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What to know from NFL Week 6: Titans stay unbeaten, Patriots look rattled and Jets bottom out

Analysis by
Staff writer
October 19, 2020 at 6:30 a.m. EDT
As the Titans' Derrick Henry showed Sunday, offenses are leaving defenses behind this season. (Wade Payne/AP)

The dominant on-field story line of the 2020 NFL season, for most every team aside from the New York Jets, remains the supremacy of offense. Scoring had erupted over the past several years owing to a combination of rule changes, schematic innovation and strategic advancement. The conditions of football in a pandemic — limited crowd noise, fewer full-contact preseason practices — have only exacerbated the impossibility for defenses.

Sunday was not an outlier for this season, but it was emblematic of how NFL football is played in 2020. If you don’t score, you don’t win. Of 12 games Sunday, the winning team scored at least 30 points in seven. Teams entered Week 6 averaging 25.7 points per game, the record by more than two points. On Sunday, teams scored an average of 22.9 points per game, even with the Jets’ contribution of zero.

For defenses to have a chance, they can find an example in the marquee game of the day and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles’s group. The Green Bay Packers shredded Tampa Bay on their opening two drives, but on the third, safety Jamel Dean picked off Aaron Rodgers and returned it for a touchdown. The Bucs never looked back in a 38-10 victory.

Pick-sixes are not necessarily a sustainable solution, but Dean’s play is instructive. Offenses are too good for defenses to win conventionally. Defenses must make their own big plays, either by taking the ball away or getting sacks to halt drives.

They could also have the good fortune of playing the Jets. Here is what to know.

The Titans are a powerhouse. A handful of teams can stake a claim as the best in the league. One of them, as much as many in the league would hate to admit after their questionable adherence to novel coronavirus protocols, is the Tennessee Titans.

The Titans improved to 5-0 after a wild, 42-36 overtime victory over the Houston Texans, placing them among the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks as the league’s final undefeated teams. The Titans built a 21-7 lead in the second quarter, watched it disappear, took the lead again, lost it again, stopped a two-point conversion attempt that would have iced the game, scored a touchdown with four seconds left to force overtime and let Derrick Henry take control on the first possession to win.

So it was a typical Titans game: They made mistakes, their offense was incredible, and they ultimately found a way to win by bullying their opponent. Henry ran for 212 yards, 94 of which came on one touchdown run, and caught two passes for another 52. He scored the game-winning touchdown on a direct snap as a wildcat quarterback.

Through six weeks, which have included more than 20 positive coronavirus tests by players and staffers, the Titans have validated their march to the AFC championship game last season. The Titans are 14-4, playoffs included, since Coach Mike Vrabel turned to turn Ryan Tannehill at quarterback last season. Tannehill has played at a borderline-MVP level. In 15 regular season games, Tannehill has completed 69.8 percent of his passes while throwing for 3,966 yards and 35 touchdowns against seven interceptions.

The Patriots have a fight on their hands. After a punchless 18-12 loss to the Denver Broncos dropped them to 2-3, the New England Patriots are under .500 in October for the first time since 2002, the year after they won their first Super Bowl. They are suddenly facing a significant challenge in trying to make the playoffs in Year 1 post-Tom Brady.

New England has time to turn it around, but not too much. This is the wrong year to be mediocre in the AFC, even with an additional wild-card spot available. The Patriots are already two games behind the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East. There are six AFC teams ahead of them in the wild-card standings. That includes the 2-3 Broncos, who own the head-to-head tiebreaker and have looked competent with quarterback Drew Lock healthy.

Because of his positive coronavirus test and related postponements, Cam Newton had not played since Sept. 27. Newton was spectacular for the first three weeks, but after the layoff, the Patriots’ offense frequently bogged in the same manner as last year. Newton repeatedly held the ball too long as plodding skill position players failed to get separation downfield. He took four sacks and threw two interceptions.

