Joe Flacco flops, Lamar Jackson solidifies his MVP case, more Week 9 thoughts: Quick Outs
After a Week 8 slate that was a rush from start to finish, Week 9 felt like a natural comedown.
Thankfully, a slow week in the heart of the NFL season still comes with plenty to talk about. On one end, I've got a bone to pick with the Indianapolis Colts' quarterback situation and the stale nature of the Seattle Seahawks' offense. On the other end, Lamar Jackson is cruising to his third MVP award and Saquon Barkley is carrying the Eagles' offense back to the top at light speed.
QB charting: Joe Flacco
Benching Anthony Richardson was supposed to fix a turbulent Indianapolis Colts offense. Not only was Richardson the least accurate passer in the league, but his game was filled with the mental and procedural errors one might expect from someone with less than a full season of NFL starts under his belt. On its face, one could understand why putting a veteran Flacco in Richardson's place might fix some things.
The reality is that the Colts' offense was just a different kind of bad on Sunday night against the Minnesota Vikings .
Flacco attempted a single pass beyond 20 yards in this game. That lone deep shot was a 22-yard out-breaker to AD Mitchell on second-and-30. Yes, second-and-30. The rest of the offense was a full-on assault over the middle of the field, largely to the intermediate area — not an ideal approach for an offense that had relied on explosive plays all season long.
Granted, that might have been fine were Flacco making veteran-like decisions with good ball placement, but that wasn't quite the case. Though a couple drops hurt Flacco's completion percentage, he still wasn't very clean in his operation of the offense. Flacco regularly missed throws and/or put the ball in danger.
Flacco escaped with just one interception but should have had at least one more. With 14:21 left in the second quarter, Flacco fired a dig route over the middle directly at safety Camryn Bynum , who just couldn't make the catch. That's the exact kind of mistake Richardson made at least once a game this season.
Flacco also had bizarre misses of his own — Richardson-esque misses, if you will. The most egregious one came in the fourth quarter on a shallow crosser to Michael Pittman Jr. on third down. Flacco slid up and to the right in the pocket for no good reason, only to make a hurried throw back the other way. The ball hit the turf two yards in front of his target.
In fairness to Flacco, he wasn't too shabby against the blitz, finishing 6-of-9 against extra pass rushers. That was a nice boon for the offense, given all of Richardson's issues versus the blitz this season.
I'm just not convinced Flacco adds more to the Colts' offense than he takes away, on aggregate. Flacco is probably better against the blitz and slightly more accurate underneath, but that's it, and that's traded out for Richardson's rushing threat and sack escapability. Richardson also can at least pretend to be a problem outside of the pocket; Flacco may as well nail his feet to the ground behind the center.
None of this is to say Richardson is secretly good, to be clear. It's more that Flacco probably doesn't fix enough to warrant scrapping the Richardson project, considering the younger QB's talent. Sunday night's game against the Vikings made that fairly clear.
; why did Giants stay put?Let's talk about it: Lamar Jackson is winning the MVP award again
Jackson was a near-unanimous MVP last season, yet some still claimed it was relatively undeserved. It was a weaker MVP pool than usual (which is completely fair), and Jackson's team success was buoyed by the defense as much as it was the QB himself (also fair). Jackson was exceptional last year, of course, but arguments for someone like Josh Allen , who truly carried the entire burden for his team, made perfect sense.
Things are different in 2024. Jackson is once again in the MVP race, and there's nothing to dispute. The Baltimore defense is worse than it's ever been in the Jackson era, and Jackson himself is playing some of the best ball we've seen.
I don't say that lightly. Jackson is averaging 0.35 EPA per dropback this season, comfortably the best mark in the league and one of the best marks in more than a decade.
According to TruMedia, there have been only four seasons since 2011 with a better EPA-per-dropback mark than Jackson's current rate: Tom Brady in 2016 (only played four games due to suspension for "Deflategate"), Aaron Rodgers in 2011, Patrick Mahomes in 2018, and Peyton Manning in 2013. The only player in that group to not win MVP was Brady, who eventually beat that season's MVP, Matt Ryan , in the Super Bowl.
That's the kind of season Jackson is having. It's not like last season, when film heads and analysts swore up and down that Jackson was better than the numbers suggested and deserving of the award for his "gravity" on the field. The numbers are there to back Jackson up this time around. At least through nine weeks, he has been every bit as productive as an MVP frontrunner ought to be.
