Every week this NFL season, we will break down the highs and lows—and everything in between—from the most recent slate of pro football. This week, Saquon Barkley tore apart his former team, while Jared Goff put a longtime demon behind him for good. Welcome to Winners and Losers.
Winner: Saquon Barkley’s Revenge
The Giants aren’t the first team to regret letting a star player walk in free agency, but they might be the first team to have HBO cameras document the decision and use it as the centerpiece of their promotional campaign for Hard Knocks.
That clip hasn’t aged well. At least not for Giants general manager Joe Schoen. Team owner John Mara looks prophetic after telling Schoen he’d “have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia.” Mara may need some sleep aids on Sunday night after he watched his former player gash the Giants defense for 176 yards in a 28-3 win for the Eagles. Barkley may have gone for even more yards had he taken up Nick Sirianni’s offer for more carries in the fourth quarter.
Barkley said earlier in the week that he wasn’t viewing this as a revenge game, and while that anecdote from Sirianni suggests he was telling the truth, his play on the field suggested otherwise. Barkley ran as hard as he’s run all season—an unfortunate development for the Giants defenders tasked with trying to tackle him. That didn’t turn out well for cornerback Dane Belton.
Or any of the other players, for that matter.
Barkley was the best player on the field on Sunday and outproduced the entire Giants offense, which finished with 119 yards on 55 plays, including just 105 passing yards on 29 attempts. The Eagles running back racked up 187 yards from scrimmage on just 17 carries and three targets. Not bad for a player whose original team felt he wasn’t worth a three-year, $37 million deal.
It’s hard to imagine where Philly’s offense would be without Barkley in its backfield. He’s been the team’s best player since Week 1, and he carried the offense to its 28 points on Sunday, with the passing game producing 70 net yards. Jalen Hurts had another shaky outing, taking four sacks on 21 dropbacks. He never looked comfortable reading the Giants defense and spent most of his time in the pocket dancing around and waiting for a scramble lane to open up. His 3.34-second average time to throw was the second highest of his season to date. Don’t let the 25-point win fool you. This Eagles passing game still has major issues it will have to solve if this team is going to make it back to the playoffs. But with Barkley playing like this, there’s still hope for a turnaround.
Loser: Kyle Shanahan
“Super Bowl hangover” doesn’t quite capture how bad the 49ers must be feeling after Sunday’s 28-18 loss in a Super Bowl rematch against Kansas City. The loss will hurt, but not nearly as much as losing Brandon Aiyuk for an extended time after the star receiver was carted off with a knee injury. The 49ers were also without Deebo Samuel (illness) and Jauan Jennings (hip) against the Chiefs, meaning they were without their top three receivers. And the preseason WR4—rookie Ricky Pearsall—was playing his first game after being shot during training camp. This is beyond poor injury luck. The 49ers receiver room might be cursed.
It may feel harsh to make Shanahan a loser with how hard the Niners offense has been hit by injuries—I didn’t even mention Christian McCaffrey’s season-long absence—but the play calling coach deserves some blame for the team’s current predicament in the NFC standings. San Francisco dropped to 3-4 and the 11th seed in the conference’s playoff picture with the loss to Kansas City and has the fourth-hardest remaining schedule by opponent win percentage. Forget about making it back to the Super Bowl; the road back to the playoffs may be difficult to navigate. And it didn’t have to be this hard. Even with the injuries. The 49ers blew double-digit leads to mediocre Rams and Cardinals teams. They also lost a winnable game in Minnesota, and with Patrick Mahomes throwing two picks in this Chiefs game, we could also throw the Kansas City loss into the bucket of missed opportunities.
Shanahan seems to be overcompensating for the loss of McCaffrey’s offense and has lost some faith in his run game, which has been the heart of his scheme for his entire career. Shanahan is known for running a quarterback-friendly offense, but he hasn’t provided Brock Purdy with a very friendly environment this season. The third-year quarterback is facing more pressure, holding on to the ball longer, waiting for receivers to shake free, using less play-action, and scrambling more than ever. It’s hard to say where this 49ers offense would be without Purdy’s playmaking out of structure—and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Though Purdy is clearly capable of hurting defenses with his legs, it’s not his strength. He’s at his best when throwing in rhythm, and those plays are becoming rarer by the week. Purdy leads the league in average time to throw (3.03 seconds), and the tape doesn’t show many opportunities he’s missing out on.
Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is known for throwing brain-breaking looks at quarterbacks, but Sunday’s game plan called for a steady diet of simple man coverage calls. Shanahan didn’t have an answer and could never get Purdy comfortable with what he saw from the Chiefs defense. With the 49ers missing their top three receivers, this would have been the game to lean on Jordan Mason and the run game. Instead, Purdy threw the ball 31 times. It was the fourth time in seven games that he attempted 30 or more passes in a match this season. He had only five such games last season. The 49ers’ injury luck has been far worse than it was last season, but the same can be said for Shanahan’s play calling through seven disjointed games.
The Ringer’s 2024 NFL Rankings
Your hub for The Ringer’s NFL rankings has arrived. Here we’ll feature our Power Rankings, Trade Value Rankings, and, of course, QB Rankings. Check back every week during the season as we put the league in order.
Winner: Jared Goff
Brian Flores was the author of two of the lowest moments in Goff’s career. The first came in Super Bowl LIII, when Goff led the Rams to just three points and left a number of plays on the field in a loss to the Patriots. Before that game, an anonymous Pats defender told NFL Media’s Mike Girardi that the game plan was to make Goff “bleep in his pants.” That’s a fitting description of what transpired in that game. The second moment may have been the beginning of the end for Goff in Los Angeles. The stakes were much lower, but the results were just as damaging. Against Flores’s Dolphins in 2020, Goff turned the ball over four times in the first half, throwing two picks and coughing up two fumbles. Flores repeatedly sent all-out blitzes at the young Rams quarterback, and he buckled under the pressure. Two months later, Sean McVay started John Wolford over Goff for the team’s wild-card game in Seattle. Goff was traded for Matthew Stafford in the offseason.
The trade has worked out for both parties. Stafford led L.A. to a Super Bowl, and Goff has revived his career in Detroit and earned a $212 million contract this year. It also appears that the Lions QB has defeated his old bogeyman in Flores after completing 22 of 25 passes for 280 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-29 win over Minnesota that pushed Detroit to the top of the NFC North standings. This wasn’t Goff’s first win over Flores. He beat the Vikings twice last season, and the Lions scored 30 points in each win. But this performance came with a significantly higher degree of difficulty. Minnesota pressured Goff on over 50 percent of his dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats. Years ago, that sort of environment would have made Goff “bleep in his pants.” On Sunday, he completed 10 of 11 passes and averaged nearly 15 yards per attempt when pressured.
Goff has been efficient under pressure all season. He’s still a bit of a statue, but he’s gotten better at sliding in the pocket to buy himself time in the face of pressure. Amon-Ra St. Brown’s 35-yard touchdown catch was a good illustration of Goff’s progress since coming to Detroit.
The Rams version of Goff isn’t making that play. Not against a Flores defense.
Winner: Mike Tomlin’s Conviction
Perhaps we should have given Tomlin the benefit of the doubt when he relegated Justin Fields to the bench for Russell Wilson ahead of Pittsburgh’s 37-15 win over the Jets. If any coach in this league knows exactly what he needs out of his quarterback to put together a winning game plan, it’s the one who has churned out .500-or-better seasons with guys like Duck Hodges, Mitchell Trubisky, Mason Rudolph, and Kenny Pickett under center. Tomlin is at it again in 2024, leading the Steelers to an improbable 5-2 start behind the mediocre tandem of Fields and Wilson.
Fields, by his own admission, has been subpar over the first half of the season. Wilson looked anything but in the win over New York. It wasn’t quite a vintage performance for the 35-year-old, but it did resemble a game from the latter seasons of his time in Seattle. That’s a massive improvement over what we saw from him in Denver, and it’s certainly a massive improvement over what the Steelers have been getting from their quarterbacks over the past four seasons, going back to Ben Roethlisberger’s final year. Wilson pushed the ball downfield with those classic moon balls. He protected the football. And he took just one sack against a good Jets front. This was exactly the type of game Tomlin has wanted from his quarterback: one where his QB makes the plays that are there to make and doesn’t give the ball to the other team while trying to make the plays that aren’t there to make. Wilson’s final line flatters his performance—he averaged 8.4 yards and 0.23 expected points added per dropback—but it was good enough to earn him a few weeks without hearing questions about Fields.
