Finally, NFL Sunday Was Fun to Watch: Week 10 of Dumb Football with Mike Tunison

Let us never suggest the NFL is trying to help us—society could collapse catastrophically and the NFL wouldn't mind so long as profits continued to climb—but still, it felt good to have one Sunday of mostly excellent pro football.

Football fans needed this. It's been a woeful season. Not fully devoid of quality, mind you; there have been highlights here and there. On balance, though, it's been bad enough to keep most fans agitated and cranky. Watching games has felt more like a chore than any leisure activity should.

If you've followed the NFL this season beyond casually watching the games, you've likely seen dozens of speculative thinkpieces about how and why ratings are down, which is easily the defining narrative of the 2016 season. One theory that has been thrown out was that the presidential election was somehow eating into the league's viewership. Maybe the ratings are still down for Sunday's games, but that's not much my concern. I'm not into this to enrich NFL owners any further. I would simply like the product not to feel like work, and Week 10 marked the first Sunday of the season where that wasn't the case.

It helped that these games were supposed to be good, Seahawks-Patriots, on paper, is one the best matchups that the league can offer, and Sunday night's game made good on that promise. Cowboys-Steelers was also great, though those are two playoff-caliber teams (OK, perhaps debatably with Pittsburgh). Dez Bryant got to pay tribute to his father who died on Saturday and have an emotional moment in the locker room after a victory. There was also a crazy unprecedented finish in New Orleans between the Saints and the Broncos.

I'm not going to spin this into a hopeful message. The NFL as an organization still sucks and there will still be more bad games, though it would be nice to believe the season progressing means teams are gelling and improving, with a corresponding rise in game quality. It just feels like, with so many awful things transpiring at once, it's worth pointing out the occasional positive. This was one.

One of the wondrous things about the NFL is that every week is a referendum on everything. So if two-point attempts are less successful than usual one week, it's because they were bad all along. The 2015 Steelers set a single-season NFL record for two-point conversions (eight), with a success rate of nearly 73 percent. Despite spending all off-season talking about how they wanted to go for even more this year, though, they had only attempted two of them (both successfully) through Week 10.

On Sunday, Pittsburgh suddenly renewed its commitment and was rewarded by going zero-for-four against the Cowboys. There were six two-point attempts in the game altogether but none were successful. Now two-point tries are old and busted, even if statistically this was just an outlier. Nevertheless, the takes—they were a-blazin'.

In the Sunday night game, Seattle scored a touchdown to pull ahead by seven points over the Patriots in the fourth quarter. Kicking the extra point meant the Pats could still tie with a touchdown and a two-point conversion. Seattle converting a two-pointer would have made it a two-score difference, effectively almost certainly ending the game. Frankly I think we should encourage NFL coaches not to hew to overly conservative orthodoxy, but I'm hardly an authority. Bill Belichick, who once famously lost a game because had his offense try to convert a fourth-and-two from their own side of the field, was caught on camera being baffled by the call.

So even though the NFL is expressly encouraging teams to try more two-point plays by making extra points more difficult, all it takes is one bad week of two-point tries to reinforce established thinking about risk taking.

Tajae Sharpe celebrated one of the Tennessee Titans' many touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers by mimicking the act of laying down and going to sleep. For this he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. One might think he could have gotten around a penalty by not using the ball as a pillow, as other players have in the past, since the league forbids using the ball as a prop in celebration. Ah, but not to worry—the league's rulebook is very thorough in the pursuit of eliminating fun. It also states that players are not allowed to engage in any celebrations while on the ground. To clarify: a sleepwalking celebration, while probably difficult to convey with a full uniforms and pads on, would be fine; conventional sleeping is a big no-no.

If you're wondering where all the gum went, it's in Danny Smith's mouth. — Dave Dameshek (@Dameshek)November 13, 2016

If there isn't a raffle going in the Steelers locker room to guess how many pieces of gum special teams coordinator Danny Smith chews at once, well, I'm afraid I just don't understand what's going on there.

If you're looking for something more newsy, well, it seems like Ben Roethlisberger is committed to undermining the authority of head coach Mike Tomlin. Early on Sunday, a report came out indicating that Ben had a face-to-face with Tomlin to ask that the coach do a better job instilling discipline in the team's younger players, which seems like a thing you shouldn't need to explain to a coach who's had his job for nearly a decade. Nevertheless, in comments immediately following the loss on Sunday to the Cowboys, Roethlisberger doubled down on his demands for increased discipline and accountability on the team, which is plenty rich given some of the things Ben has been allowed to get away with over the years.

- Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans sat during the anthem prior to the team's victory over the Chicago Bears. Instead of protesting police violence, which has been the reason behind Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest, Evans said his gesture was done to indicate disapproval of the election of Donald Trump.

- Tom Brady said Monday he would prefer that people not ask him about politics anymore. He has yet to say whether or not he voted for Trump, whom Brady counts as a friend. The president-elect has claimed that Brady voted for him, and his other claims about Patriots personnel, namely that Bill Belichick sent him a letter of approval during his campaign, have been proved.

Obviously not every game on Sunday was Cowboys-Steelers or Seahawks-Patriots, what with their many lead changes and offensive fireworks, but lower-scoring games can be interesting, too. Even in ways that are amusingly bad.

Case in point: in the process of blowing a 17-3 halftime lead, the Carolina Panthers had a 20-play drive in the third quarter that ended in a punt. It began on their own nine-yard-line and ended with a sack of Cam Newton to push them back to the Kansas City 40, where they punted. In between, there were seven rushes, 13 dropbacks, four third-down conversions, one fourth-down conversion, and one penalty. According to Pro Football Reference, it's the first time a 20-play drive has resulted in a punt. The next longest drive to end in a punt was 16 plays. That's just very impressive sustained offensive ineptitude, there.

It took a few months of workshopping, but Kirk Cousins has decided on a new victory catchphrase for 2016. It's "OOOOO WEEEEE," which OK, sure, that's certainly less aggro than "YOU LIKE THAT?" We need less screaming white dudes in general, though in fairness we also need less Dan Snyder team success, so as with most things, it's a mixed bag.

Early on Sunday, ESPN's Adam Schefter had a report that Jared Goff was likely to finally see action and start the Rams' Week 11 game if Case Keenum struggled against the New York Jets. Apparently going 17 of 30 for a whopping 165 yards does not constitute struggle in the eyes of head coach Jeff Fisher, who after the game announced there would not be a quarterback change, because, hey, a 9-6 win's a win and being 4-5 means still being very much alive in the NFC playoff race. It also means being on pace to hit another 7-9 season, because Fisher never stops playing the hits.

we're working through some stuff in America — Mike Tunison (@xmasape)November 13, 2016

Look, we're all a little deranged right now, casting about aimlessly in hopes of finding solace in whatever form it comes. It just so happens that form is two bulldogs done up to look like Russ Meyers' take on the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad. I don't know either. I don't think everything is going to be OK, but this is a delightfully weird coping mechanism, I guess.

1. The Dallas Cowboys offensive line. Ezekiel Elliott, who has had a great rookie season, broke off some huge runs in the win over the Steelers, including a 32-yard touchdown to cap a 35-30 thriller. It's telling that Pittsburgh only missed four tackles on Elliott and that he averaged 3.5 yards even before contact on the game, as Steelers defenders couldn't shed blocks to even attempt to make plays. Elliott is deserving of praise and he will get it, though it should be noted what a great job the Dallas line is doing.

2. DeMarco Murray, Tennessee Titans. The former beneficiary of some of that quality blocking in Dallas had a day for himself in Tennessee's rout of Green Bay, rushing for 123 yards and a touchdown, and passing for another score. It wasn't even one of those limp running back throws to a wide-open receiver on a trick play. It was a pretty solid throw!

3. Doug Baldwin, Seattle Seahawks. I'll excuse Baldwin for not replicating his football-pooping celebration from Super Bowl XLIX. Once you've done it on the big stage, it'd just feel cheap anywhere else. Plus, y'know, he scored all three of the Seahawks' touchdowns

4. Marcus Peters, Kansas City Chiefs. After the Chiefs erased Carolina's 17-point first-half lead with four and a half minutes to go in the fourth quarter, it looked like the game was headed for overtime. The Panthers were trying to safely pick up yards in the hopes of getting a field goal in the final minute, but it turns out there's risk even in conservative playcalling as Peters ripped the ball out of the hands of receiver Kelvin Benjamin to set up Kansas City in Carolina territory. The Chiefs corner probably shouldn't have celebrated by punting the ball into the stands, but the five-yard delay-of-game penalty didn't prevent KC from hitting a 37-yard field goal to steal a victory and move to the top of the AFC West.

