PHILADELPHIA — Jalen Hurts was in the blue medical tent. Then he was out.
The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback jogged to the locker room with his team trailing 7-3 at halftime, coming back out and not missing a play. Hurts went 8 of 9 for for 120 yards for a 118.8 passer rating, also rushing for 16 yards and a touchdown as the Eagles scored 23 points and put up 260 yards in the final two quarters.
Getting evaluated for a head injury was forgotten about.
“I guess I beat the protocol,” Hurts said after Thursday’s win over the Washington Commanders. “I beat the protocol.”
Hurts did take two hard hits in the first half, but the Eagles quarterback was good enough to play after going through the protocol. There’s no gray area when going through the concussion protocol. A player either passes it or he doesn’t.
Hurts passed the protocol. By his play on the field in the second half, he should little effects of a head injury (if any).
“When you see grass coming out of his helmet, yeah man, he got rocked a few times,” said Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson. “I thought he did a good job coming in the second half, and really putting it behind him.
Johnson, who’s had quite a few concussions in his career, didn’t notice anything different with Hurts in the first half. Hurts was 10 of 19 for 101 yards and a 68.1 passer rating in the first 30 minutes.
“A couple of times, I got hit and I was wobbling myself,” Johnson said. “I thought what saved this game was our second half adjustment.”
Saquon Barkley saw the same with his quarterback. He trusted the protocol and the results. By then, it was up to Hurts.
“I didn’t see nothing,” Barkley said. “It said his head, so I went up to him, and I said, ‘You good?’ He said, ‘I’m good,’ and we just kept rocking.”
Hurts will have 10 days to rest up and get ready for a showdown with the Los Angeles Rams on Nov. 24. The Eagles quarterback faced some adversity on Thursday, but still got the result he wanted.
“Winning is the main thing. It will always be the main thing,” Hurts said. “And it takes what it takes, regardless of how it looks, what you have to go through to get it,” Hurts said. “We’ll grow through this situation and this experience in the game. Win, lose or draw, we want to grow from every situation, but to be able to stay at it, find a way, stick together. That was pleasing.”
The Dallas Cowboys are a bad football team and getting worse, quickly. They are 3-6 after their latest loss at the hands of the division rival Philadelphia Eagles, their fourth defeat in a row. They haven’t scored more than 24 points since Week 3, their star quarterback is out for the season, their star wide receiver is banged up, they are still without several of their best defensive players… you get the idea. Their season is, for all intents and purposes, done. They are merely playing out the string, both on the 2024 campaign and, likely, Mike McCarthy’s tenure as head coach.
Dallas hired McCarthy in 2020 and gave him an incredibly low bar to clear: Go further in the playoffs than Jason Garrett did in his decade (!) as head coach. McCarthy lost Dak Prescott for the season early in his debut year with the Cowboys, but his teams then lost to the 49ers in back to back seasons, once in the first round and once in the divisional round, before getting blown off the field by the Packers last year — with all of those losses coming at home in AT&T Stadium. In the final year of his deal, McCarthy is coaching his worst Cowboys team yet.
That preamble brings us to Friday afternoon. During his weekly radio appearance (the owner has a weekly radio appearance!), Jones was — for some reason — asked if former Cowboys tight end Jason Witten could be an NFL head coach. And he took the opportunity to answer in exactly the way that you’d expect he would, if you have been following anything Jones has said over the past three-plus decades.
“Yes. Without hesitation, yes,” Jones said, via DallasCowboys.com. “He has something you can’t draw up, reminds me a lot of our other tight end, he’s the head coach up at Detroit right now.”
This is yet another sign that Jones just does not get it.
He’s pretty clearly laying the initial groundwork here to eventually hire Witten to coach the Cowboys. (Even if not necessarily this offseason.) He thinks that because Dan Campbell is a former Cowboys tight end and Witten is a former Cowboys tight end, that you can draw a straight line between the two.
He’s ignoring the fact that Witten has yet to coach at any level above high school (he did win a state championship), while Campbell spent 11 years as an NFL assistant in Miami and New Orleans, eventually working his way up to the “assistant head coach” title along with his position-coach responsibilities. All that was before getting his first head-coaching opportunity with the Lions. (He also went 5-7 as the interim head coach for the Dolphins in 2015.) But what matters to Jones is being able to say that they were Cowboys tight ends, like that really means anything.
