Week 14 Game Changing Plays: Ravens Fly to the Front
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Ravens WR Tylan Wallace
Week 14 gave us another game of the year candidate, as the Baltimore Ravens and the Los Angeles Rams took turns throwing haymakers at one another, matching each other’s moves almost step for step. In a game that had massive implications at the top of the AFC bye week race and the bottom of the NFC wildcard race, the Ravens and Rams went back and forth, finally requiring overtime to break the deadlock.
In the end, the Ravens picked up their third consecutive win, maintaining a two-game division lead over Cleveland. Couple it with losses by Kansas City and Jacksonville (and with Miami’s game on Monday still pending), and Baltimore has opened up a half-game lead on the conference and has taken control of their own fate for the bye week in the AFC. And all it took was the two biggest plays of the season to date to do it!
We’ll get into how the Ravens slipped past the Rams on a day their offense struggled to convert in the red zone, but before that, let’s look at some of the other biggest plays of Week 14.
Brock Purdy, MVP
After a bit of a scare from Drew Lock and the Seahawks, the San Francisco 49ers eventually found their rhythm and cruised to a relatively comfortable 28-16 victory. They gained 527 yards on just 53 plays — the fewest number of plays ever needed for a 500-yard day, as explosive production was the order of the day for San Francisco, and not so much sustained drives.
This was the kind of explosion that wasn’t present under Jimmy Garoppolo, and it’s what Brock Purdy has brought to the offense — and what’s pushed the San Francisco offense from being very, very good to being historically great. Since the bye week, Purdy is completing 74% of his passes travelling at least 15 yards in the air, going for an average of 26.6 yards per attempt with six touchdowns and no interceptions. He is 7-for-13 on shots of 30+ air yards or more this year, with three touchdowns and no picks. For comparison, Garoppolo was 6-for-40 with two touchdowns and six interceptions on those sorts of deep shots in his San Francisco career.
Purdy is on pace for the most yards per pass attempt for any qualified passer in the past 67 years. He’s on pace for one of the five best years in NFL history in passing DVOA. He’s first, by a wide margin, in every advanced metric out there. He’s the starting quarterback for the #1 team in the NFC by record and the #1 team in the NFL by DVOA. Yes, Purdy gets more help from his skill position players and his coaching scheme than anyone else in the league, and that makes him particularly hard to evaluate. But Purdy’s development has fundamentally changed Kyle Shanahan’s offense and made it into one that is vertically threatening, not just a YAC-monster. At a certain point, the preponderance of the evidence has to start outweighing the situation Purdy is working in. Maybe he doesn’t put up these kinds of numbers with average teammates. That sounds like a great argument for not giving him the MVP that season. This year, it’s getting more and more difficult to argue anyone has been more valuable than Mr. Relevant.
Joe Flacco, Starting QB in the Year 2023?
Joe Flacco. 26-for-45 for 311yards, including this fourth-down touchdown to David Bell to help stretch the game out of reach. Dodging pressure, finding the open guy, and helping the Browns offense tick in a way it hasn’t since Jacoby Brissett was under center. That conversation opens a whole can of worms in and of itself, but either way, Flacco has been good enough in his short time in Cleveland to be named the starter the rest of the way. That’s beyond astonishing.
Because of the win, Cleveland is a game ahead of the six-way tie at 7-6 that has muddied the AFC wildcard picture beyond belief — a game clear, and with the best conference record of the bunch, the Browns find themselves in very good position for the postseason. Meanwhile, the Jaguars missed the chance to vault over the Chiefs into third place in the AFC, wasting Trevor Lawrence’s shocking return from the high ankle sprain he suffered on Monday.
Contractually Speaking, Someone Must Win the NFC South
It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t clean, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ victory over the Atlanta Falcons has them on top of the three way tie at 6-7 in the NFC South. The winner of this competition gets the prestigious honor of getting crushed by the Cowboys or Eagles on Wild Card Weekend, so there’s a lot to play for here, obviously.
