This is the Hot Read. In this column, you’ll find everything and anything I found interesting from the NFL Week 9 Sunday action. There’s the stuff that everyone’s talking about, and the stuff that nobody’s talking about; the stuff that makes football incredible, and the stuff that makes football fun. I hope you enjoy it and learn something cool—and if you do, I hope you’re back next week, when we do it all again.
The Big Thing: See You in Las Vegas, Eagles Fans
A lot happened this past NFL Sunday. If there’s one thing you need to know, it’s this.
Entering the season, the AFC was a mess, but the NFC was pretty cut and dried. It was a three-horse race: the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles, the always-contending San Francisco 49ers, and the very talented but oft-mismanaged Dallas Cowboys.
Well, we’re at the halfway point of the season, and there is but one horse: the Philadelphia Eagles.
With a nail-biter of a win against the Cowboys on Sunday, the Eagles remain the only one-loss team in football. In the conference, only the Lions have two losses—they are a game and a half back from the Eagles. The Niners are 2.5 games back. The Cowboys are also 2.5 games back and are now behind in the divisional tiebreaker.
The Eagles are running away with this thing.
There are still ways the Eagles could lose it, of course. This is the NFL; anything can happen. The Eagles have a nightmare of a schedule after their Week 10 bye: at Kansas City, home against Buffalo and San Francisco, at Dallas, at Seattle. But Jalen Hurts is now 10-0 in the past two regular seasons against teams with a winning record; including the postseason, he is 24-3 in his past 27 starts. Wins are not a quarterback stat; they are a team stat. But when the Eagles have their star quarterback and enough of the surrounding talent on this Death Star of a roster Howie Roseman has built, they just win and win and win some more. What reason should we have to believe they’d stop?
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They’ve won with the passing game, as they did against the Commanders last week—Hurts threw for over 300 yards and four touchdowns. They’ve won with the running game, as they did when they got consecutive 130-plus-yard games from D’Andre Swift against the Vikings and Buccaneers in September. They’ve won with suffocating defense, as they did against the Dolphins on Sunday Night Football two weeks ago. They’ve done it coming from behind—Hurts has won his past six games in which Philadelphia has trailed by double digits. They’ve controlled games when they’ve been ahead—the Eagles have almost twice as many drives of at least seven minutes (nine) as the next-closest teams (five).
And against the Cowboys on Sunday, they won with some luck. Dallas missed a fourth-down touchdown by the hair on my chinny chin chin (very meager hair) and missed a two-point conversion by the length of Dak Prescott’s pinky toe. A Swift fumble late in the fourth quarter was in and out of Micah Parsons’s paws. The Cowboys had first-and-5 from the 6-yard line and couldn’t punch it in late in the fourth quarter. There are a lot of ways the Eagles could have lost this game and made the NFC East a tight race.
But it isn’t. Because the Eagles keep winning and winning and winning.
Stop and think about it for a second, and it’s actually pretty wild. Nick Sirianni is not an experienced head coach; he never held the role at any of his previous stops and has been in the NFL for only 14 years. Hurts was a second-round draft pick and is just 25 years old. That head coach–quarterback infrastructure should not be so clutch, so poised, so reliably dominant. They should make procedural errors. They should turtle up after so many fourth-down conversions and eventually make a suboptimal call. Hurts should wilt in a bright spotlight at least once. Those are just the rules of football—you make mistakes, you learn from them, and you get better at handling all those tricky things that even the best occasionally stumble over.
Not these Eagles. Hurts remains unflappable; Sirianni remains aggressive. Their stars never take a week off: A.J. Brown, Jason Kelce, Lane Johnson, Haason Reddick, Josh Sweat. In a messy NFC and even messier NFL, there is one thing you can set your watch to, and it’s that the Eagles will produce a winning performance. Somehow, some way.
Is there anything to learn from this near loss to the Cowboys? Not really. The Eagles scored a touchdown on four of their first six drives to start the game before entering eat-the-clock mode. What about their actual loss to the Jets earlier this season? If you want to beat Philadelphia, you’ve just got to win the turnover differential 4-0. Teams can pass on this secondary, given its injuries and talent deficiencies, but everyone has known that all season, and the Eagles are still 8-1.
