The Read Option: Week 5
13 GIFs, quips and tidbits from a Sunday filled with wild comebacks.
This was a pretty wild week in the NFL. Comebacks were made, records were broken and milestones were hit. Luckily, I’m here to walk you through what went down.
You know the drill by now, so let’s just get right to it. Thirteen Sunday games. Thirteen Monday takes. One for each game, not from each game.
1. Do A Little Dance
When Charlie Whitehurst hit Justin Hunter for a 75-yard touchdown to put the Titans up 28–3 on the Browns late in the second quarter, Tennessee had a 97 percent chance of winning, according to Advanced NFL Stats. It was at this point that I began wondering if the Browns were finally going to turn the reins over to Johnny Manziel.
The Browns were 1–2 and well on their way to 1–3, Hoyer was struggling (he was 5–10 for 33 yards at the time) and things looked very, very bleak. The Browns didn’t make that change, though, and Hoyer proceeded to go 16–for-27 for 259 yards and 3 TDs through the game’s final 33 minutes.
He spread it around to eight different receivers, none of whom finished with more than four catches. Ben Tate, Terrence West and Isaiah Crowell ran hard and well, totaling 173 yards on 35 carries. The defense cracked down, not allowing the Titans to score at all in the second half. A huge stop on 4th-and-1 late in the 4th quarter gave the Browns a chance to win the game.
Hoyer got the ball back at the Tennessee 42-yard line with 3:03 left and his team down 28–22, then went 3–3 for 35 yards (plus an incompletion that was wiped away by an illegal contact penalty) and the game-winning touchdown to Travis Benjamin.
The Browns are now 2–2, which somehow puts them in last place in the AFC North. Hoyer is 82–for-132 (62.1 percent) for 1,008 yards, six touchdowns and only one interception. The upcoming schedule is actually not too bad. The Browns get Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Oakland and Tampa Bay in the next four weeks. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that they go 3–1 in those games and head into a Week 10 showdown in Cincinnati at 5–3.
2. Not So Fast, My Friend

Not sure why, but I can’t stop cracking up at this GIF of Travis Frederick knocking the ball out of Justin Tuggle’s hands as Tuggle celebrates his recovery of a DeMarco Murray fumble.
3. Record Setters
The Denver Broncos’ highest single-game receiving yards list now looks like this:

Not a bad day at the office for No. 88. He caught passes short and long, he caught them against Patrick Peterson and Antonio Cromartie, and he caught them for first downs and touchdowns. He only caught eight of the 16 balls thrown his way, but it was enough to make him the most productive receiver — yardage-wise — in a single game in Peyton Manning’s illustrious career as well.

4. Speaking of Mr. Manning…

Peyton’s now become the second quarterback to ever throw for 500 touchdowns, joining only Brett Favre. He needs five more for the all-time record.
His 503 touchdown passes so far have gone to 44 different receivers. Thirty-two different players have caught multiple touchdowns from Manning, and 12 players are in double-digits (see left).
5. Play To The Whistle
This is one of the more unusual punt return touchdowns you’ll ever see. That’s Philly Brown getting interfered with on the catch, then picking up the ball and scooting all the way to the end zone for a touchdown, despite the flag.
6. A Case of the Dropsies

Marques Colston dropped his fourth pass of the year in New Orleans’ rollicking win over the Bucs. He also lost a fumble in Week 1. It looks like he’s well on his way to a season like 2012 (eight drops), 2010 (10), 2009 (11), 2008 (9) or 2007 (7) as opposed to his relatively good-hands year of a season ago. when he had only four drops in 17 games, including the playoffs.
7. Where Do You Think You’re Going?

