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, Josh Allen built his MVP case in a Buffalo blizzard, Justin Tucker was a liability for the Ravens, and Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers are proving that pinning your team’s hopes on a veteran quarterback coming off an Achilles injury is a very bad idea. Welcome to Winners and Losers.
Winner: Josh Allen
Josh Allen’s game is weatherproof. On a miserable, snowy night in Buffalo, the Bills quarterback put on a delightful performance that included the kind of play only he can make. I’m still not exactly sure how it all happened, but Allen received credit for both a passing and receiving touchdown on the same play against the 49ers:
It’s easy to say Allen was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. But 19 other players away from the ball—everyone but Allen, teammate Amari Cooper, and 49ers cornerback Renardo Green, who was trying to tackle Cooper—had seemingly stopped playing. But Allen charged toward Cooper, looking to help … somehow. There aren’t many passers who would have the instinct to call for a lateral, and the group of quarterbacks big and strong enough to then shake off a tackle and find the end zone is even smaller.
Allen was also pretty damn good on normal dropbacks, too. He completed 76 percent of his passes and averaged 8.7 yards per dropback. He was off target on just one attempt, per TruMedia. Allen connected on only three (of six) passes of 10 or more air yards, per Next Gen Stats, so he wasn’t pushing the ball downfield often.
But he impressed on the few occasions he did. This is an absurdly difficult throw to make in heavy snow, and Allen does it with ease.
His romp in the snow culminated a great couple of weeks for Allen. He overtook Lamar Jackson as the MVP favorite, he got engaged to actress/singer Hailee Steinfeld during the Bills’ bye week, and then I’m assuming he won his fantasy football game after starting himself.
He’s also got the Bills within a game of Kansas City in the race for home-field advantage. With the Chiefs starting to slip—narrowly avoiding losses to bottom-feeders Carolina and Las Vegas in the last two weeks—it could just be a matter of time before Buffalo takes the inside track to the Super Bowl. Allen is playing as well as any quarterback in the league right now, and if the playoffs go through a snowy Buffalo in January, there may not be another quarterback who can keep up with him.
Loser: Justin Tucker
The NFL’s kicking GOAT is washed. We probably could have made this call weeks ago, after Tucker’s 2024 season got off to a concerning start, but Sunday’s game against the Eagles ended any doubt. The Ravens kicker missed a career-high three kicks—two field goals and an extra point—and then watched his team lose by five points. Tucker missed field goals of 53 and 47 yards, bringing him to eight misses on the season, which leads the NFL. That’s also a career high, and his 70.4 percent hit rate would be the lowest of his career by 12 percentage points if this trend were to continue. Tucker isn’t just having a down season by his standards; he’s been one of the NFL’s worst kickers in 2024.
Tucker was one of the league’s most unique and reliable kickers when he was at his best. Now he’s officially a problem for a Baltimore team that should be contending for the AFC title. His field goal attempts have resulted in a 61.6 percent loss in win probability this season, per Next Gen Stats. His kicks against the Eagles alone lost his team 28.4 percent in win probability. But head coach John Harbaugh hasn’t lost faith in his veteran kicker. After the game, when asked about moving away from Tucker, Harbaugh said, “I don’t think that would be wise.” Maybe the best kicker of all time does deserve an opportunity to work through this rough patch, but the risk Harbaugh is taking in not considering another kicking option is that this is not merely a rough patch. Red flags have been present in Tucker’s game since last season, when he missed all but one of his field goal attempts of 50 yards or longer. Even if Tucker’s days as a reliable kicker aren’t over, as Harbaugh believes to be the case, his days as an elite kicker clearly are.
Tucker is a liability, but he’s not Baltimore’s biggest concern after this loss, which dropped the Ravens to 8-5. The Ravens are now two games back of division rival Pittsburgh in the loss column. They’ve also dropped to the sixth seed in the AFC playoff race with four games to play. Baltimore remains a virtual lock to make the postseason field—The Athletic’s prediction model gives it a 97 percent chance after Sunday’s loss—but this team has bigger goals than that. Despite all these infuriating losses, the Ravens still look like they can hoist the Lombardi in February if they play their best. But the defense has taken a significant step back from last season, and the offense is showing more cracks lately after uninspiring performances against Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia in recent weeks. This isn’t a team that can afford to leave points on the field in the kicking game, no matter how sentimental Harbaugh may feel about his kicker.
