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Week 15 was a reminder that you never know what you’re going to get in the NFL. For this week’s Quick Outs, we’re going to take a minute to appreciate some of the bizarre outcomes from Sunday’s sloppy slate of games. The Bengals – Titans game led the way as maybe the sloppiest in modern history, but Sunday also gave us a surprise Ty Johnson performance against the Detroit Lions and a tendency-breaking day out of Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers’ offense.
Advertisement We’ve got Tua Tagovailoa and his struggles against an explosive Houston Texans defense in the quarterback charting spotlight, too. Let’s jump in. QB charting: Tua Tagovailoa Miami has the most fragile offense in the league.
The offensive line isn’t good, the run game is non-functional and the quarterback is neither ambitious nor physically talented enough to lift the passing offense when it’s knocked off its preferred method of play. There’s no doubt the Dolphins can make magic when things are rolling, but they look helpless the moment a defense gets a jump on what they’re doing. That’s what happened to Tagovailoa against the Texans on Sunday.
The Texans, coming off their bye, played like they had Miami’s entire offensive game plan downloaded into their brains. Even though Tagovailoa was accurate on 30-of-40 passes against the Texans, few of those were meaningful completions. A whopping 14 of Tagoailoa’s attempts came behind the line of scrimmage.
A handful of those were screens, but Tagovailoa also constantly checked the ball down. It was his only answer when the Texans took away his first read. Tagovailoa isn’t much of a scrambler or creator outside the pocket, and he’s not the type to hang in the pocket to search for options down the field.
All he had left were those checkdowns, against which the Texans did a great job to rally and tackle. Tagovailoa was awful in the intermediate range, particularly over the middle — which is where the Dolphins’ offense has wanted to attack since Mike McDaniel took over. But the Texans weren’t allowing any of it.
Tagovailoa was just 2-of-6 to that intermediate middle area. Two of those plays were disrupted by Texans safety Calen Bullock on inverted Cover 2 calls, when Bullock walked down to play the middle of the field from his safety spot. The first was a near pick in the red zone, and Bullock finished the job the second time around with an interception right before the half.
HAWKED TUA 🦅 #ProBowlVote + @CalenBullock 📺: @NFLonCBS pic.twitter.com/fchpXLU9jl — Houston Texans (@HoustonTexans) December 15, 2024 The Texans also blanked the Dolphins’ passing offense almost any time they were in man coverage — Tagovailoa was accurate on just one of seven attempts versus man coverage.
He threw more interceptions than accurate passes in those spots. Both Derek Stingley Jr. and Kamari Lassiter denied the Dolphins’ receivers any ground, and Tagovailoa struggled to throw them open.
Advertisement The Dolphins just never got into their preferred groove. Other offenses can turn to the run game for help or pray their quarterbacks bail them out with outrageous creation ability outside the pocket, but neither of those options is available for Miami. The good news for the Dolphins is most defenses won’t come prepared with a game plan as inspired as Houston’s.
Texans coach DeMeco Ryans is as sharp as they come, and his defense’s combination of speed pass rushers and physical cover corners was perfect for suffocating the Dolphins’ particular mode of offense. And the Dolphins couldn’t afford to lose a game like this. Their season was hanging on the edge because of the losses they accumulated when Tagovailoa missed a month of play.
Miami now needs to win out and hope for a miracle or two if it wants to get into the postseason. GO DEEPER NFL QB stock report: Why hasn't C.J.
Stroud played like the phenom he was as a rookie? Scramble drill: What on earth happened in Bengals-Titans? There’s never been anything like Sunday’s Bengals-Titans game before, and we may never see anything like it again. In the moment, it felt like a fever dream . Tyjae Spears scored a touchdown as he stretched his arm over the goal line while two Bengals defenders suspended him mid-air.
Titans defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, all 340 pounds of him, recovered a strip sack and threw a stiff arm before rumbling for another 40 or so yards. Will Levis tossed another three picks, the last of which was a pick six that led to Levis being benched. Joe Burrow threw two INTs of his own, including one on Cincinnati’s first drive.
The Bengals also dropped a potential scoop-and-score touchdown at the goal line off a Pollard fumble. And that’s just the turnovers. This game was littered with yellow laundry all over the field — false starts, holdings, pass interferences.
This game being an all-time slopfest wasn’t just a feeling, either ...
Bengals-Titans was the first game in the Super Bowl era with at least 10 combined turnovers and 25 combined penalties — Dante Koplowitz-Fleming (@DanteKopFlem) December 15, 2024 Plus, according to TruMedia, it was also the first game with at least 10 combined turnovers since 2007. If all of that is still not enough to convince you of this game’s unique nature, perhaps this will: Sam Hubbard caught a touchdown pass. Yes, Bengals defensive end Sam Hubbard.
