FMIA Week 7: Hurts and Philly push forward; Jackson and Ravens look lethal

Tyson Bagent, ladies and gentlemen. Your winning Chicago Bears quarterback.

Bagent, of Shepherd University, threw for five TDs to beat Bloomsburg before 5,274 fans in Shepherdstown, W. Va., a year ago this week. He beat the Raiders before 62,199 Sunday at the old cathedral of football on Lake Michigan, Soldier Field.

Lamar Jackson has a fan, a big one, in LeBron James, who social mediaed during Baltimore’s rout: “Man, Lamar is so damn good!!! Wow!!” That’s sort of what I was thinking as Jackson built a 35-0 lead in thrashing the Lions.

Myles Garrett, you’ve never played a more impactful football game. High-hurdling the Indy field-goal team was pretty insane.

Uncatchable ball. Lord, was the Shawn Smith officiating crew in Indianapolis Sunday, absent the day that pretty basic officiating rule was taught? Big, big miss, and it killed the Colts.

Josh Harris: Are you going to school yet on all the rules about coaching searches?

Tua to Tyreek. There is no more beautiful play in football than a deep, high-arcing Tagovailoa throw to the Cheetah.

Artificial Intelligence comes to the NFL. It’s here. You can see it Thursday nights on Amazon.

Tel Aviv folks, indoctrinated in our football, are playing big roles in Amazon’s AI usage. As is Andrew Luck’s former center at Stanford.

Roger Goodell signs again, and maybe not for the last time. “Everyone presumes this is not going to be his last contract,” said one club wise guy.

Patrick Mahomes, as we all know, is not human, and he proved it again at Arrowhead.

For Bill Belichick, the climb to 300 seemed excruciating. But he got there. Now for the final ascent, to summit Mount Shula.

The Bills in the last three weeks: 1-2 … Foes 63, Bills 59. “Feels pretty bleak right now,” Josh Allen said after losing to the Pats. “We’re gonna figure it out.” Hurry. You’re playing Tampa Bay Thursday night.

Alice in Chains makes its FMIA debut.

Michael Bublé too. I don’t have a lot of confidence in Bublé’s fantasy-football drafting skills. But I do like the name of the British Columbia native’s fantasy team, the Vancouver Cannots.

Dustin Hoffman is the final first-timer in FMIA. How he helped me break a fairly big story back in the day.

Justin Herbert has not found a better life under Kellen Moore, the way the Chargers thought he would. Maybe if he had some time, things would be different.

Taylor Swift! Now that I’ve got your attention, there’s actually a little Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce nugget down in 10 Things.

On with the show.

A couple of overriding things about the Sunday night game:

• Miami’s a good team—we all know that. But there is this reality for the 5-2 Dolphins: They’re 5-0 against teams with a combined 8-25 record, and 0-2 against the 10-4 Bills and Eagles. Buffalo and Philadelphia, combined, have beaten Miami by 42 points. Is Miami a nice Wild Card playoff loser, making progress with miles to go before they sleep? It’s time for the real Dolphins to stand up. They play Kansas City in Germany in 13 days.
  
• The Eagles needed this game after an ugly loss to the Jets. Jalen Hurts still seems creaky, like he’s protecting a leg injury. But he got major help from his defense, which held the Dolphins to 12 first downs and a puny 244 yards. You never felt like Philadelphia wasn’t going to find a way to win this game, even after a tipped pick-six allowed the Dolphins to tie the game at 17.

It’s interesting that Philadelphia’s most consistent offensive weapon right now is the quarterback sneak. Can anyone argue with that? I can’t—not after going four-for-four on it Sunday night. Now 55 of 61 in less than two seasons, it’s easy to understand why Sirianni changed his mind on going for it with 10 minutes left and a seven-point lead in his own territory.

I’ve wondered for a while about the effect of the sneak on the players. Jason Kelce riffed about it, getting to how it actually feels to be in the middle of the mayhem.

“You’ve got to get very low and have great leverage to have a chance for it to work,” he said. “Miami was doing a really good job of fighting the leverage, but I mean, that’s only one component. For us, if you keep your feet moving and you keep pushing, that’s how to succeed. Plus, every time you run it, it gets harder and harder to defend, because it takes so much energy and effort for the defense to muster up to stop it.

“It’s a grueling play. It’s hard to describe because it’s not a high-impact play. You know you’re so close to guys. When you think of big hits, and hits that like, you know, really rattle guys, you think about receivers over the middle, guys just getting blindsided. Typically, when you’re right up against somebody, you don’t have time to build up momentum. There’s a hit but then it’s a continuous like effort to push and grind and it takes a lot out of you. It’s a very draining play. At times, people are lying on top of you. It takes forever to get them off of you and get up. It’s not what I’d call fun. It’s a very grinding play. You feel that for sure.

“The good thing for us is, we know how to run the play and we have a way to get to it at the line. A lot of that play just comes down to who can get organized faster. When you’re able to hit it really with like not a huddle of any sort, and the defense has to get ready to play it right away, the chance that they’re gonna be able to organize as quickly as you are, is even lower. When you know you’re gonna do it, it’s better just to get on the line and do it rather than get in the huddle and come to the line and then they get a chance to talk about how they’ll defend it.”

The key to defending it—if the Eagles win by leverage of continually churning legs—seems to be leverage on the other side plus continual churning of legs on defense. But if you don’t practice against it, it’s tough to play it for the third or fifth time and stop it—when the team you’re playing has done it more than 60 times in-game, with a high rate of success.

So the Ravens wrangled with the unsigned Lamar Jackson for months and months, and negotiations for a new contract seemed broken more than once, and then, one night in April, a bridge got built, and Jackson and the Ravens signed a five-year, $260-million deal.

All for days like Sunday.

Sunday’s game—Ravens 38, Lions 6, and it could have been two touchdowns worse—had to remind coach John Harbaugh and GM Eric DeCosta why those perpetual knots in their guts from January to April were worth it. Sunday was a Lamar 2019 MVP day. The white-hot Lions, 5-1 with pedigree road wins in Kansas City and Tampa Bay, came to Baltimore and the Ravens were 4-2 but with a bit of an asterisk. The asterisk: a sputtering offense. Entering Sunday, only one of their 18 possessions over the past six quarters ended with a touchdown. And the Lions had held their past four foes to 14 points per game. Not a day, seemingly, for the Ravens’ offense to get well.