Late in the game, the Patriots reverted to trick plays — a throwback screen from Julian Edelman to James White and an end-around pass from Edelman to Newton. That was a desperate staple of their offense last season, one they surely did not want to repeat. But the Patriots have ample talent, and they have been laid low by positive tests and three weeks of rearranged games, rushed travel, closed facilities and limited practices.

“We need more time together,” Coach Bill Belichick said after the loss. “We need to practice together.”

The Steelers are separating themselves in the AFC North. The Cleveland Browns’ string of impressive performances and their 4-1 record turned their meeting with the undefeated Steelers into a showdown, the kind of anticipated game Cleveland rarely plays in. The Steelers made quick work of serving notice that the Browns may be improved but are not on Pittsburgh’s level.

The Steelers thumped the upstart Browns, 38-7, to run their record to 5-0. Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield may have been compromised by a rib injury, and he left early after absorbing vicious hits. But the performance cemented that, for all of Cleveland’s improvement under first-year coach Kevin Stefanski, the Browns still occupy a secondary tier in the division. They have now lost to the Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens by a combined score of 76-13.

It was not all good news for the Steelers, who lost star linebacker Devin Bush for the season with a torn ACL, according to multiple reports. The Steelers face the Titans next week in a matchup of unbeaten teams before a massive game against Baltimore. The Ravens improved to 5-1 with a 30-28 victory over Philadelphia, but it was another victorious performance that still left questions. Baltimore’s offense seemed stagnant for much of the day, and its defense allowed the Eagles to nearly steal a game late that they weren’t in most of the day. The Ravens are the reigning AFC North champs, but right now it appears to be Pittsburgh’s division to lose.

The Jets took control of the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes. In Sunday’s early wave, the Atlanta Falcons smashed the Minnesota Vikings in interim coach Raheem Morris’s debut, and the New York Giants outlasted the Washington Football Team in a stink-off. That left the Jets as the NFL’s lone winless team, and they spent the late afternoon leaving no doubt about their place as the worst team in the NFL.

The Jets fell to 0-6 with a 24-0 loss to the Miami Dolphins that was one of the most dismal performances in recent memory. After cutting running back Le’Veon Bell, the Jets started backup quarterback Joe Flacco and managed 263 yards while going 2 for 17 on third down. The Jets’ ineptitude allowed for the debut of Dolphins rookie Tua Tagovailoa in garbage time; he completed both passes he attempted for nine yards to cheers from the small home crowd.

The Jets took the lead in the race for the worst record in the NFL and the right to draft Lawrence, the Clemson star widely regarded as a generational quarterback prospect. If the Jets hold on to the worst record, the only question will be who coaches Lawrence. It certainly will not be Adam Gase, who any week could join Bill O’Brien and Dan Quinn as coaches fired this season. But the possibility of coaching Lawrence may be enough to help General Manager Joe Douglas lure a top-tier candidate such as Kansas City’s Eric Bieniemy or Tennessee’s Arthur Smith.

Don’t count out the 49ers yet. It has been a nightmare season for the defending NFC champions. San Francisco lost defensive end Nick Bosa, who may be its most important player. A high-ankle sprain knocked out quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo for 2½ games and compromised him in another. Injuries have diminished almost every other part of the 49ers’ roster, too. Entering Sunday night at 2-3, they seemed headed for a season defined by rotten luck and a hellish Super Bowl hangover.

But Kyle Shanahan’s ability to build an offensive game plan is second to none. The 49ers may have lost too much high-end talent to be considered a Super Bowl threat, but they won’t be easy to dethrone in the NFC, as their 24-16 victory over the Los Angeles Rams showed.

Garoppolo is not yet fully recovered from his injury, but he played a wonderfully efficient game, completing 23 of 33 passes for 268 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions. Shanahan provided a smattering of easy completions, dialing up pop passes to Deebo Samuel and short throws to George Kittle. At 3-3, the 49ers have plenty of work to do. But they’re not going away quietly.