The Hot Read, Week 5: In Case You Weren’t Already Aware, Brock Purdy Is Legit

This is the Hot Read. In this column, you’ll find everything and anything I found interesting from the NFL Week 5 Sunday action. There’s the stuff that everyone’s talking about, and the stuff that nobody’s talking about; the stuff that makes football incredible, and the stuff that makes football fun. I hope you enjoy it and learn something cool—and if you do, I hope you’re back next week, when we do it all again.

The Big Thing: Who’s Stopping These 49ers?

A lot happened in the NFL on Sunday. If there’s one thing you need to know, it’s this.

It was supposed to be a clash between NFC heavyweights. It was a blowout.

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys 42-10 in a game that somehow felt even more lopsided than the final score. Coming off of a one-incompletion game against Arizona in Week 4, Brock Purdy threw for four touchdowns and 252 yards on just 24 attempts against the Cowboys. George Kittle caught three passes and also caught three touchdowns. The Cowboys’ leading receivers were CeeDee Lamb (four catches for 49 yards), Tony Pollard (four for 35), and the 49ers defense (three interceptions for 49 yards). Sam Darnold was taking snaps with 13 minutes left in the game.

Forty-two points. That’s the most the Cowboys have given up since Dan Quinn became the defensive coordinator in 2021.

As for the 49ers? It’s their fifth consecutive game with at least 30 points. They’re only the sixth team in the Super Bowl era to start a season with five straight 30-plus-point performances. The last four teams to do so were the 2007 Patriots, 2011 Patriots, 2013 Broncos, and 2018 Rams.

You know what else those four teams share? They all went to the Super Bowl.

The 49ers offense has never felt more effective, in large part because San Francisco doesn’t even run the same old Kyle Shanahan stuff that it did a few years ago. They take a lot more snaps from the spread and gun formations, letting their offensive talent speak for itself. Take, as an example, the way they line Christian McCaffrey up in a hybrid spot between the slot and the backfield, all to set up an easier underneath option route.

McCaffrey, for my money, is still the biggest change that came to the 49ers offense in recent history—but the headliner through five weeks is Purdy, the last pick in the 2022 NFL draft who has become one of the most productive and winningest starting quarterbacks. Purdy is the elevator that the Shanahan offense has long lacked. While a huge portion of Purdy’s production is still a result of the layups that Shanahan dishes to him (and the layups Shanahan gives his quarterback are more effective than those of any other play caller), Purdy is much more than a Jimmy Garoppolo variant. He has been since last season, when he was chucking the ball downfield against the Bucs in his first career start.

But since last season, Purdy has improved. Last year, it felt like he tried to throw three interceptions a game—rookie mistakes. This year, those boneheaded moments are fewer and farther between. Last year, Purdy threw to the middle of the field recklessly, often throwing his receivers into hits with late and misplaced balls. And he’s still kinda doing that—check out the hospital ball to McCaffrey above!—but it’s less frequent and less egregious. To open the second half against the Cowboys, Purdy had a drive that featured high-difficulty and high-quality throws.

Because the 49ers had their way with the Cowboys defense, Sunday night wasn’t much of a showcase of Purdy’s out-of-structure creativity or downfield aggressiveness—the stuff that really makes him a cut above the many pocket-passing automatons that have reaped the benefits of this offensive system.

But that’s actually still a testament to his game. Purdy has settled into a well-balanced play style, between obedience to the system and creativity outside of it. The classic Shanahan stuff works like a charm when he executes it, and in the few moments when it fails, he can summon up a play of his own.

The oft-used straw man that Purdy is a checkdown king has never held any water in my eyes. Sure, I thought that’s what he’d be when he first got the job. But he has been anything but, and that’s why the Niners are matching scoring records with him at the helm.

One other thing about those four offenses that started the season with 30-plus-point scoring streaks? They all made the Super Bowl … but they all lost it. That, coupled with Shanahan’s history in big playoff games, is a dark cloud on the horizon.