Jackson has never opened a game this explosively in the NFL. Four drives—of 75, 68, 92 and 80 yards—all ending in touchdowns in the first 23 minutes. By midway through the third, it was 35-0 and the Lions were beaten into submission. “Lamar beat us,” coach Dan Campbell of Detroit said. “He hammered us with his arm. He ran when he needed to, and we did not handle it well.”

In 2019, MVP Lamar played 12 of 15 games without an interception, with seven games of three TD passes or more. He threw three TD passes Sunday, and he didn’t throw a pick. The difference Sunday? In 2019, Jackson didn’t have a passing game of even 325 yards. Against the Lions, protected well from an oppressive Detroit rush, Jackson threw for 357.

Tight end Mark Andrews, who caught two of Jackson’s three TD throws, was asked to grade Jackson’s day, scale of 1 to 10.

“Ten, man. Ten. His ball placement was incredible,” Andrews said.

What was most notable, I thought, was that he was effective on the ground (nine rushes, 36 yards, one TD) but absolutely lethal in the passing game. He started the scoring with a deceptive 7-yard keeper, faking inside and then running left; he could have walked the last 5 yards. Then he had all kinds of time on a 12-yard TD strike to Nelson Agholor in the back of the end zone. A couple of times on Baltimore’s four early TD drives, you’d swear Jackson was taking off for a gain of 8 or 10, then sliding down, but instead he’d stop suddenly and find a receiver for those 8 or 10 yards. The maturation of a player who wants to last 15 years in the league—that’s how it struck me. And the longer he works with offensive coordinator Todd Monken, the more they’ll get to learn what the other likes to do most. The relationship seemed symphonic Sunday.

When he came to the phone an hour after the game, I expected ebullient Lamar. But he was more like Harbaugh described him: “I don’t even think he’s that happy with the game. In the locker room, it’s not like he’s all giddy.”

Jackson was beyond level. Blasé, even. “We need to keep playing with the consistency we showed today,” he said. “If we do, I believe the sky’s the limit for our offense.”

I gave him the 18-drives, one-TD streak entering the game, and wondered what made this game different. “We knew how good we’d have to be, because of the great team, great defense we were up against,” he said. “Keep the ball. Keep getting first downs. Keep getting long drives. Then, once you keep scoring points, you’re messing with the defense’s head a little bit. They can’t stop it [the offense]. Our offense is automatic, I believe. It was today.”

Baltimore’s an intriguing team in the top-heavy AFC North (Ravens, 5-2; Browns and Steelers, 4-2; Bengals, 3-3), with one of the league’s biggest schedule quirks. After playing Arizona in Glendale Sunday, they come home for three games in Baltimore (Seattle, Cleveland, Cincinnati) in 12 days. That’s not the quirk. This is: After facing the Bengals on Nov. 16, the Ravens have two games in the next 30 days: Nov. 26 at the Chargers, Dec. 10 at home with the Rams. Talk about a time to heal. That’s it. Everything’s looking up for Baltimore.

I might have seen the future of football on TV Thursday night, with an assist from Artificial Intelligence, Andrew Luck’s former center at Stanford, and a team of Amazon techies based in Tel Aviv.

That is not a misprint.

One of the reasons the NFL was so eager to get a new and aggressive streaming partner in 2022 was on display in the Jacksonville-New Orleans game on Amazon Prime Video Thursday. Let me tell you what I saw on one of Amazon’s three streaming options for its games, Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats. On the Prime Vision feed, Amazon shows the all-22 camera angle, able to see the whole field; the tradeoff, of course, is that you don’t see the quarterback, large, in the center of the TV. You see everything, with no one bigger than anyone else—while hearing Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit call the game the same as on the regular streaming ‘cast.

With 5:26 left in the first quarter, the Saints had a third-and-seven at the Jaguars’ 32-yard line. Jacksonville cornerback Tre Herndon jogged to a spot two yards across from the left slot, in coverage on receiver Michael Thomas. On the all-22 view, Herndon leaned forward as quarterback Derek Carr began his cadence. Just then, a red circle was superimposed around Herndon—and on the other side of the formation, red also encircled linebacker Devin Lloyd—with black circles superimposed around the four Saints wide receivers plus running back Alvin Kamara.

The red circle was Amazon’s way of foreshadowing what AI told them from whipping through hundreds of factors—including anticipatory tics that could be gleaned from the two movement trackers in Herndon’s left and right shoulder pad—in split seconds: Prime Vision was predicting Herndon and Lloyd would blitz. Quite a leap of faith in the Herndon forecast. In the first six games of the season, Herndon, per Next Gen Stats, had blitzed only 12 times.

Carr took his time on the cadence. The red circle was around Herndon for two, three, four, five, six seconds, and the six-year vet corner showed nothing. Carr certainly could get no clue from the possible blitzer on his left. Finally, 8.31 seconds after the encircling of Herndon appeared on the all-22, Carr snapped the ball. Herndon streaked at Carr. Lloyd came, too, but was caught in traffic. No one touched the blitzing Herndon. Just as Carr was releasing the ball, Herndon, unseen, slammed into Carr and the football bounded harmlessly away. Incomplete.

Here’s the really amazing part of this: A soybean farmer in Iowa, were he a football nerd once his day job was done, could have been watching this Prime Vision view of the game just like me. And the soybean farmer would know more about the likelihood of Tre Herndon blitzing than Saints coach Dennis Allen or his offensive play-designer, Pete Carmichael, standing 20 yards away from him. Because the live feed you and I can see is banned on the sidelines and coaches’ box upstairs (more about the pitfalls of that later), people from the Everglades to the Cascades can see a blitz coming better than the teams on the field can.

It’s sort of revolutionary. Viewers should love this. The NFL must love the fun of it today. But Artificial Intelligence strikes fear into those who think it might go too far. The competitive guardrails on this, for the NFL, had better be sturdy.

