Every week in the NFL season brings a host of new questions … and answers some old ones, too. Let’s run down what we learned in Week 12 … and what we’ll be wondering about in Week 13 and beyond.
ASKED: Does Bryce Young still have some juice after all?
The NFL is a snap-judgment league, one where it’s easy to form impressions and hard to break them once formed. So it’ll take an awful lot of good play for Bryce Young to break the initial “bust” impression that formed around his career. Fortunately for Young, he’s quietly putting together some really, really strong performances. Sure, Carolina is still losing, but Young is finally starting to look comfortable in the job. This, for instance, might be his best throw as a pro:
And Sunday’s game — 263 yards, one touchdown — might be his most complete game as a pro, an accurate pocket-passing game that leans into his skills and size. Granted, that’s damning with pretty faint praise, but given that Young’s career was put out on the curb with the week’s trash earlier this season, it’s a pretty strong bounce-back. And against the two-time defending Super Bowl champions, no less. Carolina isn’t making the playoffs, but the Panthers might have just salvaged their dignity for this season, thanks to Young emerging as the player that Carolina prayed he was way back when.
ANSWERED: Baker Mayfield is the coolest QB in the NFL
Analytics have reinvigorated the NFL game, giving us an infinite number of ways to assess and predict how any given player, team or coach will react in any given situation. They’re an essential weapon to craft a championship team. But analytics cannot possibly account for something like this:
Or this, a quarterback making a block 40 yards down field:
Baker Mayfield throws himself into every play like he’s flinging himself off the back of Jet Ski. He’s a big reason why the Buccaneers remain on the edge of playoff contention despite catastrophic injury to key receivers. In an era where quarterbacks are becoming downright golf-like with their impassive, make-no-waves demeanor, Mayfield is a loud, brash throwback, the kind of quarterback who would be smoking a cigarette on the sidelines 50 years ago. We need more like him, and we’re getting a whole lot less.
ASKED: Will Saquon Barkley kill ‘Hard Knocks’ forever?
In retrospect, there’s no more infamous moment in the history of the “Hard Knocks” franchise than last season, when Giants owner John Mara expressed his trepidation at the idea of letting Saquon Barkley go to the Eagles.
That’s Greek tragedy-level foreshadowing right there. Barkley has been absolutely spectacular this entire season; he dropped 302 yards of total offense and two touchdowns on the Rams’ heads Sunday night on national TV. At the same time, the Giants are an exercise in absolute front-office-driven futility, flailing with a poorly constructed roster and an indifferent lineup that even players are calling “soft.”
The Barkley decision has blown up so badly that it’s not unreasonable to think that no NFL front office is going to ever want cameras inside the building again, just to guard against getting their pants yanked down in public like this.
ANSWERED: The NFC East is the NFL’s most entertaining division
The NFC West is football’s most competitive division, the NFC North its toughest. But pound for pound, you can’t beat the NFC East for sheer entertainment value. (Please note that “entertaining football” does not necessarily equal “good football.”) Just think about what we’ve seen this year: an emerging star throwing a generational Hail Mary (Washington), a washed star rediscovering his game and inspiring his team (Eagles), a total catastrophe lit by streaming sunlight (Dallas), and a train wreck right into a Dumpster fire (New York).
You’ve got two of the most ridiculous plays of the season coming out of this division: Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary against Chicago a few weeks back, and Sunday’s KaVontae Turpin absurdity, a fumbled kick, an unnecessary spin and a house call:
This division is probably only going to put one team in the playoffs after all, but what a ridiculous ride it’s been so far.
ASKED: Should we contract the AFC South?
The Texans are, allegedly, the best team in the AFC South. The Texans, on Sunday, lost to the Titans, one of the worst teams in football, despite sacking Tennessee eight times and generally making life hell for Will Levis. How is this possible? Because the Texans, despite their gaudy-ish 7-5 record, have fattened up on a whole lot of bad teams and aren’t quite displaying the same trajectory that was expected of them after last season’s C.J. Stroud breakout.
Between the underwhelming Texans, the embarrassing Titans and Jaguars, and the scattershot Colts, this is a division that doesn’t quite seem to know how to play four quarters of consistent football anywhere, at any point in the season. If this were the Premier League, we’d be relegating the lot of them to the Big Ten. But since we don’t do that sort of thing in America, we’ll schedule them for their usual Wild Card Weekend Saturday afternoon playoff slot.
ANSWERED: Somehow, the Dolphins are still alive
Any time you discuss the Miami Dolphins, you have to put the very real questions about Tua Tagovailoa’s future health off to the side, because if you start questioning whether he should be in the lineup, you need to start asking those questions about literally every player on the field. Here’s the truth, though — the Dolphins are a markedly better team with Tagovailoa behind center. Since his return from a four-week concussion-induced layoff, Tagovailoa has the Dolphins averaging better than 30 points a game. His accuracy and his ability to read the field are exceptional, and his short-yardage decisionmaking is crucial:
Tagovailoa doesn’t have the strongest arm in the league, but he might have the best touch, and so Mike McDaniel has used that skillset to design a short-ball offense that plays to Tagovailoa’s strengths. Miami’s 34-15 win over New England isn’t exactly a milestone victory given the state of the Patriots these days, but Tagovailoa’s numbers — four touchdowns, 317 yards passing — are an indicator of this team’s potential.
The whole country will get a look at Tagovailoa on Thanksgiving against the Packers, and if Miami is able to escape from this tilt with a win, the 5-6 Dolphins will be right back in the heart of the playoff mix in the AFC. McDaniel’s plan for the Dolphins offense is coming together, even if it took a little longer than expected to bring it to fruition.