5. Darian Stewart, Denver Broncos. With Denver's offense flagging and unable to keep up with the Saints' attack on its own, the Broncos needed turnovers and a few special-teams points to come away with the win. Stewart was a big reason they pulled it off, with two interceptions and a recovered fumble. The first pick likely took points away from the Saints as Stewart nabbed a pass intended for Travis Cadet in the red zone.

— Conrad Garcia (@ConradBuckets)November 13, 2016

1. Blake Bortles. The Jaguars are in no hurry to dispatch their awful head coach, so why should it be any different with their cratering quarterback? Bortles threw a pick-six on the opening drive of the game and managed to turn a give-up on a screen into a turnover when the ball caromed off T.J. Yeldon's foot into the hands of a defender. It was initially ruled an interception, but I suppose the stat keepers wanted to take mercy on Bortles' passer rating. Either way, the Jaguars lost to the Texans, whose QB, Brock Osweiler, threw for 99 yards on 27 attempts, another shining moment for quarterback wins.

2. The Green Bay Packers secondary. This unit has been ravaged by injury this season, and missing Clay Matthews in the pass rush doesn't do it any favors. The secondary looked hapless on Sunday, allowing Marcus Mariota to complete nearly 80 percent of his passes as the Titans went off for 47 points. The Packers offense doesn't seem to play with any urgency until the defense forces them to play from behind, a circumstance that's becoming all too frequent in what increasingly looks to be a lost season in Green Bay.

3. Philip Rivers. Now that the Chargers stadium referendum failed, it's important that the team leave little reason for San Diegans to harbor any emotional attachment before the team, uh, bolts for another city. In that sense, Rivers is actually a hero for his four fourth-quarter interceptions against Miami. But in another, more real sense, he absolutely is not.

4. Michael Thomas. The Broncos winning on a blocked extra point returned for a decisive two-point score will surely be the thing most people remember about the Denver-New Orleans, and understandably so. The game probably doesn't get to that point, however, without the Saints receiver putting the ball on the ground twice in the fourth quarter, the first setting up a tying touchdown when the Saints led 17-10. There was also a first-half interception of Drew Brees that happened after the ball deflected off Thomas's hands. At least he won't have long to dwell on it, since the Saints play again on Thursday—the rare benefit of unsafe scheduling that nobody likes.

5. Rams-Jets. Yes, the entire game. On a Sunday where the NFL was mostly quality, this was a reminder of the dregs of the rest of the 2016 season. Plus, the Jets didn't have the decency to prevail and hand Jeff Fisher his 162nd career loss, which would have tied him for second all-time with Tom Landry. It's critical we get Fisher to that loss record this season, just in case the country isn't still intact for the 2017 season.

As for tonight …

It appears Odell Beckham spent part of the weekend with Conor McGregor at the UFC event in New York. What better way to prepare for the Cincinnati Bengals than to hang out with an orange man who loves to fight? A chippy Bengals defense seems like just the thing that could get under Beckham's skin. Provoking the Giants receiver, however, usually requires shutting him down, and Cincinnati's pass defense in general hasn't been the strongest in 2016.

Though the Bengals and Giants are only separated by a game and a half in the standings, their circumstances are wildly different because of their respective divisions. Despite being 3-4-1, the Bengals can climb to second place and be within half a game of first in the middling AFC North with a victory. The Giants, meanwhile, will still trail the Cowboys by two games even with a win, and would fall into a last-place tie in the NFC East with 5-4 Philadelphia with a loss. A win would give the Giants at least a full-game lead on the staggering eight other teams presently in contention for a Wild Card berth in the NFC.

Cincinnati has never beaten the Giants in New York, a statement that is less damning once you realize the Bengals have somehow played the Giants there only three times in nearly 50 years of existence. Chalking that up to the Bengals being historically Bengal-y is a little trickier when you notice that Cincy has won all six of the meetings at home. Obviously, none of this has any bearing on tonight's contest. Just one of those quirks of NFL history only possible through a scarcity of games. Nevertheless, the Bengals' organizational achievements are limited enough that winning for the first time on the road against the Giants might actually mean something.

Anyway, if you're tired of the discourse and looking for a sports figure willing to bury his head in the sand regarding the present political climate, look no further than Eli Manning. Whereas Bill Belichick actually got involved in this year's presidential race, Eli gave the most Belichickian answer when asked about Donald Trump's victory after the fact:

"No reaction. Woke up this morning, saw it, and went to work."

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