---

Amazon had the idea when it got the NFL contract in 2021 of an alternate telecast heavy on analytics. Some of the elements, like tagging skill players pre-snap, started last year. But the biggest element, predicting blitzing, debuted 11 days ago in the Denver-Kansas City game. I heard about it in a smart story in The Athletic by Ted Nguyen. The brainchild behind the idea, Sam Schwartzstein, told me he began working on it in “late April or May” with Amazon AI experts, a machine-learning team based in Tel Aviv.

Keep in mind Amazon’s not CBS or ESPN, with virtually all the idea people solely based in the U.S. Amazon’s based in Seattle, but has campuses in more than 50 countries, including Israel. Schwartzstein has been a leader at Amazon in getting some people unfamiliar with American football, very familiar in a short time. Just who is Schwartzstein? He started 13 games at center for Stanford in Andrew Luck’s last season, 2011, and they became fast friends and smart forecasters of defensive tendencies. There is so much that’s ironic about Schwartzstein’s role in introducing new technology to the Thursday night games, but how about this nugget: He has assembled a crew of smart former players as advisers to Amazon’s Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats—including Luck. Schwartzstein meets with him on Monday nights to talk Amazon football business.

“We are in a unique spot as a sports broadcaster that is a tech company first,” Schwartzstein told me Friday night. We spoke for 30 minutes; the conversation will air in The Peter King Podcast dropping late Tuesday.

“So,” Schwartzstein said, “we looked at all these different ideas of what we could do. The first one came to mind is how do we identify the players who are going to blitz … take you into the mindset of what I used to do when I played center in college … There weren’t a lot of things that we could do to help people to watch defense in a unique way. But then talking with our science team, they said, I think we can do this with machine learning and AI. We went through the process to be able to identify using machine learning where we don’t have a readout of the rules or the specific reasons why someone’s being highlighted as a potential blitzer. But we know that’s it’s being ingested from thousands of plays that are then creating that identification tag of ‘this player is likely going to blitz.’ You can never be 100 percent right; we’re just giving you an idea of looking at the defense the same way the quarterback is.”

Two Amazon coordinating producers for the Thursday games, Alex Strand and Betsy Riley, went to Tel Aviv last spring to meet with the AI team, and to begin explaining football to the non-fans there. They ended up building the software and the model that ID’s which players on every play were likely to blitz, using pieces of physical, statistic and analytical information. Schwartzstein lives in the Bay Area. Tel Aviv is 10 hours ahead. So if he’d wake up at 7 a.m. in California, on some days he’d be tutoring the Tel Aviv team in the late afternoon and evening on Football 101.

“We probably had 15 different ideas,” Schwartzstein said. “I can’t give you the exact number that have gone to production, but a lot have gone to the wayside that we’ve tried to accomplish and pushed off for later times. We have the ability to continue ideating with them and talking with them about different ways we can help expose new things to our fan bases. What I really like is we’re not afraid of the big hairy audacious goals. We are looking to try and do things that people said that you can’t do.”

The goal this year was predictive blitzing. Amazon trusted the red-circling so much that Schwartzstein and the game producers of Prime Vision just let it go when the game starts. “I can’t turn it on and off,” he said.

The factors. That’s what I wonder about. Think of the scores of known football factors as a quarterback comes to the line, and then add the minutiae of what Next Gen Stats knows, and then add what can be read from the movement trackers in every shoulder pad. The amount of information that can be processed and interpreted by AI in seconds is, of course, mind-boggling. “It knows the alignment of every player on the field, offense and defense,” Schwartzstein said. “And then there’s expectations of all the plays where players have blitzed from. It’s taking that bevy of information to make a prediction. I can tell you … that it’s seen so many different plays and so many different scenarios that it’s intelligently highlighting unique players.”

Like Herndon, with 5:26 left in the first quarter Thursday night. AI figured he was blitzing. The Saints either didn’t or blew an assignment, and let him rush, and it cost them a third-down conversion in opposing territory in a game they lost by a touchdown. Sort of a big deal.

---

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Schwartzstein, and he’s right. What I saw Thursday night will make me come back for more, to see the game in a different way than I ever have. The potential for more cool innovations for home viewers is there. It’s fun. It’s smart. It’s great.

But the potential for mayhem is too, because AI may know more than an offensive coordinator about what a defender like Tre Herndon is likely to do on a given play.

We can all think of the dangers for this totally new tool. When I asked Amazon about the delay from live game to being able to see the Prime Vision feed, a spokesperson emailed: “The vast majority of Prime Video’s TNF streams travel from the stadium to the screen in 10 seconds or less. This delay matches and is often less than what viewers receive from live games on broadcast and cable. Prime Vision’s technology adds a minimal amount on top of that, usually three seconds or less.”

The exact time of delay depends whether you’re watching the stream on home internet, Xbox, Apple TV, your phone, or other devices. Understand two things here. Encircling a defender in red isn’t a guarantee that he will blitz; it’s simple saying the AI program suggests he’s likely to blitz. But in this case, Herndon was circled for 8.31 seconds, which is an eternity before the ball is snapped. (To be fair, most red circles are evident for less time.) My concern is, Amazon’s delay has to be enough time so that some person in some stadium won’t be able somehow to alert a team with information that could be an advantage competitively. It appears to be long enough, but that must be policed.

“No one’s using it for nefarious reasons,” Schwartzstein said.

The NFL’s got to be sure it has multiple layers in place to ensure no one does.

Five observations about the three-year contract extension for commissioner Roger Goodell, through February 2027:

1. No surprise. Owners have known about it since May.

2. In Goodell’s last two extensions, it was widely speculated that each would be his last contract in the high-stress job. Not so this time. As one top club executive told me Saturday: “Everyone presumes this is not going to be his last contract.” I’m not positive about that, but the fact is, Goodell certainly appears to not be beaten down by the job, and he has full support of ownership without factions chipping away at him. That makes it more likely than not he’ll be in the chair more than three-and-a-third years longer. “We’ll see what the future holds. I don’t know,” is all Goodell would say about his future Wednesday, when the new deal was announced.