The upcoming slate is brutal. The playoffs are never easy. But I can’t imagine doubting these Eagles anytime soon. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the eating has sure been good in Philadelphia.
The Little Things
It’s the little things in football that matter the most—zany plays, small victories, and some laughs. Here’s where you can find them.
1. THE NUMBER of drives against the Ravens that ended in touchdowns
Nine. The Ravens have played nine games, and they’ve given up nine touchdown drives.
That’s a ludicrous number. The Ravens on Sunday held a top-five Seattle offense to three points just two weeks after holding the Lions, another top-five offense, to six points. With a touchdown surrendered on only 8.6 percent of their drives, the Ravens are on pace for the second-best defensive season in the TruMedia database.
Who’s first, you ask?
The 2000 Ravens. Ever heard of ’em?
That defense was coached by Marvin Lewis. Future head coaches Rex Ryan, Jack Del Rio, and Mike Smith were on the staff. It would end up a legendary group, headlined by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis. This Ravens defense? Coached by second-year defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald—the youngest coordinator in franchise history and the second-youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. This defense, which is unquestionably the best leaguewide right now, is achieving these ridiculous numbers with Kyle Van Noy, Jadeveon Clowney, Brandon Stephens, and Arthur Maulet at key positions.
If I had a head coach opening this offseason and first pick at making a hire, I would take Macdonald without blinking. He’s got the goods.
2. THE RESILIENCE of Joshua Dobbs
The story of the NFL season might be Dobbs. (I know it isn’t; it’s the Eagles or Lamar Jackson or something. Just let me nerd out for a second.)
This time last season, Dobbs was on the Cleveland Browns. They waived him when Deshaun Watson came back from his suspension, and Dobbs signed to the Lions practice squad. He then joined the Titans’ active roster and started the final two weeks of the season for Tennessee. He entered the league in 2017, and those were his first career starts.
This offseason, Dobbs signed back with the Browns, to back up Watson. But then rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson looked great in the preseason, so, in late August, the Browns shipped Dobbs to Arizona, where Dobbs started eight games for the injured Kyler Murray. And he was actually pretty solid! But Murray is coming back, and the trade deadline was coming up, and Kirk Cousins got hurt, so, whoop, Dobbs was traded to the Vikings this past Tuesday.
Six stints with five teams in 12 months, all leading to this moment. When Dobbs took his first snaps from center Garrett Bradbury … it was on the sideline, during Sunday’s game against the Falcons … because he had to go in after rookie Jaren Hall was injured.
Dobbs didn’t take a single rep with the starters before the live snaps on Sunday. The offensive line had never heard his cadence. (That’s what’s happening here, on the sideline: The line is learning how Dobbs will signal the snap of the football.)
This is absurd! Dobbs said after the game that head coach Kevin O’Connell was basically explaining to Dobbs, via the helmet headset, how plays would work as Dobbs called them in the huddle. Dobbs was walking up to the line being told, “So that means you’ll have these routes over there and those routes over here, essentially.”
It’s worth remembering at this time that, while football isn’t rocket science, Dobbs is an actual rocket scientist. This is one of the smartest quarterbacks at work, buttressed by a play caller in O’Connell who continues to impress me with his ability to work around whatever obstacles are in his way. The Vikings should not have been able to score a point—not a single point!—with an offense missing Justin Jefferson, Christian Darrisaw, and Cousins. Those are their three best players, and the replacement at quarterback had literally not played in the offense before.
What an astonishing performance. This is more impressive to me than how the Dolphins dropped 70 on the Broncos. (OK, I know, it’s not; I’m just really fired up right now.) Dobbs is a testament to what sticking in the league and grinding out the bottom of rosters can lead to, and I will be rooting for him every single game from here on out.
3. THE (re)PLACE(ment) KICKER
(Did the editors really leave that in for me? That’s wild. One of the worst jokes I’ve ever made.)
Texans running back Dare Ogunbowale, previously most famously known for being Arike Ogunbowale’s older brother, is now most famously known for hitting a field goal.
Non-kicker field goals are a rare sight. This is the first one since 2004, when Wes Welker did it. Clean operation, too—you wouldn’t know that was a running back unless I told you. Kudos to the Texans coaching staff for letting Ogunbowale attempt a kick late in the fourth quarter of a tie game. If only the Buccaneers hadn’t scored late and this had been the game-winning play.
