Week 6 Game Changing Plays: 49ers and Eagles Fall
6 min read
Browns ER Myles Garrett
Pop the bubbly, 1972 Miami Dolphins. There will be no undefeated team in 2023.
The San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles both came into their games this week as heavy favorites. Sure, their opponents — the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets — both boasted terrific defenses, but both teams were missing their planned starting quarterback. It looked like it was going to be a pair of walkovers, with both teams rumbling towards their eventual Week 13 clash of the titans.
But a funny thing happened on the way to their rematch. On this Any Given Sunday, both teams fell due to a combination of stellar defensive play, poor kicking, unfortunate injuries, and just plain bad luck. It’s the earliest we’ve lost our last undefeated team since 2017, when the 5-0 Chiefs fell to the Steelers.
Both the Eagles and 49ers will likely be fine in the long run. They’re the two teams in the NFC who control their fate for the top seed. They can each theoretically make the playoffs even if they don’t win another game all season. A 6-5 finish for either wins their division more often than not. 4-7 likely punches them a playoff ticket. Bad weeks happen, and even some of the best teams of all time have some ugly losses on their resume.
But because they were the big names to go down, they’re the ones who take up the lion’s share of Week 6’s Game Changing Plays. We’ll hit a few other highlights before looping around and covering how the NFC favorites fell.
10. Roar, Lions, Roar
Hey, the NFC isn’t just a two-horse race! The Detroit Lions would like to remind you that they’re here, they’re also 5-1, and they are very much relevant. In a battle between the conference’s other two division leaders, Detroit…well, it would be a stretch to say they won comfortably, per se, but they gutted out a 20-6 victory despite the loss of David Montgomery basically destroying their run game. But it’s alright if you’re averaging 1.8 yards per carry if you’re slinging the rock around the yard like this. Fun fact: Jameson Williams now has five career receptions, and two of them are on receptions of 40+ yards. Nice work if you can get it.
The Lions remain in third place in the NFC because their one loss was in conference, but being in a statistical tie with the the teams from last year’s NFC Championship is a pretty nice place to be.
Nos. 6 and 9: The Seahawks See Red
The Seattle Seahawks aren’t a good team in the red zone — they entered the week 19th in red zone DVOA at -16.1%. This, however, was ridiculous.
The Seahawks, on paper, dominated Cincinnati. They outgained the Bengals 381-214, led in first downs 24-15, and basically moved the ball up and down the field with relative ease, until they reached the red zone. There, everything shut down entirely for them. They had five trips to the red zone, including two in the final two minutes of the game, trailing by just four. They came away with just 10 points, with Geno Smith throwing an interception on one drive and then witnessing his offensive line crumbling into dust twice in a row to finish the game.
The Bengals don’t look like they’re at full speed yet, but they’ve survived Joe Burrow’s early season injury to climb back to .500. Meanwhile, the Seahawks miss a crucial opportunity to draw within one game of the 49ers in the NFC West, and are now just a half-game ahead of the wild card mass beneath them. If they end up missing the playoffs by a game, having two cracks at the end zone in the final two minutes and coming up empty is going to haunt them.
Nos. 2 and 7: Jalen Hurts Interception Interlude
Four turnovers. Four! The New York Jets defense took the Eagles’ offense to the watershed, in ways both small and large, and that’s the reason Philadelphia Eagles are no longer undefeated. The much-heralded rushing attack was held to just 2.3 yards per carry, and every time it felt like the Eagles were about to shrug off the pesky Jets and put this game away, someone made a big play — Quinnen Williams corralling a tip-drill interception early, C.J. Mosley stripping D’Andre Swift, or Bryce Hall and Tony Adams picking the ball off twice in the fourth quarter with the Jets down just two points. Yes, the Jets only generated 10 points off of the four turnovers, but in a game they only won 20-14, ten points is a lot!
Of the four turnovers, Adams’ pick at the two minute warning was the least justifiable from Philadelphia’s perspective. Jalen Hurts felt pressure, misread the defense, and fired the ball right to Adams, who might have been able to take it to the house had he picked up one more block. Excuse some of the other plays if you will, but that interception, and the subsequent score, was on Hurts. That the Jets did this without Sauce Gardner or D.J. Reed makes it extra impressive, too. The Eagles’ sloppy play, which has popped up multiple times this season, finally did them in.
Of course, it would have hurt more if it wasn’t for…
The Browns Bring the 49ers Back to Earth
It finally happened. For the first time in his career, Brock Purdy played a bad game.