3. Re the no negative factions, Dallas owner Jerry Jones was the last owner who had questions about Goodell—and his mega-compensation—long-term. That’s disappeared. Jones knew he was on an island and so got on-board. Here’s Jones on Dallas’s 105.3 The Fan the other day, on the Goodell contract: “That’s a really outstanding thing for the league, for him. He’s got a wealth of intellectual knowledge about how it works, about the issues, whether it be television, labor, or certainly internal issues within the NFL. So I think it’s great that he’s going to be our commissioner for more years to come.”

4. As one club person told me, those who will be most influential in choosing a new commissioner may not be known right now. Arguably, the five most influential owners in the league will be between 72 and 85 at the end of this Goodell extension. Today, New England’s Robert Kraft is 82, Jerry Jones 81, Atlanta’s Arthur Blank 81, Pittsburgh’s Art Rooney II 71, and John Mara of the Giants 68. Jonathan Kraft and Stephen Jones, and perhaps 58-year-old Clark Hunt of Kansas City, seem the most likely heirs to lead picking the next commissioner, perhaps with rising influencer Greg Penner, the Walmart executive running the Broncos. For now, owners are likely to skate along comfortably with Goodell until he tells them otherwise.

5. Several prominent people in the league think Goodell could do this job for a long time. I agree, but I also think he hasn’t decided that yet. Some history here:

Pete Rozelle, heavy smoker and social drinker, lasted 29 years in the job but left in a surprise in 1989 at 63 years, 8 months old. He looked every bit his age at the end of his term, beaten down by the litigious Al Davis and the legal burdens of the job. He died at 70, seven years after leaving office, of brain cancer.

Paul Tagliabue, a high-powered attorney, lasted 16 years in office. Even after shepherding the league through the 9/11 crisis, he didn’t seem to be defeated by the job when he left at 65 years, 9 months old.

Goodell worked in NFL PR and climbed the executive ladder inside the league until taking the commissioner’s office in September 2006. Now in the chair for 17 years, he’s a year older today than Rozelle was when he left office. He looks a decade younger than Rozelle did at the end and seems far less stressed by the job. That’s probably in part due to his fitness regimen—he does hot yoga, Pilates, spin classes. Assuming he fulfills this contract, Goodell will have just turned 68. As one friend said: “There’s nothing else he wants to do. He’d be bored working at a hedge fund or doing something else to make a lot of money. He doesn’t want to sit around. This job fulfills him, and he likes almost everything about it.”

As for the assumption Goodell won’t be around to honcho another labor or media negotiation, I think it’s a bad assumption. He’s not sure, so how can anyone else be sure? The current labor deal expires in March 2030. Labor talks usually begin 18 months to two years out from expirations. So if Goodell signs another deal after this one—unless it’s a bridge deal for just a year to find a successor—he’d be involved in the talks for the next CBA. The TV/media deals run through the 2033 season but can be re-opened by the league after the 2029 season. Those high-stress negotiations are not altogether fun for Goodell, but to think he’d be too old, or too unwilling, at 70 to negotiate the next CBA seems off-base in today’s world. Look at Washington. The next presidential race could feature 78- and 81-year-old candidates on Election Day 2024.

Atlanta defensive lineman Calais Campbell got his 100^th career sack in season 16 as an NFL player two weeks ago, at age 37. What Campbell, who played his 234^th career game at Tampa Bay on Sunday (and got sack No. 101), has learned about longevity:

“I remember studying Tom Brady and the greats in this league. I was like, ‘Maybe I should try what they’re doing too. I ended up getting with a nutritionist and a chef, learning how to take care of my body. I know Tom’s one of the best examples because he’s written books and talked about it a lot. Same thing with basketball and LeBron James. I spend $200,000, $300,000 a year on my body with specialists coming in to work on me. The injury rate in football is 100 percent, so I’m gonna get nicked up and beat up. There’s definitely been a lot of games where I wasn’t sure if I was going to play, last week included. Those people that I’ve worked with for so long know my body, understand how hard they can push me and get me back ready to play. Why not give your body the best opportunity you can? I don’t know when the wheels are going to fall off, but I’m fighting Father Time as hard as I can, round by round. I’m trying to get another round in.

“They say the best ability is availability. So having the right team, the right people who understand my body, making the necessary sacrifices with time and resources to be able to put my body in the best position to be successful … It definitely is dedication. A lot of times my son wants to come play and I’m like, ‘I’m working.’ He says, ‘You’re always working!’ He’s only three. But it’s tough—the sacrifices we make because we love the game so much.”

A recurring element in the column this year: a video on one of my favorite memories of 40 years covering pro football.

I never thought the Watergate scandal and the Nixon impeachment and Dustin Hoffman and “All the President’s Men” would come in handy in covering the New York Giants. But in 1988 they did. After getting a valuable tip that I trusted, I used the Watergate-reporting tactic to confirm the four-game suspension of Lawrence Taylor for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy and reported it in Newsday on the Monday before the start of the regular season.

Offensive players of the week

Patrick Mahomes, quarterback, Kansas City. I can’t imagine what it’s like for opposing defensive coaches to try to find ways to beat this man. Like: Everyone knows he’s targeting Travis Kelce all day and all night, and does anyone stop it? Nope. Last three games, Mahomes to Kelce: 33 targets, 31 receptions, 370 yards, 11.2 yards per target. Think of it! Every time Mahomes throws it in Kelce’s area code, Kansas City gains the equivalent of a first down plus something. Oh, and Mahomes threw for 424 yards in shredding the Chargers Sunday. He’s 29-3 against the AFC West in his career.

Lamar Jackson, quarterback, Baltimore. Sunday was classic Lamar, MVP Lamar, sprinting out of the gates against a very good team with four long touchdown drives on the first four Baltimore series. Accurate (21 of 27), mistake-free and productive (four total TDs, no picks, 357 passing yards), playing from ahead (built a 35-0 lead). The big contract seems well worth it this morning.

