Goodell! You’ve done it again!
There were 14 NFL games yesterday. 12 of them were decided by one possession, with the big afternoon broadcast from Brazil and Sunday Night Football both coming down to the final possession.
On days like Sunday, I like to meditate on how improbable that is. Football is this massively complicated game with 22 players on the field at any given moment and players are constantly getting injured and there are One Million Rules that are constantly changing and have never been correctly officiated and …
…
…
… it works somehow? It’s fun to watch every week? How did they do that?
– Rodger Sherman
Today’s Lineup
A redemption arc in Rio
Drake Maye’s terrible start
49ers go way down the depth chart
🇧🇷 A Maracanã miracle 🇧🇷
🐦⬛ Baltimore 34 🐦⬛
🤠 Dallas 31 🤠
They played an NFL game in Brazil, and it essentially came down to penalty kicks: It was the first game in NFL history with two made field goals in the final 10 seconds. (I mean, not a great metaphor, but I’m an American sportswriter, I’m obligated to come up with a convoluted soccer reference, so, deal with it.) With seven seconds left, Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey hit a game-tying kick, but Baltimore quickly completed a pass to set up a Tyler Loop’s 56-yard game-winner.
Let’s watch the Brazilian call by Everaldo Marques, who has been calling NFL games for Brazilian fans since 2006. (You think the 70,000 fans in the stadium showed up by accident?)
Loop’s Ronaldo celebration by the corner flag — see? soccer! — was clearly premeditated, but his kick was from so close to midfield that he had a long way to go to get to the pylon. (And kickers aren’t exactly fast.)
It was one of the best endings to a game you’ll ever see — but an ending that will become increasingly common, as a pair of NFL trends converge.
First of all: Redemption arc for Loop, who missed a 44-yard field goal that would have sent the Ravens to the playoffs last season. The Ravens stuck by Loop, who hit every other kick he attempted from under 50 yards all season long. (Gotta be the first time in NFL history that a team has replaced its coach but not the kicker after a season-ending missed field goal .)
I think this is the shortest game-winning field goal drive in NFL history, at least in terms of time. (There have been shorter one-play game-winning touchdown drives, like this one, but not many.)
According to Mike Sando of The Athletic, 110 drives since the year 2000 have begun with seven or fewer seconds and a score margin of 0-3 points; this was the first to end in points.
The Cowboys totally botched the ending. They made a series of decisions that gave the Ravens the ball with 7 seconds in the first place. After a Dak Prescott scramble, head coach Brian Schottenheimer called timeout with 14 seconds. Then they ran a bizarre final play, on which Prescott seemed to throw the ball away instead of giving his receiver a chance to catch a game-winning score. Schottenheimer said that was intentional, and that he “overcoached” the sequence.
The idea was apparently to kick the game-tying field goal with as little time as possible. I think the Cowboys should’ve tried to win in regulation by running a legit play for the end zone … but if their plan really was to kick as late as possible, why did Schottenheimer call a timeout and run a fake play instead of just letting the clock run to one second and kicking a game-tying field goal?
Then, on the kickoff, Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey kicked the ball through the end zone for a touchback. If even a single second had come off the clock, the Ravens likely wouldn’t have been able to win in regulation. Ravens head coach Jesse Minter seemed surprised the Cowboys didn’t realize this.
Teams should get better at this exact end-game scenario because it’s going to come up more and more often. The ending highlights a compounding dynamic in late-game situations that has made these game-winning field games come easily and more often. It comes down to two things:
Teams are getting the ball farther down the field than ever: Up until 2017, teams got the ball at the 20-yard line after touchbacks; that moved up to the 25 and then, starting last year, the 35-yard line. From 2000 to 2024, the average drive after a kickoff started at the 27.1 yard line; last year the average drive after a kickoff started at the 30.8.
At the same time, kickers are hitting longer and longer field goals with better and better accuracy. (Like I wrote last year: The Kickers Are Too Good.) I will once again cite my favorite stat: There were more 60-plus yard field goals last year (kickers went 12-for-22) than there were in the entire 20th century (kickers went 4-for-61.)
Kickers have gotten so much better at ultra-long kicks in the last generation. From 2000 to 2010, kickers went 49-for-154 (31 percent) on kicks from 55 or longer. Last year alone, they went 73-for-114 on those kicks (64 percent.) They’re hitting a decade’s worth of bombs in a single season these days, and converting at about double the rate from 20 years ago.
