2025 NFL Season Thread

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

And just like that, the 2026 Falcons first that the Rams own gets markedly worse.

Unbelievable.

[EldrickOnIce]

Should have been PI
I think should have been ruled a catch by Nacua
Regardless Rams shot themselves in foot all night
Congratulations Drake Mate, NFL MVP

[browna]

Well that gives Seattle a bit of an out. Win vs SF and get the NFC bye. Lose and get a rematch with Carolina or TB.

But again Seattle lost to Tampa and had to grind out a second half vs Carolina.
Seattle’s only path to make any damage in the playoffs is to get a bye and home playoffs.

[puffnstuff]

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...ssault-charges

New England wide receiver Stefon Diggs is facing a felony charge of strangulation and a misdemeanor charge of assault from an alleged incident on Dec. 2.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by browna

Well that gives Seattle a bit of an out. Win vs SF and get the NFC bye. Lose and get a rematch with Carolina or TB.

I think it's ever better for the 49ers, that offense is much better off playing at Carolina or Tampa than Chicago or Philadelphia in January.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Crazy to me that the Seahawks are road favorites this week. Sam Darnold in a high pressure road game? Sounds like easy money to me, but yeah as I said Sunday if he has another pooping of the pantaloons against the stank ass Niners D I think they gotta see what Lock can do in the playoffs.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Absolutely no chance of starting anyone but Darnold no matter how many turnovers he has this week. This is the trial run and it's why they structured the contract the way they did. They'll go as far as he and the defense can take them, and given that before the season a one-and-done playoffs would have been considered a very positive outcome and a step in the right direction after a near-miss last season, they'll stick to the plan.

Plus if you've ever seen Drew Lock play, including with Seattle, he's no less prone to the occasional terrible decision than Darnold is. If they're not winning anything with Sam they're not winning it with Lock either.

[browna]

For all the stick Sam gets, from myself included, only QB in league history to win 14 games with 2 different teams in back to back years.

In part because he’s fully in agreement with his coaches and coordinators, mostly. He has the physical size and tools and is smart enough QB to understand defences and make adjustments.

With the right game plan setup, as he had in Minnesota and again in Seattle, he just has to execute the game plan they have set up for him in passing situations. He doesn’t have to do more than that or take it upon himself to do something on his own unlike some guys who get frustrated in that seemingly restrictive mindset, he has no problem or ego around that. So, things get done the way the coaches plan and map it out, without any surprises in the QB going off script (Russ, Geno) and a QB who can complete all short and long passes.

His mistakes are usually 5-10 yard interceptions where he tries to force something he himself thinks the play or throw should work instead of trusting the coaches who have told him to throw it away.

I somewhat think Hurts is the same in that regard.

So with the execution more or less robotic from the QB, it comes down to the Xs and Os from the coordinator, and adapting within game from the coordinator vs the defense, to have the success.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The stick he gets is from the last two years, where he looked like a top 10 QB until the important games, then reverted to Jets Darnold when it mattered. But they have won the last two games he's been poor in, so maybe that gives him a bit more confidence. And I get that Lock is not an improvement over most versions of Darnold, but we're all improvements over Jets Darnold so if that is what he is in what amounts to playoff games going forward, I'd roll the dice.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by browna

For all the stick Sam gets, from myself included, only QB in league history to win 14 games with 2 different teams in back to back years.

In part because he’s fully in agreement with his coaches and coordinators, mostly. He has the physical size and tools and is smart enough QB to understand defences and make adjustments.

With the right game plan setup, as he had in Minnesota and again in Seattle, he just has to execute the game plan they have set up for him in passing situations.

He arguably deserves a bit more credit than this because he hasn't been in a situation where he can be a pure game manager. The Vikings were like 19th in rush yards and 23rd in yards per rush attempt last year, and this year's Seahawks are 16th in yards but only 25th in yards per attempt. He hasn't had a run game to lean on. And the offensive lines have ranged from decent at best, to absolutely horrendous late last year with the Vikings injuries. This year's Seahawks o-line has been inconsistent. This isn't a Daniel Jones situation where he has Jonathan Taylor doing all the heavy lifting.

That being said, you could certainly argue that it's actually just the defense and the special teams doing the heavy lifting instead. I think that's more what's really happening. Look at their wins this year.

Steelers - special teams play changed the game with the kickoff TD after two Darnold picks in the first half had them behind.
Saints - special teams again with the punt return TD to put the game up 14-0 and was over immediately.
Jaguars / Texans / TNF Cardinals - legitimately good wins for Darnold against solid competition (even the Cardinals at the time were playing everyone close), proof of concept etc etc. That said, even these ones involved getting out to leads early and then trying to protect them; it wasn't a full 4 quarter clinic by the offense in any of these games, so even these are not inspiring as much confidence as you'd like, and the Texans game got very messy.
Commanders / Cardinals Pt II - Teams in freefall by this point and offering no real pushback, over by halftime, no useful data to go on, but especially since the defense and special teams wrecked these games early. Against the Cardinals it was two strip sacks returned for TDs, against the Commanders it was sack -> 3rd and 17 -> interception -> TD -> Fumble on ensuing kickoff -> short field TD -> game over.
Vikings / Colts - Very concerning both from a play calling perspective and the inefficiency of the offense. Obviously the Colts game required great special teams in terms of Myers setting a franchise record with 6 FGs and the Vikings game, against even a normal backup calibre QB could have been different - the Vikings should have been ahead going into the half before Brosmer threw that insane pick 6 in the red zone.
Falcons - 6-6 at half time, then Shaheed gets a kickoff return TD to start the 2nd half and they never looked back.
Rams Pt II - Clearly a loss if not for special teams again; Rasheed Shaheed punt return TD.
Panthers - Defense ensures that Bryce Young can do absolutely nothing, and even then Darnold tries to give it away with an endzone INT and another should-have-been intercepted just before that to a defensive lineman, as well as 3 balls batted at the LOS.
Titans - The Titans be the Titans.

