Week 11 observations you can steal to impress your friends

Week 11 has come and gone, but what did we learn from this weekend of NFL action?

We’re nearly in the home stretch of this NFL season, but we’re still learning new things with every passing week. Lamar Jackson went from a guy who is “jUsT a rUnNiNg quArTerBaCk”  to an MVP frontrunner on a Super Bowl contender. New England was apparently exposed last week in primetime, but then remembered that it has the greatest coach in NFL history on the sideline. Minnesota might have unlocked the Kirk Cousins formula and the Rams might be about to turn their whole season around.

Simply put, we’re still not sure how this season will end. Even in all the unpredictability, not having quasi-nuanced take around the water cooler is an uncomfortable spot to be in. Never fear, though, as we have a grab bag of very correct observations you can give the ol’ five-finger discount and claim as your own.

Ravens should be your new favorite team

Lamar Jackson wasn’t born with enough middle fingers for the haters. He’s way too nice to get angsty about it like Aaron Rodgers, rather he just continues to put up stats that are hard to argue against.

That attitude represents the entire Ravens team, who have gone from simmer under the surface of the Super Bowl conversation to a rolling boil. The much-hyped showdown between Deshaun Watson and Jackson on Sunday was less a shootout and more a statement game by the Ravens that doubled as a massacre.

Watson is an MVP-caliber quarterback who many have argued is outplaying Lamar Jackson but not getting the same hype. He’s a better passer, has done more with a less talented team than Jackson has around him, and is the reason Houston is considered a Super Bowl contender. Not for nothing, but Watson also hadn’t been shutout in the first half of a game in either his college or pro career. Until Sunday, when Baltimore’s defense, entirely unfazed, tossed him and the Texans into an active volcano in what was nothing short of a ritualistic sacrifice to the football gods.

There’s also this stigma that Jackson isn’t a good passer and therefore the Ravens won’t win. Yet all Jackson and the Ravens have done this year is win, and the quality of those wins continues to be impressive. Baltimore has beaten the Seahawks and Patriots, almost beat the Chiefs, and haven’t lost since September. If your take is that Jackson is somehow going to cost the Ravens in a big game, you’re trying too hard.

https://twitter.com/Ravens/status/1196177929568444416

If the Ravens aren’t your favorite team right now, you need to start paying closer attention.

Myles Garrett’s helmet swing was not the worst thing that’s ever happened

Watching Myles Garrett swing his helmet and connect with the head of Mason Rudolph on Thursday night was one of, if not the, most shocking act of violence we’ve seen in the last decade of football.

It was not, however, the most appalling or even the worst thing we’ve seen.

No one is defending or excusing what Garrett did because it’s impossible to explain away his actions. Short of threatening his life, there was no reason for Garrett to use his helmet as a weapon against Rudolph. Garrett has only himself to blame for the pall this incident will leave over his career.

The reaction to the incident, however, also needs to be addressed. What Garrett did was offensive in that it violated an agreement by players engaging in the most violent sport in the world that the violence will remain controlled. Swinging your helmet at another person is not a football act.

Garrett clubbed Rudolph with his helmet, but the knee jerk reaction by the Twitter mob — always the most reasoned and measured group of people — would have led you to believe that he had decapitated him and hijacked the final moments of the game into the final moments of Seven. Rudolph wasn’t even particularly incapacitated by the helmet strike, which is notable

The glad-handing and coded adjectives used to describe Garrett was troubling, to say the least. Yes, what he did has no place in the NFL. No, the police did not need to be called — which in 2019 America is very coded phrasing. Yes, Myles Garrett should be suspended for the rest of the season and a precedent needs to be set. No, he should not be kicked out of the league. Yes, this will always be a part of Myles Garrett’s legacy. No, it’s not as bad as some of the headhunting that happens during the game.

It’s possible for two things to be true at once with something as complicated as this Garrett helmet swing. Just because you say what he did was wrong (so long as you do it carefully and with nuance) doesn’t mean you can’t also say the pearl-clutching was extremely over-the-top. This was one of the most shocking things in NFL history, but it’s by no means the most appalling or dangerous — and that’s not an uncomplicated thing to try and wrap our heads around.