Winner: Russell Wilson
Here’s a sentence I wasn’t expecting to type in 2024: Russell Wilson just outdueled Joe Burrow in a 44-38 road win for Pittsburgh. To be fair to Burrow, most quarterbacks would have struggled to keep up with Wilson in Week 13. Wilson led all passers in yards per dropback (10.1) and success rate (65.9 percent) and ranked third in expected points added. His 414 passing yards also led the NFL this week and were just 38 yards off of his career high. It was a vintage performance for the 36-year-old quarterback. This sidearm strike to Pat Freiermuth for a touchdown looks straight from Wilson’s highlight reel in Seattle.
Wilson isn’t the athletic playmaker he was at his peak, but since arriving in Pittsburgh, he has improved in other ways. He’s more comfortable sticking around in the pocket—almost by necessity now that he’s slowed down—and he attacks the middle of the field more regularly.
Wilson has also rediscovered his deep-ball magic in 2024. We’ve seen plenty of his trademark moon-ball throws, but he’s completing driven throws at a high rate as well. Per Next Gen Stats, he leads all qualified passers in completion percentage over expectation on throws over 10 air yards. He went 8-of-9 on those throws against the Bengals, which included a handful of throws between the numbers.
On the season, Wilson now ranks fifth in yards per dropback and eighth in EPA per dropback. I’m not sure he’s played at a top-10 level this season, but it’s easy to make the statistical case that he belongs there. The offense has been more efficient since he took over for Justin Fields in Week 7; Pittsburgh has averaged more yards per play and created more explosive plays since Wilson entered the lineup.
Pittsburgh’s offense has been better with Wilson
There is, however, a boom-or-bust nature to Pittsburgh’s offense. Wilson has been a top-10 quarterback in most metrics, but even after his impressive performance on Sunday, he ranks below average in success rate. That’s usually a sign that regression is around the corner, but this is sort of who Wilson has always been as a quarterback—it appears the Steelers coaching staff understands that and has just leaned into the bit. Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith has put his twist on this offense, but this looks like the scheme Seattle put together for Wilson, with a lot of vertical throws to offset the inefficiencies in the quick passing game.
The formula has worked well for Pittsburgh so far. The Steelers have won five of six games since (controversially) swapping Wilson for Fields. They’re 9-3 on the season and have a 98 percent chance of making the playoffs, per The Athletic’s prediction model. After Sunday’s results, they’re the betting favorite to win the AFC North on FanDuel. Of course, head coach Mike Tomlin deserves his fair share of the credit for this remarkable season, and the top-10 defense has also done its part. But it’s been Wilson’s play that has separated this version of the Steelers from the offensively feckless, overachieving versions we’ve seen over the past few years.
Loser: Kirk Cousins (and Another Quarterback Returning From an Achilles Injury)
Things aren’t going so well for Russell Wilson’s 2012 draft classmate, who’s also in his first year with his third team. Cousins played his worst game of the season Sunday in a 17-13 home loss to the Chargers. The 36-year-old threw four ugly interceptions and fumbled, yet the stat line doesn’t quite capture how bad Cousins actually played in this one. There were times when he appeared to be straining just to complete a handoff. He didn’t look capable of escaping pressure and didn’t look interested in holding on to the ball if a receiver didn’t pop open immediately.
It’s not surprising that Cousins is having issues with mobility. He’s coming off of a major Achilles injury. It’s not like Cousins had any mobility to spare before the injury. But the Falcons quarterback might as well be playing the position while sitting on a barstool. He’s barely moving out there, and the numbers show it. Of the quarterbacks with at least 250 pass attempts, Cousins ranks dead last with 20 dropbacks from outside the pocket. Tua Tagovailoa, who missed four starts, is next on the list with 38 dropbacks.
More concerning is that Cousins’s play has been getting worse lately. He’s thrown six interceptions over the past three games and hasn’t thrown a touchdown over that span. Since Week 10, only two quarterbacks have been worse by EPA per dropback: Cooper Rush and Aaron Rodgers. Atlanta hasn’t won since early November. But because of NFC South incompetence (and Atlanta’s tie-breaker over the Buccaneers, who are also 6-6), this streak of crappy play hasn’t knocked the Falcons off their perch atop the division. Atlanta looked like a postseason lock just a few weeks ago, but it now has to fight to make it to the dance. According to head coach Raheem Morris, that’s enough reason to stick with a struggling Cousins as calls for rookie first-round pick Michael Penix Jr. get louder.