And, to be fair, the Buccaneers were mostly cromulent in the second half, and especially on the final drive that clinched the game. Tampa managed to actually generate a running attack for the first time all season after halftime, which in turn opened up lanes for Baker Mayfield to throw the ball. And throw he did, hitting Chris Godwin on a 32-yard catch on 3rd-and-10 to keep things alive and then finding Cade Otton in the end zone to ice things. The Bucs have now won back-to-back games after starting 4-7, and control their own fate in the division. What a world.
Curse You, Kadarious Toney!
The Chiefs-Bills game featured more than one football play. For example, it featured this throw from Josh Allen to Deonte Hardy, a dime that set up the field goal that gave Buffalo a 20-17 lead with less than two minutes to go. Pretty snazzy, right? Surely the highlight of the day and what people will be talking about this week!
OK, yes, I know what you want to see.
That would have been one of the plays of the year — one of the plays of all-time. A walk-off, semi-planned lateral to stay in the bye week race? We would be seeing replays of this for the rest of time. But Kadarius Toney, no longer satisfied in ruining things from dropping passes, instead lined up a good foot offsides.
After the game, Patrick Mahomes was uncharacteristically upset with the call, saying it damaged Kelce’s Hall of Fame resume. Andy Reid was also pissed, which is at least consistent — he was saying the same things back in 2019 when Dee Ford was caught offsides in the AFC Championship Game, arguing that the refs should have given a warning before throwing the flag. Referees have been doing that less this year, especially on offensive offsides. And even if they were, Toney was a) not looking at the ref, b) not the outside receiver, and c) way, way offsides. This isn’t a ticky-tack call that ruined something cool. This was a bonehead decision of epic proportions, a massive mistake by Toney who should know better at this point in time. The anger Kansas City is feeling is justified. But it should be aimed at Toney, not the officials who got this right.
The loss basically saves Buffalo’s season — they’re still in 11th in the conference, but they’re in that six-way tie at 7-6 and have a puncher’s chance of making noise down the stretch now. The Chiefs probably do stay at the fringe of the AFC bye week race because of their 6-2 conference record and win over Miami, but they’re going to need some serious help down the stretch if they want to avoid Mahomes having to play on the road in the postseason for the first time.
Ravens Produce Two Biggest Plays of the Season
I’ve been keeping track of the biggest plays of the year all season long. To win this game, Baltimore needed to break the record twice in about half an hour of real life time.
To get there, though, Baltimore needed to get a little more consistency on offense. The Ravens were 4-for-12 on third downs and just 1-for-3 in the red zone; a more consistent Baltimore team probably would have won this going away. So we do have to tip our hat to Odell Beckham, who found ways to get open and convert on second and long repeatedly, finishing the day with four receptions for 97 yards and a touchdown. That 46-yard score on a double move is the highlight reel play, for sure, but a 17-yard pickup on 2nd-and-8 and a 14-yard gain on 2nd-and-10, both extending fourth-quarter scoring drives, were almost as valuable.
The first big Beckham catch set up a field goal which gave Baltimore a 23-22 lead with 11:21 left in regulation. That’s left plenty of time for Los Angeles to mount a comeback, however, even with a couple three-and-outs in between. Matthew Stafford led the Rams on an eight-play, 85-yard drive highlighted by a great Puka Nacua catch gave LA the lead back, 28-23, requiring some more Baltimore heroics. And, after Beckham’s other fourth-quarter catch, Lamar Jackson did this on 3rd-and-17.
That, at that moment, was the biggest play of the season, factoring in the importance of the game as well as the significance of the play itself. Zay Flowers’ touchdown, had it ended up being the winning score, would have knocked the Rams out of playoff position and propelled Baltimore into a solo first place in the AFC. And, with less than two minutes left, it looked like it would do exactly that. You can’t beat that!
Well, you can, actually. With just 1:16 left, the Rams marched back down the field, with Stafford finding Cooper Kupp and Davis Allen for big games, setting up a game-tying field goal. And a quick Baltimore three-and-out in OT seemed to bode quite poorly, as well. Had the Ravens blown their shot?
Well, no. The Rams also went three-and-out, punting to backup Ravens returner Tylan Wallace. And, well…
Ballgame.
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