Fields had been playing a safe brand of ball through six weeks, but his sack rate was still among the highest in the league, and he had to sacrifice some of his big-play ability to limit his turnovers. Fields looked like a dancer counting his steps out there. Wilson could keep the ball out of harm’s way without limiting himself in other ways. That’s the difference between a veteran quarterback who’s had success at this level and a young but promising quarterback who has yet to find a winning formula at this level. Tomlin, who watched both of these players through the offseason, recognized that and had enough conviction in the decision to name Wilson the starter to bench Fields after a 4-2 start. Not many coaches in this league have the clout to make such a move, but Tomlin does. Don’t forget how he earned that authority: by consistently making winning decisions that have kept this franchise above water for the better part of two decades.
Losers: Everyone Involved in the Deshaun Watson Situation
Somehow, the entire Watson situation got even more toxic after a crowd of 68,143 in Cleveland cheered when Watson went down with an apparent Achilles injury in the first half of a 21-14 loss to the Bengals. The fan reaction drew the ire of the team’s best player, Myles Garrett, who seemed to be leaving out a detail (or 24) when he said the quarterback is “a model citizen.”
Watson has had 24 civil cases filed against him for various forms of sexual misconduct (including sexual assault) over the past few years. That, of course, didn’t stop Cleveland from trading for him and giving him a fully guaranteed contract worth $230 million. And despite Watson playing like one of the league’s worst quarterbacks, the team hasn’t sent him to the bench. Watson is the clear villain in this story, but the Browns, including some of the players who have gone out of their way to stick up for the maligned quarterback, shouldn’t escape criticism for providing him plenty of cover over the past 31 months.
Watson’s injury will give Cleveland some unearned cover. The team purchased an insurance policy attached to Watson’s guaranteed deal, and per ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler, that policy has already provided the team a $4 million salary cap credit after Watson missed the end of last season. According to Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald, the Browns have $13.9 million of Watson’s salary covered for this season. If Watson misses the remainder of the season, Cleveland could earn another credit of about $7 million. If he misses the 2025 season, they’ll get another one, thanks to the insurance policy. For owner Jimmy Haslam, the injury is a financial break that will soften the blow of what could go down as the worst transaction in NFL history.
The Browns may have also caught a break from an on-field perspective. Watson has been playing like a bottom-five quarterback for the better part of two years now. Any hope of him reclaiming his Houston form died in September, but it felt like Kevin Stefanski was being pressured by ownership to try to make it work anyway, despite Cleveland having two viable options behind Watson on the bench. Dorian Thompson-Robinson showed some flashes of potential as a late-round rookie last season, and he was given his first shot to replace Watson on Sunday but eventually left the game with an injury of his own after some ugly play. Jameis Winston, serving as the team’s emergency quarterback, threw a touchdown off the bench and figures to be the starter going forward. Winston is a reckless quarterback, but he’s always been a productive one, too.
The 2015 first pick doesn’t have to replicate his career numbers to provide an upgrade over Watson, who ranks 31st in EPA and yards per dropback and 32nd in success rate, per TruMedia. It’s hard to do much worse than that. But even if Winston can resuscitate this offense, he won’t make it easier to root for Cleveland.
Winner: Amari Cooper
Just getting out of Cleveland would have made Cooper a winner this week, but Josh Allen’s newest target locked up the W after opening his Bills campaign with 66 yards and a touchdown in a 34-10 win over the Titans. Those aren’t world-beating numbers, but Cooper arrived in Buffalo less than a week ago. His first practice with the team came on Thursday. That’s barely enough time to learn the team’s core passing concepts; it’s certainly not enough time to develop a rapport with his new quarterback, as evidenced by his first touchdown in a Bills uniform. Allen signaled to change the play before the snap, and Cooper was seen asking rookie Keon Coleman what it meant before making the play.
Cooper was on the receiving end of just two catchable end zone targets through six weeks in Cleveland. He’s already halfway there after just one game with Allen. And he’s already emerged as the midrange option this Bills passing game was lacking after trading Stefon Diggs to Houston in the offseason. The touchdown was the first of three catches of 10 to 25 air yards.
Even before Sunday’s 34-point explosion, the Bills offense had been producing at a high level, ranking fifth in EPA per play after six weeks. But we also saw Buffalo struggle to move the ball against high-level defenses in Baltimore and Houston. With Cooper adding a second-level threat to go along with Khalil Shakir’s work underneath and Coleman’s playmaking downfield, the passing game could take off in the second half of the season.