The very fact that Peyton Manning and Tom Brady before him failed makes me feel all the more that Purdy is the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, Kwisatz Haderach, the Prince That Was Promised. From the rags of Mr. Irrelevant to the riches of the Super Bowl.

It won’t be all because of Purdy—like I said, I still think the true story of this offense is McCaffrey (and we haven’t even touched on the development of Brandon Aiyuk or the continued dominance of the defense). But if the Niners continue on this path toward the Super Bowl, the story will certainly be largely about Purdy. Because if they’re beating the Cowboys by 32 points, I’m not sure they’re losing to anyone.

The Little Things

It’s the little things in football that matter the most—zany plays, small victories, and some laughs. Here’s where you can find them.

1. THE FLEA FLICKER

On Sunday, Detroit Lions tight end Sam LaPorta and San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle each caught a touchdown on the exact same play.

Very cool play.

Why add the little flip to the receiver as part of the flea flicker? Seems like adding the extra toss introduces an unnecessary point of risk, yeah? But it also helps make the play work. As the wide receiver is in reverse motion and the ball is flipped his way, the second level of the defense slows its momentum, ensuring nobody is in place to impede the tight end’s eventual release. Clear out the deep middle safety with a receiver, and you get a free score.

This play has been everywhere, apparently. A reader shared this clip, in which the University of Michigan runs it:

I can’t track the origin of this exact flea flicker, but I can find a common thread between the Lions and the 49ers. Here’s Jared Goff (the Lions quarterback) running an extremely similar flea flicker in 2019 with the Rams, when he was coached by Sean McVay (Kyle Shanahan’s best bud).

I imagine if you keep digging, you can find iterations of this play everywhere. If you can remember one I haven’t mentioned, feel free to send it to me on Twitter @BenjaminSolak or at [email protected].

2. THE SABOTAGE enacted by the Baltimore Ravens receiving room

You know those games in which an elite pass rush goes against a devastated offensive line? Every snap makes it obvious that this unit is just untenable, that every yard gained will be in spite of them.

It’s less obvious when a wide receiver room has that sort of bad day. They’re on the screen less and don’t impact every single play, as the line does. But I’d argue the Ravens wide receiver room had that sort of day.

I cannot remember a game with more heartbreaking drops than this one. Throw in how rookie wide receiver Zay Flowers fell over himself trying to track a deep ball, as well as how Odell Beckham Jr. got bodied on a red zone fade route that became an interception, and you have one unit that single-handedly lost the Ravens a game they should have won five times over.

Here’s the lowlight compilation. Be sure to get some “Yakety Sax” on in the background.

3. THE BOUNCE BACK from Desmond Ridder

I’m a self-proclaimed Ridder fan. Liked him when he was in college and was glad the Falcons gave him a crack at the starting job. It was tough to be a Ridder supporter after his performance against the Jaguars in London in Week 4—but the likable thing about Ridder has always been his toughness. High moxie guy.

Coming off of a performance that had fans and analysts wondering about backup quarterback Taylor Heinicke, Ridder went 28-for-37 with 329 yards and a passing and rushing score apiece; that’s a career-best performance. The Falcons are 3-2 and far from a legit team, but through five weeks, they look like the best team in the NFC South.

4. THE COMMITMENT to the bit

Entering their Week 5 game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Vikings had two more fumbles lost (seven) than the next-closest team.

Here was their first snap from scrimmage.

The Zag: Bill Belichick Is a Good Coach

I tend to be a little contrarian. It’s not so much a personal choice as it is an occupational hazard. Here’s where I’ll plant my flag.

The Patriots lost 34-0 to the Saints on Sunday—this, one week after a 38-3 loss to the Cowboys. This marks the first time in Belichick’s tenure that the Patriots have lost back-to-back games by at least 34 points, and I know that because these are the only two times that the Patriots have ever lost a game by 34-plus points under Belichick.

It has literally never been worse in New England in this century than it is right now. It’s been so bad that some are grumbling that Belichick isn’t actually a good coach.

The Patriots have been on a downswing since Tom Brady left for the Buccaneers in 2020. We should stop and look at that sentence for a moment: Since the greatest quarterback of all time left the team, the team hasn’t been as good as they were.

