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Bleeding Green Nation
Jalen Hurts confirms broken finger on his non-throwing hand
Eagles’ QB Jalen Hurts was on the injury list throughout the week with a “left finger” designation, and he confirmed post-game on Sunday that it is a broken ring finger on his non-throwing hand. The good news, he didn’t think playing with the injury made it any worse, suggesting a shattered finger is a shattered finger, but it didn’t help things.
#Eagles QB Jalen Hurts arrives at the stadium, with a bandage on his apparently broken finger on his left hand. pic.twitter.com/VXEWQSzbr9
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 15, 2024
There was early speculation that Hurts might have injured his finger during a tush push last week against the Panthers, but the quarterback said that was incorrect.
Blogging the Boys
Cowboys underdogs again this week when they host the Buccaneers
Context is everything. It’s true that both the Cowboys and the Panthers have been playing better lately, but there is a reason Carolina is now 3-11. It seems the oddsmakers agree.
They have made the Cowboys substantial underdogs for a home team next week even after the dismantling of the Panthers. They are 3.5-point underdogs to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Buccaneers are a team still in the fight for the NFC playoffs and they are currently leading a bad NFC South division with an 8-6 record. They went on the road on Sunday and annihilated the Los Angeles Chargers 40-17. That’s impressive.
Big Blue View
QB Tim Boyle had to get to know the Giants’ receivers on the field
New third-string quarterback Tim Boyle got the ball for the Giants after Tommy DeVito was ruled out of the game with a concussion. Drew Lock, the starter in the last two games, had been relegated to emergency third quarterback status due to a heel injury.
Boyle has been on and off the Giants’ roster since Nov. 19th, when he was signed to the practice squad. He was added to the roster to take Daniel Jones’ roster spot on Nov. 23, was waived on Dec. 7, signed back to the practice squad on Dec. 10 and was signed back to the 53-man roster on Saturday. The Giants named him Tommy DeVito’s backup on Sunday while Drew Lock was made the emergency third quarterback due to heel and elbow injuries.
Boyle had never thrown a pass to the Giants’ starting wide receivers prior to to his 16-yard toss to Malik Nabers on the third (non-penalty) play of the second half.
“What you saw today was my first time playing with those guys,” Boyle said. “So, definitely a cool learning experience. Feeling the speed, the o-line, I think they really did a good job today. The o-line did a good job. The Ravens presented a lot of tough looks, especially on third down. I think our guys up front handled it really well. So, kudos to our guys up front.”
Wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson said playin with Boyle was a unique experience.
“Today was definitely a whole lot different. Not really catching one live pass, ever from Tim. You got to go with the flow. It’s the NFL, guys got to step up and whoever may go down. Over on the side, it’s just like, hey, let’s catch a couple passes real quick and see what this ball comes out like and go from there.”
NFL.com
2024 NFL season, Week 15: What We Learned from Sunday’s games
Cowboys at Panthers
Next Gen Stats Insight for Cowboys-Panthers (via NFL Pro): Micah Parsons generated eight pressures and two sacks on 32 pass rushes, recording a 25.0% pressure rate.
NFL Research: Rico Dowdle became the first undrafted player with three straight 100-plus rushing-yard games since Arian Foster, Weeks 5-8, 2014.
Commanders at Saints
- Commanders get big W for playoff position. With the Los Angeles Rams nipping at their heels for the No. 7 seed, Dan Quinn’s club pulled out a needed win. Washington had lost three of their previous four games. Coming off the bye, Washington stemmed the tide, with the offense rolling early and the defense taking advantage of the Saints QB situation. The Commanders improved their playoff odds to 82%, per Next Gen Stats. New corner Marshon Lattimore played his first game for Washington, participating in 49 of 51 snaps. His former club didn’t target him at all. His presence will help stabilize the Commander secondary for a potential playoff run.
NFL Research: Terry McLaurin is the first Commanders wide receiver to have 10-plus receiving touchdowns in a season since Gary Clark in 1991 (10); Tight end Jordan Reed (11 in 2015) is the only other Washington player with 10-plus receiving TDs since 1991.
