What We Learned From Week 7 in the N.F.L.
The Giants moved to 6-1 with another strong fourth-quarter finish, and the Bengals are beating defenses by targeting their slot receiver.The Giants (and the Jets) had been underdogs entering their Week 7 matchups, but things change quickly in the N.F.L. As one of the league’s most menacing fourth-quarter teams, the Giants added another comeback win to improve to 6-1. The Jets, playing the Broncos in Denver, were finally favored by Las Vegas oddsmakers, but only after Denver quarterback Russell Wilson was ruled out for the game.
Elsewhere, the Cincinnati Bengals have reversed their early-season woes with some offensive tinkering, and the N.F.C. South’s teams are shaping up to play spoiler in the season’s second half.
Brian Daboll’s offense has turned the Giants into a fearsome fourth-quarter team.
Daniel Jones spent three years in a Giants offense that had little to no identity. The sixth-overall draft pick in 2019, Jones was pigeonholed into burdensome, pass-heavy offenses at the beginning of his N.F.L. career, a result of his team often playing from behind and of injuries to Saquon Barkley, which stalled the running game.In his first season as the Giants’ head coach, Brian Daboll has shifted the burden of the offense from Jones’s arm to his receivers. Jones has been set up to chip away at defenses with consistent gains via play-action, run-pass options, screens and quick passing concepts with plenty of eye candy.
That is a shift from Jones’s old hero ball performances. The newer, more methodical passing approach has helped limit Jones’s turnovers this year, his fourth N.F.L. season. He has just two interceptions and two fumbles through seven games.
Moreover, Daboll has put more of an emphasis on Jones as a runner to complement Barkley. Daboll’s gap-heavy run scheme has been enough of a godsend for Barkley by itself, but using Jones on more option concepts has allowed the Giants to even the math with their running.
Jones entered Week 7 with 7.8 rushes per game, 2.2 more than his previous career high. It has not always led to explosive gains, but every now and again the Giants run into a defense with poor discipline up front, like the Jacksonville Jaguars’, and Jones gets to roam for 107 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. Barkley finished Sunday with 110 yards on 24 carries.
The formula is perfect for the 6-1 Giants, who beat the Jaguars (2-5), 23-17, on Sunday on the road. Previously, a 300-yard game for Jones most likely meant an inefficient, pass-heavy affair and a Giants loss. Now Jones can safely put up 200 yards through the air with a healthy serving of yards after the catch and add another 100 on the ground by himself.
Where Jones’s turnovers were a hallmark of close losses in the past, the Giants now have four fourth-quarter comeback wins and, after the win Sunday, a plus-36 point differential in the final stanza.
Breece Hall’s injury may haunt the Jets.
The Jets’ fourth straight victory, a 16-9 win in Denver, got out to a fast start that may hobble the team in the future. Midway through the first quarter, Breece Hall, a rookie running back, took a pitch from under center into the wide side of the field, and the Broncos’ second-level run defenders all overran their run fits. As the entire defense flowed to the sideline, Hall found a crease right on the painted numbers and took off for a 62-yard touchdown run.Late in the first half, he took a carry near the left sideline and tweaked his knee as he went down in the scrum tackle. He needed to be carted off the field. The Jets managed only two other explosive plays, and no other touchdowns, after his departure: a reverse to Braxton Berrios and a checkdown that running back Michael Carter turned into a 37-yard gain.
Hall has been instrumental, with the entire offensive game plan revolving around getting him going. In wins over the Dolphins and the Packers, he ran for at least 97 yards and a score. He even took a short pass against the Packers for 79 yards, accounting for more than a third of the team’s receiving yards in that game on one play.
Without the passing game finding any sort of groove yet, Hall’s contributions as a runner and underneath receiver were the most important aspects of the offense.
Coach Robert Saleh said in the postgame news conference that the team suspected Hall tore his anterior cruciate ligament. That may just be a “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” kind of comment, but if Hall misses significant time it could turn out to be a big blow. Carter is a good back in his own right, but not quite the workhorse or touchdown threat that Hall is.