Tyson Bagent, quarterback, Chicago. The first undrafted rookie QB from an NCAA Division II school to start an NFL game since 1950 at the start of the day, became the first NCAA Division II undrafted rookie to win an NFL game since 1950 by mid-afternoon in Chicago. Steady and mistake-free in the 30-12 win over the Raiders, Bagent was 21 of 29 for 162 yards, one TD and no turnovers. Heck of a job, and he did it at Soldier Field—where the Bears hadn’t won a game in 13 months. Bagent Fever, baby.

Mac Jones, quarterback, New England. The Patriots had lost four straight—by 17 points per game—in the series against Buffalo that they’d dominated for so long. On this day, Michael McCorkle Jones played one of the best games of his young, pressure-packed career, completing 83 percent of his throws with his best passer rating (126.7) in almost two years. Not bad for a guy everyone in six states has been screaming to bench.

Defensive players of the week

Myles Garrett, edge rusher, Cleveland. Strange in a game that the Browns gave up 456 yards and five touchdowns that a defensive guy is in here. But Garrett made like an Olympic hurdler early in the second quarter at Indianapolis and leaped over the line to block a Matt Gay field-goal try. Garrett ended two Colt drive with strip-sacks; one of those strips, of Colts quarterback Gardner Minshew, came in the end zone and was recovered by linebacker Tony Fields for a TD. I don’t know who’s going to win Defensive Player of the Year, but I can tell you Garrett will be in the discussion. Like, in the final final discussion.

Foyesade Oluokun, linebacker, Jacksonville. First, learn how to pronounce the name of one of the league’s best, and most unheralded, players: foy-yay-SAH-day oh-LOO-ah-kun. Since opening day 2021, Oluokun has the most combined tackles (solos plus assisted tackles) in the league—and not by a few. The top three, with games played in parentheses: Oluokun (41) 457 tackles … Roquan Smith, Baltimore (41) 403 … Jordyn Brooks, Seattle (39) 402. In New Orleans Thursday night, the 28-year-old Yale product had the first pick-six of his career, a 24-yard tipped interception in the third quarter and led all tacklers with 14 stops. That included a goal-line stoning of Alvin Kamara.

Special teams players of the week

Leonard Williams, defensive end, New York Giants. Special teams is about effort in so many cases, and Williams’ effort on a field-goal block early in the fourth quarter of a tightly contested game was huge. With the Giants up, 14-7, and Joey Slye lining up for a 27-yard chip shot to make it a four-point game, Williams burst through the center-guard gap and got one huge hand on Slye’s boot. Big, big play in the Giants’ 14-7 win.

Younghoe Koo, kicker, Atlanta. His 51-yard field goal as the clock hit :00 handed the Falcons a 16-13 win at Tampa. Amazing point about the state of placekicking today: Koo is a career 81-percent field-goal kicker … from 50 yards and beyond. This kick made him 21 of 26 in his career from long range.

Logan Cooke, punter, Jacksonville. Give a demerit to the Saints’ punt-rush team for not being ready for a fake—against a head coach (Doug Pederson) who never met a risk he didn’t like. With the Jags up, 14-6, fourth-and-two at the Saints’ 46-yard line and 1:33 left in the first half, backup wideout Tim Jones, the gunner set wide left, put a move on the cover guy and got open, and Cooke hit him for an easy 13-yard gain. That set up a field goal before halftime to give Jacksonville an 11-point lead. Smart play by the Jags, well-executed by Cooke and poorly played by the Saints. Sort of a microcosm of Jacksonville’s win, and of the Saints’ frustration in the first seven weeks of the season.

Coach of the week

Bill Belichick, head coach, New England. Became the third coach ever to win 300 regular-season games with the upset of the Bills in Foxboro. (Don Shula, 328; George Halas, 318; Belichick, 300.) Of course it’s the record including playoff wins that’s the Holy Grail. This was Belichick’s 331^st win encompassing all games, leaving him 17 from breaking Shula’s record. Seems likely it’ll be 2025 before Belichick makes that sort of history, assuming he’s still coaching somewhere.

Rivalry of the week

St. Ignatius Prep 38, Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep 14 (San Francisco high school football, Friday night.) One hundred and thirty-one years ago, in 1892, these two city schools played a football game on Thanksgiving Day. Friday night, they continued the oldest high school sports rivalry west of the Mississippi, playing the annual Bruce-Mahoney Game at Kezar Stadium, where John Brodie and the Niners once roamed. The rivalry was named the Bruce-Mahoney Game after students from both schools who played football there were killed in service of the United States in World War II. Lieutenant Bill Bruce, from St. Ignatius, enlisted in the Navy and flew more than 50 combat missions in Europe. Back home in 1943, training pilots at the Naval air station in Washington, Bruce was killed in a plane crash. Seaman first class Jerry Mahoney, from Sacred Heart, was killed when his ship was sunk by a German vessel in February 1945, less than a year after graduating from high school. The rival schools decided to name the athletic competition between them after the two service members, and this great tradition is still going strong after a century-and-a-third.

I.

--Chicago QB Tyson Bagent, who won his first NFL start over the Raiders Sunday, a year after playing NCAA Division II football.

II.

--Tua Tagovailoa, on his state of mind with the 2023 Dolphins, to Michael Smith of NBC Sports.

III.

--Saints tight end Foster Moreau, morose, in the losing locker room after he got two hands on a catchable ball in the end zone with a half-minute to play in New Orleans’ 31-24 loss to Jacksonville.

IV.

--Jaguars edge-rusher Josh Allen, into the end zone camera, after a Jacksonville pick-six made it 23-9 at New Orleans Thursday night.

V.

--Colts owner Jim Irsay, to Jori Epstein of Yahoo! Sports.

Well, perhaps. But a big part of Springsteen’s greatness has been durability and standing the test of time. Irsay spoke on the day Anthony Richardson chose to have season-ending shoulder surgery. Richardson, thus, will have played four games in his 17-game rookie season.

There’s something that feels, well, off about the Chargers. Many things, actually.

The defense needed to improve over last year’s 20^th-ranked unit in the league, allowing 346.1 yards per game. It’s 60 yards worse per game this year. The Chargers are 31^st in the league in yards allowed.