Next Gen Stats Insight for Commanders-Saints (via NFL Pro: The Saints defense sacked Jayden Daniels eight times, including seven sacks without blitzing, both tied for the second most in a game by any team this season. The Saints pass rush was incredibly balanced, with five players generating at least three pressures (their most in a game this season); none had more than five pressures on the day.
Ravens at Giants
DeVito ruled out with concussion as Giants pivot at QB again. The Giants have now pivoted to their fourth quarterback this season after losing Tommy DeVito on Sunday. He was taken off the field late in the first half after a few big hits and was replaced by Tim Boyle, who was just signed off the practice squad this weekend and has been with the team about a month. It’s not exactly clear when DeVito suffered the concussion, but he was sacked on his second-to-last play before coming out and took a big hit from Justin Madubuike a few plays before. Boyle handled his business like a pro, especially considering how little work he likely has had with the offense, hitting Malik Nabers for the rookie’s first TD in eight games. But it was another miserable game overall for the Giants, who last won in early October — nine straight losses overall — and dropped to 0-8 at home.
Eagles at Steelers
Next Gen Stats Insight (via NFL Pro): Jalen Hurts fared well against man coverage, completing 11 of 13 for 138 yards and two touchdowns, resulting in a season-high 71.4% success rate on such dropbacks. Hurts was also effective on the ground, gaining 30 rushing yards on five designed runs (season-high +13 RYOE), while logging another three carries for 12 yards on scrambles, as well as four carries for 4 yards and a touchdown on QB sneaks.
NFL Research: The Eagles have won 10 straight games since their Week 5 bye, which is the longest active streak in the NFL and the longest win streak in franchise history.
Discussion topics
Sports Illustrated/MMBQ
The 2024 NFL Product Seems Sloppier Than Ever
From poor clock management to bad officiating to multiple players giving the ball away before they reach the goal line, it just seems like things are getting worse.
On Sunday, Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle picked up a fumble and, as he approached the goal line, appeared to both lose sight of the ball and catch himself mid-celebration attempt. The ball popped out of his hands like a greased ham and cost the Bengals a touchdown. Shockingly, Battle was not the only player in the NFL to have dropped the ball before he crossed the goal line Sunday (there have been at least three high-profile instances so far in 2024, thanks to New York Jets receiver Malachi Corley in Week 9 and Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor, later in the day Sunday).
In another part of the country, there was a situation in the New Orleans Saints–Washington Commanders game where the end-of-quarter clock had hit zero a full six seconds—six!—before the Commanders snapped the ball, missed a kick and were allowed to retry that kick at the beginning of the next quarter. At the end of the game, the game clock was, for some reason, frozen at nine seconds while New Orleans got to the ball, with the referee pool report simply stating that an official mistakenly froze the clock. In a no-timeout situation. With the quarterback desperately needing to spike the ball and having no timeouts.
Like any season, the 2024 NFL calendar year has produced no shortage of great moments. But when it comes to the underpinning of the whole thing, it feels less fortified than ever in terms of a sports product. It’s easy to come up with a handful of games off the top of our head that have been destroyed this year by poor officiating (here’s one example I wrote about) and those are just the granular examples that don’t involve several honest to goodness facemask calls so egregious that we double-checked the games weren’t simply a reairing of The Exorcist. Clock management from both quarterbacks and coaches has reached epidemic proportions. The Chicago Bears, in a prime Thanksgiving timeslot just a few weeks ago, dawdled as the final seconds of a game withered away, much to the horror of people who remembered when knowing how to use timeouts or being aware of a game situation was a prerequisite for competing at this level.
In New York City, the Rockettes have refined their performance to a specific number of kicks per show. Every member has to be a uniform height. It’s the precision, in part, that helps the show maintain its audience. People come in expecting to be mesmerized in the same way we watch synchronized diving or gymnastics. With the NFL, the lack of precision has become part of the draw. And, I assume, it’s just as well that you could build a version of the Rockettes in which dozens of women in heels kick one another and fall off the stage, but after a while it would leave us feeling a bit numb and silly, wouldn’t it?