Trevor Lawrence Stinks, and Other Truth Bombs

Some thoughts, observations and projections for selected Week 11 games as Too Deep Zone reignites its NFL engine:

Los Angeles Chargers at Jacksonville Jaguars

Trevor Lawrence stinks.

OK, perhaps “stinks” is too loaded a term. Lawrence has regressed. He’s damaged. He needs a complete overhaul. His reputation is currently being propped up by excuse-mongering and confirmation bias.

Lawrence is not helping the Jaguars win. He’s exacerbating their losses. If the Jaguars were real contenders, not AFC South participation-trophy Wild Card contenders, Lawrence would be holding them back. But the whole team now plays down to Lawrence’s performance level. Or maybe Lawrence plays down to the team. After all these years, the noodle tastes just like the broth. And last Sunday’s collapse was one of the ugliest things I have witnessed in years.

Yes, I know the Texans defense is the league’s best. And that Lawrence’s game-ending interception was just desperate-situation chaos. I’m aware that the TikTok influencers running the Jaguars transformed Travis Hunter from Charles Woodson into Weird Barbie in the span of six months. I know Brian Thomas was hurt in Week 10, and even when he’s healthy I wouldn’t trust him to hold my baby if he were my own brother.

Excuses. Rationalizations. Special pleading. That collapse was on Lawrence.

The Texans spotted the Jaguars a 17-point lead on turnovers and special teams and stood waiting for the knockout blow. Instead, Lawrence provided sacks, near-interceptions, near-fumbles, batted passes and short settle-for-field-goal drives. Davis Mills, playing behind an offensive line full of Sidy Sow-caliber backups, engineered a comeback from a 29-10 deficit at the start of the fourth quarter while Lawrence stood there and absorbed punches like a palooka taking a 12th-round dive.

Of course there were Jaguars penalty sprees! Sure, the Texans might have gotten a call or two! What part of blew a 29-10 fourth-quarter lead over Davis Mills and rejects from the 2023 Patriots offensive line do you hope to explain away with penalties and officiating?

Any NFL quarterback, starter or backup, should have been able to preserve the lead that the Texans spotted the Jaguars. It required making two or three decent throws or decisions in the fourth quarter. Lawrence made zero. He was rattled, indecisive and careless in what should have been a no-sweat situation for a veteran franchise quarterback, no matter how well Danielle Hunter was playing.

The conversation around Lawrence is veering dangerously close to 2019-2020 Carson Wentz territory. He doesn’t have the weapons. His receivers aren’t executing. Look at the tools and traits!

It’s telling that Lawrence and Wentz both became Doug Pederson projects. Pederson gets great short-term results by maxing out his quarterbacks’ self-esteem. Fine-tuning the details? That’s someone else’s problem.

Pederson is gone now, so there is no value in blaming him. And Lawrence has not gone Full Wentz yet. But trust me: this is how it looks, with a solid roster puttering at .500 and an offense grinding in first gear while the all-22 cinephiles sniff that Parker Washington didn’t run his route exactly right.

Also, we haven’t seen much of Liam Coen the Screen Pass Wizard this year. Instead, we’ve seen goofy Wildcat jet sweeps in the red zone, Hunter as a Swiss Army Knife that’s all toothpicks, and so many offensive line penalties that it looks like the Jaguars practice them for three hours per week.

Long ago, in the 2022 playoffs, Lawrence led a comeback from a 27-0 deficit to beat the Chargers by a 31-30 final score. It was a watershed moment in my hardy-har-har Justin Herbert shtick. Herbert’s Chargers, however, now limit unforced errors and remain competitive under adverse circumstances. Herbert has been running for his life behind an offensive line that could use a Sidy Sow, but he’s never looked like he was just spraying footballs off defenders’ hands.

The Jaguars’ playoff portfolio is currently a house of cards built atop a Chiefs win made possible by a 99-yard interception return touchdown and a Lawrence rushing touchdown which began as a pie-in-the-face pratfall. The Chargers will systematically stomp them on Sunday. The Jaguars will then hobble through the rest of their schedule sniping opponents like the Jets and Titans to stay alive.

Lawrence must play significantly better in the weeks to come. If not – if the Jaguars finish 9-8 because they beat the Titans twice on strip-sacks or something – the Jaguars braintrust of Coen, Doogie Blackstone and the Grand Goofus of Wrestling should trade him. There will be no sense waiting for the rest of the NFL to finally come around to the same conclusion I reached in the opening sentence.

