On paper, Sunday afternoon’s Week 12 NFL games didn’t exactly look like the most entertaining day of football, given that there were exactly zero matchups between teams with winning records. Instead, while the second slate of games were one-sided, the early window delivered a series of frantic finishes and shocking turns. The final few minutes of regulation in those games were the best advertisement the NFL could ever do for the RedZone channel.

Some of those massive plays didn’t actually win their teams the game. The Panthers used a pair of pass interference penalties to set up a touchdown and the game-tying 2-point conversion from the 1-yard line against the Chiefs, but they left Patrick Mahomes just enough time to scramble into field goal range for a Kansas City victory. The Bears scored 10 points in 26 seconds to tie their game with the Vikings and lost. And the Commanders pulled off something that was even more miraculous than their Hail Mary victory over the Bears and still managed to lose by eight points. It was a weird day.

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Leaving aside the Chiefs, let’s talk through three teams with young quarterbacks who were involved in dramatic games Sunday, both because they played in a compelling contest and because it’s a good time to discuss what’s going on with them. They all lost their games, but are they and their teams heading in the right direction? I’ll start in Chicago, where the Bears concluded a three-game homestand with their fifth straight defeat, yet still might feel a sense of optimism about their future:

Jump to a matchup:
Vikings 30, Bears 27
Titans 32, Texans 27
Cowboys 34, Commanders 26

Chicago Bears (4-7)

Week 12 result: Lost to the Vikings, 30-27

To a subset of Bears fans, the past two weeks have been something close to an ideal outcome. After the disastrous 19-3 loss to the Patriots led to widespread condemnation of the Chicago offense, the calls to fire Matt Eberflus and his coaching staff grew. Instead, the team moved on from offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. Since then, the Thomas Brown-led offense has gotten quarterback Caleb Williams back on track, while the Bears have continued to lose games in heartbreaking fashion. If your goal for 2025 is to see a thriving Williams with a new offensive-minded head coach in place of Eberflus, you’re likely enjoying Bears football right now.

While Eberflus deservedly came in for criticism after getting conservative in field goal range last week, I’m not sure there was much to be done in terms of game management Sunday. He correctly went for 2 in the fourth quarter down 24-16, although it didn’t work out when Williams couldn’t hit Keenan Allen. The Bears got the 2-pointer on their subsequent score to make it a three-point game with 29 seconds to go, and then chaos happened.

After they recovered an onside kick that bounced off Vikings tight end Johnny Mundt, Williams delivered what might have been his best NFL throw. Needing a chunk play with no timeouts, Williams stepped up in the pocket and delivered a perfect pass on time to DJ Moore, setting up the game-tying field goal:

Caleb gets the Bears in FG position!

📺: #MINvsCHI on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/JGTSXkgESr

— NFL (@NFL) November 24, 2024

From there, things fell apart. The Bears won the coin toss, but Williams took a coverage sack against a three-man rush on second down. Eberflus’ defense, the strength of the team all season, then allowed the Vikings to convert third-and-10, a first-and-15 and first-and-20 for new sets of downs, eventually setting up a chip-shot field goal for John Parker Romo to win the game for the Vikings.

Through the past two weeks, Williams looks significantly better than he did at his worst under Waldron. With the Bears unable to make significant changes to their offensive line or their personnel, there has been a clear mandate to the quarterback: Get the ball out or get running.

Through Week 10, Williams’ average pass came after 2.90 seconds, which was the 25th-quickest time for any signal-caller. He was holding the ball too long too often. When he held the ball for more than four seconds over that span, his 19.6 QBR ranked 29th in the league. It felt like he was emulating the hero ball he had to play for stretches at USC, just against far tougher competition at the professional level.

Over the past two games, there has been a clear emphasis on getting the ball out quicker, both through playcalling, play design and Williams’ decision-making. He has averaged just 2.42 seconds before releasing passes, a rate topped only by Tua Tagovailoa over this two-game span. Unsurprisingly, getting rid of the football has also helped his sack rate; after being taken down nine times in 39 tries by the Patriots in Week 10, he has been sacked six times on 84 dropbacks by the Packers and Vikings combined.

