NFL Week 12 best and worst coaching decisions: Bills miss a Josh Allen opportunity

NFL Week 12 best and worst coaching decisions: Bills miss a Josh Allen opportunity
By Ted Nguyen
Nov 28, 2023

Cover 7 | Tuesday A daily NFL destination that provides in-depth analysis of football’s biggest stories. Each Tuesday, Ted Nguyen analyzes the best and worst coaching decisions he saw during the week’s games.

Thanksgiving weekend is over and some teams finished feeling more thankful for their team’s coaching staff than others. Green Bay Packers head coach Matt Lafleur unleashed his team of young and talented playmakers on the Detroit Lions. Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel made the New York Jets’ pass rush more invisible than the plate of Brussels sprouts on the corner of your dinner table. Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald continues his master class in play calling, surprising the Los Angeles Chargers with a well-timed counter punch. We get into all this and more with Week 12’s best and worst coaching decisions.

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LaFleur trusting his young QB to bomb it

The Packers were eager to get the taste of the 34-20 trouncing that the Lions gave them in Week 4 out of their mouths. After winning the opening coin toss, Green Bay elected to receive the ball and take a shot to Christian Watson that resulted in a 53-yard catch on the first play of the game. But the play almost didn’t happen. According to The Athletic’s Matt Schneidman, LaFleur texted quarterback Jordan Love that he was thinking about changing the first play during the week. Love made his case to keep the play in the script, and LaFleur trusted his young quarterback and young pass catcher to get it done.

15:00 remaining in the first quarter, first-and-10

The Packers lined up in a three-by-one formation with Watson lined up to Love’s far right. The Packers had a play drawn up to stress the free safety in a single-high defense. They had max protection with Watson running a streak and slot receiver Jayden Reed running a crossing route.

As Love was dropping back, he used his eyes to get free safety Tracy Walker III to jump Romeo Doubs running an outside breaking route to his left. With the corner on Watson playing with outside leverage because of Watson’s split and stack alignment, Watson had a free release and runway to build up speed.

Without safety help, Watson got wide open. Love underthrew the ball but Watson made a spectacular contested catch.

LaFleur said Love’s improvement in the last few weeks gave him the confidence to be more aggressive as a play-caller. Love averaged 9.4 air yards per attempt against the Lions and had the best game of his young career.

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McDaniel getting the ball into Hill’s hands

The Dolphins’ biggest weakness offensively is their line. The Jets have one of the best defensive lines in the league. To mitigate the mismatch, McDaniel schemed up different ways to get the ball quickly to Tyreek Hil and let him create after the catch. Against the Jets, Hill had by far his lowest air yards per target game of the season, averaging only 3.67 air yards per target.

On Hill’s touchdown catch, McDaniel had Hill line up in the backfield, which kept the defense from matching up properly. Safety Jordan Whitehead had to cover Hill. Hill ran to the flats and Whitehead got through the attempted rub but couldn’t tackle Hill in open space.

Tua Tagovailoa’s average time to throw against the Jets was 2.13 seconds, which is even faster than his league-leading 2.26 average. Against the fierce Jets pass rush, Tagovailoa was only pressured on 12.5 percent of dropbacks thanks to a QB-friendly game plan.

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Macdonald setting up Chargers for game-winning pressure

The Ravens’ defense is must-see TV, with difference-makers on every level of the unit. Safety Kyle Hamilton erases every play run in his direction, linebacker Roquan Smith obliterates everything thrown in the middle of the field and edge Jadeveon Clowney is having the best season of his career. You mix all that with the way Macdonald is calling plays and you’re cooking with fire.

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On Sunday night, Macdonald set up the Chargers for a big play at a critical juncture in the game. He called one of Baltimore’s favorite pick stunts from an overload front early in the game and just before he hit them with a counter.

2:23 remaining in the fourth quarter, second-and-10

Down three points in the fourth quarter, the Chargers had a chance to tie or win the game. The Ravens’ defense needed a stop. On second down, Macdonald called their pick stunt from an overload front to the left in which Patrick Queen sets a pick to free up defensive tackle Broderick Washington.

The Chargers slid their protection toward the overload side and running back Austin Ekeler had to come across the formation to account for Queen. On the right side of the line, the guard and tackle have a two-on-two but Smith would drop back instead of rush.

On the fourth down of the same series, Macdonald’s counter caught the Chargers completely off guard.

