In the aftermath of the Patriots' victory over the Giants a couple of Mondays ago, Marcus Jones walked up to the podium, still clad in his game pants and smiled, flashing those pearly whites. He had every reason to beam. Not only had the Pats won their 10th straight game, but Jones had put himself in the NFL history books, becoming the all-time punt return leader in terms of yards per return.
That mark had stood since 1950, held by former Bear George McAfee. From 1940 to his retirement a decade later, McAfee averaged 12.78 yards per return. On his 75th return - thereby hitting the qualifying number - Jones went 94 yards for a touchdown, and finished the evening with a career mark of nearly two yards better than McAfee (14.64).
“Whenever my dad had me in a parking lot when I was like 4 years old, he used to throw the ball in the air and be like, ‘Track it.’ That was the first thing I thought about,” Jones recalled.
If you walked by Jones on the street, you would have no idea he was capable of being something special. He’s 5’8”, and I would argue that’s on a good day, and not quite pushing 190 pounds. But what you’d miss is how fast he is, how quick, how tough, and how courageous. Yeah, to do what Jones does as a punt returner requires a level of fearlessness that most - even the elite athletes - do not possess. When he decides to field the ball, there’s more of a chance he’s going to get smoked than end up in the opponent’s end zone.
“Yeah, for sure,” Jones told me earlier this week. “I would say I love the adrenaline rush that comes with it. Not a lot of people like to do it, but I love to do it.”
Mike Vrabel has repeatedly noted that the coaching staff has great trust in Jones to make the right decisions. That’s a large part of the battle for returners. Many teams will set a cut-off for fielding a punt. The 10-yard line. The 8. Maybe even the 6. But the Pats have given Jones carte blanche.
“We give him the free range to not - if he has space, he has space,” special teams coordinator Jeremy Spinger said earlier. “He's a veteran who's earned the role that he has. I give him the flexibility to make the decision on his own."
“I mean, we talk about it every single week of like, knowing certain things,” Jones said of the coaches. “But they believe in me, okay, you know, if you do have time, take advantage of it. My main thing is just not to put the offense in a bad situation.”
Between the Carolina game in week four (two long returns, including one for a touchdown) and this most recent game with New York, Jones had only nine opportunities to actually put his wheels in motion. Most opponents had decided - wisely - to angle punts toward the sidelines, even kicking them out of bounds, to keep the ball out of Jones’ hands. They also decided to sacrifice distance for hang time, forcing a guy who doesn’t want to fair catch to do exactly that. Thus, when the Giants mess up, Jones wants to make them pay.
“Whenever I do get time, I'm just trying to make plays,” he told me. “At the end of the day, the first thing is always the first down, to get it right, but I'm always trying to take every single one back, because I don't know how many times I'll be able to catch the ball.”
“You're always going to prepare to have things set up,” Springer added. “And hopefully you get an opportunity in every game with #25. You get an opportunity with 25, then you have the chance to take it to the house.
WHY NOT?
I will preface this by writing that I have no idea if this Philip Rivers thing will work, but I’m looking forward to it. How can you not be intrigued by Rivers coming out of retirement - having last played in 2020-21 - to try and pull the Indianapolis Colts out of a freefall that has seen them lose 4 of their last 5?
Rivers, who just turned 44, has been coaching his son, a highly touted QB in the class of 2027, in Alabama. He’s also recently become a grandfather. But he and Indy coach Shane Steichen are long-time friends, having established their relationship when Steichen was a young assistant in San Diego with the Chargers. The two talk weekly, and while it’s unclear if the subject had been broached before, the Colts head coach set the wheels in motion sometime Sunday night, and Rivers said he’d sleep on it. Indianapolis knew Daniel Jones was lost for the season with a torn Achilles, and then found out his backup, Riley Leonard, had a PCL sprain and might not be available this coming weekend.
“Called him back Monday morning. He said, ‘I need to get up there, need to get up there and throw, get in that building, start moving around,’” Steichen recalled.