It’s one thing to throw quickly, but Williams is also having some success making those throws. When getting rid of the ball in 2.5 seconds or less over the past two games, he is 35-of-44 for 277 yards and a touchdown. Those aren’t spectacular numbers, but they’re a building block for steady gains the Bears didn’t have on offense before.

Williams is also getting out of the pocket and running more often. He was averaging 27 rush yards per game on scrambles and designed runs before the Waldron firing, but that has nearly doubled in jumping to 51.5 rush YPG over the past two weeks. It’s clear the Bears have told him to be more decisive and intentional as a runner as opposed to scrambling solely for the sake of extending plays. When he has decided to go over the past two weeks, it has usually been a good idea. Williams picked up a third-and-8 with a scramble early in this game, a second-and-6 on a quarterback draw, and then converted a fourth-and-4 in the fourth quarter when his initial side of the field was covered, deliberately moving Andrew Van Ginkel for a moment with his eyes before running the other way for a critical first down:

"WOWWWW" pic.twitter.com/cP0sM5EOzN

— Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) November 25, 2024

With all of that in place, the magic that made Williams an easy selection as the No. 1 overall pick has popped more often. He hasn’t been dominant, but he has looked much more confident and decisive as a pure passer in the dropback game. He had an excellent sequence to extend the game against the Packers last week, when he hit Rome Odunze on a third-and-19 scramble drill for 16 yards, then threw a perfect back-shoulder to Odunze against press coverage on fourth-and-3 to extend the game.

This week, most of Williams’ best throws came early in the contest, as he was whizzing passes into narrow windows against Minnesota’s zone coverage. He snuck a pass through Van Ginkel for a 40-yard completion to Allen on a throw so good that it briefly reminded the veteran he was allowed to run with the football after he catches it. Williams ran away from an unblocked Van Ginkel and hit D’Andre Swift streaking up the sideline for 30 yards. He squeezed another go route to Allen past Cam Bynum in center field for 24 yards, then nearly hit Allen for a 24-yard gain on another back-shoulder, only for the veteran to narrowly step out of bounds.

There’s still progress to be made. While the Vikings can pose pressure problems for even the most experienced quarterbacks, I would have liked to see the Bears rely more heavily on play-action when they weren’t using quick game. Williams has used play-action on only 11.5% of his dropbacks since Brown has taken over. He’s 6-of-9 for 138 yards using play-fakes over the past two weeks, and moving linebackers to create passing lanes will only make life easier for him. The Packers and Vikings, to contrast, used play-action on about 30% of their dropbacks against Chicago.

The risk of firing Eberflus is the same issue the Jets encountered once they moved on from Robert Saleh. Will getting rid of a defensive-minded head coach for a disappointing season from the offense break the defense? Saleh had built the Jets defense into an elite unit, but after ranking among the league leaders in most defensive metrics over the past two seasons and into 2024, the Jets rank 30th in points allowed per drive and 32nd in expected points added (EPA) per play allowed since he was fired.

Eberflus’ defense, one of the league’s best during the second half of 2023, ranks seventh in points allowed per drive and ninth in EPA per play. Sunday wasn’t their best performance, as they had a clear game plan of taking Justin Jefferson out of the picture. With Jaylon Johnson covering the star wideout for nearly 58% of his routes, Jefferson had just two catches for 27 yards. Unfortunately for Eberflus, the Vikings also have Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockenson, and they caught 15 passes for 276 yards, including a lob to Hockenson over Jonathan Owens in zone coverage to set up the game-winning field goal.

The Bears are better than their record, having outscored opposing teams by four points this season. They’re 2-5 in one-score games, including back-to-back losses. It’s easy to find Eberflus culpable for some of the decision-making and sloppiness in those defeats, and that might lose him his job at the end of the season. In a universe in which the Bears can defend a Hail Mary and successfully hit a 46-yard field goal, they’re 6-5 and in the thick of the playoff picture in the NFC. That would be nice for Eberflus, but if fans continue to see this version of Williams the rest of the way, their long-term excitement over him will overcome the short-term frustration of missing out on the playoffs.

