NFL 2022: The Week 5 thread

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We're living in a golden age of QBs. We have two future Hall of Famers (Brady, Rodgers) still playing, some decent veterans (Russellwilson, Stafford, Cousins on a good day, Carr on a good day, the corpse of Matt Ryan) and a ton of exciting young QBs (Mahomes, Herbert, Joshallen, Lamar, Kyler, Trevor Butterfingers, Hurts, Burrow, Tua). If you discount the bums playing QB in Chicago, Charlotte and DC, we might never have had so many good QBs on NFL rosters at any one time.

So why the hell aren't teams scoring any daggone points? The Ringer grappled with that question this week:

With a handful of lower-tier quarterbacks putting up top-10 numbers and leading efficient offenses, one would think that scoring would be up across the league, but the opposite is true. Scoring is down by about one point per game from last year and nearly three points compared to 2020. Michael Lopez of Next Gen Stats wrote about the falling scoring average after last week’s games and found that a decline in passing efficiency was the main culprit.

Quarterbacks were better in Week 4, but passing numbers are still down across the board. The league-average EPA per dropback is 0.02, the lowest it’s been since 2017—which was a strange year for quarterback play due to injuries. Not counting that season, you’d have to go back to 2005 to find a lower EPA average. That was around the time the NFL adjusted its illegal contact rules, which eventually sparked the league’s passing revolution.

The Ringer concludes that we can blame the scoring shortage on two-high safeties and a lot more zone coverage. The teams that are scoring lots of points and winning games (or both) are the ones that can run the ball, believe it or not. Go read the whole thing, as they say, and discuss it below.

STAT OF THE WEEK #1

The Lions (the Lions?) lead the NFL in points scored (140) and points allowed (141). The combined total is the highest in NFL history through Week 4.

The Lions are fun, y'all. Maybe we'll get them on a national broadcast before Thanksgiving.

STAT OF THE WEEK #2

Games might be closer than they appear. Through four weeks of the 2022 season, the NFL has had 49 games enter the fourth quarter with the two teams less than one score apart. That's a record!

SCORIGAMI!

Speaking of the Lions, we had our first Scorigami of the 2022 season: Seahawks 48, Lions 45.

WEEK 4 IN THREE (OR SO) GIFS

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WHICH PATRIOTS QB IS THIS??

One of these guys is Patriots starter Mac Jones. The other is current backup Bailey Zappe. Do you know which is which? Answer below.

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Spoiler:

That's Bailey up top (I think) and Mac below. In case you think maybe Bill Belichick has a type, well, here's late 20th century Tom Brady:

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POWER RANKINGS

Let's go with The Ringer this week.

Top 5: Bills (1st last week), Chiefs (2nd), Packers (3rd), Eagles (7th), Bucs (4th)

Bottom 5: Jets (31st), Steelers (28th), Panthers (29th), Bears (30th), Texans (32nd)

WEEK 5 SCHEDULE
A lot of mostly who-cares games, which means half of them will turn out to be absolutely bonkers.

Thursday: Colts-Broncos in the HORSE BOWL (Prime)

Sunday morning: Giants-Packers in London (NFL)

Sunday early: Steelers-Bills, Chargers-Browns, Texans-Jaguars, Bears-Vikings, Lions-Patriots, Seahawks-Saints, Dolphins-Jets, Falcons-Bucs, Titans-Commanders

Sunday late: Niners-Panthers, Eagles-Cardinals, Cowboys-Rams (GOTW on Fox)

Sunday night: Bengals-Ravens (NBC)

Monday: Raiders-Chiefs (ESPN; no ManningCast until Week 7)

Byes: None; byes start in Week 6

Coverage maps are in their usual space.

Falcons-Bucs

Usually it really sucks when your team gets the early bye week.

STAT OF THE WEEK #1

The Lions (the Lions?) lead the NFL in points scored (140) and points allowed (141). The combined total is the highest in NFL history through Week 4.

2014 Jared Goff's Cal team was #10 (out of 128 D1 teams) in Scoring offense #123 in Scoring Defense.

Enix wrote:

The Ringer concludes that we can blame the scoring shortage on two-high safeties and a lot more zone coverage. The teams that are scoring lots of points and winning games (or both) are the ones that can run the ball, believe it or not.

Quarters (aka "Cover 4") is skyrocketing in use across the league. Seattle-style Cover 3 is effectively dead as a trend, with this year's increased emphasis on downfield contact penalties acting as the last nail in the coffin. The Legion of Boom would be yellow hankied into oblivion in the current NFL.

The Ringer article doesn't touch on the $64,000 question when it comes to playing two-deep safeties: how do defenses fill 8 run gaps with only 7 bodies? That's the calculus that led to the single-high safety trend in the first place, bringing the second safety down and giving the defense a body for each gap.