Compare Sunday’s ending to a game from just five years ago, also featuring the Ravens: In 2021, the Lions kicked a field goal to take a 17-16 lead over Baltimore. Detroit’s ensuing kickoff was a touchback, which put Baltimore at the 25-yard line. Over the course of seven plays and a minute, they were able to move the ball forward 23 yards — just enough for Baltimore kicker Justin Tucker to hit a 66-yarder that bounced off the crossbar. That kick was the longest in NFL history at the time.
Sunday, the Ravens got the ball 10 yards closer, and in 7 seconds were able to set up a much easier kick. But if they did have to kick a 66-yarder, that wouldn’t have been a record — Cam Little has since hit 67- and 68-yarders. On Sunday, Little attempted a record-setting 70-yarder; he had the leg but missed it by about 3 feet to the right.)
The Cowboys failed to reckon with this on Sunday — which is funny, since their kicker, Brandon Aubrey, has helped reset expectations for kickers with his ability to hit 60-yarders.
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Fantasy Genius of the Week
Fantasy Genius is the must-have fantasy football tool to unlock the lore, stories, and stats of YOUR league. Stuff like “who in your league is the best at making trades?” or “who in my league is the most addicted to getting 1.7 points from Kyle Pitts?”
Every week, we’re going to highlight the most interesting player of the week, so you can be a Fantasy Genius too.
Brock Bowers, TE, Las Vegas: 10 receptions, 116 yards, 1 TD (27.6 PPR points)
It was pretty hard to feel good about using a top pick on Brock Bowers after he missed the first two weeks of the season — but you’re probably feeling like a Fantasy Genius after Week 3, and not just because of his gaudy stats.
Like Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak said: Brock Bowers is a football robot from heaven. (He’s actually from Napa, believe it or not, but, same difference.) Bowers got back on the field and was immediately the TE1 in fantasy football. His 27.6 points were the seventh-best performance by any player, regardless of position, in Week 3. Here’s his first TD of the year:
The Raiders essentially reshaped their entire offense to accommodate Bowers. They targeted him 13 times on 36 routes, a 43.3 target share that actually surpasses Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s league-best target share at wide receiver.
The Raiders also played almost exclusively out of two tight end sets to pair Bowers with Michael Mayer: They ran a remarkable 62 percent of their plays out of 12 personnel, with another 11 percent of their offense coming out of 22 personnel (two tight ends, a running back, and a fullback) and another 7 percent coming out of 13 personnel (three tight ends.)
Long story short: Bowers isn’t coming out of the game, and the Raiders are going to make sure he gets the ball a lot. He’s gonna score a lot of points!
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📉 He Maye Be Bad 📉
🐆 Jaguars 35 🐆
🇺🇸 Patriots 6 🇺🇸
Remember how I said basically every game was close Sunday? There was one legit blowout … and it featured a team that played in the Super Bowl last year.
Drake Maye played the worst game of his career Sunday in a 29-point loss to the Jaguars. Maye’s decision-making this year has been absolutely horrendous. He’s thrown a league-leading six interceptions, many on plays when nobody was open. He squandered the Pats’ only trip inside the 10-yard line on Sunday with a no-chance pass intercepted by Travis Hunter:
The Jaguars dominated the game so thoroughly that with eight minutes left, Trevor Lawrence took a dive at the 1-yard line instead of walking into the end zone to set up a rushing touchdown for his teammate, Bhayshul Tuten. (Lawrence joked he was trying to help out Tuten’s fantasy owners.) Again: This happened with 8 minutes left in the game. The Jags knew the Pats had nothing.
We have to ask: Is Maye just off to a bad start to the season, or is something bigger going on?
Drake Maye almost won the MVP last year. Seriously, if just one voter had switched their first-place vote from Matthew Stafford to Drake Maye, Maye would’ve won.
Almost won the Super Bowl, too. (OK, “almost” is a stretch, but still. He was the QB of one of the two teams in the Super Bowl.)
Just a year later, Maye has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the league to start the season. He’s leading the NFL with six interceptions. (Nobody else even has five.) He’s 31st of 35 qualifying quarterbacks in passer rating. (Below him: backup Jameis Winston, Kyler Murray, the Falcons’ third-string duo of Jack Strand and Cooper Rush.) According to SumerSports, Maye is 36th in EPA/play, costing his team .21 points with every dropback.
Maye threw two interceptions and no touchdowns on Sunday. It was the first time Maye had a no-TD, multi-interception game since the 2022 ACC Championship Game, which UNC lost 39-10 to Clemson. (Yes, North Carolina used to make the ACC Championship Game before Bill Belichick took over.)
Maye also had a bizarre fumble, simply dropping a ball he was trying to throw. (Like Jack Strand last week!) Maye blamed it on his bloody center, saying that Jared Wilson was bleeding on the ball. (Apparently the second time this season that Wilson has been snapping while bleeding.)