Detroit Lions at Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles are 7-2, with wins over the Chiefs, Rams, Buccaneers and Packers. One of their trade-deadline acquisitions, Jaelan Phillips, recorded multiple pressures on Monday night. (Another, Jaire Alexander, is not so much going on leave of absence from the NFL as making the leave of absence he was already on official.) The Eagles have a two-and-a-half game lead over the second-place Cowboys in the NFC East.

Meanwhile, the Lions are 1-2 in their division, have lost to three teams that the Eagles have beaten, are banged up on the offensive line and defense and sat on their hands at the trade deadline. They smoked the Tennessee Titans Alumni Team in Week 10, but they lost to the Vikings in J.J. McCarthy’s third career start in Week 9. McCarthy went on to complete 48% of his passes and throw two interceptions in his fourth career start.

The Lions and Eagles rank fourth and eighth in weighted DVOA. They rank fifth and eighth in offensive DVOA. Yep, the Eagles rank eighth in offensive DVOA. You are excused for thinking it was closer to 28th. I didn’t believe it either. But turnover mitigation is a thing, and opponent adjustments can be hard to make with the naked eye.

Lions at Eagles looked like an NFC Championship Game preview when it popped up on the Sunday Night Football schedule. It still looks like one, though Seahawks at Rams looks more like one. The NFC’s Final Four isn’t hard to spot, though the Buccaneers could still poke their heads in.

The stats and won-loss records suggest that the Lions are the more unpredictable, mercurial, self-destructive team. The Eagles, however, are mired in yet another chapter of the endless A.J. Brown Vaguebooking Sadgasm telenovela, a soul-consuming bleakscape of metastasized self-pity.

Now, let’s say you are a highly-valued, hard-to-replace employee at an incredibly successful company in a competitive industry, but you are unhappy at work. You are well compensated, and the company is doing well. This is a personal and professional-satisfaction situation: you are mad at coworkers/bosses, feel disrespected or taken for granted, and/or seek a chance to pursue more of your individual goals.

Under the circumstances, there are three paths forward:

Boomer: Grin and bear it like a pro’s pro.

Troublemaker: Loudly and publicly demand change, making ultimatums if necessary.

Lord/Lady Emoknickers: Mope around acting vaguely miserable for months, muttering melancholy little riddles to anyone trying to figure out what is wrong and bellyaching to Twitch streamers while tears flow onto your game controller.

The Boomer path is best for the company, but not the individual. If you are wired to keep your mouth shut and get the job done, it does have its advantages: it rarely makes the situation worse, for example. But it’s not for everyone. Personal happiness is important, after all. The Boomer path is also not always the righteous one: if there’s a problem at work that’s impacting your happiness and performance, your colleagues and superiors may need to hear about it, because you might not be alone.

The Troublemaker path, for NFL wide receivers, is the well-worn Diva path. You might get labeled as a crybaby or malcontent. You might also force change: a trade, a raise, or an assurance of a better role. You could force ownership to intervene in the situation. Or expose a deeper company problem. Heck, airing the grievances can be an end in its own right. A boss looking you in the eye and saying There’s nothing we can do to make this better for you, but the team needs you, so please stick with us can be downright therapeutic.

The Lord/Lady Emoknickers path is the way moody college students handle romantic breakups. It’s immature attention-seeking behavior masquerading as courageous stoicism. It accomplishes nothing while dragging down or alienating the people who have to deal with you on a daily basis. It’s also self-fulfilling: the Troublemaker brings the issue to a head, the Boomer sacrifices the personal for the professional, but Lord Emoknickers slowly makes others distrust or dislike him, which only makes him sadder.

I have no idea how the Eagles proceed with Brown. If I were Jeffrey Lurie, I would stage personal interventions with all relevant parties. If I were Nick Sirianni, I’d bench Brown for his latest round of complaints, if only to see if I could awaken the Troublemaker, who might catch some spite touchdowns. If I were Jalen Hurts, I might call Brown out publicly, for the same reason. Emoknickers-types absolutely hate getting called out for their shit: the coddling/enabling behavior is what they crave. But it’s often what’s best for them, and everyone around them.

What’s clear at this point is that the Eagles don’t have a team chemistry problem like the one they had in December of 2023. They have a Whiny Hiney Receiver problem. Those are easier to compartmentalize and mitigate.