Houston Texans (7-5)

Week 12 result: Lost to the Titans, 32-27

This has been coming. Anyone watching the Texans closely and critically throughout this season has to be disappointed with what they’ve seen. Houston’s only dominant victories have come over the Patriots and a Dak Prescott-less Cowboys team. It has squeaked by the Jaguars and Colts, often getting significant help from opponent mistakes along the way.

Sunday felt like another game in which an AFC South opponent was entirely disinterested in its own survival. The truly horrific Titans special teams allowed an 80-yard kick return on the opening snap before the defense blew a coverage on the first play from scrimmage, spotting the Texans a touchdown in 20 seconds. The Titans later muffed a punt to give Houston another short field and an additional three points. Will Levis was sacked seven times in the first half and threw a pick-six to Jimmie Ward. A Tennessee team that is essentially simulating until 2025 tried to hand the Texans a victory.

The Texans handed it right back. Stroud threw two interceptions. A 33-yard Nico Collins touchdown that would have given them a lead in the fourth quarter was wiped off by an illegal shift for two players moving before the snap at the same time. While Nick Folk hit three field goals from 50-plus yards to salvage the day for Tennessee’s special teams, Ka’imi Fairbairn missed a 26-yarder that would have tied it with 1:56 to go. And when the Titans punted the ball back to Houston for one final opportunity, Stroud was sacked on consecutive plays to produce a game-sealing safety.

For another team, that’s a bad day. For the Texans, these are common occurrences. Last week, for example, Collins had a 77-yard touchdown catch on the opening play of the game wiped off when Laremy Tunsil went downfield before the pass was thrown. Those sorts of penalties are mental mistakes, some combination of sloppy football and subpar coaching. They were able to overcome that mistake against the Cowboys and produce another long play on a 45-yard Mixon touchdown run. This week, the lost touchdown gave way to the Fairbairn miss.

Stroud threw five interceptions all of last season. That sort of interception rate is almost impossible to sustain year-on-year, but he’s now up to nine picks in 12 games, and even that number has been aided by a generous amount of dropped interceptions. He ends up on different pages from his receivers too often, and by the end of this game, it felt like he wasn’t confident with the ball. He was missing open receivers on checkdowns with bad ball placement. Again, that’s not a talent issue.

Much has been said about this offensive line, and it’s obviously an issue. If anything, the line was supposed to be better than it was a year ago, given that injuries tore Houston apart up front in 2023. Kenyon Green, the 2022 first-round pick who missed all of 2023, was returning to the lineup. Tytus Howard, their 2019 first-rounder who was forced into the lineup at guard, was moving back outside to his natural position after missing 10 games. Juice Scruggs, a second-round pick last year who also missed 10 games in his rookie season, was going to get a full year at center. On paper, this was supposed to be a plus.

It has been anything but. Green was a disaster before going on injured reserve, with Scruggs moving to left guard out of necessity. Shaq Mason, the former Patriots standout, has been credited with 9.5 sacks allowed this season by NFL Next Gen Stats, the most for any guard in the league. T’Vondre Sweat shoved him to the ground for a sack on Sunday. Tunsil has been struggling with speed rushers around the edge, and he has committed a league-high 17 penalties this season, including 10 false starts. In addition to the one-on-one issues, a blown protection let Ali Gaye run free for a sack on Sunday, with the former Houston player running through untouched to take down Stroud.

Bobby Slowik’s offense is almost entirely reliant on Stroud to be magical, often while behind schedule. The cheat code for the Kyle Shanahan-tree offenses, for many years, has been to dominate on first downs. The goal is to avoid third downs altogether, but with quarterbacks Matt Schaub, Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppolo leading the way, succeeding on first down also kept those offenses out of obvious dropback situations on third-and-long. Adding a potential superstar such as Stroud to that mix only raised the ceiling for what was possible.

The Shanahan-tree teams dominated on early downs last season. On first down, the Dolphins ranked second in the league in EPA per play (0.10). The 49ers were third (0.09). Slowik’s Texans were sixth (0.05). This season, the Texans have dropped to 18th in EPA per play on first down and 29th on second down. They’re not doing enough on early downs to move the chains or stay ahead of schedule.