This is why I say the offense is fake; there are maybe three legitimate wins where you can take something away all season where you think the offence played well and even in those games, they didn't knock anyone's socks off and were up early so they didn't have to execute in the clutch. All the rest of them were beating up on bad teams or carried by defense or special teams, or both.

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I get that Lock is not an improvement over most versions of Darnold, but we're all improvements over Jets Darnold so if that is what he is in what amounts to playoff games going forward, I'd roll the dice.

I wouldn't. There's no upside to that roll of the dice. It's like having to make a 12 with two D4s. Switching QBs gets you nowhere, because the best version of Drew Lock isn't good enough to win anything. The best version of Darnold could, even if you have very little faith in him showing up. The better roll of the dice is on the guy with the higher ceiling, even 4 out of the 6 sides have 1s on them. Is the metaphor exhausted yet?

[browna]

^ now do the 14 wins he got with the Vikings last year.

Again, I don’t think he’s the saviour and yes special teams and the defense have played a large part for the team success, along with solid coaching who can make adjustments in game, along with team wide solid execution, but he’s doing enough to win or better put not doing bad enough to lose some of those games on his own. In the right system with the right coaching he’s able to get by, and there are probably 20+ teams in the league who’d like to have that in their QB and offense.

He does have a WR with the most yards in the league too with 1700+, and only 500 are YAC (JSN had 1100 yards last year with 480 YAc last year) so it’s not 3 yard passes and JSN is doing the work.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by browna

In the right system with the right coaching he’s able to get by, and there are probably 20+ teams in the league who’d like to have that in their QB and offense.

I fundamentally agree with this and while I don't know about 20+ teams, at least half the league is in that category. The issue is that I don't think what the Seahawks have - yet - is the right system. What they need for the Darnold-as-QB version of this Kubiak offense to work is a better run blocking offensive line. Literally all Sam needs to be a perfectly serviceable top ten QB is decent protection and a run game. There have been tons - TONS - of mediocre QBs with fewer tools than Sam Darnold who have seen decent offensive success with exactly that, and as I said above, Daniel Jones with the Colts this year is a perfect example - that offense was putting up historically great numbers. You don't even need anything near that realm for this to work consistently and reliably in Seattle, you just need a solid, predictably well-above average ground game. Right now they don't have one and as a result the offense is extremely inconsistent and totally unreliable.

Obviously John Schneider, Mike MacDonald and Kubiak all agree with that, because that was exactly what they hoped they would be able to put on the field this season. But it's not. They drafted Zabel, but completely whiffed on signing any other offensive lineman - they went after Will Fries and Mekhi Becton and Teven Jenkins and got none of them. They had no idea who was playing C going into, or even really out of, preseason. Taking everything into account, they're a bad, bottom 10-ish running team. That's what they have to improve in the offseason if this is going to be the model going forward, and in fairness, it's not at all an impossible thing to address if it's prioritized. But it's been the biggest weakness of the team for years now and even though it gets a bit better some years, it never fully gets fixed.

[Weitz]

I hope Tampa bay wins on Saturday.

And then the falcons win on Sunday, putting the panthers back into the playoffs. Would be hilarious.

[Joborule]

That would be peak NFC South.

[EldrickOnIce]

Peak NFL scheduling blunder.
Play that #### game first, please

[Senator Clay Davis]

Why should the Panthers get a possible benefit though? If they played NO-ATL first and Atlanta wins, then Carolina gets to rest their players. It's an unusual situation and sets up the possibility that Sunday's second biggest game is between two eliminated teams, but NFC South football acts in mysterious ways. So the Bucs will win, Atlanta will be leading 28-3 with four minutes left, Saints tie it 28-28 and it ends in a 28-28 tie for peak lolz.

[Sainters7]

Knowing the Saints and Bucs feelings towards each other the past few years, I have a feeling Saints would just go for 2 in that situation anyway haha. From a lowly NFC South fan's perspective, it's pretty amusing both the Bucs and Panthers postseason hopes rest on the Saints vs Falcons game..

[Weitz]

Well no the panthers can win and be in. But they can also lose and be in.

[Sainters7]

Yep! Entirely dependent on the Saints/Falcons game...stay tuned

[Sylvanfan]

I saw that since the Falcons last playoff appearance that they're like 53-78 while still on contention and 12-4 after being eliminated. They are the toilet that starts flushing after the house catches on fire.

Maybe the Saints play some 4D Chess here trying to trick the Falcons into keeping Raheem Morris.