1:57 remaining in the fourth quarter, fourth-and-6

Again, the Ravens lined up in their overload front but this time, to the right. Queen lined up on the right edge to occupy Ekeler. The Chargers slid their protection to the overload side and the left guard and tackle had a two-on-two on the backside.

The Ravens did a good job of disguising their slot blitz on the backside and creating a three-on-two. No one accounted for slot corner Arthur Maulet and Justin Herbert was called for intentional grounding.

The Ravens stifled a Chargers offense that came into the game ranked eighth in points per drive, holding them to only 10 points. Enjoy Macdonald while you can, Ravens fans, he’ll be one of the hottest head coach candidates this offseason.

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Dislikes

McDermott not trying to end the game before regulation

After the Eagles converted a 58-yard field goal to tie the game, the Bills got the ball back with 20 seconds left and one timeout from their own 25-yard line. To get into position to kick a field goal, they would have needed two chunk plays. They would have to thread the needle but it was possible.

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At first, I wasn’t too critical of head coach Sean McDermott’s decision to not try to get the field goal, but after rewatching the game and seeing Josh Allen make amazing play after amazing play, you have to give your red-hot, freak-athlete quarterback a chance to end the game in regulation.

The Eagles were having a lot of trouble bringing Allen down on a wet field, so he might even have had a chance for a big scramble and get out of bounds. But we’ll never know because McDermott elected to kneel instead. The Bills went to overtime, got the ball first, and kicked a field goal, but the Eagles had a chance to respond and ended the game with a touchdown.

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Lions staff collectively galaxy-brained

The Lions made plenty of mistakes on Thursday. Head coach Dan Campbell said they may have tried to put too much into the offensive game plan on a short week, resulting in too many mental errors.

I normally like Campbell’s fake punts but there should be a cap on how many of them you try in one season because eventually, opponents just become uber-aware of the possibility of one coming. They’ll spend time practicing against it during the week and the special teams coach will yell, “Watch the fake!” to his return unit every time you punt. The Lions tried to copy the Vikings’ wide zone fake that they ran on the Broncos last week but ran it into a loaded front and were easily stopped. The punt team should have an option to abort the fake against a bad look.

Perhaps the Lions’ staff’s biggest mistake was playing an inordinate amount of man coverage against the Packers. Maybe defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn assumed they could bully the Packers’ young receivers. Coming into the game, the Lions played man coverage on 24.3 percent of dropbacks. They more than doubled that rate against the Packers, playing man on 51.9 percent of dropbacks. I think the idea was to force Love, who had been one of the most inaccurate quarterbacks in the league, to throw into tight windows. Only, they couldn’t tightly cover the Packers’ receivers and Love was on fire Thursday. The theory had merit, but the problem was that they never adjusted.

Harbaugh non-challenges

In two separate instances, it appeared a Ravens runner got the ball past the first down marker but head coach John Harbaugh didn’t even appear to think about challenging the calls.

With 4:48 remaining in the first quarter, on third-and-3, Lamar Jackson scrambled, lowered his shoulder against linebacker Kenneth Murray Jr., and extended the ball past the marker. Instead of taking the time to let the coaches upstairs review the play to give a recommendation on whether to challenge or not, the Ravens tried to catch the defense off guard. They hurried to the line and ran a wildcat play with Gus Edwards taking the snap that was stopped short of the line.

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With 8:31 remaining in the third quarter on second-and-22, Jackson completed a pass to Nelson Agholor, who looked like he got enough yardage for the first down. The replay clearly showed Agholor rolled over a defender’s body to get past the sticks. The Ravens hurried to the line and attempted a pass on third-and-1 that fell incomplete. To their credit, they did convert on fourth down but it didn’t have to be that hard.

Harbaugh said after the game that they were having trouble understanding where the officials spotted the ball but they didn’t consider challenging the Jackson run because it looked short. They thought that the officials gave Agholor the first down and didn’t realize it was third down until after the play. Harbaugh is one of the best game managers in the league and doesn’t usually make a lot of these types of mistakes, but these were pretty glaring.

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(Top photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)

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Ted Nguyen

Ted Nguyen is a NFL staff writer for The Athletic. He breaks down film to uncover the story that the X's and O's tell. He also covers the latest trends around the league and covers the draft. Follow Ted on Twitter @FB_FilmAnalysis