Considering Cousins is in the first season of a four-year, $180 million contract, it’s not great that Morris is already getting questions about Cousins’s spot on the depth chart. We’re one or two of these troubling performances away from this signing looking like an unmitigated disaster for Atlanta.
Meanwhile, in New York, the Jets and Rodgers, another veteran quarterback coming off of a major Achilles injury, are well past that point. The Jets have already fired their head coach and demoted their offensive coordinator, and nothing has improved. Sunday’s loss to the Seahawks may have been the worst performance of Rodgers’s Jets career so far. He threw a pick-six to Leonard Williams, a 300-pound lineman who was a first-round pick by the Jets in 2015, and missed several wide-open throws, including this would-be touchdown that directly preceded Williams’s interception.
Rodgers had the worst off-target throw rate of the week after missing 25.6 percent of his throws, per TruMedia. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, the Jets quarterback blamed “inconsistent” wind for at least one of those misses. For what it’s worth, Seattle’s Geno Smith (another former Jets draft pick) was playing in that same wind and was off-target on only 6.5 percent of his misses.
There are a lot of factors contributing to New York’s disappointing season, but Rodgers is near the top of the list. Even if he hasn’t been that bad—I still have him as an above-average starter in my quarterback rankings—he hasn’t been close to the winning quarterback the Jets thought he’d be when they handed him the keys to the organization in 2023. He’s missed the type of throws he made regularly in Green Bay, his decision-making has regressed considerably, and he’s no longer winning games in the clutch.
Even with how bad things were before Rodgers’s arrival, the Jets are worse off now than they were two years ago. We’re not quite at the same point with Cousins in Atlanta, but the early warning signs are there.
Loser: Azeez Al-Shaair
The Texans linebacker wasted little time becoming the villain of the week. In the second quarter of Houston’s eventual 23-20 win in Jacksonville, Al-Shaair teed off on a sliding Trevor Lawrence, knocking the Jaguars quarterback out of the game with one of the dirtiest hits in recent memory.
The hit incited a sideline-clearing fracas, and by the time the dust had settled, the refs had assessed three personal fouls: on Al-Shaair (who was ejected) and two Jaguars (Evan Engram and Jarrian Jones, who was also ejected). Those penalties offset, so Houston wasn’t even punished for Al-Shaair’s dirty play. Houston head coach DeMeco Ryans said he’d talk to his linebacker about the hit but also defended him, saying the hit wasn’t “representative of who Azeez is.” The wider sample size suggests otherwise. Al-Shaair was flagged just last week for a late hit on Titans running back Tony Pollard.
And he punched Bears running back Roschon Johnson for no apparent reason during a Week 2 game.
Al-Shaair isn’t the only Texans player with an apparent discipline problem. Houston has been penalized 95 times this season. That’s third most in the NFL, and only two teams have been flagged for unnecessary roughness more often than the Texans have this season, per TruMedia. This isn’t necessarily a bug in the system, either. It’s a feature of how Ryans wants his defense to play. But the line between aggressive and reckless is thin. Al-Shaair seems to cross it habitually, and the Texans do it far too often.
Fox analyst Daryl Johnston rightfully flamed the Texans linebacker for the cheap shot on Lawrence, saying Al-Shaair did “everything you’re not supposed to do” on a play. Johnston also called the hit “disrespectful” and drew a connection to the scuffles we saw in multiple college football games over the weekend, several of which were incited by flag-planting.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Johnston said. “We need our coaches across the football landscape—in the NCAA and the NFL—not to just be about X’s and O’s but to be about character and leadership, and to get a handle on this. Because the disrespect we’ve seen during the course of the weekend, and here this afternoon, is very troubling to this game.”
That’s a bit strong. From a player safety standpoint, the NFL game has never been cleaner. It wasn’t too long ago when the league’s broadcast partners celebrated concussive hits just like the one Al-Shaair delivered—remember ESPN’s “Jacked Up” segment? There have been dirty players in every generation. And when you put one of those players on a team that emphasizes playing fast and hitting hard, this sort of play is inevitable. Al-Shaair deserves most of the blame for his cheap shot, but we shouldn’t let his coaches off the hook.