So far this season, Maye has thrown interceptions on 7.3 percent of his passes. For comparison: Max Brosmer, the undrafted Vikings rookie who threw four interceptions in a spot start for the Vikings last season, finished last year with a 5.6 percent interception rate.
My read: Maye’s deep passing last year was unsustainable. Maye had seven touchdowns and one interception on passes more than 20 yards downfield in 2025, per NextGenStats; he added more EPA on throws than any passer in the league; deep passing charts made it look like Maye was in a league of his own. This year, Maye is 4-for-12 with no touchdowns and four interceptions on passes more than 20 yards downfield.
The meme explanation for this is simple: Maye’s spectacular 2025 season was built on the back of a comically easy schedule. The Pats played the third-easiest schedule in NFL history, and the easiest in the 21st century. He only got all those MVP votes Maye thrived when playing the Jets and the Dolphins; he’s now underwhelming against tougher opponents.
The Pats’ next two matchups are against the 3-0 Bills and the 3-0 Raiders. (Yes, I’m counting the 3-0 Raiders here.) The Pats’ remaining strength of schedule is the sixth-toughest in the NFL by pure win-loss record to date. If he’s not a Schedule Merchant, it’s time to prove it.
⛏️ 49th-stringers ⛏️
I don’t know who this guy is, but he might have to take snaps for the Niners this week.
In August, I wrote about how the 49ers’ preposterous number of injuries were probably due to Kyle Shanahan’s overly physical practice philosophy. (I don’t believe it’s because of The Substation.) It was a little bit prescient: Whether at home or in Australia, the Niners have been brutalized by injuries. Sunday, they lost two more core players: wide receiver Mike Evans, who left the game with a rib injury, and linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who suffered a quad injury and tried returning but was only able to one snap. (All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams also left the game with a stinger, but isn’t expected to miss much time.) After Sunday’s game, Niners beat writer Matt Barrows wrote that the team was in “injury hell.”
AND YET.
The 49ers are the best team in the NFL so far. They’re 3-0, one of five remaining undefeated teams in the league, and with the league’s best point differential. Brock Purdy had a four-touchdown, zero-interception game on Sunday, leading the 49th-string 49ers to a 36-33 win over the Cardinals.
So I’d like to issue a little mea culpa to the 49ers. I do believe the Niners bear some responsibility for the injury bug that keeps on biting. But I respect the hell out of the way the Niners manage to keep winning games, regardless of who’s available to play on Sundays. Is there anything more impressive in all of football than the 49ers’ ability to lose half a roster and still win?
OK, let’s do a quick roundup of where things are since we last talked about the 49ers. San Francisco is now down five wide receivers: Evans, plus four receivers who were already on injured reserve: Ricky Pearsall, Christian Kirk, Demarcus Robinson, and De’Zhaun Stribling. (That’s not including tight end Jake Tonges, who tore his MCL in the Australia game.) They’re also down at least seven defensive linemen, and Nick Bosa has been added to the list after suffering a calf injury in practice.
According to this tracker, the Niners had 19 players on injured reserve heading into Week 3, the most in the league; nobody else has more than 15.
Apparently, none of this matters. The Niners got 60 receiving yards Sunday from Jordan Watkins, a fourth-round pick in 2025 who got 26 yards his entire rookie season.
Brock Purdy’s Week 2 game against the Dolphins was the best game by any QB this season in terms of EPA per dropback. Sunday’s game against the Cardinals was the second-best game by any quarterback all season in terms of EPA per dropback.
I never thought I’d say this, considering how plug-and-play 49ers quarterbacks have been, but ……….. if Purdy stays healthy, he deserves real MVP consideration. Clearly he’s valuable if everybody else on the team is dead and he’s still thriving!
The Niners set a surprise record in Sunday’s game: On the first play of the game, the 49ers ran a hook-and-ladder resulting in an 80-yard touchdown for Deebo Samuel.
(I know somebody’s going to say “It’s actually a hook-and-lateral!” but I don’t care. It might technically be more accurate that the play involves a hook route and a lateral, but I like saying “hook-and-ladder” and I like pretending the play is like a firetruck. So I’m gonna keep saying “hook-and-ladder.”)
The 49ers didn’t throw any passes to Samuel for the rest of the game. This gave Samuel a final stat line of 80 receiving yards, one receiving touchdown, and no receptions. ESPN lists him as having 0 yards per reception, but mathematically, he actually had infinity yards per reception.