That feels like it should have been a very obvious thing to happen. But it wasn’t. We had never seen Brady without Belichick, and we had only sparingly seen Belichick without Brady in New England. In those games, Belichick’s record was far from perfect, but still OK. He went 11-5 in 2008 with Matt Cassel at quarterback, as Brady suffered a season-ending injury in the first quarter of Week 1. The Pats went 3-1 in 2016 when Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett filled in for a suspended Brady. Then 7-9 in 2020 with Cam Newton (and a little Brian Hoyer and Jarrett Stidham mixed in).

But that’s why quarterback wins are a tricky (read: extremely bad) stat. Cassel went 11-5 that one year—but did Cassel go 11-5, or did an extremely good Patriots team go 11-5 with their backup quarterback also there, along for the ride? Wins are a team stat. The Patriots’ deterioration since Brady’s departure isn’t about the quarterback under center; it’s about the team.

Remember the 2021 offseason? Coming off of that seven-win Cam Newton season (which, mind you, saw more COVID opt-outs for the Patriots than any other team), the Patriots spent a whopping $137.5 million in free agency over a two-day period to add the following players: tight end Hunter Henry, tight end Jonnu Smith, pass rusher Matt Judon, pass rusher Deatrich Wise Jr., defensive back Jalen Mills, wide receiver Nelson Agholor, wide receiver Kendrick Bourne, and defensive tackle Davon Godchaux.

At the time, it made no sense. They spent a lot of money on a bunch of fine but seemingly unspectacular players. On defense: the sort of players that Belichick could often find and develop for cheap. On offense: the sort of players that, sure, a star quarterback like Tom Brady could elevate into a great offensive unit—but not the talent needed to develop a rookie quarterback or sustain a playoff run with a middling passer. Two years later, and it turns out Judon is super great. Otherwise?

If the Patriots nailed the selection of their young quarterback to replace Brady, then perhaps they could have salvaged that great waste. But they didn’t. Mac Jones, the fifth quarterback taken in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft, has ended up exactly where most QB5s end up: a functional NFL player, but not a high-impact playmaker. He’s a quarterback who needs coddling, which he certainly has not gotten throwing to the pass catchers that Belichick acquired for him, behind an offensive line that let Joe Thuney and Shaq Mason out the door, with Matt Patricia and Joe Judge cosplaying as offensive gurus in his headset. Just look at what, uh, “a source close to Mac Jones” thinks of the situation:

You can blame Belichick for all of this, and you’d be right to do so. Belichick runs the personnel—he brought all these guys in. Belichick hires the coaching staff—he thought the hirings of Patricia and Judge were good ideas. That’s bad work, and it’s why the Patriots are bad, plain and simple.

But this is what happens to most coaches, most organizations. You draft a first-round quarterback after a franchise mainstay finally leaves, and developing him is pretty hard (ask the Steelers about that). You spend a lot of money in free agency, and even if you improve the roster, you don’t get enough bang for your buck (ask the Trent Baalke Jaguars about that). You hire your friends as coaches and they’re bad (ask literally any NFL coach not named Kyle Shanahan about that). To say that Belichick is a bad coach now because he missed on a first-round quarterback, missed on free agent signings, and was too nepotistic is to forget what most NFL coaches do most of the time.

That’s not to excuse the moves and the choices. They were mostly objectively bad. But we simply can’t have memories this short. We have decades worth of evidence that Belichick is very, very good at this. All we have as contrary evidence is these past three seasons, which is really just an example of how all good things must come to … the end. Brady is gone. So are Josh McDaniels, Nick Caserio, Ernie Adams, and Dante Scarnecchia. The Patriots’ reign was as good as it gets in the NFL, but it had to end at some point, and it was always going to end like this: with Belichick finally at the bottom of his bag, scrounging around for another answer in what once seemed like a bottomless supply.