Winner: Bryce Young
The Panthers found another way to give away a football game on Sunday, losing to the Buccaneers after fumbling in overtime. Still, fans in the Carolinas have to feel a lot better about the future of their team after watching Young string together yet another encouraging performance. His numbers weren’t spectacular—Young finished 26-of-46 passing for 298 yards and a touchdown—but the second-year pro continues to look confident in ways we didn’t see during his rough rookie season or before his benching earlier this season. This certainly isn’t a play he would have made a year ago:
Young’s performance against the Bucs was the fourth-best start of his career by EPA per dropback. Two of the three best performances of his career have come in the last month. We still haven’t seen a true breakout performance from Young—at least not in a winning effort—but he’s starting to resemble the quarterback we saw at Alabama, the one who seemed worthy of the first pick in the draft. And while there are still valid concerns about his long-term viability as Carolina’s quarterback, this string of games should be enough to earn Young a third season as the starter.
If anything, these last few weeks have been proof that it is possible to build a productive offense around Young. Carolina’s coaching staff, led by first-year head coach Dave Canales, has developed a formula that works. They’re doing a better job of moving Young’s pocket and clearing out throwing windows that work for a diminutive passer. That’s made Young a more confident thrower and decision maker. Young’s accuracy and processing were seen as his strengths coming into the league, but he was inaccurate and put the ball in harm’s way as he struggled to find comfort in NFL pockets. Those positive hallmarks of his game have resurfaced now that the Panthers offense is providing him more easy buttons.
That’s not to say that Young is dealing with ideal circumstances. The pass protection has been bad—Young was under pressure on 40 percent of his dropbacks against the Bucs on Sunday—and a thoroughly washed Adam Thielen leads the receiving corps. (Though he’s still capable of a jaw-dropping catch.) The more the Panthers start to resemble a functioning football team, the better Young looks. Funny how that works.
Loser: Coaching scared
Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon failed a fairly straightforward analytics test that cost his team a win against the Vikings on Sunday—and may end up costing Arizona a spot in the playoffs. With his team clinging to a three-point lead and facing a fourth-and-goal from the Minnesota 4-yard line, Gannon defied the fourth-down bots and sent his kicker out for a chip-shot field goal to go up by six instead of going for a game-sealing touchdown.
“I just wanted to go up more than a field goal there,” Gannon said of his decision after the game. “… I wanted to make them score a touchdown to beat us there.”
You can probably guess what happened: Sam Darnold marched the Vikings down the field and scored a touchdown, dropping the Cardinals to 6-6 and helping Seattle pad its lead in the NFC West standings.
The numbers and logic are simple in this situation: Kicking a field goal incentivizes the opponent to aggressively play for a game-winning touchdown rather than trying to force overtime with a field goal. For instance, the Vikings were forced to keep their offense on the field for a fourth-and-5 from the Arizona 33 with 2:10 left. If Minnesota had been down by three instead of six and kicked, that would have been plenty of time for Kyler Murray to lead a game-winning drive. But Minnesota had no reason to kick a field goal, and on fourth down was able to move the chains with a 12-yard pass to Justin Jefferson. They scored the game-winning touchdown three plays later. Murray threw a pick on the next possession, essentially ending the game.
This wasn’t an isolated incident of conservative game management, either. Gannon settled for a field goal and opted to punt in two other situations where the analytics recommended going for it.
When it comes to fourth-down decisions, Gannon has taken the conservative route more often than not this season.
Gannon made a similar mistake in a Week 12 loss to Seattle that cost Arizona first place in the division. With the Cardinals trailing by 10 early in the fourth quarter, Gannon opted for a field goal from 4 yards out rather than cutting further into Seattle’s lead. The Seahawks answered with a field goal of their own to stretch the lead back to double-digits, and the game was essentially over from there. In many ways, Arizona’s second-year coach is off to a promising start and has his team trending in the right direction, but this is starting to develop into a major issue for him and his staff.
After punishing Gannon for coaching not to lose, the Football Gods rewarded Colts head coach Shane Steichen for his bold decision-making. After watching Anthony Richardson convert on fourth down several times en route to scoring what appeared to be a game-tying touchdown in New England, Steichen trusted his quarterback to win the game with a two-point conversion. The Colts ran a QB option play that gave Richardson a choice between handing the ball off to Jonathan Taylor or keeping it behind a pulling Quenton Nelson. The second-year quarterback called his own number and delivered a win that kept Indianapolis’s flickering playoff hopes alive at 6-7.
According to the numbers, Steichen’s decision wasn’t some bold gambit that happened to work out. It was a smart decision.
And by the same measure, Gannon wasn’t taking the safe route by settling for a field goal. He made the wrong decision, and it cost his team a key win.
