The Sunday NFL action after Thanksgiving is always odd because so many games are isolated during the holiday, even more so this year with the Dolphins and Jets squaring off in the first-ever “Black Friday” game. Take four games off the Sunday slate and it can get pretty thin pretty quick. That was extremely evident during the early slate of games, where nary a single team topped the 30-point mark.
Six slow-moving slogs served to emphasize the increasing late-season warmth of several hot seats around the league. And it’s impossible to start anywhere but Carolina when looking at who might be the next coach fired.
David Tepper hasn’t been happy with this team’s performance and Sunday’s embarrassing effort against a meh Titans team only exacerbated the problems.
Now, let’s be clear: the Panthers mostly have a Tepper problem on their hands from an overarching, roster-building perspective. But they are not a good football team, and scored less than 14 points for the SIXTH time this year while falling to 1-10 on the season.
Rookie Will Levis didn’t have to do much in this effort for Tennessee, attempting just 28 passes. Mostly the Titans handed off to Derrick Henry (76 yards on 18 carries and a pair of rushing touchdowns) and let their defense handle the rest, snuffing out Carolina’s run game and letting the pass game look like, well, what it’s looked like all season.
Bryce Young actually had multiple plays longer than 20 yards and Carolina held Tennessee to 2-for-11 on third down and the Panthers still were never really in this game. Young had a chance to engineer a game-tying drive but Carolina only managed to muster 4 yards before turning it over on downs.
Carolina’s had three legitimately winnable games over the past month and was only really mildly competitive against the Bears and Titans, but not in any sort of way where you believed they might actually win.
Which makes it significantly likely Frank Reich is going to be a one-and-done coach in Carolina. Tepper went out and wooed Matt Rhule, gave him a massive contract, saddled him with questionable quarterback choices and still canned Rhule less than three years into his tenure with the Panthers. Not saying it was a bad move, but the whole process was completely flawed.
So is what’s going on with Carolina this year. Reich is a good coach. He hasn’t done a good job coaching this year. Those two things can live in mutual exclusivity. Reich got saddled with a rookie quarterback who cost significant draft and personnel capital to acquire. Young has no real weapons. The Panthers are like a homeless man’s Jets team with their bad offensive line, lack of offense and a stout defense that can’t hold every team to less than 10 points.
At this point it would be shocking to see Reich stick past the end of the season.
End of an Era, death of a dynasty
Bill Belichick won’t get fired … right? RIGHT?? It’s impossible to fathom the possibility of Belichick being canned in New England, considering he brought a ridiculous six Super Bowls to the Patriots over the last 20-something years. But, man, any other football mind coaxing this poor performance from a football team would be getting fired without question after this season.
Somehow Sunday was a new low, impressive considering the two weeks before the bye featured a loss at home to Sam Howell and a loss in Germany to Gardner Minshew on a very public stage. But Sunday, oh buddy Sunday … it was a new low as Belichick’s team lost as a 3.5-point road favorite to Tommy DeVito.
DeVito’s got as many wins this season (two) as the Patriots, who fell to 2-9 on the year, easily the worst start in Belichick’s tenure and the worst Patriots start since Drew Bledsoe’s rookie year of 1993.
The Patriots have recorded four games scoring seven points or less this season. They had five such games in the 283 starts of Tom Brady’s career. They’re the first team in 30 years to allow less than 10 points in back-to-back games and lose both of those games (shoutout to the 1993 Patriots). Belichick’s two games lost while allowing 10 points or less matches the total for the entirety of his 28 years as a head coach previously.
Mac Jones was reportedly named the starter shortly before kick after Belichick spent all week long refusing to name who would be under center for this team in Week 12, as if it mattered between Jones and Bailey Zappe. It really didn’t: reports indicated Zappe would get some work as well and he sure did, but largely because Jones basically got benched. He finished with two picks and a fumble that the Patriots should have lost. Zappe wasn’t much better and the Patriots sunk to a new low.
Only the Bears (via the Panthers) and the Cardinals are preventing New England from holding the first overall pick. And there’s a very viable question if the Pats would want to keep the keys in Belichick’s hands for a rebuild with a new first-round quarterback. Given the offense the last two seasons, it’s not an unreasonable question.
Wherever they end up picking, there’s no turnaround in sight. It’s hard not to see this season as a fast track for a divorce between Belichick and the franchise he’s captained to unimaginable success for over two decades once the offseason gets here.
Commandeering the Commanders
This one feels obvious but there’s little to no chance Ron Rivera is coming back next year. After a humiliating performance against the Cowboys on Thanksgiving afternoon in which Dak Prescott piled up 20+ points in the final nine minutes to turn things into a blowout, Rivera met with new owner Josh Harris and agreed to dismiss defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio.
It’s the type of firing that is almost clearly and certainly a precursor for a head coaching change, especially with new ownership in place.
Rivera is a defensive coach and JDR was a close confidant who ran his defense. The Commanders traded both Chase Young and Montez Sweat off a defense that was already bad. What could they possibly expect?
This firing is as much about setting the table for a future house cleaning as it is trying to shake up the defense in its current iteration. Rivera would need a miracle turnaround to save his job at this point.
