With 12 weeks of actual football in the books for the 2023 NFL season, and the Thanksgiving slate behind us, it’s time for Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire, and Kyle Madson of Niners Wire, to come to the table with their own unique brand of analysis in “4-Down Territory.”
This week, the guys have some serious questions to answer:
- Who’s the NFL’s Most Valuable Player at this point of the season?
- Which current non-playoff team is the league’s most dangerous?
- Which player deserves to be traded from his current team as an act of mercy?
- What was the Worst of the Week for Week 12?
You can watch this week’s “4-Down Territory” right here:
You can also listen and subscribe the “4-Down Territory” podcast on Spotify…
…and on Apple Podcasts.
1. Who's your NFL MVP at this point of the season?
Doug: I want to see how the Cowboys keep this up, but it might be Dak Prescott right now. Yes, it sounds a little nuts if you look at Prescott’s performance before the Week 7 bye, but it’s what he’s done since then I’m talking about.
Before that bye, Prescott had completed 132 of 190 passes for 1,333 yards, six touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 91.0.
Since the bye, Dak Prescott has completed 127 of 180 passes for 1,602 yards, 17 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 124.8.
Prescott’s completion rate has risen from 69.5% to 70.6%, and that’s especially impressive because he’s been throwing completing so many deep balls of late — before the bye, he attempted 19 passes of 20 or more air yards, completing eight for 194 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 92.9. Since the bye, Prescott has completed 20 of his 33 deep throws for 565 yards, six touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 144.3. When you’re just about perfect on the game’s toughest throws, you are indeed playing with house money.
And he’s doing all of this in an offense run by Mike McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer, with one top receiver in CeeDee Lamb. He doesn’t have the playbook and the weapons other great quarterbacks have, but he’s playing as well as any quarterback in the league right now. If it continues against some tougher competition – Dallas has the Seahawks, Eagles, Bills, Dolphins, and Lions before their get-well regular-season finale against the Commanders – and if they go deep in the playoffs, that’s going to be a discussion.
Kyle: I’m having a hard time with this because I certainly see the argument for Jalen Hurts. The Eagles are 10-1 in part because of the inevitability of Hurts and that offense in late-game scenarios. If he was 20% worse they’d probably be looking at three or four losses at this point. Prescott has been objectively better to this point, but narratives play such a vital role in MVP voting that the Cowboys will need to do something special over the next several weeks to get him into the mix.
For me, I’m rolling with a non-quarterback because this feels like a good year for a non-QB to win one. Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill gets my vote right now. He’s leading the NFL with 88 receptions, 1,323 receiving yards, and 10 receiving touchdowns. Pro Football Focus also has him as their highest-graded receiver by a pretty wide margin. There’s just not a lot he can’t do right now on the football field, and if he winds up going for 2,000-plus receiving yards with 15-plus receiving TDs it’s going to be hard to keep him out of the MVP conversation.
2. Which team that's currently out of the playoff race is the most dangerous?
Doug: The Houston Texans. They’re now 6-5 and the AFC’s eight-seed after their 24-21 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, but keep in mind that the Jags might be the AFC’s best team right now, and these Texans spanked the Jags 37-17 in Week 3. That was the game where a lot of us started thinking that Stroud was made of something different.
They’re still putting things together on defense, and I hated DeMeco Ryans’ decision to give kicker Matt Amendola a 58-yard game-tying attempt against Jacksonville when Ammendola hadn’t hit a 50-yarder since he was at Oklahoma State in 2017, but Ryans is still deservedly in Coach of the Year conversation, it’s clear that everyone has bought into the program, and any time you have C.J. Stroud firing guided missiles to Tank Dell, Nico Collins, Dalton Schultz, and Robert Woods, you have a team that can beat just about anybody if the circumstances are right. I’m not saying that this is a Super Bowl team yet, but they’re certainly headed in that direction, and they’ve absolutely become one of those teams you do not want to play under any circumstances.
Their remaining schedule is pretty favorable, as well – they have the Broncos, Jets, Titans, Browns, Titans, and Colts to finish the season. Playoff Stroud could be a reality in his rookie season, and I’m all the way here for it. Who would have thought it possible for a team that finished the 2022 season with a 3-13-1 record?
Kyle: I think it’s the Buffalo Bills. One-game playoff scenarios are so tricky and I’m not sure there’s a team I’d rather bet on than Buffalo. I’m not totally sold on Sean McDermott as a head coach and defensive game planner, and I’m definitely not sold that Josh Allen is capable of playing mistake-free football for multiple playoff games. However, there’s enough talent there to make Allen and the Bills a dangerous team in any first-round playoff matchup.
