his teammates. Huge red flag, and one that didn’t need to be told in a press conference. Quite honestly, the mere act of bringing up players-only meetings after throwing a game-ending interception is a surefire way to only throw gasoline on the fire that is a clear culture problem in Miami.
It’s fair for Tagovailoa to be frustrated with the Dolphins’ start, but he has to be able to read the room and situation better than that. He’s not playing well enough to point fingers and there’s no reason to anyways when you’re 1-5. That is a complete and shared failure that no amount of player-only meetings or passive-aggressive comments can fix.
Category: General Sports