49ers gave us an all-time worst bad beats

Everyone will be talking about the San Francisco 49ers coming back from 16-0 down to beat the Cardinals on Sunday. What you won’t hear about — or enough about — is how badly the Niners screwed bettors.

The line on the game was -10, which looked good right up until the final moments. Arizona, with time running out, needed a touchdown to overcome a 30-26 deficit. That would have held the line on the game (a score would have made the final score a three-point difference). The Cardinals failing to score would have held the line as well, and with literally no time left it looked like anyone who bet the line would be a winner.

And then one of the worst bad beats we’ve ever seen happened. San Francisco recovered a fumble and returned it for a touchdown. Because there was no time on the clock, the extra point wasn’t kicked and the final score was 36-26 — an even ten-point difference.

Westgate had the Niners at -9.5, which means that last-second touchdown covered the spread. Lest we forget anyone who was playing against the Niners defense in fantasy was subjected to one final blow before the game ended.

NFL should be ashamed of the Colin Kaepernick workout

You might have heard Colin Kaepernick had a workout for NFL teams on Saturday. You might have also heard it did not go well.

Howard Bryant did some digging on just exactly what happened, and what went wrong. While the NFL (and even Jay-Z) have come out hard against Kaepernick, painting a picture that many people already want to see of him, Bryant gives a different side of the story.

The cliff notes version of Bryant’s thread:

The entire workout felt like a sham from the start, and in the end, nothing was solved by it. Kaepernick is still out of the league, the NFL absolutely looks shady as hell, and everyone who had already drawn conclusions one way or another about the situation feel even more validated in that opinion. Just like the discourse around his peaceful protest during the anthem, the whole incident was one small step forward and one giant Ralph Wiggum-tumble down a hill.

Let’s Re-Draft our Mock Draft after the Tua injury

Before we even begin to think about how Tua Tagovailoa’s injury affects the NFL Draft, we need to remember that his NFL future is anecdotal to how the injury affects his life. The injury he suffered — a dislocated hip and posterior wall fracture, as well as a broken nose lost to boot — was immediately and correctly compared to the injury that ended Bo Jackson’s career.

Bo Jackson was one of the greatest athletes in human history, and this same exact injury ended his career before he could accomplish the great things he was destined for. Tua is somehow going to make a full recovery after successful surgery, but his NFL career remains secondary to everything else.

No matter how responsible we are in treating Tua’s injury with care, it has ramifications in the football world when it comes to his draft stock. Teams — most notably the Dolphins — have been “Tanking For Tua” since the summer, but now it’s unlikely that he’ll be the No. 1 pick he was projected to be. There’s also lost value in trading up in the draft since there’s no sure-fire prospect everyone will want (trading up for Chase Young isn’t worth the price and both Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow are not on Tua’s level even if the hype will probably make ignite the trade-up conversation around them)

Things can change, and Tua shooting back up draft boards wouldn’t be the first time a quarterback was considered out of the running for a top pick before then becoming exactly that (Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield both say hello). But since we live in the moment — for better or worse — here’s what Tua’s injury seemingly does to the top of the draft board.

1. Bengals – Joe Burrow, QB/LSU
2. Redskins – Andrew Thomas, LT/Georgia
3. Giants – Chase Young, Edge/Ohio State
4. Dolphins – Jeff Okudah, CB/Ohio State
5. Jets – Jerry Jeudy, WR/Alabama
6. Buccaneers – Grant Delpit, S/LSU
7. Broncos – Justin Herbert, QB/Oregon
8. Falcons – Derrick Brown, DE/Auburn
9. Cardinals – CeeDee Lamb, WR/Oklahoma
10. Lions – A.J. Epenesa, DE/Iowa

As for where Tua goes, imagine a world where the Steelers — laughed at for trading their first-round pick this year — trade back into the end of the first or top of the second-round to draft Tua as Ben Roethlisherber’s replacement. Big Ben isn’t going to retire for a couple of years which puts Tua in the perfect situation where he doesn’t need to start right away and is in one of the best environments in football.