Back in the last heyday of 2-deep safety looks, we saw a lot more "2 gap" defenses. Defensive linemen would hold the point of attack and maintain position to cover 2 gaps rather than attacking a single assigned gap.

Here's an example of 2-gapping. This is Vince Wilfork (#75, the left DE) on the 2010 Patriots. He squares up on the offensive lineman and looks into the backfield to "read" which gap he will need to cover, as he's responsible for both the B and C gap. (We also see #55, Brandon Spikes, the linebacker, attacking the A gap, as he's only assigned a single gap):

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The problem with 2-gapping is that you give up a lot in terms of your pass rush. You're having guys take their foot off the gas and maintain position rather than trying to knife into the offensive backfield and blow things up. As an example, the Wilfork play turns out to be a play action pass, and once that fact is established, we see Wilfork is not in a great position to transition from gap coverage to a pass rusher:

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Instead, what we're seeing from some teams is the Vic Fangio "gap and a half" approach popping up more. Rather than squaring up with the offensive lineman to keep in a position to step into either gap, a defensive linemen will still attack his primary assigned gap, but will maintain control such that they can get back into their secondary gap if needed.

Here's an example from an Athletic article. #50 is putting his body into the primary gap, but rather than just barrelling through the gap, he's maintaining contact with the offensive lineman, and allowing himself space to operate by extending his arm into the O-lineman's chestplate. This gives him the room to work back to his secondary gap once he sees that it's a run play headed towards that second gap. But had it been a pass play, or a run away from him, he could have then kept pushing through the primary gap that he placed himself into.

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Enix wrote:

STAT OF THE WEEK #2

Games might be closer than they appear. Through four weeks of the 2022 season, the NFL has had 49 games enter the fourth quarter with the two teams less than one score apart. That's a record!

So basically just watch during the Witching Hour.

Enix wrote:

WHICH PATRIOTS QB IS THIS??

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I motion to have Zappe's job designation changed from "Mac's backup" to "Mac's stunt double".

Man Tom Brady has had a ton of plastic surgery.

Are Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen still "exciting young QBs"? My rule of thumb would be that this category only applies to players on their rookie contract. They're obviously young compared to Brady and Rodgers but they've been around for a while too.

I got a stat of the week for you.

The Ravens are 2-2. They have only trailed for a combined 14 seconds in their two losses.

Stele wrote:

I got a stat of the week for you.

The Ravens are 2-2. They have only trailed for a combined 14 seconds in their two losses.

So what you're saying is that they're chokers?

*Legion* wrote:
Enix wrote:

The Ringer concludes that we can blame the scoring shortage on two-high safeties and a lot more zone coverage. The teams that are scoring lots of points and winning games (or both) are the ones that can run the ball, believe it or not.

Quarters (aka "Cover 4") is skyrocketing in use across the league. Seattle-style Cover 3 is effectively dead as a trend, with this year's increased emphasis on downfield contact penalties acting as the last nail in the coffin. The Legion of Boom would be yellow hankied into oblivion in the current NFL.

...

[lots of great stuff]

I wish I knew this much about defensive coverage. I've tried looking it up just so I'd maybe be better at Madden, but what I found just didn't stick.

Stele wrote:

I got a stat of the week for you.

The Ravens are 2-2. They have only trailed for a combined 14 seconds in their two losses.

I would say the Ravens being 2-2 and the Falcons being 2-2 means maybe we don't pay too much attention at this point.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
Stele wrote:

I got a stat of the week for you.

The Ravens are 2-2. They have only trailed for a combined 14 seconds in their two losses.

I would say the Ravens being 2-2 and the Falcons being 2-2 means maybe we don't pay too much attention at this point.

No, that's too sensible of a take. I like the chokers one better.

He should be penalized further for filing the lawsuit.

The animal-rights activist who was tackled by Los Angeles Rams linebacker Bobby Wagner has apparently filed an assault complaint following the incident.

Look, if he didn't want everyone to think his protest was a gender reveal, he should've picked a different color smoke bomb.

This is probably a fantasy football concern more than anything, but I feel like Kickers are showing up on practice reports as limited or DNP a lot more often than I remember. In previous seasons, my only concern about my Fantasy Kicker was 1) Does he play in a dome 2) does he have a late bye so I don't have to think about him for 10+ weeks. Now I'm constantly checking to see if my Kicker will actually play.

McAdoo: Baker passes getting batted down "for a variety of reasons"

McAdoo avoids suggesting that one of those reasons is Baker being the shortest starting QB in the league not named Kyler or Russ.

*Legion* wrote:

McAdoo: Baker passes getting batted down "for a variety of reasons"

McAdoo avoids suggesting that one of those reasons is Baker being the shortest starting QB in the league not named Kyler or Russ.