The Zag: C.J. Stroud Is the Best Rookie Quarterback We’ve Seen in a Decade
I tend to be a little contrarian. It’s not so much a personal choice as it is an occupational hazard. Here’s where I’ll plant my flag.
This week, Stroud set the single-game record for passing yards from a rookie quarterback. He threw for 470 yards in Houston’s 39-37 win against the Buccaneers. (And five touchdowns.)
Stroud, at 22 years and 33 days old, is now the youngest player with a 450-yard, five-touchdown game since 1950. Previously, the youngest was Patrick Mahomes.
Stroud is unlike any rookie quarterback I can remember. Rookies aren’t supposed to look like this. Rookies are supposed to make a cool play, then a terrible one. Rookie seasons are supposed to be about process, not results; growth, not final products. Patience is required for rookie quarterbacks. Understanding. A willingness to accept mistakes.
Stroud doesn’t make mistakes. Every other quarterback with at least 200 pass attempts has thrown at least three picks. Stroud has thrown one. And I just double-checked: He’s still a rookie.
There are two ways for a quarterback to throw only one interception in the first half of the season and also set rookie passing records. He can do it by playing shamefully cautious football. Dump everything off. Eat sacks instead of trying to throw downfield. The coaching staff will dial up nothing but screens, quick game throws, and the occasional deep bomb to the sideline, where no scary safeties or sinking linebackers reside. If the rest of your squad is just absurdly good, you can point and shoot your way to production. Think 2022 Brock Purdy.
What Stroud is doing is not that. This is the opposite of that. Stroud’s receivers and offensive line and offensive coordinator aren’t carrying him. He is carrying the offense. He got career days out of both tight end Dalton Schultz and receiver Noah Brown on Sunday. He’s played behind more backups than he has starters along the offensive line throughout this season. Stroud is one of the most aggressive, poised, and accurate quarterbacks we have right now, and I promise, I just Googled it again: He’s still a rookie.
Some of Stroud’s best work comes on under-center, play-action dropbacks—the classics of the Shanahan offense. But Stroud pushes those play-action attempts farther downfield than the other Shanahanites. On play-action dropbacks, Stroud ranks behind only Ryan Tannehill in air yards per attempt; only Tannehill, Matthew Stafford, and Jared Goff have more explosive plays off play-action than Stroud does. Spamming play-action is a great way to put water wings on your young quarterback—but these are not your typical kiddie-pool concepts. This is tough stuff.
You know when you can’t live off play-action? When you’re down by four and there are 46 seconds left on the clock in the fourth quarter. In that scenario, you just have to drop back and play. And that’s what Stroud did against the Bucs, working the middle of the field until Houston ran out of timeouts, with the ball on the 41-yard line with only 16 seconds left on the clock. Then, he hit this throw:
This is the exact throw the defense wants to take from you in this scenario. They want to force you to the sideline. For Stroud to see that it will be open, throw it despite the sinking corner, and put it directly in place, with pressure in his lap, is the good stuff. It’s the throw that makes the game-winning touchdown possible.
And that was a pretty throw, too:
When you contextualize Stroud’s season with rookie quarterback years in recent history, he looks like a star. He’s seventh in expected points added per dropback among all rookies with at least 200 pass attempts since 2000—Dak Prescott, Robert Griffin III, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson, Deshaun Watson, Justin Herbert, Cam Newton, and Jameis Winston are the rest of the top 10. The only rookie quarterbacks with a higher explosive play rate than what we’re seeing from Stroud were Watson and Roethlisberger (and Matt McGloin, which feels so random that I’m willing to dismiss it entirely and pretend it never happened).
But again: Stroud’s production, as incredible as it is for a rookie, is not what impresses me about his season. Rather, it’s the nature of it. Not what he’s doing, but how he is doing it. Stroud does not have the 2016 Cowboys’ offensive talent, as Dak did, or the element of surprise with option football that Newton and RGIII enjoyed. Stroud’s rookie season reminds me more of Andrew Luck’s or Justin Herbert’s—he is in total command, is playing like a 10-year vet, and is the most talented player on his offense immediately. I have never been this impressed with a rookie quarterback in my time covering the sport. When all is said and done, we may be looking at the best rookie quarterback season since … RGIII? Cam?