If anyone can explain what LeSean McCoy is doing here, I’d like to hear it. This carry wasn’t emblematic of his day as a whole, as his 81 rushing yards were the most he’s had in a single game this season. Still, he averaged only 3.4 yards per carry behind the Eagles’ still-patchwork offensive line and he’s at just 2.9 per carry for the season.
St. Louis came into the game with a rush defense DVOA in the bottom half of the league and McCoy still couldn’t manage to shake loose for very much, even as Darren Sproles took his seven carries for 51 yards. Obviously the offensive line has been in shambles, but this is still very, very odd stuff for last season’s leading rusher.
8. The Ugliest Box Score That You Ever Did See

Twelve completions on 31 attempts (with two throwaways).
Nobody with more than three receptions or 24 receiving yards.
Woof.
Geno Smith was dreadful. Michael Vick was worse. Rex Ryan apologized to the Jets fans that are still left after the game, and his next move might be cleaning out his office. The Jets get Denver and New England the next two weeks, and it’s hard to see them winning either one of those games.
The clash with the Broncos has a chance to get particularly ugly, given the strength of Denver’s receiving core and the weakness of the Jets’ secondary. If Muhammad Wilkerson (neck) and Damon Harrison (leg) can’t go, boy, it could get disgusting real quick.
9. Houdini
It’s not every day that you see a quarterback put a move on J.J. Watt like that one. Romo’s made that little backward spin move a whole bunch of times throughout his career, but even Jason Garrett admitted in his post-game press conference that this might have been the best one of his career. That he kept his eyes down field and found Terrence Williams for a 43-yard touchdown makes it all the more impressive.
Dallas wound up blowing its 17–3 lead to Houston by allowing two late touchdowns (the second one after somehow burning only 11 seconds on three plays before punting the ball back to the Texans), but snuck away with an overtime win thanks to Dan Bailey’s 49-yard field goal. Bailey actually missed a kick for the first time in 31 tries at the end of regulation, but Romo just drove the Cowboys right down the field for another attempt on Dallas’ first possession of OT.
The Cowboys are 4–1 and are headed to Seattle to take on the Seahawks (presumably 3–1 after they dispatch Washington on Monday night) next week.
10. Turning Points

Here’s the win probability graph for the Bears-Panthers game. The spot on the line that I’ve marked with a black dot is Robbie Gould’s 35-yard missed field goal. Before that play, Advanced NFL Stats pegged the Bears as having a 94 percent chance to win. After the play, it dropped to 89 percent, and it never got higher. Carolina drove down the field, got a Cam Newton touchdown pass to Greg Olsen and outscored Chicago 24–3 from that point forward.
Two late Chicago turnovers (Jay Cutler’s second interception and a fumble by Matt Forte) turned into 10 Carolina points, and that was that.
11. Let’s Check In With Dee Ford
This is not the greatest look in the world for Kansas City’s first-round pick. Ford had only played 26 of KC’s 265 defensive snaps coming into Week 5, and plays like this one aren’t going to help him earn more.
12. At Its Highest Point


Brandon Lloyd and Dez Bryant really took the whole “go up and get the ball at its highest point” advice typically given to wide receivers literally. Lloyd made two fairly miraculous sideline catches in San Francisco’s win over the Chiefs, and Dez hauled in this Tony Romo bomb over Jonathan Joseph to set up Dan Bailey’s game-winning kick.
13. Cause for Concern

The Bengals came into their Sunday Night Football contest with the Bengals with the NFL’s No. 1 defense by DVOA. They did this on the strength of an elite pass defense helped by the fact that they’d trailed for only 51 seconds through their first three games of the year. That allowed the pass rush to get after quarterbacks and the secondary to stick to them like glue.
But the Bengals also came into the game with the league’s worst run defense, according to DVOA. And then New England ran all over the Bengals all night. Patriot ball-carriers carried 46 times for 4.8 yards per carry (Stevan Ridley led the way with 27 for 113, but Shane Vereen also chipped in with 90 yards on nine totes), and now Cincinnati opponents have run 113 times for 561 yards on the season, an average of 4.97 yards per carry.
The loss doesn’t change the fact that the Bengals are good, but the poor run defense is something that needs to be corrected quickly if they’re going to maintain their legit AFC contender status.
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