In part, that’s because the run game has been inconsistent. Joe Mixon has been excellent at picking up short-yardage runs with his vision and has had some big plays, but he turned 14 carries into 22 yards on Sunday. (The backs who replaced him while he was injured, mainly Dare Ogunbowale and Cam Akers, were a disaster.) The Texans didn’t run for a single first down all game, something they’ve done twice this season. The rest of the league has only done it once combined.

By EPA, just 33.7% of Houston’s running plays are successful in terms of keeping them on schedule to move the chains. That’s the league’s second-worst mark, ahead of only the Raiders. This was a problem last season, when their 35.6% mark was the fourth-worst figure, but the passing offense made up for it with better efficiency on early downs.

Instead, Stroud is facing a run of third-and-forevers. The average Texans third down has come with 8.2 yards to go, the second longest for any team. Nearly 39% of their third downs have come with 10 or more yards to go, which is the highest rate. Stroud has actually converted those at a higher rate (25%) than league average (17.5%), but no coordinator has a playbook for third-and-a-mile. Houston needs one, because it spends more time there than any other team.

Stroud ranks 25th in QBR and 24th in EPA per dropback, behind Drake Maye and Trevor Lawrence. Trying to blame one element of the Texans offense for their problems isn’t telling enough of the story. When a team can’t pass block, can’t run the ball consistently and doesn’t do a great job of protecting the ball, it’s not going to thrive, even if it has a difference-maker under center. This offense looks lost.

The defense has been much more consistent. The stars are playing like stars. Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. have been incredible on the edge, combining for 20 sacks and 125 pressures this season, per Next Gen Stats. Hunter leads the league in pressure rate (21.7%), while Anderson is seventh. With Derek Stingley Jr. allowing a 51.9 passer rating in coverage, the Texans are getting Pro Bowl-caliber play out of their three top defenders.

Teams have found ways to attack the defense up the middle, though, and the Titans were able to hit one of the weaker players in the lineup for a pair of big plays on Sunday. Eric Murray is a core special-teamer who serves as Houston’s third safety, but with Ward banged up and hybrid corner/safety Jalen Pitre leaving the game in the second quarter with a shoulder injury, Murray played 57 of the 66 defensive snaps.

First, Murray seems likely to have been at fault for the 39-yard touchdown pass to Nick Westbrook-Ikhine. Playing as a quarter-field safety, he initially backpedaled but then stopped and triggered as Levis hitched at the end of his drop. Westbrook-Ikhine then ran past Murray for an easy score on what really wasn’t even a double-move.

In the fourth quarter, what should have been a short completion turned into a long score. A play-fake from Levis drew in both Texans linebackers, with neither Azeez Al-Shaair nor Henry To’oTo’o matching to Chig Okonkwo in coverage. Okonkwo caught a shallow cross for an easy first down, and once he got in the open field, the Texans didn’t have an answer. Murray was the deep safety on that side and attempted to make a play, but his attempt at a diving tackle didn’t get close to Okonkwo or bring the Titans tight end closer to other defenders who could help make the play. What should have been a short completion turned into a 70-yard game-winning touchdown.

That’s how a team loses a game in which it had the more talented roster. Teams with eight or more sacks and a return touchdown were 36-2 since 2000 before Sunday. The Titans had that 70-yard touchdown and otherwise racked up minus-3 yards on 20 plays across their final six drives of the game. When a team gets handed 17 points by bad special teams and a pick-six and has a quarterback as talented as Stroud, it shouldn’t have any trouble winning, let alone beating a 2-8 Titans team.

Sitting atop the AFC South in mid-November is a dangerous place to be. In 2022, the Titans were 7-3 and about to repeat as division champs, only for injuries and close game luck to blow up their season. They didn’t win a single game the rest of the way, and the 3-7 Jaguars won six of seven down the stretch to claim the division title. Last season, those Jags were 8-3, but after they lost to a Joe Burrow-less Bengals team on “Monday Night Football,” they went 1-5 the rest of the way. A 6-5 Texans team that had just lost to the Jags instead won four of their final six to win the South.