Now, here’s the real kicker: Herbert is off his rookie deal. So are Joe Burrow and Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson. The greatest advantage a team can enjoy in football is an impactful quarterback on a rookie contract, and right now, the Texans might have the most impactful one: four years and $36 million of C.J. Stroud football.
Get used to days like Sunday, football fans. This guy is the next big thing.
(Mostly Real) Awards
I’ll hand out some awards. Most of them will be real. Some of them won’t be.
Usually, I keep these awards focused on the week. But we’re at the halfway point of the season (kinda; odd numbers are hard). So I’m widening the scope and checking in on the awards I’d give for the full season, if it ended today.
Most Valuable Player of the (Half) Year: Ravens QB Lamar Jackson
I’ve already made the case for Lamar as the MVP in this column. Nothing about the Ravens’ 37-3 win over the Seahawks, if you can believe it, has changed my mind.
Offensive Player of the (Half) Year: Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill
Tyreek Hill pace update: Since 1966, only one player has had more receiving yards through nine weeks than 2023 Tyreek Hill (1,076 yards)—that’s 2022 Tyreek Hill, who had 1,104 yards. Hill ended last season with 1,710 receiving yards—11th all time. Even after a fairly pedestrian performance on Sunday, with just 62 yards against the Chiefs in Germany, he’s still on pace for over 2,000 receiving yards this season, and assuming he gets there—I think he will—he’s a shoo-in for the award.
If I were submitting an MVP ballot tomorrow, Hill would be third behind Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes.
Defensive Player of the (Half) Year: Browns DE Myles Garrett
The Browns defense shredded another offense on Sunday (though calling the Clayton Tune–led Arizona Cardinals an “offense” is defining the term rather charitably), and Garrett is the driving force of the unit. No edge rusher regularly receives more attention from opposing offenses, consistently generates as much pressure, or instills as much fear. As Aaron Donald’s career enters its twilight, the mantle of defensive game wrecker has been passed on to Garrett.
Offensive Rookie of the (Half) Year: Texans QB C.J. Stroud
See above. (Sorry Puka Nacua, still love you.)
Defensive Rookie of the (Half) Year: Eagles DT Jalen Carter
A lot of defensive rookies are playing great ball this season. Seattle’s Devon Witherspoon is a true playmaker at cornerback with elite-level tackling, which is a rare thing to find. Houston’s Will Anderson Jr. looks the way top-five picks at pass rusher are supposed to look.
But Carter looks like a bona fide star. Carter has recorded a pressure on 15 percent of his rushes, which is top-25 leaguewide and a top-three mark for interior rushers, behind only Dexter Lawrence and Devonte Wyatt. Halfway through the season, Carter has four sacks—if he reaches eight this season, he’ll be one of only 14 rookie defensive tackles to do so; only Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh have hit that number in the past 20 years.
Coach of the (Half) Year: Steelers HC Mike Tomlin
Do you know Tomlin has never won Coach of the Year? Perhaps that’s a good thing—recent winners include Brian Daboll, Kevin Stefanski, Matt Nagy, and Jason Garrett. But it feels eminently wrong. The only thing the Steelers have going for them lately is that they’re well coached.
They aren’t good at scoring more points than the other guys—they have a point differential of minus-30, ninth worst in the league. They aren’t good at getting yards, either. The Steelers are the 34th team in NFL history to be outgained in each of their first eight games, but they are the only one of those 34 teams to start the year with a winning record: The Steelers are 5-3.
Tomlin’s Steelers have historically been so good in so many close games that, at this point, the sample size is inarguable. Per TruMedia, Tomlin is 94-59-2 in one-score games in his career; in the past seven seasons, he’s 47-21-2. In games that are typically coin flips for most coaches, Tomlin is winning 70 percent of the time.
I don’t know whether the Steelers will finish this season with a winning record and a playoff berth (the Steelers, Bengals, and Browns are currently all 5-3, and if the season ended today, each would qualify for the AFC playoffs). But man, if they do, this award must be Tomlin’s.
Coach of the Week: Raiders interim HC Antonio Pierce
This column has long examined and enjoyed the content that emerged from the travesty that was the Josh McDaniels Raiders. Every week, McDaniels gave me some late-game mismanagement or baffling offensive approach to whine about, and for that, I thank him.