If the Patriots move on from Belichick, I’ll get it. They have to move on from Mac, and starting from a clean slate can be good. But whether he’s there or elsewhere, Belichick will be a good coach in 2024 because he’s a good coach now. It will have to look a little different than it used to: He needs to modernize his offensive approach and hitch his wagon to a legit general manager. But I’m positive Belichick is a good coach, and no number of Mac Jones interceptions will convince me otherwise.

(Mostly Real) Awards

I’ll hand out some awards. Most of them will be real. Some of them won’t be.

Offensive Player of the Year (of the Week): Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase

Picking awards can be stressful. So many good players, so little space! When Chase sets a new franchise record for single-game receptions while also scoring three touchdowns, he makes my job easy, and I appreciate that. It was an appropriate performance for last week’s Always F—--- Open Award winner—turns out he wasn’t lying.

Chase wasn’t the only player on Sunday to have three touchdown receptions, as 49ers tight end George Kittle joined him in the evening slate. Throw in Bears wide receiver D.J. Moore’s Thursday night performance, and three players had three-plus receiving touchdowns this week. That’s only the sixth such week in the Super Bowl era.

The Vacation Award: The Jacksonville Jaguars

The Jaguars became the first team in NFL history to play back-to-back international games, as they hung around in London after a Week 4 win over the Falcons to play a “road game” against the Buffalo Bills. It was a great competitive decision from the Jaguars brass, as they were far more acclimated to the time change and unique environment than the traveling Bills, who lost a sloppy game, 25-20.

More importantly: The past week of London weather has been sunny to partly cloudy, largely in the 60s or 70s. Great environment to get some chips down by the Thames, and do other various British things. (Is that where Buckingham Palace is?) Congrats to the Jaguars for making the right choice and enjoying a nice in-season vacation. A 2-0 international stretch has one of the offseason’s most hyped teams back on track.

The Game Ball: Jets OC Nathaniel Hackett

The Sean Payton–Hackett drama was a good ride. For those who missed it: Hackett was the head coach of the Broncos, he was really bad, he got fired after 15 games, Payton got the job, he said the 2022 Broncos “might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL,” and … that was it.

That was the whole beef. Payton saying something messy and unprovoked (if, albeit, a perfectly defensible opinion), and Hackett just never rising to the jab. Which was cool from Hackett. Hackett is known as one of the best dudes in the league—loved, fun, easy to get along with—and that’s something easy to overlook from the outside. (I should know: It’s never something I brought up when I was wildly critical of Hackett’s Broncos teams.)

But the guys in the Jets locker room wanted to defend Hackett with their performance on the field, and they did. Even as Zach Wilson tried to toss the Broncos back into the game with a late interception, a scoop-and-score off a Russell Wilson strip sack put the game away for good.

And at the end: a game ball for Hackett. Always fun to watch locker rooms rally around their guys.

How I Would Manage the Clock

A new segment about how good I would be at the end of the half.

I, like many lifelong football watchers, am positive I could manage my timeouts, my challenges, and the end-of-game clock flawlessly. Here are the key pieces of my strategy.

First: I would snap the ball before the clock expired in the half. Not a lot of people are doing this. Here’s an example where the Jets failed to do this at the end of the first half against the Broncos.

The coaching point here for Zach Wilson is to throw the ball into the end zone—no chance that a player will get tackled in bounds. The only time you’d throw the ball before the line to gain is if a receiver is standing alone and right next to the sideline so that he can freely step out of bounds after securing the catch. But even then, you’re already in easy field goal range. The yardage isn’t worth it.

That’s what makes this play bad. What makes it funny is how slowly the offensive line and Wilson walk up to the line of scrimmage after the ref sets the ball. An unbelievable lack of situational awareness, made believable only because the voice in Wilson’s helmet is Nathaniel Hackett, for whom the fans in Mile High Stadium used to loudly count down the play clock to assist with time management. Some poetic justice for the Denver faithful in attendance on Sunday.

The second key piece of my end-of-half time-management strategy: I would get the correct play call in. Not many people are doing this either. For example: the Baltimore Ravens, who left an incalculable quantity of points on the field in their loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the end of the half, the Ravens went for it on fourth-and-2 with 20 seconds left. Here was the play, which ended with head coach John Harbaugh aghast in a modified surrender cobra.