Loser: Bobby Slowik
The Texans are 5-2, so there’s no reason to panic, but it’s not too early to start asking questions of second-year offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik after Houston’s 24-22 loss in Green Bay. C.J. Stroud played one of the worst games of his career, ending the day with just 55 net passing yards. The Texans finally got their run game going, with 115 yards and two touchdowns from Joe Mixon, but failed to find any semblance of offensive balance. That’s been a recurring theme for Slowik’s offenses since last season, when Houston was dragged to competence by Stroud and the passing game.
Sunday’s poor performance isn’t an isolated incident. The Texans offense has been putting up mediocre numbers all season. They rank 21st in total EPA, behind teams off to horrid starts such as the Jaguars and Rams. They’re 27th in success rate, behind the Panthers and Titans. The numbers have been even worse on first and second down, but Stroud’s brilliance on late downs has masked the team’s inability to run the football and the offensive line’s proclivity for pre-snap penalties. Until Sunday, that is. Against the Packers, Stroud averaged minus-0.7 yards per play and lost 11.1 EPA on third-down dropbacks alone, per TruMedia. He was pressured on 10 of his 12 dropbacks on that key down, so it’s difficult to blame him for the issues. Green Bay blitzed on only five of those dropbacks but showed heavy pressure looks repeatedly, and Slowik couldn’t find an adjustment to scare the team out of the aggressive third-down plan.
This isn’t how this was supposed to go. Not after the team traded for Stefon Diggs and added him to an emerging receiving corps led by Nico Collins (who, to be fair to Houston, is currently injured). The offensive line, which had been banged up to a historic extent last season, was sure to improve. And Stroud looked primed for a second-year breakout that would catapult him into the MVP discussion. Diggs is averaging under 10 yards per reception. This healthier offensive line is even worse than last year’s. And Stroud’s numbers have declined across the board even though he’s made significant strides as a quarterback in year two.
The ceiling for this offense remains high. Collins, who didn’t play against Green Bay, has blossomed into a star receiver. Diggs is still a good player, and Tank Dell is one of the better third options in the NFL. Mixon, whom the team traded for in the offseason, has been one of the few bright spots on the offense. And in Stroud, Houston has one of the five or six best quarterbacks in the NFL. Having those pieces should make Slowik’s job easier, but the scrutiny he’ll face if these results continue will make it harder for him to hang on to that job. Outside of Stroud’s development, we’ve seen little out of the former Kyle Shanahan assistant to suggest he’s capable of better.
Winner: Kliff Kingsbury
A little over a year ago, Kingsbury bought himself a one-way ticket to Thailand and thought he was done coaching football. By this time next year, he could be back in a head coaching gig after turning the Commanders offense into a point-scoring machine that kept humming after a scary rib injury knocked Jayden Daniels out of Washington’s 40-7 win over the hapless Panthers on Sunday. Daniels exited the game in the first quarter after taking a hit on a red zone run. It had little effect on the Washington offense. Marcus Mariota completed 18 of 23 passes for 205 yards and a pair of touchdowns—and that stat line doesn’t reflect just how good Mariota looked.
Mariota looked as dynamic as he did early in his career, when Tennessee believed he would develop into a franchise quarterback. He was decisive and accurate from the pocket, he made throws on the run, and he protected the football. It was the kind of performance Daniels has been producing on a weekly basis. In fact, Mariota’s advanced stat line this season looks awfully similar to Daniels’s.
Mariota Vs. Daniels, 2024 Season
The structure of Kingsbury’s offense, which spams RPOs on early downs and simple pass concepts on late downs, did not change after Mariota entered the game. And it provided the former first-round pick with a similar environment conducive to efficient passing numbers. It’s clear Mariota lacks the physical gifts that make Daniels’s ceiling so high, but that didn’t stop Kingsbury from leading Washington’s offense up and down the field all afternoon.
Kingsbury had a reputation as a quarterback whisperer before things went bad in Arizona. He had a hand in developing Patrick Mahomes, Baker Mayfield, Caleb Williams, and Kyler Murray before helping Daniels get off to a blinding start. It’s unclear how much time Daniels will miss—Quinn had no updates after the game, but Daniels’s mom tweeted that he’s “fine”—but if he does miss time, Kingsbury could have an opportunity to prove that his offense works without a star talent at quarterback. That ought to be enough to earn back that quarterback whisperer badge, which is the easiest way to earn a big job in this quarterback-obsessed league.