He once again thinks that reaching into the past for someone with a connection to the team is the solution to his franchise’s woes, just as he did back in 2011 with (former Cowboys quarterback) Jason Garrett, and this past offseason by thrusting (former Cowboys defensive coordinator in the 1990s) Mike Zimmer on Mike McCarthy as his defensive coordinator. He also hired Garrett as offensive coordinator and head-coach-in-waiting before ever hiring Wade Phillips as head coach, then insisted on McCarthy keeping (former Cowboys quarterback) Kellen Moore as his offensive coordinator when taking the job in 2020. Neither of those solutions went all that well, because “previous connection to the franchise” is not an appropriate criteria for a coaching job. (Moore’s offenses were good, but he and McCarthy were never a personality or scheme fit.)
Even when the Cowboys look outside the cocoon for their coaching hires, they only barely do so, and they’re only really pretending. After allowing Garrett’s contract to expire (they didn’t even fire him!), Dallas conducted only one interview with former Bengals coach Marvin Lewis before hiring McCarthy free and clear. It was a process that was explicitly designed to hire McCarthy — who had beaten the Cowboys in their own building in two playoff games and won a Super Bowl there with the Packers, which is the kind of thing that matters to Jerry Jones — while technically complying with the Rooney Rule. They didn’t conduct a real search, because they didn’t want to. They wanted to hire McCarthy so they found a way to do it without subjecting themselves to league discipline.
Eventually, you’ll likely see something similar happen with Witten. Or with Deion Sanders. Or somebody else who used to play or work for the Cowboys in some capacity.
Ordinarily, you’d expect that a team with Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons, Trevon Diggs, Daron Bland, Tyler Smith and more could have its pick of head-coaching hires; and that with a real search, could land on someone who would do the job well. But as we have seen in the past, the Cowboys don’t operate that way. They’re not looking for a head coach of a football team so much as they are looking for someone who can prepare a group of players for a series of football games from which Jones can market and profit.
One of the biggest games in Week 11 will be taking place in Pittsburgh where the Steelers (7-2) will be hosting the Baltimore Ravens (7-3).
When the Steelers take the field, they’ll be making some NFL history since this will mark their first divisional game of the 2024 season. That’s right, the Steelers went through the first 10 weeks of the season without playing a single game against a divisional opponent, which means six of their final eight games will come against teams from the AFC North. That run starts Sunday against Baltimore.
Before this year, the longest a team had gone to start a season without playing a divisional opponent came in 2019 when the Falcons didn’t play another NFC South team until Week 10. Speaking of the Falcons, they’ve already played an NFL-high FIVE divisional games this year, so it’s kind of crazy that Pittsburgh still hasn’t played any. (The Saints have also played five divisional games.)
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was asked about his team’s unique scheduling quirk this week, and well, he didn’t seem too impressed about the fact that his team was making NFL history.
“I don’t care,” Tomlin said, via the team’s official website. “I’ll play them whenever they schedule us. We’ve got no control over the schedule. Our goal is to beat everybody, but specifically week to week, we get singly focused on this week’s opponent, and so I’d be making it up if I told you I cared about the schedule of when we face people. I don’t.”
The Steelers can take control of the AFC North if they can beat a Ravens team that they’ve gone 7-1 against in their past eight meeetings. (As of now, though, Baltimore is the betting favorite to win the division at FanDuel Sportsbook.)
As for the scheduling quirk, the bizarre thing about the Steelers making history is that Chicago will be joining them. The Bears will be playing their first divisional game Sunday when they host the Packers.
The fact that the NFL scheduled two teams to go through the first 10 weeks without playing a divisional opponent probably isn’t a coincidence. By backloading the schedule with divisional games, that means there’s a higher chance that one team won’t run away with the division and clinch it early.
Back in 2010, the NFL decided to spice up the final week of the regular season by passing a rule that required all games in the final week to be divisional games, so if the league starts pushing more divisional games to the back half of the schedule, it wouldn’t be totally surprising.
Former NFL MVP and Carolina Panthers legend Cam Newton admitted to hurt feelings over not being among the Panthers alumni invited to the team’s trip to Munich, Germany, a week ago, claiming that the franchise has been avoiding his legacy and “doesn’t f–k with” him anymore in general. Newton, who played his final snaps for the Panthers at the end of the 2021 season, was the team’s No. 1-overall draft pick in 2011 and led the team in the most successful era of their history.