And somehow those two sub-5-foot QBs don't have 10 percent of their passes batted down. Could it be ...

SCHEME?!?

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Let me know when QB School or someone of that ilk roasts the Panthers' OC. I'm here for it.

Russ avoids getting balls batted down by throwing high-arcing rainbows, and never throwing over the middle.

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Kyler avoids it by, well...

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One of the Twitter folks who follows the Panthers closely did a podcast breakdown of Baker's tipped ball that got intercepted. The TL,DR version is that Carolina's formation and motion tipped off JJ Watt as to what the play was going to be (a quick out to DJ Moore), and Watt just sat back and waited for Baker to throw it.

Baker's bad, sure, but he's not getting any help from this retread Ben McAdon't offense.

Sunday should be interesting. It'll be the Niners' immovable object versus Carolina's stoppable force. Oh, and Jeremy Chinn's out.

PS: Here's something for you, Legion. This is the two-play series in which Mayfield and then CMC get stuffed on 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1 against ARI. As JT O'Sullivan pointed out on Twitter, he had never seen a QB sneak fail against a wide open A gap. You'll love the 4th down formation. Double wing, baby!!

Don't remember if this got posted last week, but Tanier was on FO bashing the Panthers for their CMC-up-the-gut ground game approach.

For sure, McAdoo's offense is not doing Baker (or CMC, or DJM, or Robb(ie|y), or Viska) any favors. Well maybe it did Baker a favor at first by being so brain-dead that he got it down in about a week.

If the 49ers D doesn't obliterate that offense, I'm going to be highly disappointed. This needs to be a get-healthy week as the Niners work through a ridiculous injury list ONCE AGAIN.

We're up to:
- OT Trent Williams
- OT Colton McKivitz
- RB Elijah Mitchell
- RB Tyrion Davis-Price
- TE Tyler Kroft
- DT Arik Armstead
- DT Javon Kinlaw
- DE Jordan Willis
- CB Jason Verrett
- S Jimmie Ward
- S Tarvarius Moore

It's cool, just 5 starters, and of the other 6, 3 are backups to injured starters. No big deal.

I am worried about Brian Burns vs. third string offensive tackle Jaylon Moore. Losing Williams is devastating enough, but playing without McKivitz too is super not cool, especially since McKivitz will be out for "a while" with an MCL sprain.

Should be OK though as long as the Panthers don't activate secret weapon Arron Mosby...

Carolina will be without S Jeremy Chinn (IR) and Laviska. Looks like S Xavier Woods (the guy who holds the back side of their D together) will be out, and LB Frankie Luvu might not play, too.

I wouldn't worry too much about Burns. He needs help on the other side to really wreck things, and Marquis Haynes and Yetur Gross-Matos aren't nearly as effective in that role as Haason Reddick was a year ago. Burns has just four hurries combined vs the Saints and the Cardinals, and his one sack in the past two games came by his chasing Kyler out of bounds one yard short of the sticks. (Yep, kids, that's a sack even tho Burns didn't touch him.)

I love Burns, but any competent OC/QB tandem can neutralize him on passing downs.

*Legion* wrote:
Enix wrote:

WHICH PATRIOTS QB IS THIS??

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I motion to have Zappe's job designation changed from "Mac's backup" to "Mac's stunt double".

And here is Garret Gilbert, a.k.a. Bailey Zappe's stunt double. (Not pictured here: Brian Hoyer in IR with a concussion.)

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I will be disappointed if a pissed off, divorce-facing Tom Brady doesn't throw for 400 yards and 5 TDs against the Atlanta Dumpster Fires. If Julio can only be healthy for two more games this year, let it be the Falcons games, and if Julio can just torch them it would be just delicious.

Pink Stripes wrote:

And here is Garret Gilbert ...

AKA former Carolina Panther Garrett Gilbert!

He got his first NFL action in Carolina's Week 17 game in 2018 against the Saints only because Carolina's other three QBs were hurt. The day after the game, Carolina cut him. Dude was on the roster, like, five days.

@rodger wrote:

Amazon paid $13 billion over 11 years for Thursday Night Football. that's $1.18 billion per year. and there are 15 TNF games per year. long story short they paid about $78 million to broadcast this Colts-Broncos game

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The thing we all knew was crap for years is still crap. This isn't like not liking a food as a child and then trying it as an adult and going, "Whoa, I was wrong about this."

Player CP/ATT YDS TD INT
Russell Wilson 9/17 69 0 0

You love to see it.

Edit: Or at least I do.

So does Denver just have some magic power to drag other teams down to their catatonic level?

*Legion* wrote:

Russ avoids getting balls batted down by throwing high-arcing rainbows, and never throwing over the middle.

Russ just tried to throw over the middle, and DeForest Buckner batted it right back at him.

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