To the best of my knowledge, Samuel has set the NFL record for most receiving yards with zero receptions. The previous record-holder was Eagles running back Timmy Brown in 1961, an all-Pro who went on to star on the TV show M*A*S*H. One of my favorite Bluesky accounts, Quirky Research, dug up the video of Brown’s 65-yard non-catch:
I’m choosing to believe the 49ers knew about this potential record and decided to freeze out Deebo for four quarters of football, passing to their seventh-, 12th-, and 14th-string wide receivers instead.
This was kind of a diversion … but isn’t it kind of 49ers to deal with their unprecedented injury woes by literally having a bunch of receiving yards credited to a liminal space in the box score?
🪖 Commanders 33 🪖
🕛 Seahawks 31 🕛
Biggest stunner of the day: The undefeated Super Bowl champion Seahawks losing a shootout to the winless Commanders. Seattle finally got Sam Darnold back after he missed the first two weeks; Washington was playing backup QB Marcus Mariota after Jayden Daniels’ elbow injury.
I can’t get over that. The Seahawks couldn’t lose with their backup and the Commanders couldn’t win with their starter. Then everything flipped! Mariota threw three touchdowns for the first time since October 2022, when he was with the Atlanta Falcons.
However, the real backup of the game might not even be Mariota. The game-sealing touchdown was a pick-six by linebacker Kain Medrano — playing his first NFL snaps on defense.
Medrano was playing a terrifying injury to Leo Chenal. (Chenal has movement in his extremities; he will undergo season-ending neck surgery today.) A sixth-round pick out of UCLA in 2025, Medrano had exclusively played on special teams as a rookie last year and through the first two games of this season.
Medrano had one career pick-six in college … off Dylan Raiola, the backup Oregon quarterback we wrote about yesterday who led the Ducks to a win on Saturday — and actually asked Mariota for permission to wear Mariota’s No. 8 at Oregon. (And Medrano was UCLA teammates with Dante Moore, the guy who suffered a horrible concussion that sent Raiola into the game.) (Are you following this? Is it less cute because of all the horrible brain and neck injuries involved?)
BTW, thoughts on the “12 o’clock” emoji for the Seahawks? Eh? I remain open to suggestions.
🦬 Bills 24 🦬
🪫 Chargers 16 🪫
The Chargers pulled off a truly remarkable loss here. They forced five turnovers, gained 348 yards, and the Bills committed 88 yards of penalties … and somehow Buffalo still won. It’s legitimately logic-breaking.
I saw a stat so wild I had to look it up: Teams that force five or more turnovers and commit one or fewer turnovers are 3-81-1 since 2013 … AND THE CHARGERS ARE ALL THREE LOSSES. (The Browns did have a tie; misery loves company.)
I would’ve made the whole column a how did the Chargers lose this??? Discussion, but we were already pretty heavy-handed about how cursed they are last week.
📦 Browns 21 📦
🐈⬛ Panthers 18 🐈⬛
At 2-1, the Browns have been upgraded off the poop emoji.
By the way, after listening to some of the commentary this week, I just wanted to say … you do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Deshaun Watson!
🦁 Lions 31 🦁
🛩️ Jets 24 🛩️
Another close loss for my Jets — progress — but mainly I just wanna post this Jahmyr Gibbs highlight.
🧲 Colts 19 🧲
🤘 Texans 17 🤘
An 0-3 start for a Texans team that many thought would be legit contenders. Only two teams have made the playoffs after starting 0-3 this century …. The 2018 Texans and last year’s Texans. They just need a little bit of extra time to get started!
🧑🏭Steelers 30 🧑🏭
🐯 Bengals 27 🐯
The Pittsburgh offense looked … really, really good? They scored more points in this one than in their first two games combined; Aaron Rodgers had zero completions of more than 20 air yards until Sunday, when he threw two touchdowns with more than 20 air yards.
🇳🇴 Vikings 23 🇳🇴
🏴☠️ Buccaneers 17 🏴☠️
A battle between two teams starting bite-sized Heisman-winning Oklahoma quarterbacks who went No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft. Both looked pretty ineffective Sunday; the difference is the Vikings are 3-0 and owe Kyler Murray only $1 million, while the Buccaneers are 0-3 and just signed Baker Mayfield to a three-year, $163 million contract. Baker got injured in this game and will likely miss time; his backup is undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels. I liked Jalon at Kansas, but … yikes!
🌃 Giants 12 🌃
🎸 Titans 7 🎸
Giants and Titans are kinda the same thing, if you think about it.
💘 Chiefs 24 💘
🐬 Dolphins 10 🐬
0-17 watch remains alive for the Dolphins, who lost star running back De’von Achane to a season-ending ACL injury.