What’s most noticeable, to me, is the lack of progress in the passing game. After six games last year, Justin Herbert had thrown for 1,716 yards, with 10 TDs and three picks. This year: 1,592, with 10 TDs and four picks. LA’s a field goal better in scoring, 144 points this year to 141 last year. A wash.

The expected freeing-up of Herbert by new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore hasn’t materialized, in part because the quarterback is under increasing pressure. As is the coaching staff.

The pressure is unrelenting—it came on 37.2 percent of his pass drops last year and continues at a 36.1-percent clip this year, including Sunday’s 31-17 loss at Kansas City, per Next Gen Stats. Here’s what I bet was most bothersome for Brandon Staley watching the tape of the game on the plane home from Kansas City last night: Next Gen Stats showed that of the five sacks on Herbert in KC, four came without a blitz. And though Herbert was in the middle of a maelstrom of rushers throughout the second half, he was not blitzed a single time by Kansas City in the final two quarters—and the Chargers scored zero points in five second-half possessions. Yikes.

“We need to reset as a football team,” Staley said post-game.

To say the least.

I.

Among the members of the Alice and Chains and Friends League, a fantasy football league based in Los Angeles:

• Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez, members, Alice in Chains
• The Miz, professional wrestler
• Jeff Garlin, actor (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), comedian
• Michael Bublé, Canadian singer/songwriter
• Jerry O’Connell, actor (“Sliders,” “Pictionary”)
• Slim Jim Phantom, drummer, Stray Cats
• Scott Ian, rhythm guitar, Anthrax
• Duff McKagan, bass guitar, Guns N’ Roses
• Michael Fabiano, Sports Illustrated fantasy analyst

Pick of the Year: In the 2023 fantasy draft, Bublé picked ahead of Garlin, a huge Bears fan. Both wanted Chicago quarterback Justin Fields. Bublé picked Fields. Garlin settled for Tua Tagovailoa.

II.

Games with at least 310 yards passing since opening day 2022:

• Mac Jones, 3 (in 21 starts); Daniel Jones, 3 (in 21 starts); Zach Wilson, 2 (in 15 starts).
• Derek Carr, 1 (in 22 starts).

Reach me at peterkingfmia@gmail.com.

Sports gambling is a blight on us. From Alex Davis of Denver: “I applaud you bringing up gambling and its future addiction problem. I am 42 and seeing serious signs of [problems]. The parlay popularity seems to me to have a lot of people chasing highs with the ability to make big payments on a rare collection of outcomes. I have a friend who is not a hockey fan but is betting numerous $50 parlays on dozens of players across the league getting enough shots on goal. This seems similar to having an alcoholic drink alone on a Tuesday at 7 a.m.”

I am reminded of when the United States legislated against smoking ads on TV and radio, and when cities began banning smoking in restaurants, and when using seat belts became mandatory. Sometimes you’ve got to do what’s best for people, whether they like it or not. You might say sports gambling doesn’t hurt anyone. I say: Just wait. You’ll see.

Nothing wrong with a little bet now and then. From Rick Moran: “Gambling has been legal in my state for about two years. Many of my friends and I do it weekly. You know how much we bet? About $10 a game. Are there people who will bet thousands trying to get rich easily? Sure. But I’d argue those people are going to do that with or without sports gambling. They’d use the stock market or other high-risk ways. Legislating morality has always been a mistake in this country. It is about time we stopped doing it.”

Disagree. Forcing private citizens to wear seat belts can be regarded as violating personal liberty, correct? As are restrictions on smoking—where it can be done, at what age it can be done. And drinking alcohol. How about the states that either outlaw alcohol sales on Sundays or restrict alcohol sales to certain times—is that morally right? You’re correct, Rick, in saying on the surface that thousands of people can handle sports gambling and won’t abuse it. Should that outweigh what is likely to happen five, eight, 10 years down the road, when America will have a scourge of problem gamblers who’ve lost everything because of it? It’s one thing to say we shouldn’t infringe on people’s rights. It’s another thing, to me, to live with the consequences of a potentially dangerous behavior like pounding people over the head with gambling come-ons by the day, the hour, the minute and making it all legal and attractive.

On Caleb Williams. From Dan Cryer, of Kennewick, Washington: “I thought your original ‘I saw him for one game and he’s not that good’ take on Williams was a little out of character for you, but your follow-up after the USC-Notre Dame game has an ‘I told you so’ pettiness about it. It seems like you’re targeting Williams for no apparent reason.”

You would have to invent words from my few paragraphs on Williams from the Oct. 2 column to find me saying Williams is “not that good.” I never did, Dan. I simply said he had all day to throw against Colorado and he’ll very rarely have all day to throw in the NFL, particularly playing for what’s likely to be the bad NFL team that drafts him—probably with a suspect offensive line. Read my note about him last week: I watched the three-interception game at Notre Dame and saw him play poorly under pressure and wrote what I saw. As Bruce Feldman of The Athletic wrote the other day, PFF has Williams as its 175^th-ranked quarterback under pressure (fifth-worst in college football) in 2023. That’s an issue scouts will want answers to.

Anil wants a 40-year King Team. From Anil Chandra: “Could we get an all-Peter King team? From the day you started, to the day you retired, who was the best at every position? Maybe three spots per position, and a slot for coaches and front office.”

I’d love to do it, and I will. I appreciate you sending along a swell idea, Anil. Give me a few weeks to percolate and get it done.

Good idea (but not entirely practical). From Ignatius Fogarty, of England: “I am an avid reader from the UK; I have been going to the games since the first London series in 2007. There seems to be lots of videos of fans fighting at games recently. Why doesn’t the NFL segregate fans at NFL games? I am a season-ticket holder for Tottenham Hotspurs and at away games, fans and home fans don’t mix. If you support the ‘away team’ you will sit in a separate section and have your own entrance to the ground and your own bar and facilities. If you are an ‘away fan’ who has managed to get a ticket in the home end, you better keep quiet as you will get kicked out and you are certainly not allowed to wear the colours of the away team. I understand that football (soccer) has a reputation for crowd trouble, so these measures are in place to mitigate that. But what it does is create an incredible atmosphere at the games and means that you rarely get trouble at the ground itself.”