Dan Campbell wouldn’t stand for Brown’s Emoknickers behavior. He’d pull some Warrior Alpha Daddy emotional jujitsu on Brown and have this problem solved in no time. Then Campbell would order Brown to throw an option pass that results in a pick-6 while trailing by 10 points to a clearly inferior team in the playoffs, earning kudos for his bold aggression. Sirianni’s Malcontents, meanwhile, will just continue barely beating championship-caliber competition in aesthetically-displeasing ways.

And that’s why Campbell is a better coach than Sirianni. – Philly talk-radio listeners, probably.

Seattle Seahawks at Los Angeles Rams

Sam Darnold leads all quarterbacks on play-action passes with 13.9 yards per attempt on 65 attempts, per Sports Info Solutions. Lamar Jackson is second with 13.7 YPA on just 36 attempts. No one else is over 10.0.

Darnold leads all quarterbacks on designed rollouts with 13.3 yards per attempt on 23 attempts. Cam Ward is second at 10.0 YPA.

Darnold leads all quarterbacks on passes from two-tight end packages with 11.9 yards per attempt on 96 attempts. Jared Goff is second at 10.8 (66 attempts). The only other quarterback over 10.0 is Russell Wilson, at 10.2 YPA on just 23 attempts: a small-sample blip containing a bomb or two against the Cowboys.

Don’t think of these as “Darnold is awesome” stats, but as “Seahawks operating at peak capacity” stats. The Seahawks are playing harder, faster and smarter than their opponents. Their defense is keeping them ahead in games. Their offense is balanced enough to keep them in positive down-and-distance situations. This is complementary football on HGH. The Seahawks are in complete command of most games, allowing them to gain high yields from low-risk plays.

One last stat to illustrate this matter: Darnold has thrown just 48 passes with the Seahawks trailing this year. That figure ranks 38th in the NFL. Among the quarterbacks who have thrown as many or more passes while trailing this year: Davis Mills (also 48), Tyrod Taylor (61), Tyler Shough (62), J.J. McCarthy (65), and Wilson (78). Brock Purdy, who fell down a well sometime in October and is just clawing out, has thrown 47 passes while trailing. Matthew Stafford, leading a 7-2 team that has blown out four straight opponents, has thrown 116 passes while trailing in 2025.

Playing quarterback is much easier with a lead. But guess who leads the NFL in yards per attempt when trailing? That’s right: Sam Darnold at 11.9.

The Rams have executed 65 rushing plays and 33 passing plays from three-tight end personnel groups. No team – not even the Steelers! – deploys three tight ends that often.

The Rams only began using 3TE tactics in Week 6 against the Ravens. I searched the Sports Info Solutions database back to 2022 and found only two running plays from 3TE personnel before the Ravens game.

I would make fun of Sean McVay as a fad dieter who discovers something like keto and then becomes the world’s most dedicated/annoying keto advocate, but … have you seen McVay’s record? And his waistline? When the dude is on to something, he’s on to something.

McVay has adopted another new favorite wrinkle: presnap motion in which one of the tight ends (or a receiver, lined up “tite”) short-motions to the gap between the tackle and another tight end. The motion man then blasts through the gap to either run a route or block on the second level.

This little wrinkle messes up defensive man-coverage assignments and puts coverage defenders in a bind: it’s hard to sift through traffic to cover someone slipping through a run gap. In the running game, it masses blockers at the point of attack: extra tight ends mean extra gap assignments, and the motion man can act as an old-school fullback to blow up the defender who tries to close down a hole.

You can see a few examples of both the 3TE package and what I will call “insert” motion tactics in the first minute of this highlight video against the Saints.

The Rams also used three tight ends and insert motion frequently against the 49ers. I couldn’t find many capital-H Highlights, but the tactics produced lots of move-the-chains plays.

This is a “gather information” game for me. The Rams haven’t faced anyone in their weight class for over a month – the Lamar-less Ravens don’t really count – and I suspect there’s a little bit of helium in the Seahawks’ record/stats/reputation as well. Both teams have several blowout victories and zero truly “bad losses” in their dossiers. (Narrow losses to the 49ers can’t really be classified as bad.) That’s more than the Eagles, Lions or Packers can boast right now. The winner of this game could end up being my favorite to not just reach the Super Bowl, but win it.

Kansas City Chiefs at Denver Broncos

Sometimes, when studying Broncos offensive film on NFL Pro, I’ll see a play description like this:

(:43) (Shotgun) B.Nix pass short right to T.Franklin to LV 14 for no gain (J.Chinn; D.White)

… and think, “OMG, I cannot WAIT to see what that’s all about!”