But it sure was cool to see the Raiders actually want to play football on Sunday. They opened the week with a mini basketball hoop in the locker room and closed it with victory cigars, celebrating what was functionally their Super Bowl: casting off the yoke of McDaniels.
Pierce’s Raiders didn’t do anything special in their 30-6 win over the Giants: They ground out tough yards with Josh Jacobs, riding his talent to easy third downs; they spread the football around in the passing game; they played fast and physical on defense. But they felt like a runaway train on Sunday, an unstoppable force, simply because the vibes were finally good. Football is back in Las Vegas, and even if the Raiders ultimately are bad, at least they’re enjoying the game again.
Next Ben Stats
What it sounds like: Next Gen Stats, but I get to make them up.
$69,315,000: The amount of dead dollars on Daniel Jones’s contract next season
Just in case anyone was curious.
3x: That’s how many more interceptions Bryce Young threw Sunday than C.J. Stroud has thrown all season
I know Panthers fans have a lot of hope for Bryce Young. His environment has been bad—poor pass protection, poor pass catchers, and already two play callers in a nine-week career. You can envision a future in which Young’s career eventually settles into a nice place.
But it has to sting in the worst way to watch Stroud set NFL rookie records while Young continues to prove he’s not NFL ready—not by a long shot. Young threw three picks, including two pick-sixes, in a loss to the Colts on Sunday and has seven interceptions in seven games. The environmental stressors are challenging, but if you dropped Stroud in this Carolina offense, it would be remarkably better—and if you dropped Young in Houston’s, I’m not sure he could do a fraction of what Stroud is doing right now. The difference between the first and second picks in the 2023 NFL draft is massive.
1: That’s how many seasons Patrick Mahomes has played in his career with an above-average defense. It’s this season.
The best year of Kansas City defense in the Mahomes era, before this year, was 2022. The Chiefs defense ranked 18th in EPA per drive and was 14th in success rate. It was an average defense—and barely so.
This year? Third in EPA per drive, eighth in success rate. In Germany on Sunday against Miami, the Chiefs held Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to minus-0.25 EPA per dropback, which is his worst mark of the season and second worst of his career under head coach Mike McDaniel. The Dolphins offense is a gnarly one to stop, and they didn’t score until the end of the third quarter and made just three of 12 third-down conversions.
The Chiefs offense may not be what it usually is under Mahomes, but it’s still one of the better offenses. Accordingly, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that offense is a weakness—but it’s only relative. It’s a strong unit, and it’ll continue to improve as the season progresses.
The defense? No improvement needed. This is a bona fide group, coordinated by one of the most veteran and reliable defensive coaches in the league: Steve Spagnuolo. Another heap of credit goes to general manager Brett Veach, who—while struggling to solve his team’s wide receiver position, yes—has quietly hit on a bunch of defensive acquisitions. Leo Chenal, George Karlaftis, Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson, Mike Edwards, and Charles Omenihu have all played key defensive roles this season; each was acquired in the past two offseasons. The Chiefs are now one of only four teams (along with the Cowboys, 49ers, and Ravens) with a top-10 offense and defense by EPA per drive. This is still a Super Bowl–caliber team.
Plus-80: That’s the Bills’ point margin
It’s the second-best mark in the league.
Minus-1,000,000,000: That’s what the Bills’ point margin feels like
I don’t know what to do with the Bills after their 24-18 loss to the Bengals on Sunday night. The eye test tells me that Josh Allen is playing exceptional ball, that they’ve solved many of the offensive issues that have plagued them in seasons past (the offensive line has improved; alternative pass catchers to Stefon Diggs are available), and that they can still score with anyone.
And the numbers tell me I’m right. The Bills lead the league in EPA per drive on offense; they’re second in success rate. Allen is having a season different from the one he had last year—he’s throwing a little shallower, scrambling a little less, completing way more passes—but he is still both explosive and efficient. This offense should strike the fear of God into the hearts of opposing defenses.
Does it? I don’t know. I do know that the defense is too banged up to get the stops the Bills need, and they’re 5-4 accordingly. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Josh Allen don the Superman cape down the back half of the season and start playing some really aggressive football: downfield shots, long scrambles, reckless play. You remember? The sorta stuff that lost them the Jets game back in Week 1.
The signs are on the horizon: The Bills feel close to unraveling.