Could we be ready for another case of AFC South upheaval? Barring an injury to Stroud, I don’t think so, but that’s mostly a product of what’s going on outside of Houston as opposed to having faith in the Texans. The Titans are 3-8 and don’t have a consistent enough offense, and the Jags are lost in space at 2-9. The Colts are the only team that could really make a run, and after getting swept by the Texans, they’re two games back and don’t have the tiebreaker. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, the Texans have a 91% chance of winning the South. After an offseason where Houston fans dreamed about something much more, though, I’m not sure this team is playing at a level where a deep playoff run is in the cards.

Washington Commanders (7-5)

Week 12 result: Lost to the Cowboys, 34-26

For about 55 minutes, Dallas at Washington was a normal football game. With Jayden Daniels and the Commanders offense struggling, a Brandon Aubrey field goal put the Cowboys up 13-9. After a disastrously blown coverage led to a Luke Schoonmaker touchdown, the Cowboys seemed in position to close out the game at 20-9 with 5:16 left on the clock.

Then, the chaos came. A quick drive from the Commanders produced a Zach Ertz touchdown. The Cowboys immediately responded with a 99-yard KaVontae Turpin kickoff return for a score, aided by one of the great high-variance plays on special teams: dropping the football. Fumbling a punt or a kickoff is obviously dangerous and not recommended, but it can also mess up the timing and rush discipline of the would-be tacklers. The famous DeSean Jackson touchdown against the Giants is a classic example. Turpin initially fumbled the kick, picked it up, inexplicably hit the spin button and then ran upfield to restore a 10-point lead.

After the Commanders kicked a field goal to get back within seven, a failed onside kick seemed to all but end the game. What little we knew. The Cowboys didn’t try to move the ball aggressively and instead burned Washington’s last two timeouts, punting the ball to the Commanders’ 14-yard line. With 33 seconds and no timeouts, Daniels was somehow going to need to drive 86 yards for a game-tying touchdown.

While Cowboys fans might have had nightmares of Daniels’ Hail Mary in their heads, it turns out that Washington didn’t even need to resort to one. With Dallas rushing three and playing soft zone coverage behind, offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury flooded the right side of the field with receivers, and Daniels hit Terry McLaurin on a go route up the sideline. Jourdan Lewis and Josh Butler were nearby but weren’t able to tackle McLaurin or force him out of bounds, and with a lead block from Noah Brown, McLaurin simply outran the Cowboys to the end zone.

Since 2000, 94 teams have started drives inside their 20-yard line, with 40 seconds or less left to go, out of timeouts and needing a touchdown to potentially tie or win the game. The Commanders are the first of those teams to score a touchdown in that situation. More teams have scored defensive touchdowns in those situations (three). It’s more likely an offense will complete a Hail Mary than score a touchdown in such a desperate situation. The Commanders have done both at home in Daniels’ rookie season.

Then Austin Seibert missed the extra point. Oh no. Shades of John Carney. Should the Commanders have gone for two? There’s no clear right answer. The strength of the team is the offense, and Daniels is still a threat to score as a runner in short-yardage, as he did on a 2-pointer earlier in the quarter. They had to go for 2 on that earlier score because Seibert missed an extra point earlier in the game. And if you have any belief in momentum, it’s hard to imagine a moment in which the other team would feel more deflated than this one, where it had allowed an 86-yard touchdown in a hopeless situation in the middle of a lame-duck season.

On the other hand, the Commanders were huge favorites playing at home and Cooper Rush was on the other side of the field. While Rush had a solid day, going 24-of-32 for 247 yards with two touchdowns, Washington would have liked its chances going into overtime against Rush. Going for the lead can inspire aggressiveness from an opponent, which is why win probability models are often more conservative in those situations than would be expected, but the Cowboys weren’t going to get frisky with 21 seconds and one timeout. I can see arguments for both sides here.