Not a pick six — an offensive touchdown, making Hubbard the first primarily defensive player this season to score on offense. Bengals-Titans was Mad Libs football. It was an implausible, reprehensible effort from both sides that somehow produced something beautiful and eccentric by the time the final whistle blew.
GO DEEPER NFL Power Rankings Week 16: Eagles, Bills the new 1-2, plus team MVPs Needle-mover: Bills RB Ty Johnson The Buffalo Bills’ offense has so many ways to win. The run game is as varied and dangerous as any in the league. Josh Allen can be a point guard, just the same as he can be Superman.
Though the receiving corps lacks a true star, it’s four or five deep with players who can take over a drive. This is a chameleon offense that can be whatever it needs to be in a given week. Advertisement As it turns out, that means it can even turn into the “Ty Johnson Show.
” Johnson splits time as the team’s No. 2 back with rookie Ray Davis, but the Bills prefer Johnson over Davis when it comes to passing downs. Johnson is a little slimmer and quicker, and he has better hands than a lot of other backs.
That skill set came in real handy Sunday against a depleted Lions linebacker group. Couldn't have picked a better game for Ty Johnson to be mic'd up for the first time in his career. 😈 @GEICO | #BUFvsDET pic.
twitter.com/e0IUUUpGNb — Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 18, 2024 The Bills did not waste any time getting Johnson activated. On Buffalo’s second play of the game, Allen found Johnson on a wheel route down the left sideline, just over linebacker Kwon Alexander’s outstretched arm.
Three plays later, Allen bailed to his right before Johnson worked himself open at the 8-yard line. Those two huge plays helped set up the first of the Bills’ six touchdowns on the day. Two drives later, Johnson again bailed out Allen on a scramble drill, this time to convert a much-needed fourth-and-2 right at midfield.
The Bills also freed up Johnson on another wheel route right out of the half to move into Lions territory. Johnson oscillated all game long between beautifully designed plays in structure and chaotic scramble-drill connections. He finished the day with five catches for 114 yards, 50 yards more than anyone else on the team and the most this season for any running back in a single game.
Johnson joined Breece Hall as the only backs to clear triple digits in receiving yards. I’m not sure this game means anything for Johnson’s future usage or production, but it does speak to the Bills’ seemingly endless bag of tricks. They continue to find new ways to take out the best teams in the league, all while having a “get out of jail free” card at quarterback.
That’s the right combination to keep this thing rolling deep into January. GO DEEPER NFL Week 15 best and worst coaching decisions: Bills' Joe Brady's great plan vs. Lions Stat check: Baker Mayfield’s season-high aDOT Going into Week 15, I thought the Chargers’ defense would have its way with the Buccaneers’ offense.
It’s not that the Buccaneers secretly have a bad offense or anything, but rather that the Chargers looked to be a tough matchup for them stylistically. The Chargers’ defense is as good as any at rallying and tackling on short throws and screens, while the Bucs’ offense has lived on quick gimme throws and screens to ease the burden off Mayfield. Advertisement To their credit, those types of plays weren’t what lost the Chargers this game.
They actually did well to limit yards after the catch and shut down all of Tampa Bay’s screens early. The problem is that I — and maybe the Chargers — thoroughly underestimated Tampa Bay’s ability to unleash the ball down the field. Mayfield’s average depth of target against the Chargers (9.
4 yards) was his highest mark of the season. The next closest mark for him (8.7) came against the Ravens, a game in which the Bucs trailed for a majority of the contest and had no choice but to chuck it.
Sunday, on the other hand, was one of the only times all year that the Bucs decided to take the top off the defense from the get-go. Mayfield beat the Chargers down the field in all kinds of ways, too. His first touchdown came on a wheel route to Jalen McMillan from a bunch set against man coverage — safety Ja’Sir Taylor got caught in the traffic and McMillan jogged down the left sideline completely uncontested.
Later in the game, Mayfield launched a post to Mike Evans to beat an inverted Cover 2 call, on which the outside cornerbacks were the two deep-half players in coverage. Deep post routes are the clearest weakness for that coverage, because there is no deep safety help, so the play just becomes a one-on-one sprint if the receiver takes it vertical. In that instance, Mayfield rightfully trusted Evans to win his opportunity.
MAKE THAT ✌️ FOR @MIKEEVANS13_ !!️ 📺: #TBvsLAC on FOX 🗳️: 1 RT = 1 #ProBowlVote + #WPMOYChallenge pic.twitter.com/I25D7m5W1b — Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) December 15, 2024 This game was a lesson that just because a team hasn’t done something for a majority of the season, doesn’t mean it can’t.
Mayfield can be an aggressive quarterback when necessary, Evans is as good a vertical receiver as there is in the league, and offensive coordinator Liam Coen’s game plans have been fantastic. All of that came together to allow the Bucs to play a different style than they have at any other point this season. (Top photo of Tua Tagovailoa: Tim Warner / Getty Images).