Thanks, Ignatius. The NFL certainly has to do something, because the amount of fights at games this season borders on the out-of-control. I like your suggestion, but the logistics of making that part of the NFL landscape would be hard to do.

1. I think I’ve got a Taylor Swift update for you! Breathless news! TRAVIS KELCE REFUELS HIS CAR AS HE DATES TAYLOR SWIFT! Brother Jason Kelce told me Sunday night: “It’s certainly been weird, the level that it is now. On one hand, I’m happy for my brother that he seems to be in a relationship that he’s excited about, that he is genuine about. But there’s another end of it where it’s like, ‘Man, this is a lot.’ There’s paparazzi talking about him fueling his car before the game today and I’m like, ‘Is that really necessary information to share?’ This is another level of stardom that typically football players don’t deal with. And so on one hand, really, really happy for my brother and where he’s at in his current situation with Taylor but on the other hand, there’s some, I think, alarms sometimes with how you know, over-in-pursuit people can be. Overall, he can deal with some of this. As long as it’s not, you know, becoming a threat to his safety and things like that.” Travis Kelce’s finding out he’s entering a level of attention that even goes beyond what Brady-Bündchen was.

2. I think it was refreshing to hear Mac Jones not feeling beaten down by the Belichick coverage in New England in the last few weeks. After playing his best game in the league in nearly two years in the 29-25 upset over Buffalo in Foxboro, what was clear to me was how Jones, as expected, is good at compartmentalizing what really matters in football: leaving the outside stuff at the locker-room door. Business is business. Don’t let outside stuff interfere with it. “I wouldn’t say that it’s hard,” Jones said. “You’ve got to know that what’s going on outside the building doesn’t matter—only what we’re doing inside the building. To me, what’s been important is being Mac. I love the game, I love preparing for the game, and I think my teammates see that and respect that.” Jones credited offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien for being creative with motions so Buffalo couldn’t always have a clear read about what the Patriots were doing. And he said Belichick “did a good job of rallying the team, getting us ready, and focusing on the stuff that really matters.”

3. I think if you listen to Tua Tagovailoa talking to Michael Smith for “Football Night in America,” he doesn’t spell out why he favors Mike McDaniel over Brian Flores, but he comes close to it when he describes his early times in Miami “almost like people pleasing, being like a yes man, almost.” That’s consistent to what he’s said in the past—not wanting to be highly critical of Flores’ coaching and relationship style, but implying how much more comfortable he is now, feeling freer under McDaniel. The full interview:

4. I think I like the Eagles in Kelly Green, but are you like me—and when you turned on the TV Sunday night did you wonder if the Jets somehow snuck onto Lincoln Financial Field?

5. I think, re Ian Rapoport’s report that Bill Belichick signed a contract extension earlier this year in New England: I doubt sincerely, and I mean sincerely, that this will matter if the Patriots finish last in the division and do it in a desultory fashion. Paying off a contract won’t stand in the way of Robert Kraft doing what he thinks is best for the organization … and I, in no way, mean this is a done deal—at all. I just mean Kraft’s going to do what he thinks is best for the franchise after the season, whether it’s keeping Belichick or moving on.

6. I think Trevor Lawrence is that limited with a bad knee—eight carries, career-high 59 yards (a long of 26) in the win over the Saints after being iffy to play—he’s either a lot grittier than we’ve thought of him, or the adrenaline of a tough prime-time is a very good thing. Lawrence showed a lot Thursday night.

7. I think it’s cool, I suppose, that men’s flag football and women’s flag football will be contested at the 2028 Olympics. Just seems odd to me. Not saying the International Olympic Committee put in a sport that is likely to result in two gold medals for Americans in an Olympics to be contested in America (Los Angeles), but two questions: If these Olympics were to be contested in Athens or Beijing, would flag football be in them? And how many countries will field truly competitive flag football teams?

8. I think for those who don’t know what a “hip-drop tackle” is (I am one of them), and why the NFL seems bound and determined to ban it, Zaire Franklin feels you. Franklin, the Indianapolis linebacker, leads the NFL in tackles after seven weeks. He expressed what I’ve thought on this topic on social media: “Nobody who ever played football know what … a ‘hip drop’ tackle is! SMH. When you’re in the open field with somebody that can put you on ESPN the only thing on your mind is to get him down not what type of tackle am I gonna use. Who’s fighting for the players??” I’ve never heard or seen a defensive coach teach a player to tackle someone with the intention of forcefully putting body weight on the offensive player’s shin, lower leg or ankle. It’s football. It happens.

9. I think the NFL’s got to get out of business of trying to legislate everything out of the game that might hurt players.

10. I think these are my other thoughts of the week:

a. Steve Hartman is singular in American TV, with good-news stories when we need them most. Like this week, from St. Louis, with a story of a grandma cooking breakfast for some high school students:

b. It’s a little more than that.

c. The Wednesday Breakfast Club at Bishop DeBourg High School, with a crew of students, used to meet at a local diner until one Wednesday in 2021.

d. Then, as Hartman reported: a student named Sam Crowe said, “You know, my grandma could cook better than this.” So the next Wednesday, they all showed up at [grandma Peggy] Winckowski’s doorstep. “I’m like, OK, and they came all school year—every Wednesday,” Winckowski said. The breakfasts continued merrily until July 2022 when all joy was lost.

e. Then Hartman, with a plot twist, as he does so well.

f. Hoops Story of the Week: Emma Bacallieri of Sports Illustrated on the explosive fame and basketball learning of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark:

g. This story’s a good example of a fine writer, Bacallieri, taking minimum expansive stuff from the subject and making a definitive and illuminating profile out of it. Nice work on Clark’s maturation as a player and a teammate.

h. The fame’s got to be tough to handle sometimes. Writes Bacallieri:

In August, Iowa announced that it had sold out the entire women’s basketball season: Demand for season tickets was so overwhelming they could not promise any single-game offerings. The Hawkeyes set a record for Big Ten attendance last year. But this was another level. The program had previously sold out just a handful of games in the 15,056-capacity arena, and now it was packing an entire season months before tip-off.