There's no reason to expect things to slow down, either. Jackson has taken clear command of the offense in Year 2 under Todd Monken. Running back Derrick Henry has given the offense a new element and forced defenses to play with more loaded boxes. Second-year receiver Zay Flowers only continues to blossom as a young player. And if that weren't enough, Baltimore doubled down on its offense before the trade deadline by acquiring wide receiver Diontae Johnson .
Baltimore's offense can be whatever it wants to be, and Jackson's maturity and unique talents are at the center of that. We are witnessing something truly special — and I will keep reminding everyone about it until the year is over.
-hot LionsStat check: Saquon Barkley 's miles per hour
Barkley's backwards hurdle was the most ridiculous feat of athleticism we've seen all season. The audacity to even try something like that, let alone the talent to pull it off, is one-of-one type stuff. There's just nobody else who can do that.
That outrageous hurdle was only the tip of the iceberg for what Barkley did on Sunday, though. He was a menace all game long, just as he has been all season long. If Henry weren't on an historic pace in Baltimore, Barkley's play this season would be getting even more pub.
Aside from the obvious highlight, Barkley stood out in this game for his ability to hit top gear. NFL Pro registered Barkley with 10 separate runs on which he hit at least 15 MPH. Through nine weeks, there have been only two other instances of a player hitting that speed at least 10 times in a game: Jackson in Week 1 and Aaron Jones in Week 4.
Barkley also cleared 20 MPH on one of those runs, bringing his total on the season to four such runs. (Henry, of course, is the only other player with four 20-plus MPH carries.)
Dating back to his days with the New York Giants , Barkley has been one of the scariest runners in the league when he's got a clear runway. He's getting them now more than ever in Philadelphia. If anything, those opportunities have only gotten more frequent over the past few weeks, as the Eagles have started to hone in on what they're good at (hint: the same things they were good at in 2022).
There was little doubt that DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown would generate explosive passes for the Eagles this season. Now, they've got Barkley to give them explosives on the ground, as well. The skill talent in Philadelphia was already overwhelming, and Barkley continues to prove he was the final piece they needed to put this thing over the top.
? Can Carson Beck regroup?Scramble Drill: The Seahawks Can't Keep Living Like This
I'm tired of the Seattle Seahawks' offense. All of my greatest fears with the Ryan Grubb offense have been realized, and I can't keep watching them play the way they're trying to play.
When the Seahawks hired Grubb away from the Washington Huskies this offseason, the thinking was that he could generate an explosive passing offense with an aggressive quarterback, Geno Smith , the same way he did with Michael Penix Jr.
It's easy to see Smith as a more mature, complete version of what Penix was at Washington, and Seattle's receiving corps should have been good enough to match the stars the Huskies had at that position.Here's the problem: Washington also had the best offensive line in college football. Both of its tackles were drafted in the first two rounds. There was no issue being a shotgun, dropback team that heaved the ball down the field all the time, because the Huskies had the five guys up front to always block it up.
The Seahawks do not. Through nine weeks, the Seahawks have allowed the NFL's eighth-highest pressure rate (38.1 percent) and the third-fastest time to pressure (2.51 seconds), according to NFL Pro. Anecdotally, it's not a coaching issue, either. The Seahawks don't allow free runners or miss assignments the way a lot of bad offensive lines do. Everyone, save for left tackle Charles Cross , just loses their one-on-ones. That's it.
And yet, the Seahawks insist on being a gun, dropback team. Their 80.4 percent shotgun rate is the fourth highest in the league, per TruMedia. They have dropped back 272 times from shotgun formations without play action or screens, the most in the NFL this season. (The NFL average is 203.)
Now, some of this is a byproduct of Seattle's woes on the ground — the Seahawks are worse than they were a year ago. According to NFL Pro, they rank 28th in rushing success rate (36.8 percent) and hold the fifth-highest stuff rate (19.9 percent) in the league.
To me, that's as much of an issue with offensive line personnel as it is an offense being severely limited in its run concepts by playing almost exclusively as a shotgun team without a running quarterback. The Seahawks hamstring themselves from both a numbers and schematic standpoint, and they just don't have the horses up front to make up for it.
The Seahawks' offense is too one-dimensional right now. All it has is dropback passing game out of shotgun. Smith is a good enough quarterback to keep things afloat with the help of a couple explosive plays from DK Metcalf and Kenneth Walker III from time to time, but this is not a healthy way to run an offense. Something has to change if the Seahawks want to find their way through a rugged NFC West.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; top photo of Joe Flacco: Stephen Maturen / )