“So he came in here, threw – he didn’t forget how to throw a football. … Then Tuesday, he was in the hotel thinking it over. He called us, me and (Colts general manager) Chris (Ballard) were in the office, and he said, ‘What do you think?’
“He said, ‘Dadgummit, let’s freaking go.’”
Rivers is not in football shape, joking that his weight is obviously not what it was when he last played. But he can still spin it and is both familiar and comfortable with the Steichen playbook, having used it with his high school team. So, why the heck not?
“They wanted me,” Rivers said. “I try to keep it as simple as that. A game I love to play. A game that I thought I was done playing. Certainly, I wasn’t really hanging on any hope of playing again. I kind of thought that ship had sailed.
“But something about it excited me. Just kind of one of those deals – a door opens and you can either walk through and find out if you can do it or run from it. I know that there’s risk involved, obviously, in what may or may not happen. But the only way to find out is to go for it.”
As of the writing of this, the Colts had yet to name Rivers the starter for Sunday. Considering the man is bypassing a potential induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame - he’s a semifinalist - and will have his clock to get in reset to 2031 at the earliest, I have to believe if his body is up to it, Rivers will get the nod.
The Colts visit the Seahawks. Kickoff is set for 4:25 PM.
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE?
The Chiefs are under .500 through 13 games for the first time since 2012 (finished 2-14). I can’t say I saw this coming. I don’t think anyone who’s reasonable did. When Kansas City hired Andy Reid as head coach following that year. He has had only three losing seasons in his career, and none with the Chiefs. But after Sunday’s loss to the Texans, they are in need of something close to a miracle to get into the postseason.
“You hate for it to come down to this, but I have learned over the years that anything is possible,” Reid said. “I communicated that to the guys. They were down in the dumps after the game. They put their heart and soul into that game, and we came up short. But at the same time, we’ve got to pick ourselves up and get ourselves going again. Hope is always a good motivator there.”
To Reid’s point, Travis Kelce declined to speak following the loss, instead staring vacantly into his locker. Rashee Rice, who had a critical drop for a second straight week, was gone before reporters even entered the room. This is a team searching for answers but unable to find them.
KC is 1-6 in one-score games in 2025. That’s the 2nd-worst such W-L mark in the NFL this year. Only the Commanders are worse (0-4). The Chiefs had won 17 straight one-possession games entering the season (including playoffs). That is the longest streak of all time.
“You’ve got to be able to make that stuff happen,” Patrick Mahomes said, “and we haven’t done that enough this year.”
The Chiefs are currently the #10 seed in the AFC entering Week 15, trailing the Bills, Chargers, Texans, and Ravens in the Wild Card race. On top of that, KC would currently lose the head-to-head tiebreaker to Buffalo, LA, and Houston.
“You’re just getting late in the season,” Mahomes said, “and you’re not getting these opportunities back.”
“We can control how we finish the season,” Chris Jones added. “We can finish the season strong, and God-willing, find a way to get into the playoffs.”
This isn’t a bad team. They’re 6th in total DVOA. In the AFC, the only team that is better is the Colts, and they have their own set of problems. DVOA isn’t a foolproof metric, but as far as they come, it’s been the best indicator of playoff teams for as long as I can remember. But it’s been that kind of year in the conference. The AFC currently has different division leaders in 2025 than in 2024. That would be the first time all four division champs in the AFC changed from the previous year since 2003, and the first time it’s happened in the league since 2017.
WINGS CLIPPED
The Eagles’ collapse in 2023 was shocking. They began the year 10-1 before losing six of their final seven games, including a spanking at the hands of the Buccaneers in the Wild Card round. A year prior, Philadelphia had gone toe-to-toe with the Chiefs before losing by the narrowest margins in the Super Bowl.
As we know, Nick Sirianni’s club rebounded, getting back to the title game and smacking KC so hard they knocked the taste out of their mouths (and, as seen above, maybe started this decline).
Turns out history might be repeating itself. The Eagles have now lost three straight after Monday night’s overtime loss in LA to the Chargers, falling to 8-5 on the season.