It’s never just a screen pass that got blown up. In this case, it was a screen pass where Bo Nix pumped to Troy Franklin in the right flat, looked downfield, then dumped a slider to Franklin, who got drilled by the two unblocked defenders who had been waiting around to tackle him since the pump fake.

A traditional short-passing offense strives to get the ball out quickly to dynamic playmakers in space. The current Broncos short-passing offense appears designed to deliver the ball late to slow guys surrounded by defenders. The whole offense seems to be controlled by the Madden AI. Nix makes decisions and throws as if they were based on dice rolls. Receivers often run directly into defenders after the catch. It’s an offense that can only look good against a defense that had its awareness and tackling sliders set to zero (the Cowboys).

Nix would have been benched by now if the Broncos had anything less than a top-10 defense. That doesn’t mean he should be benched; it’s often best to grin and bear third-quartile quarterback play, especially from someone who could still develop. But Nix can only subsist on random bombs and late-game scrambles because the Broncos have won four games in which they scored 20 points or less (and beat the Eagles by scoring 21 points, 18 of them in the fourth quarter). “Streaky” and “clutch” are very often code words for “mostly ineffective, but still within three points.”

The Chiefs are 3.5-point favorites against this little engine that could. They will win by double digits.

Green Bay Packers at New York Giants

Good riddance to Brian Daboll! He’s a bellicose backroom schemer whose last act as Giants head coach was going full Sid from Toy Story on Jaxson Dart.

Yes, the officials should have forced Dart into the medical tent after he got hit in the skull by Soldier Field last Sunday. But Daboll, already in hot water because of his cavalier attitude towards Dart’s health, also had the option of sending the rookie to the tent. Coaches can do that! They can see a fellow homo sapiens crumpled on the ground after a high-speed collision and think, mayhap I shall use what resources I have at my disposal to provide this ailing soul with much-needed medical attention.

But no, Daboll was coaching for his job, and nothing on earth is more important to Daboll than Daboll and his career. Fair enough. Yet it takes a piquant vintage of selfish shortsightedness to think endangering the woozy hope-for-the-franchise, after already having been fined and publicly warned by the boss not to endanger the hope-for-the-franchise, was the right way to save his job. Daboll’s strategy was more disappointing than his decency.

I wouldn’t trust Daboll to walk my dog or coach a high school JV team. He’ll probably be in Baton Rouge by January.

Mike Kafka is a clever play caller, though fans may not realize it because Daboll took credit for all offensive successes.

Kafka’s first act as interim head coach was to promote Jameis Winston, who will start until Dart returns from concussion protocol. Daboll stuck with Russell Wilson as his backup, even though Daboll preferred a concussed Dart or (at the start of the fourth quarter against the Bears) nothing but handoffs to Wilson.

Daboll and/or the Giants probably made promises to Wilson which were voided by Daboll’s dismissal. Jameis provides volatility and variance, which is more than what Wilson now provides (nothing).

Elgton Jenkins’ ankle injury will likely force Sean Rhyan to take over at center for the Packers. Rhyan lost his starting job at right guard to Jordan Morgan early in the season. He filled in at left guard when Aaron Banks was hurt against the Panthers, then replaced Jenkins on Monday night.

Rhyan played only nine snaps at center before the 2024 season. Jenkins has been a stalwart on the Packers line at various positions since 2019. Center may have been Jenkins’ least natural position, but he was an experienced adjustment-making presence.

When Romeo Doubs (chest) got injured on Monday night, Jordan Love was forced to target the likes of Bo Melton (converted to cornerback, and back again) and Dontayvion Wicks (hands like tonsils) in high-leverage situations. Tucker Kraft is long gone, of course, and Matthew Golden, the gifted rookie Packers fans have mistaken for Randy Moss-meets-Darius the Great, was out with a shoulder injury. Oh, and Love was without his starting center against Jalen Carter.

It’s fun to blame everything on Love and Matt LaFleur, and its not like they are crushing it, but you aren’t going to move the ball against the Eagles defense without a viable WR2 (or TE1) to challenge the weak spots in their defense. The Giants defense, with its nasty pass rush, could also pose problems. Check injury reports for updates on Doubs and Golden.

I hammered the Giants +7 the moment Winston was announced as Dart’s replacement. The Packers should still squeak out a win, especially with their situation growing desperate. Even with Jameis spotting them two turnovers, however, I don’t trust the Packers offense to cover a touchdown spread against anyone right now.

Walkthrough returns to its regular schedule first thing Monday morning.