Of course, the game wasn’t over. The ensuing onside kick was returned for a touchdown by Juanyeh Thomas, who surely should have kneeled down to end the game, only for the siren call of the end zone to lure him in for a score. (To be clear, I don’t blame him. If you’re a special-teamer who never touches the ball with green grass ahead of you, you’re not kneeling.) The Commanders got the ball back and got in position for another Hail Mary, only for Daniels’ pass to be tipped and picked to end the game.

Whew. Obviously, being defeated at home by a Cowboys team that had lost five straight games isn’t exactly a great result, even if the fans got their money’s worth along the way. Before the game and for most of the contest, there was plenty of chatter about how the Commanders were dealing with the aftereffects of hitting the “Kliff Cliff,” the idea that defenses figure out Kingsbury’s offenses as the season goes along, leading to impressive first halves and disappointing second halves of the season.

Is it a real thing? I wouldn’t rule it out, but some of the evidence I’ve seen backing it up isn’t sound. While there’s no clear definition of what a “Kliff Cliff” would look like, most of the evidence I’ve seen has pointed out that both his teams at Texas Tech and with the Arizona Cardinals won more games and scored more points in the first half of seasons than they did in the second. There’s a chart that looks something like this:

That’s a pretty clear trend, but is it proof there’s something innately wrong with Kingsbury’s coaching? I’m not so sure. For one, the college data has one really obvious flaw: scheduling. Teams begin their seasons with games against opponents from outside their conference, and while that can mean playing a powerhouse in a dream game, it usually means beating up an overmatched smaller school. Texas Tech dropped 61 on Stephen F. Austin, 59 on Sam Houston and 69 on UTEP early in the season with Kingsbury at the helm. That’s not some great scheme. It’s scheduling.

If we do this same exercise for the college years but just include the nine games Tech played in the Big 12 each season, there’s still an effect, but it’s not as prevalent. The Red Raiders were 13-17 and averaged 35.9 points per game during the first half of the Big 12 schedule (I’m treating the first five games as the first half of a nine-game slate.) They fell to 6-18 afterward, but they still averaged 32.4 points per contest. The defense is really what collapsed; it allowed an average of 30 points per game during the first half of the Big 12 schedule and 41.9 points per game afterward.

What about the pro game? In 2019, the Cardinals actually scored more points per game during the second half of the season, so while their record declined slightly, it doesn’t appear to have been an offensive issue. In 2022, they struggled throughout the season, but quarterback Kyler Murray played just one full game during the second half of the year, as he missed two games with a hamstring injury, came back and then tore his ACL early in a loss to the Patriots. It seems bizarre to include those years as evidence that teams figure out Kingsbury’s offense late in the season.

Plus, in 2021, Murray missed three games at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half. Colt McCoy went 2-1 in his absence, but a bigger issue might have been losing wideout DeAndre Hopkins to hamstring and knee injuries. Hopkins had 486 receiving yards and seven touchdowns during the first eight games of the season, but he played just two games the rest of the way. He was replaced by Antoine Wesley, a Kingsbury favorite from Texas Tech, who never played in the league again after his lone season in Arizona.

Are these too many excuses? Maybe. Everyone battles injuries, and it’s possible Kingsbury’s style of play exposed Murray to more hits. But I find the college arguments to be specious because of scheduling and the defense falling off far more significantly than the offense, while the Cardinals lost their quarterback and best offensive player in back-to-back seasons for almost the entire second half after having them for all of the first. Those seem like compounding factors.

Kingsbury’s status as an Air Raid coach raised some concerns across the league that his playbook wouldn’t be up to NFL standards, given that one of the original tenets of the offense was around running a small number of plays more effectively than teams with larger playbooks. I’m not sure that has been the case in reality, but the Air Raid also prefers to line up receivers in the same spots snap after snap, which makes it easier to avoid giving away play tells and play with tempo, albeit at the expense of allowing defenses to know exactly where receivers would be every play.

That’s fine, but if that were really the case, why would defenses’ ability to sniff out Kingsbury’s playcalls reset at the end of the year? If Kingsbury’s offense was easy to solve after seeing it on film, it would have given defenses trouble in the first half of his first season. After they adjusted in the second half, though, they still would have had access to that film and Kingsbury’s concepts after the season. That same knowledge still should have been applicable to the first half of the following year, but the Cardinals thrived in the first half of each season, even though they apparently were not installing drastically new or expanded concepts.