The mania had spread beyond campus, too: When the Triple A Iowa Cubs gave out a Caitlin Clark bobblehead in June, fans started getting in line at 6 a.m. When she played the John Deere Classic Pro-Am in July, just over the border in Silvis, Ill., organizers couldn’t recall a gallery so large since Bill Murray played in 2015. (At the event Clark was paired with U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson, who demurred when asked whether she had the game-changing potential of Tiger Woods but called her “transcendent” and “spectacular.”) And Clark received perhaps the biggest honor of all in August: Her likeness was sculpted in butter at the Iowa State Fair.

“I mean, people go to the fair just to see the butter sculptures, especially the butter cow,” Clark says. “For me to be next to the butter cow, that’s a pretty big deal.” (Previous butter honorees have included Elvis, John Wayne, Abraham Lincoln and The Last Supper.)

i. Then there was the scrimmage against DePaul last week. Outside. In Kinnick Stadium.

j. And 55,646 showed up to see a women’s basketball scrimmage. On a windy day, Clark had a triple-double, and scored 34. Of course.

k. Team of the Week: The Las Vegas Aces, who went on the road and got beat up in Game 3 but survived to win Game 4 and take the WNBA title, 3-1, over the New York Liberty. Well-chronicled here by Sabreena Merchant of The Athletic.

l. Wrote Merchant:

Las Vegas was given every opportunity to come apart, every excuse to back down and let this series go back to [Nevada] for Game 5. Already without Candace Parker most of the season, the personnel shortages were compounded in the finals by the injuries that sidelined Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes, two starters whose contributions anchored the offense and defense, respectively. Only eight Aces players were healthy. Four were not regular rotation players, and one had never played minutes outside of garbage time for the Aces.

Cayla George took over for Stokes in the starting five after playing six total minutes in the first three games … [Becky] Hammon gave her the green light to shoot, and the only way her presence on the court would matter is if she heeded the words of her coach.

The 34-year-old has been a successful player abroad, winning the MVP of the WNBL in Australia this past season, but that production has never really translated to the U.S. She had started three games in her WNBA career entering Wednesday and was in and out of the rotation in Las Vegas, but mostly out during the playoffs. However, when her number was called in the finals, George delivered her best game of the year.

m. Vegas was down 12 in the third quarter, and the 34-year-old George hit two straight threes to start the comeback. That’s a good player, and that’s a good story. Congrats to the Aces.

n. Hate Jose Altuve as much as you want. And I have my suspicions about his role in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. But that’s a Hall of Fame player right there.

o. That three-run game-winning homer against the Rangers Friday night—turning a loss to a win with one swing—was his 26^th jack in 101 postseason games. This is a 5-foot-5 person, and if we were to judge him on a 162-game season for playoff games, Altuve would be on pace to hit 42 homers in the equivalent of a full season of them. Who knows—he may end up in 162 of them before he retires, and we’ll get to know if he can keep it up.

p. The D-Backs giving a better team all it can handle in a league championship series is what sports are all about.

q. I wonder if the bus riders of Seattle are still in mourning over Eclipse the black lab, on the one-year anniversary of her death?

r. Eclipse became a Seattle legend by boarding a bus each day for seven years—often by herself—after being shown how to do it by her owner, Jeff Young. It wasn’t that Young stopped taking her; it was that Eclipse pushed the envelope and wanted to go earlier than Young was planning. “One day,” Young said, “she was antsy, so she got herself on the bus and got off at the dog park and just continued doing it.”

s. Back when it started, in 2015, Eclipse was a story:

t. Have a great, great day, Phil Bell. Good luck. And thanks for being a reader.

u. RIP, Burt Young. Paulie in the “Rocky” movies defined character actor, just a perfect angry, hard-drinking, selfish-with-a-side-of-good-heartedness guy who just seemed so real. Some of Paulie’s character, he told The Observer, was very much Burt Young. “His insecurity, of course, I patterned from me,” Young said.

v. RIP, Samantha Woll, the 40-year-old Isaac Agree Downtown Detroit Synagogue president found stabbed to death near her home Saturday morning. The more I’ve read and heard about Woll’s unselfish life of service—she worked to build bridges between the Jewish and Muslim communities, for instance—the sadder this death is.

Houston at Carolina, Sunday, 1 p.m., Fox. Interesting game for a few reasons. It matches the top two picks, both quarterbacks, in this year’s draft: No. 1 Bryce Young (Panthers) vs. No. 2 C.J. Stroud (Texans). Stroud has outplayed Young by a lot so far, so this once-in-four-years matchup has much at stake for the owner, GM and coach of the Panthers, all of whom reportedly wanted Young over Stroud. Both teams are coming off byes. This will be the first game with Carolina offensive coordinator Thomas Brown calling plays; head coach Frank Reich sort of demoted himself in surrendering the play-calling after just six weeks in his new job. Carolina is 0-6, the only winless team in football. Teeth-grinding time in Charlotte. Big game for Reich, and for Young.

Cleveland at Seattle, Sunday, 4:05 p.m., Fox. Sneaky excellent game. The Browns, entering Sunday’s play, had a 60-yard lead on the field in yards allowed per game (1. Cleveland, 200.4; 2. Baltimore, 260.8), which is stunning. Seattle has the kind of receiver corps that can challenge Cleveland’s very good secondary, including the game’s best cover corner so far this year, Denzel Ward.

Cincinnati at San Francisco, Sunday, 4:25 p.m., CBS. Sort of a quirky non-conference setup for the Bengals; this game is Cincinnati’s seventh of 2023, and fourth against the NFC West. The Bengals have awakened from a somnambulant September with 51 points against the Cards and ‘Hawks, then a bye, and now the premier team in the West awaits. Speaking of quirky: The Burrow Bengals are averaging an NFL-worst 4.90 yards per pass play. If that holds here, this game’s over midway through the third quarter.

Strange days in Cleveland.
P.J. the great, Deshaun the
disappearing one.