Mecole Hardman’s breakout game shows how dangerous Kansas City can be.
Kansas City’s offense is such that any given skill player could have a monster day depending on the game plan. Coach Andy Reid has a unique eye for picking apart defenses, and the skill player group has so many varied skill sets that he often gets his choice players to feature. Sunday’s 44-23 win over the 49ers was a Mecole Hardman game.San Francisco, with one of the best defenses in the league (when healthy), simply could not stop Hardman in jet motion. Kansas City’s top receiver, Hardman scored on three separate jet motion plays — once on a quick touch pass and twice on handoffs. He was able to reach the perimeter all three times, and the 49ers’ defense never seemed to have an answer.
The 49ers believe in playing fast, chaotic football, and their front seven players personify that. San Francisco’s defensive linemen fire off the ball with unmatched intensity, giving the team an elite pass rush, which can stop the run on the way to the quarterback rather than letting run plays develop.
But that approach made defending against Kansas City’s jet motion plays exceptionally difficult Sunday. On all three of his touchdowns, Hardman took the ball and blew right past the 49ers’ edge defenders. Whether it was Nick Bosa or someone else, they flew upfield with their sights set on the quarterback, missing Hardman. As a result, Kansas City effectively got to “block” the edge defender without throwing an actual block.
To be clear, this isn’t a blueprint for other teams to beat the 49ers. Most other offenses will not set up these plays and keep a defense on its toes the way Reid does, or get two turnovers from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. But it is the kind of performance that makes Reid and the Kansas City offense special.
The Raiders’ rebound starts with the running game.
Josh McDaniels needed only a month to revive a Las Vegas Raiders run game that short-circuited last season. After an 0-3 start in which running back Josh Jacobs was held to fewer than 70 yards rushing in each game, he has run for at least 100 yards and a touchdown in each of Las Vegas’s last three games, including a 38-20 win over the Texans in Week 7.There are a few reasons Jacobs has come alive. The Raiders’ offensive line has been better this season after a few shake-ups, and Jacobs looks healthier and bouncier than he has at any other point over the past two years. All of those factors marry perfectly on the Raiders’ gap running schemes, which have been Jacobs’s bread and butter when he is on his game.
Jacobs’s third rushing touchdown, with 7 minutes 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter, was a good example. The Raiders were in a 21 personnel (two running backs, one tight end) offset I-formation. Both the tight end and one of the receivers were tight to the formation to the side of the offset fullback, completely overloading that side. McDaniels dialed up a counter concept the other way, featuring the strong side guard and fullback pulling back across to the weak side to kick out the defensive end and first linebacker at the second level. The bait-and-switch, so to speak, sprang Jacobs free into the Raiders’ secondary and let him handle the rest for a score.
If Jacobs and the Raiders’ backs can continue churning out 140 yards every game, the offense will have stable ground to stand on as it continues to work on unlocking the passing game.
Burrow-to-Boyd opened up the Bengals’ offense.
Cincinnati’s 0-2 start brought questions about how quarterback Joe Burrow and the Bengals’ passing offense would respond to a league that increasingly favors two-high-safety coverages. They have not been a good enough rushing team to force defenses out of two-high shells, nor have they targeted the middle of the field in the passing game well enough to make defenses think twice about calling coverages that commit players to defending deep passes instead of the middle of the field.Between last week’s 30-26 win against the New Orleans Saints and this week’s 35-17 dismantling of the Atlanta Falcons at home, it looks like the Bengals have adjusted.
The slot receiver Tyler Boyd has quietly been the answer to the Bengals’ woes. Burrow clearly prefers to operate from the shotgun, which means they would have to find success with passes over the middle to get defenses out of two-high coverages. The Burrow-to-Boyd connection between the numbers is finally giving Cincinnati’s passing offense the element needed to do so.