“We have won a lot of football games. Right now, we've lost three in a row,” Sirianni said. “I'm confident in the coaches that we have, the players that we have, the owner that we have, the front office that we have. We're built to overcome, and we know how to do that.”
Despite a collection of talented - and expensive - playmakers on offense, Philly hasn’t managed to score more than 21 points in a single game since October, and it went from bad to worse in Los Angeles. Jalen Hurts turned the ball over five times, including a career-high four interceptions (he had just two in the first 13 weeks).
“I have to find ways to lead our team to victories,” Hurts said. “That’s not something that’s foreign to us. We are just not able to do it at the moment. That starts with me and how I play, how I lead, and how I go out there and do my job. When I look at it at any point, it’s about how I respond to a test. And what level of resilience and resolve I have to push forward and figure things out.”
Hurts has been at the center of the Eagles’ woes - if you will. He has not seen the field particularly well, and according to reports, has frustrated teammates by refusing to make tight-window throws. Wideout A.J. Brown has been demonstrative and vocal about his displeasure with the entirety of the offense, and Hurts has mostly been the source of his irritation. But Brown has also contributed to the unachieving nature of this group, quitting on plays and having a pair of balls clang off his hands on Monday, including one that ended up as an interception.
“You always have to look inward and be honest with yourself, first and foremost. Take accountability and learn to fix it as quickly as possible,” Brown said. “That’s what we plan to do. That’s what I plan to do.”
There still remains an opportunity to flip this script. Three of Philly’s final four opponents have losing records (two with Washington and one with Vegas), and Vic Fangio’s defense remains one of the better ones in all of football. But confidence in the offense is low, and, as we’ve seen before with this group, there are no guarantees.
NERD NUMBERS
- This will be just the 2nd matchup in the last 50 seasons between the Bills and Patriots in which both teams were 5+ games over .500 entering the game. I talked about the last time this happened on my podcast on Tuesday. That was Week 16 in 2019: Bills (10-4) at Patriots (11-3); The Pats won 24-17.
- Cleveland’s Myles Garrett needs 3 sacks to break the record for most sacks in a single season, set by Michael Strahan in 2001 and tied by T.J. Watt in 2021 (22.5). Watt and Strahan both won AP Defensive Player of the Year in those seasons.
- The Bears are top 10 in scoring and total offense in 2025. They were bottom 5 in both a year ago. Chicago has not finished a season in the top 5 in total offense since 1977. That’s a long time. HOF Walter Payton won AP NFL MVP and OPOY that year.
- Ja’Marr Chase has 91 receptions (3rd in NFL) and 1,015 receiving yards (4th in NFL). Chase is the 5th player in NFL history with 1,000+ receiving yards in each of his first 5 seasons. The others? Justin Jefferson, Mike Evans, A.J. Green, and Randy Moss. Pretty good company.
- Houston’s DeMeco Ryans can become the 6th head coach since 2000 to make the playoffs in each of their first 3 seasons as a head coach, joining Chuck Pagano, Jim Harbaugh, John Harbaugh, Matt LaFleur, and Sirianni.
- Since Jacoby Brissett became the starter in Week 6, he has averaged 307.4 pass YPG. That’s the most in the NFL. Arizona is also fourth in first downs per game and eighth in total offense, but have won just one of Brissett's eight starts.
- The Jaguars have scored 25+ points in 6 consecutive games since their Week 8 bye, the longest streak in 2025 and tied for the longest streak in franchise history (6 games in 2007). Prior to the bye, Jacksonville ran on 39.1% of plays (27th in the NFL). Since Week 9, they’ve upped that number to 53.1% (2nd in the NFL; MIA: 53.6).
- How bad is the Jets' passing game? Garrett Wilson, who’s eligible to come off IR, leads NY with 395 receiving yards and 4 TDs. He’s played seven games.
- LAC’s Justin Herbert needs 168 more yards to pass Mahomes for the 2nd-most passing yards by a player in their first 6 NFL seasons all-time. Only HOF Peyton Manning currently has more than Mahomes.