Reacting to a video from a Panthers Fan Fest in Germany that included former teammates like Luke Kuechly, Steve Smith and Julius Peppers on his 4th and 1 podcast, Newton went into his discontent with the way the franchise has treated him following his playing career, saying that the Panthers have not honored him under the pretext that he never officially retired from the NFL. While Newton has gone on record as saying his playing career has come to an end, he says he does not have any interest in formally retiring.
“When I see certain things happen like this, me being in control of the narrative, it’s like, bro, I ain’t hard to find,” Newton said. “I ain’t even know certain opportunities even existed. And when I don’t show up, it’s because I didn’t know. So did it hurt my feelings? Yeah, it did, as a man. Like damn bro, I gave this city everything.”
FULL VIDEO: @CameronNewton on his relationship with the @Panthers https://t.co/uJhDGOa10U pic.twitter.com/AopEJ0Otcq
— 4thand1show (@4thand1show) November 14, 2024 “… Me and that franchise, it’s simple. It takes two to tango. My number ain’t changed. I’ve reached out multiple times and did so many things. There is so much familiarity there. How did they look at you? As an ambassador or as a former player? There’s a difference.
“But for too long, it’s been a bullshit ass excuse like, ‘We don’t know if Cam’s retired or not.’ … Bro this shit is over with. I ain’t been back yet and it ain’t because I didn’t want to go back. I’m a very international-based person … I ain’t just going back to walk the halls.”
Newton’s place as one of the greatest players in Panthers history — if not the greatest outright — is more than secure considering that he leads the franchise in nearly every statistical category for quarterbacks and is the lone player in franchise history to have won NFL MVP honors, having done so in 2015 while leading the Panthers to a 15-1 record and an appearance in Super Bowl 50. A large part of his legacy is also the bonds he formed with his longtime teammates and fellow franchise greats, who reached out to help set the record straight.
Greg Olsen, who paired with Newton to form one of the NFL’s most prolific quarterback-tight end connections in recent memory, offered to lead the way in joining a live show among Panthers greats that Newton said he suggested to the franchise. Thomas Davis, meanwhile, clapped back at someone who suggested Newton had been snubbed from his and Olsen’s retirement speeches in 2021.
Let’s put it together.
So many stories to tell. Special group of guys who have a lot to share
Name the place and time. I’m there 🤟@CameronNewton @4thand1show https://t.co/55Bcxe6E5g
— Greg Olsen (@gregolsen88) November 14, 2024 “Stop the shit. Everyone knows me and Cam are A1 so don’t try to create no BS,” Davis wrote with several laughing emojis on his X account.
Newton played 10 of his 11 NFL seasons for the Panthers, first from 2011 to 2019 and then again in 2021 following a midseason injury to Sam Darnold. He has not played in the NFL since then, and is now pursuing a media career that includes his own platform as well as a spot on ESPN’s First Take.
Pro Bowl running back Jahmyr Gibbs has exploded on to the scene in the NFL since being selected 12th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft by the Detroit Lions.
Despite being in a clearly defined tandem with veteran David Montgomery, Gibbs profiles as one of the best five to 10 running backs in the entire NFL across the entirety of his career the last season and a half. He ranks inside the top 10 of NFL running backs in rushing yards (1,672, 10th), yards per carry (5.5, second), rushing touchdowns (17, fifth), scrimmage yards (2,190, eighth), scrimmage yards per touch (5.8, third) and scrimmage touchdowns (19, eighth) even though his 304 career carries are the 20th most in the league since 2023 while his 378 career touches are 18th in the NFL.
However in another series of events, one of the NFL’s most efficient backs might have landed with another team or two if Detroit had opted to not select him as high as they did in 2023. Gibbs himself actually didn’t even expect to be a Lion when the draft rolled around.
“To Detroit, no I really didn’t [expect to go there]. I knew they liked me, but you know when you go on a visit, it seems like they all like you,” Gibbs told retired Super Bowl champion cornerback Richard Sherman on “The Richard Sherman Podcast” on Thursday. “It was crazy I knew for a fact Dallas was going to get me at 26 if I was still there, and a couple other places like Cincinnati was going to get me. I think they [the Bengals] were going to trade up to like 18 or something around that range. I didn’t think I was going to go 12th.”