Had Jake Elliott missed a 59-yard field goal at the end of Sunday’s game, the vibe around the Bills would be way different. They’re capable of laying an egg, but they’re also capable of looking like the best team in football. That’s the team I have no interest in facing in the first round if I’m an AFC playoff team.
3. Which player should be traded to another team as an act of mercy?
Doug: Jessie Bates III of the Falcons deserves so much better than this, and what team wouldn’t like a top-tier center-field safety? Bates’ 92-yard pick six against the Saints on Sunday in a 24-15 win was one of the most impressive defensive plays you’ll see all season. New Orleans had third-and-3 from the Atlanta 12-yard line, the Falcons were in Cover-1, and Derek Carr tried to throw a Texas (angle) route to receiver Rasheed Shaheed. Bates was in center field, just on the other side of the end zone line, and he crashed down with perfect timing to take the ball away. That he returned it 92 yards for a touchdown was nice, but Bates has been making these types of plays all season long.
I’m not feeling sorry for Bates – the former Bengals star signed a four-year, $64.02 million contract with $36 million in guarantees this offseason – but when your head coach and offensive shot-caller is Arthur Smith, and the talent around you on defense is iffy… Bates is 26 now, and he might be pushing his thirties before this team is truly among the elite.
Kyle: Look, man. I know he’s almost 33 years old, but Khalil Mack has still got it. He deserves so much better than being a Los Angeles Charger under head coach Brandon Staley. Mack did everything he could Sunday night against the Ravens with six tackles, a tackle for loss, 2.0 sacks and a pass breakup. The Chargers still lost that game by 10. Mack this season has 47 pressures and 12 sacks according to PFF – those numbers rank No. 13 and No. 3 in the NFL, respectively. The 12 sacks are also his most since posting 13 in 2018. Mack has four games this year with fewer than five pressures, and he deserves to be putting this late-career surge to use on a team that’s not foundering in the AFC West’s basement.
4. What was your worst of the Week for Week 12?
Doug: Shotgun runs on fourth-and-1. We need to outlaw these for the good of the NFL. On Thanksgiving Day, two teams tried these, and as usual, they didn’t work. With 4:19 left in the Seattle Seahawks’ 31-13 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle made the decision to hand the ball to running back Zach Charbonnet. Quarterback Geno Smith was in shotgun, and the play went nowhere. Pete Carroll said the day after the game that h3e was trying to get the 49ers to widen their front because they had to respect the pass. Whatever.
As for the Washington Commanders in their 45-10 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, they tried a shotgun run on fourth-and-1 with 8:19 left in the third quarter, and this thing was dead in the water before it even got in the water.
Per Sports Info Solutions through Week 11, NFL teams have run the ball on fourth-and-1 out of shotgun 27 times for 68 yards, two touchdowns, and 16 conversions to first down.
Fourth-and-1 runs from under center have been far more successful — 89 attempts for 233 yards, one touchdown, and 68 conversions to first down. Even when you take out the “tush push” numbers engendered by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (seven fourth-and-1 attempts from under center for 16 yards and seven conversions to first down), the metrics tell a very clear tale. Stop being cute, and let the Eagles show you the way!
Kyle: It’s the shotgun runs on fourth-and-1! That’s the worst thing of the week! It’s unbelievable that teams are still doing this in the year 2023! We are 39 years shy of the Jetsons and we’re still lining the quarterback and running back up five yards behind the line of scrimmage to try and gain one (1) yard. The Eagles get every single fourth-and-1 by getting as tight as possible and forcibly pushing defenses vertically. Then here’s the Commanders and Seahawks like, “let’s move as far away from each other as possible.” If I owned a team and my OC called a fourth-and-1 shotgun run I’d fire them on the spot and grab a kid in the stands who plays Madden to call my offense the rest of the way.
For the sake of talking about something else though, Panthers owner David Tepper is my worst of the week. Frank Reich is out as head coach after 11 games. They botched the Bryce Young pick right away by bringing in an undersized QB and then putting him behind a dreadful offensive line with zero dynamic weapons at the skill positions. Now they’ve canned his first head coach which will force him to start over in a new offense next year while the team has no substantial assets to make the team better around him this offseason.
Tepper clearly wants to win. That is the best quality for an owner to have. The worst quality an owner can have is thinking that he’s the best person to make football decisions. Tepper needs to hire a well-respected football person to run the show and get the heck out of the way. Until he does that, the Panthers are likely to continue the disastrous path they’re on.