The Browns were able to consistently get pressure rushing just four, which disrupted the entire 49ers’ gameplan. Jim Schwartz’s defense have never bit on the misdirection and grand designs of Kyle Shanahan’s offense, and they just blew up the questionable 49ers line, made their way to Purdy, and dared him to make plays. Purdy could not oblige, being uncharacteristically off-target and rattled. There were many little reasons the 49ers lost, any one of which could have flipped the 19-17 Cleveland victory. But full credit has to start with Myles Garrett and the Cleveland defensive line, who did what the Giants tried to do two weeks ago, and what the Cowboys failed to do last week, and forced Purdy into trouble. They wasn’t “the 49ers lay an egg, and Cleveland benefits”. This was the Browns forcing errors and winning the game.
That being said, injuries to Christian McCaffery and Deebo Samuel put more of the load on the shoulders of Purdy, and the wet and the small-handed quarterback also struggled with wet and rainy conditions. It wasn’t just Purdy who played sloppy either; Brandon Aiyuk dropped some potential big plays and the running game mostly went nowhere. Still, the 49ers had a 17-13 lead midway through the fourth quarter — on pace for a hard-fought win, but a win not withstanding. Their win probability was hovering at around 75%, so it wasn’t game over, but it looked like they would shrug things off. Instead, a combination of the Cleveland running game, some questionable reffing, and a miscue from a rookie sent them down. Let’s dive in.
4. P.J. Walker Converts a Fourth Down
Walker and the Browns got closer — Amari Cooper had one of his four catches to bring the ball to the 20 — but a Nick Bosa sack stopped the drive short and Cleveland was ultimately forced to settle for the field goal anyway. No harm, no foul, right? Cleveland gambled on 4th, picked it up, but was unable to take the lead. Sit on the ball, drain some clock, and San Francisco can go home.
Instead, their next drive took just 25 seconds off the clock, and they were forced to punt back to Cleveland.
Fine, that happens. Cleveland threw incomplete on first and second down, and the third-down pass fell incomplete too, but…
5. Tashaun Gipson Flagged for Unnecessary Roughness
There’s no denying that this was a sloppy, chippy football game — 25 combined accepted penalties for a combined 224 yards tells the story there. But Hussey and his crew did not help, blowing calls that hurt both teams. The Browns will rightfully points out that Christian McCaffrey got away with a facemask early in the game, and they had to blow a challenge to correct a terrible spot in the first quarter. The 49ers looked like they had a sack-scoop-and-score late in the third quarter, but a whistle and a questionable decision to call it a forward pass negated it. Both teams have every right to complain.
But this penalty was the most impactful of the lot. Tashaun Gipson drives his shoulder into Elijah Moore’s shoulder, and gets called for unnecessary roughness for a blow to the head which did not occur. The broadcast was all over it, immediately pointing out why it wasn’t a foul. And yet, Hussey’s call stood, and Cleveland got new life. Rather than facing 4th-and-10-and-ballgame from their own 26, the Browns had the ball at their own 40. That gave them a win probability of about 44%, so there was still work to do. Traditionally, this is where they’d hand the ball to Nick Chubb and let him run wild, but that of course, was not an option. So, instead…
Nos. 3 and 8: The Browns Hand the Ball to Jerome Ford and Let Him Run Wild
But Cleveland couldn’t drain all of San Francisco’s timeouts, and they could only kick a field goal to take a 19-17 lead. That gave the 49ers a chance. After a pass interference call kick-started the engine, Purdy found Brandon Aiyuk for 25 yards. He found Aiyuk and Jennings again for moderate gains, moving the ball into Cleveland territory. A spike set the ball up on the Cleveland 23 yard line with nine seconds left, and the 49ers with a 69% win probability. All they needed was their third-round rookie kicker to make a decently routine 41-yard field goal. Sure, he had missed one earlier, but what are the odds you miss twice?
1. Don’t Draft Kickers
Well, of course the Michigan kid is going to miss in Ohio, right?
As a result of the miss, the 49ers fell to 5-1 and out of first place in the NFC, albeit only on the strength of victory tiebreaker. Cleveland, on the other hand, leapfrogged the 3-3 teams and currently sits in the seventh seed, despite being down their starting quarterback and running back. This is a huge win for Cleveland — a game people had written off for them, and a common opponent, too. It’s quite possible that this missed field goal ends up propelling Cleveland to the playoffs when all is said and done. A hell of a win from a team who needed a hell of a win.
About The Author