The Cowboys could really use Gibbs right now. Since Pro Bowler Tony Pollard departed to the Tennessee Titans in free agency last season and Dallas opted to start two rookies on the offensive line (first-round pick Tyler Guyton at left tackle) and center (third-round pick Cooper Beebe), they now have the second-worst ground game in the league, averaging just 83.7 rushing yards per game. The Bengals are in a similar spot with their rushing attack, averaging the fourth-fewest rushing yards per game in the NFL (89.7). Cincy traded longtime starter Joe Mixon to the Houston Texans this offseason, and his replacement Zack Moss is likely done for the rest of 2024 with a neck injury.
Dallas ended up drafting defensive tackle Mazi Smith out of Michigan 26th overall while the Bengals selected edge rusher Myles Murphy out of Clemson 28th overall. The Cowboys are still waiting for Smith to prove himself since Pro Football Focus ranks him as their lowest-graded defensive tackle in the entire NFL (30.3 PFF defensive grade, last out of 120 qualified defensive tackles). Cincinnati is in a similar position with Murphy since PFF grades him 92nd (54.3 PFF defensive grade) out of 112 qualified edge rushers. Both franchises are left to wonder what if when it comes to Gibbs thanks to the Lions aggression in drafting a running back within the first 15 picks back in 2023.
Week 11’s edition of “Monday Night Football” doubles as the battle for Texas bragging rights with the Houston Texans (6-4) coming to AT&T Stadium to face the Dallas Cowboys (3-6).
The two teams are headed in opposite directions with the Texans in first place in the AFC South, and the Cowboys in the midst of a four-game losing streak. However, that doesn’t mean in-state bragging rights don’t mean something to these teams. Dallas second-year linebacker DeMarvion Overshown is from the small town of Arp, Texas, that is roughly 140 miles or so southeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He also went to the University of Texas, and he reps his small town Texas heritage with pride, regularly wearing authentic cowboy hats, big belt buckles and boots. To native Texans like Overshown, Monday night means a little extra than any old regular-season football game.
“It’s the battle of Texas. I know they’re [the Texans] pretty new to the league [becoming a team in 2002], and they’re not a team where we can go back all the way and time tells. When it’s the battle for Texas, especially with them having the season that they’re having, a team that they’re thinking that they run the state,” Overshown said Friday on a conference call. “Even though it’s a down year for us, we still run the state of Texas. So we got to go out there with that pride and that mindset of this is still our state and we’re still the big brothers.”
DeMarvion Overshown going with the real Cowboy look today. pic.twitter.com/HSmlbiDQuP
— Todd Archer (@toddarcher) September 15, 2024 Even though he was a third-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, 2024 is really Overshown’s rookie year after he tore his ACL in the preseason a year ago. He has burst onto the scene with his speed and pass-rush chops from the inside linebacker position, racking up a team-high 4.0 sacks in 2024, including a Week 1 sack of Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson that blew three-time All-Pro teammate Micah Parsons’ mind. That play led Parsons to declare Overshown a future All-Pro after one career game. With four sacks in his first nine games, Overshown joined Parsons (6.0), Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware (4.0) and Jay Ratliff (4.0) as the only four Cowboys players since sacks have been tracked as official statistic (since 1982) to have at least four sacks in their first nine games. Should Overshown register a sack of Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud on Monday night, he would trail only Parsons (8.0) for the most sacks by a Cowboys player in their first 10 career games. The 24-year-old credits Parsons for his own early development.
“Any player that is blessed to play with Micah Parsons would see that he takes a lot of attention to him, and if you have two or three guys blocking one guy, there’s no reasons why the other 10 shouldn’t be winning their battle,” Overshown said. “So I definitely don’t take that for granted, and I look at it as an opportunity for me to get mine. I think us just playing off each other know that ‘hey, if he’s not there I’m there. If I’m not there, he’s going to be there.’ So just having that kind of relationship and know that we got each other’s backs. I know that’s how we feel about everybody on the defensive side of the ball. That’s really the culture we’re trying to get on that side of the ball. … Micah and I have shared with each other how excited and ready we are to play with each other because we know how we play.”
Cowboys’ LB DeMarvion Overshown covered over 14 yards in only 2.8 seconds. That’s a closing speed of 5 yards/sec 🤯
— Reel Analytics (@RAanalytics) September 8, 2024 The Texans won their first game as an NFL franchise against the Cowboys in Week 1 of the 2002 season, but Dallas has the all-time edge over Houston with victories in six of their eight matchups. The football world will find out on Monday night if the struggling Cowboys can maintain their big brother status or if their edge over the Texans is now in brand recognition only in 2024.