But Harbaugh isn’t reacting to the Lamar Jackson heave to space. He’s reacting to the fact that his offense … actually ran a play.

The Ravens offense had a call dialed up, but as Harbaugh said after the game, center Tyler Linderbaum made the choice to snap the ball because he thought they had a free play after a Steelers linebacker jumped offsides. That’s why every Ravens receiver was late off the ball and Lamar wasn’t ready when the ball arrived.

Me? I wouldn’t do this. I would have my players just execute the play as intended. I also would make sure that my offensive line really, really, really knows what offsides look like before I gave them this level of autonomy. Especially if I had Justin Tucker as my kicker.

The last thing I wouldn’t do? Give up 75 yards over four plays in 32 seconds, including 27 penalty yards. Committing penalties is the cardinal sin of a defensive effort at the end of a half, as the game famously cannot end on a penalty—and penalties stop the clock. The Rams thought this would be a good idea, but I have the analytics, and they’re telling me it’s actually bad.

This is hard to do, by the way. Since 2001, there were only 14 drives at the end of the first half that began with fewer than 45 seconds on the clock and inside of the 30-yard line and ended in a touchdown. This was the 15th.

All of this is bad. If there are any college football fans enjoying this column, you know that clock management can get even worse.

Next Ben Stats

What it sounds like: Next Gen Stats, but I get to make them up.

Really fast, but make it a number: That’s how fast the Dolphins players are moving

Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins are posting some silly-billy stats this season. McDaniel, as he always does, had a wry comment on the topic.

But the nerdiest (and therefore the coolest) of the Dolphins offensive stats come from the data provided by the GPS tracking chip in the shoulder pads of their playmakers. When the Dolphins drafted high school track star De’Von Achane to join Tyreek Hill, we knew they’d post some numbers—but Achane and Hill own six of the seven fastest game speeds among all players this season. The seventh? Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert.

Here’s the only problem: Using mph as the measurement kinda sucks. I know it’s the best way to measure speed, but hear me out. When I see 22 miles per hour, I immediately think, “That’s very slow,” because the only time I think about going miles per hour is when I’m driving, and if I’m ever stuck going 22 miles per hour, there’s a good chance I’m also road raging.

I did some Googling. Apparently Usain Bolt ran 27.33 miles per hour one time, which I know is insanely fast, because it’s Usain Bolt. The problem is, hippos can run anywhere from 19 to 28 miles per hour, which means that Tyreek Hill could not outrun a hippo, and neither could Usain Bolt, which worries me. I’d like for the fastest humans to be able to outrun the hippos, just in case there’s ever an organized hippo uprising or something.

So, we need to come up with a better number than mph to show the speed of Achane and Hill and all these NFL stars. Something with real punch and zest. “Hill hit a top speed of 10.1 meters per second, which means he could have run the height of the Empire State Building in 44 seconds.” That’s cool. I’m into that.

22-1: That’s Jalen Hurts’s record in his past 23 regular-season starts

If you’ve been reading the Hot Read regularly this season, you know I’m big on the film and big on the numbers—not so big on wins. Wins are overrated. One hundred things happen in every NFL game; 50 of them are dumb luck and coin flips. I like teams that play well, and presumably, they’ll win at some point.

But man, Hurts and the Eagles just win. They’ve been far from a perfect team this season—they spent most of Sunday’s game arguing with one another on the sideline, for goodness’ sake!

And through all of the issues, the Eagles have just slowly and steadily been playing better and better football as they shake off the Super Bowl hangover. Offensively, this was their best game of the season by both success rate (per play) and expected points added (per drive); defensively, it looked sketchy early, but they circled the wagons for a dominant second half.

I continue to be impressed by how well the Eagles close out games. No team is better at sitting on a lead—not by just running the ball mindlessly into a three-and-out, but by controlling the clock and moving methodically down the field. Against the Rams, the Eagles had three scoring drives of at least 12 plays. That level of sustained, mistake-free football is hard to find—though, of course, having a fourth-and-1 cheat code certainly helps.