NFL Biggest Takeaways Week 15

Bills Dominate The Cowboys

The Cowboys were coming off a five-game win streak before getting dominated by Buffalo this week. What makes this game look a lot worse is that it wasn’t the Bills star QB who dominated them, but rather their RB James Cook who accumulated 220 yards on 27 touches and added two scores. He averaged seven yards a carry and the Bills as a team ran for 269 yards. That’s the best way to limit one of the best offenses in the league: to run the ball and not let the Cowboys offense get on the field. I bet Bills QB Josh Allen feels good that he only had seven completions and they still won the game 31-10. The Bills have beaten the Chiefs and Cowboys back-to-back and seem to be clicking at the right time. As for the Cowboys, I wouldn’t be too worried if I was their fans. They came across a desperate team that needed this win much more than they did and it showed on the field. If there is something the Cowboys need to work on, it is the defense. They allowed the Seahawks to put up 35 points a few weeks ago and now allowed 31 by the Bills. They’ve shown a vulnerability recently in allowing a few big plays that open the game for the opposing team. If they're going to want to stop a team like the 49ers, they’ll need to clean that up. The only team I see beating the Cowboys in the NFC right now is their kryptonite, the 49ers. with Philly losing, the Cowboys are right in the thick of getting the two seed, and they're in a good spot.

Philly Loses Third Straight

This one is hard to write because I don’t want to sound unprofessional since I’m an Eagles fan. The Eagles lose their third straight to the Seattle Seahawks and fall to 10-4. It’s one thing if Seattle had their starting QB Geno Smith. This was Drew Lock’s first win in his last seven games as a starter. Out of all the teams that have three to four losses, the Eagles are the only team that hasn’t played as well as their record says. From the NFC, the 49ers, Cowboys, and Lions have had a few dominating wins while the Eagles’ most dominating win was by 14 against the Dolphins and Buccaneers. At first glance looking at the box score everyone will blame Jalen Hurts for his two INT’s. While yes, he is to blame for the most part because those INTs were brutal and the main reasons why they lost the game, the offensive coordinator Brian Johnson has been horrible all season. With the first INT, the Eagles are up 17-13, and Johnson’s play call is a deep throw to the end zone to WR Quez Watkins which gets intercepted. Then the second INT which was the game-sealing one, is also a play where all the routes go deep when they only needed 15-20 yards to get into field goal range and still had two timeouts left. This has been a reoccurring thing all season long where the play calling has been awful. Then it doesn't help that CB James Bradberry has been getting torched all season as well. We can’t let Hurts off the hook either. This was a horrible game by him, and he has not looked very good these last few games and the turnovers are starting to pile up for him this season. As of right now, the Eagles look like pretenders and there is no way they beat a team like Dallas or San Fran in the playoffs. I don’t even think I’d trust them as the fifth seed to go to a team like Tampa Bay on the road and win there.

Steelers’ Safety Suspended For Season

Monday morning the NFL announced that Steelers’ Safety Damontae Kazee has been suspended for the remainder of the regular season without pay after his nasty hit to WR Michael Pittman Jr. in Saturday’s game. I completely disagree with this decision. I understand the NFL wants to make the game safer and take away the possibility of things like this happening, but this doesn’t help that. What I took away from that hit, is that the QBs need to learn to make better throws where they won't put their players in a position to get hit like that. That throw by Gardner Minshew is what we would call a “hospital ball” because there is no right way to go for that ball except diving for it as MPJ did, which caused him to get hit like that. Especially when you have a tough WR like MPJ who you know will go for every single ball no matter how hard the catch is, you have to position him better than that or just throw it away. Even legendary QB Tom Brady had this to say about the hit, “QBs should not be throwing the ball in areas where they are exposing their own teammates to these types of hits.” You hate seeing big hits like this but as the defender, it feels like your hands are tied and you can't play the right way because you have the potential to get a big fine or suspended. Did he deserve to get suspended for the remainder of the season? Let me know in the comments!