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In contrast to last weekend, Week 13 of the NFL featured a number of close finishes, with eight of the fifteen games going down to the wire. Not only were there numerous thrilling matches but a number of the results also had major playoff implications.
The Panthers clinched the NFC South, the Green Bay Packers moved into the lead for the NFC North, the Jets moved into an AFC Wildcard slot, and the Patriots dropped from the provisional first seed in the AFC to the third seed.
The Patriots’ loss at home to the Eagles was definitely the biggest upset of the weekend. Yes, the Patriots were without Rob Gronkowski and others, but both Danny Amendola and Jamie Collins made their returns to the line-up. After last week’s overtime loss to the Broncos it seemed a fait accompli that the Pats would bounce back in a big way.
Add to this the Eagles’ terrible play in recent weeks, conceding over 40 points in two straight games, and no one gave Philadelphia even a glimmer of hope.
But the Eagles, despite all their flaws, are not as bad as those results suggest. They have struggled in recent weeks, on both offence and defence, but they were also boosted by the return of Sam Bradford from a shoulder injury and concussion suffered two weeks ago.
Bradford was good without being great. He controlled the football, and threw two touchdowns and zero intercepts, but he only threw for 120 yards and completed just 58 per cent of his passes.
The Eagles were incredibly lucky to win this game. They scored a touchdown on a punt return, a blocked punt and a 99-yard pick six, Tom Brady’s first ever red-zone pick six of his professional career. They also scored a touchdown in the ensuing drive after a bizarre drop-kick-onside kick attempt. But their defence did a good job pressuring Brady and forced two intercepts.
Despite the victory, plenty of concerns continue to surround the Eagles. There has been talk in recent weeks surrounding the job security of coach and general manager Chip Kelly. Some have suggested that GM Kelly deserves to be fired, while coach Kelly should keep his job – a sound line of thinking.
GM Kelly has made some very poor recruitment decisions, including signing Demarco Murray and trading for Sam Bradford. Consequentially, Coach Kelly has had very little talent to work with. The Kelly offence relies on using the read-option offence to set up deep play-action passes down the field. Murray is an ineffective runner in a shotgun offence and Bradford is one of the worst deep passers in the league.
The problem with that belief is that good coaches are able to adjust their schemes based on the players they have available. Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak attempted to implement his offensive scheme in the opening few weeks of the season, with Peyton Manning lining up behind centre, and the team heavily reliant on the run game. Manning has never enjoyed playing under centre and he struggled. Thus, Kubiak adjusted and introduced more pistol and shotgun formations – preferred alignments for Manning. When Manning went down injured, he adjusted the scheme again to suit Brock Osweiler. Osweiler started taking snaps from centre, and the reliance on the running game increased to take pressure off the young quarterback.
Kelly has failed to do this. His offence has become predictable; linebackers can edge up in the tackle box because they know Bradford won’t throw behind them. The offensive line is so poor, ranked 30th in run-blocking DVOA, that the team can’t get any production on the ground.
With a quarterback who can’t throw deep and no deep-threat wide receiver, a poor offensive line and a deficient running game, the Eagles’ offence has devolved into a short-passing offence. Bradford is ranked 25th in the league in yards per attempt, at just 6.86 yards per throw, and has become reliant on short crossing routes, out routes and screen passes.
Unfortunately for Kelly, there isn’t much else his offence can do. The Bradford experiment has failed miserably – he’s ranked 28th in total QBR, although he is ahead of Nick Foles, so I guess you could say the trade was a success.
One solution is for the Eagles to start taking more snaps under centre, with Murray lining up behind the quarterback like he did last year in Dallas. But last year he was playing behind the best offensive line in the competition, this year he is playing behind one of the worst.
GM Kelly has backed Coach Kelly into a corner, and Coach Kelly has struggled to get out of it. It’s not that his scheme doesn’t work, it does, it’s just that the scheme does not suit this team.
Despite this, the team is playing in such a bad division that they remain just half a game behind Washington, with the Redskins still to play Dallas in Monday night football. If Bradford can stay healthy and the defence returns to their level of play from the opening half of the season, the Eagles should win this division.
One of the few blowouts of this weekend was the Seattle Seahawks’ 38-7 victory of the Vikings in Minnesota. The result saw the Vikings fall behind the Packers in the chase for the NFC North, while the Seahawks set themselves up for one of the two NFC Wildcard positions.
After a so-so start to the season, the two-time defending NFC Champions have really hit their stride over the past month, winning five of their past six games, including impressive victories over Pittsburgh and Minnesota in their last two matches.
The team’s improvement can be tracked through their DVOA ratings, which have steadily risen throughout the season. From a low of 24th in Week 1 to a month-long plateau at rank nine, the team are now fifth.
After a slow start to the season, in which they looked mortal, the defence has slowly returned to their dominant best. Richard Sherman is returning to the form that saw him ranked the top cornerback in the game over the past two seasons. Last weekend against Pittsburgh he shut down Antonio Brown, relatively speaking anyway, and recorded his first pick of the season. This weekend he played a major role in restricting Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to just 118 yards.
The Seahawks’ defence did not give up a point – the only touchdown the Vikings scored was a 101-yard kickoff return. Bridgewater was under pressure for the entire match, with Seattle knocking him down 11 times in what quickly became a nightmare.
Bridgewater shared his nightmare with superstar running back Adrian Peterson, who was held to just 18 yards at 2.3 yards a carry, and was completely shut down by the Seattle defence. It was a suffocating performance by one of the best run defences in the competition, one that has been shutting down opposing running backs all season and is ranked third in the league, giving up just 87.8 yards a game.
Shutting down the opposition run game sets up the rest of the defence to stop the passing game. This is the Philadelphia conundrum in reverse; by shutting down one aspect of the opposition offence you can focus on the other aspects.
Despite their recent improvement, the defence has struggled compared to their usual high standards. The team has been saved on numerous occasions by quarterback Russell Wilson and the fourth most efficient offence.
Wilson has been phenomenal over the past month, throwing for over 1100 yards, 12 touchdowns and just one intercept in this time. He is making his reads quicker and more effectively than in previous years, has improved significantly when passing from the pocket, and no longer relies on his feet as much when in trouble.
With no Marshawn Lynch and a struggling defence, the pressure has fallen on Wilson to win his team football games, and over the past few weeks he has delivered in spades. If he can carry this team into the playoffs as the defence slowly improves, Seattle will be a very dangerous wildcard team.
If they can secure the five seed, I can’t see them having any trouble with whoever wins the NFC East in the first round of the playoffs. And given they led Carolina, Arizona and Green Bay in the fourth quarter of their regular season match-ups, it’s entirely feasible that they can beat two of those three teams in successive weeks in January.
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