Washington’s offense has declined in recent weeks, and it was quiet for most of Sunday, although it eventually finished with 412 yards and 26 points. The line struggled to keep Daniels protected at times, with an injury suffered by right tackle Andrew Wylie not helping matters. The three-headed backfield of Austin Ekeler, Jeremy McNichols and Brian Robinson combined to carry the ball 17 times for 55 yards, with Robinson suffering an injury early in the game before returning and Ekeler leaving with a concussion on that final kickoff return of the contest.

If the Commanders are struggling institutionally on offense, the run game is the most likely culprit. Through their 7-2 start, they were producing successful runs on 47.8% of their carries, the highest rate of any ground game in the league. They ranked seventh in rush yards over expectation per carry and did that without a recognized lead back in the mix.

Since Week 10, they’ve kept up the success rate, with their 48% mark ranking fifth. They just haven’t hit any big plays. They’ve dropped to 29th in rush yards over expectation per carry, which is closely tied to big plays. They had 11 runs of 20 yards or more during the first nine games. They have one over this three-game losing streak, a 23-yard scramble by Daniels in the fourth quarter on Sunday.

Does the rib injury Daniels suffered last month factor in here? Maybe, but it hasn’t been in the playcalling. Outside of a game with seven designed runs in the opener against Tampa Bay, Kingsbury has been pretty conservative in saving Daniels’ designed runs for the red zone or key situations. With scrambles, sneaks and kneel-downs not included, Daniels averaged three designed runs per game between Weeks 2 and 7. He has had 14 over the ensuing five games. He has been less likely to scramble over that stretch, which might be more about how defenses are playing him than the playcalling.

The screen game, which is tied to Washington’s run concepts, has also fallen off, although the divide isn’t as neat as this three-game losing streak. Through the first six weeks of the season, Daniels averaged 33 passing yards per game on screens, the fifth-most of any quarterback. Since Week 7, that has dropped to 12.5 passing yards per game. Those are easy yards when Daniels gets to decide whether to hand the ball off or throw a high-percentage screen if he has the right numbers.

Their third-down performance has suffered. Through Week 9, the Commanders were converting just under 46% of their third downs, the fourth-best rate in the league. Since then, they’ve dropped to 31.7%, which is 29th. That might typically be chalked up to the third downs being more difficult, but the average distance needed to convert those third downs has virtually been identical across both those stretches.

And again, schedule matters. Washington topped 30 points three times during the first half of the season. It had a great day against the Browns, but its other big games came against the Bengals, who ranked 29th in EPA per play, and the Panthers, who are 31st. The first two games of this losing streak came against the Steelers and Eagles, two of the league’s five best defenses. The Cowboys decidedly are not, but again, the Commanders got to a reasonable offensive performance by the end of the day.

One thing I’d like to see the Commanders do to try to show newer looks on early downs while creating more opportunities for the run game is emulate what Kingsbury’s replacement has done in Arizona. Drew Petzing’s offense leans heavily into 12 and 13 personnel groupings, loading up on tight ends, which allows it to dictate defensive personnel while creating physical advantages in the ground and play-action games. Washington still uses 11 personnel as its base grouping, but it isn’t exactly blessed with great wideouts behind McLaurin. Leaning into the trio of Ertz, Ben Sinnott and John Bates might help get the run game started again. With an upcoming bye after next Sunday’s game against the Titans, Kingsbury has a chance to rest Daniels and take a big-picture look at how the offense might want to evolve over the final month of the season.

And realistically, Daniels was playing like an MVP candidate for the first two months of the season. It’s tough for anyone to keep up that level of play, let alone a rookie. That was always going to be difficult to sustain given the quality of talent on this roster. If he has settled in as a good quarterback with special moments for the rest of the season, that’s still an incredibly valuable player and a franchise-altering addition for the Commanders. Yes, 7-5 feels disappointing after a 7-2 start, but every single Washington fan would have been thrilled to find out their team would have a winning record in late November. There’s enough here to get them over the line and into the postseason.