On the fourth play of the first drive, Burrow connected with Boyd on a 60-yard touchdown straight down the middle. The Falcons were in a Tampa 2 coverage with two deep safeties and a middle linebacker “running the pole” down the deep middle. The Bengals ran a play-action 989 concept, with three vertical routes that allow the slot receiver to stay vertical or bend his route depending on the coverage.
The play fake meant that Atlanta’s middle linebacker was late getting depth and that both deep safeties expanded to the sideline to cover the go routes on the outside. Boyd ran straight through the middle of the Falcons’ defense and waltzed into the end zone to put the Bengals up, 7-0.
The Falcons’ defensive coordinator, Dean Pees, reacted and reverted to one-high coverages: exactly what the Bengals wanted. One-high coverages all but confirm isolated coverage on the outside for receiver Ja’Marr Chase, and everyone knows Burrow wants nothing more than to throw those passes. Couple Pees’s sudden change of plans with Atlanta’s losing cornerback A.J. Terrell to a hamstring injury midway through the second drive, and you get a Bengals passing offense fully in its comfort zone again.
Chase finished with eight catches for 130 yards and two touchdowns, and Boyd added eight catches for 155 yards and a score.
The caveat is that the Bengals won’t play an A.J. Terrell-less Falcons defense every week, but they don’t need to. This same Bengals team gashed the Saints’ defense for 273 yards through the air a week ago with a similar formula. Boyd had six catches against the Saints, his season high until this week.
It’s no coincidence that the Bengals’ passing offense has looked its smoothest with Burrow finally working the middle of the field to help open up the passes he really wants to throw. If Cincinnati can keep building on these performances, it may return to being one of the A.F.C.’s best contenders.
The N.F.C. South is a mess, but not unsalvageable.
Every N.F.L. season comes with at least one division that is completely out of sorts, but few people expected that division to be the N.F.C. South this year. Not with quarterback Tom Brady unretired for one more go with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New Orleans Saints’ high-powered offense and the Carolina Panthers returning a healthy Christian McCaffrey.But each of those three marquee drawing points has been thrown for a loop to start this season, and through Week 7, the N.F.C. South is the league’s only division without a single team above .500.
Perhaps no team has disappointed this season like the Buccaneers, the bettors’ preseason favorites to win the N.F.C. Even with some of the offensive line shuffling and Rob Gronkowski retiring (again), the expectation was that Brady and his receivers, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and the freshly acquired Julio Jones, would be more than enough to keep the offense rolling while Coach Todd Bowles’s tremendous defense holding up on the other end.
That has not been the case. The Bucs have now endured two consecutive embarrassing upset losses, to the Steelers and to a Panthers team that fired its head coach after five games and last week traded McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers. The offensive line has been far worse than the team could have imagined. As a result, Brady has reverted to quick-fire passes with little to show for them.
The rest of the division has been no better, but each team still has avenues to win games and be a nuisance to the rest of the conference races. Coach Arthur Smith’s Falcons can run the ball as well as any team. The Saints, even with quarterback Jameis Winston injured, were a top-10 scoring team entering Week 7 because of an efficient rushing attack and a deep passing game with just enough juice to be a credible threat.
The Panthers had been the division’s ugly duckling up until this week, but their 21-3 win against the Bucs goes to show what their defense can do when Brian Burns, Derrick Brown and Shaq Thompson are all on their game.
The N.F.C. South’s teams have chances to play spoiler for a contentious A.F.C. North, their interconference schedule pairingthis season. The Falcons’ brute run game already took down the Browns in Week 4 and may be able to make a mess against the Ravens in Week 16. The Panthers’ fierce front seven is well equipped to wreak havoc on the Ravens’ and Bengals’ offensive lines over the next month, too. The same goes for the Bucs’ defense despite the team’s sputtering offense.Even the 2-5 Saints may be able to force a shootout against Browns and Ravens secondaries that have relentlessly blown coverages this season.
