NFL Fallout Week 6: The Giants Should Start QB J.J. McCarthy; The Bears Are Back

The New York Giants are not a very good football team. Their 34-27 home loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday exposed all of their flaws. They are lucky to be 3-2-1 and in first place in a terrible division. And if they want to stay there and make a real run at the playoffs, they have to give J.J. McCarthy their starting quarterback job. McCarthy, the 23-year-old former Vikings bust, replaced Jameis Winston on Sunday with New York in a 34-10 hole and 11:25 left in the game. Then all he did from there was very nearly pull off a Meadowlands miracle. He led three fourth-quarter scoring drives, threw for 243 yards and a touchdown, and almost hit tight end Isaiah Likely with a game-tying touchdown pass with six seconds left in the game. “I thought he came in there and did a heck of a job given the circumstances,” Giants coach John Harbaugh said. “(It was) kind of desperation time. It’s different than normal football. But (he) made some plays and got us back, gives us a chance to win the game. And we’re throwing the ball in the end zone at the end, so that was good. You’ve got to compliment him on that.” He didn’t complete that last pass into the end zone — the ball went through the well-covered Likely’s arms — and McCarthy’s overall performance was far from perfect. He completed only 11 of 21 passes and his first drive ended with an interception. But he gave life to a Giants offense that had stalled and struggled over the previous three-plus weeks with Winston despite not losing a game. And really, the Giants knew this day would come when they traded a fifth-round pick to Minnesota for McCarthy just a week after losing starting quarterback Jaxson Dart for the season. They knew that McCarthy was going to play at some point. And even though Harbaugh refused to commit to McCarthy as his starter for Week 7 in Houston, he has to know that’s the only logical choice. And by the time he looks at the film, that will be obvious. Forget all the excuses about “desperation time” and the Saints’ soft and terrible defense. This is about what McCarthy did in that situation. He completed big passes (five for at least 20 yards and two for more than 45 yards). He stayed out of trouble (after getting picked on his fourth pass). And McCarthy did it all under duress, with both of the Giants’ starting tackles sidelined and the pocket crumbling in front of him most of the time. He did what New York’s brass liked about him when they traded for him back in September — at a time when I wrote Winston was the best of the Giants’ terrible options to replace Dart. McCarthy reminded them of Dart. He moved around the pocket. He spun out of trouble and extended plays. And when the Giants got the ball back with just 57 seconds remaining and 71 yards to go, he kickstarted a potential game-tying drive by stepping away from the pass rush and taking off for a career-long 28-yard run. Winston, at age 32, has neither that kind of mobility nor playmaking ability. And while he’s got a bigger arm, he’s been the high-wire act everyone figured he’d be since Dart went down, completing just 57% of his passes with seven touchdowns and five interceptions in five games. Maybe McCarthy will prove to be risky, too. But at the very least, it’s worth exploring whether he can manifest the upside he showed upon being the No. 10 overall pick of the 2024 draft. He’s earned the chance to prove that Sunday’s performance wasn’t a fluke. Besides, it would be a terrible message if, after watching McCarthy’s near miracle, Harbaugh turned back to the quarterback who got him into the original mess. There’s too much at stake for that. The NFC East is a total mess. The door is wide open. And the Giants already have a lead. What they need are players who propel them forward, not ones who hold them back. The former is what McCarthy did on Sunday. He gave the Giants’ offense a bolt of energy they haven’t had since Week 1. And they’re going to need more of that because it’s going to be a fight for this flawed team every step of the way. They will need everything that McCarthy gave in those magical 11-plus minutes if they’re going to make a real run at the playoffs. They need to give McCarthy a shot to see if he can do it again. It’s been 34 years since the 1992 San Diego Chargers became the only team in NFL history to start a season 0-4 and reach the playoffs. But the Texans are going to join that exclusive club. Yes, it was just a few weeks ago that many of us pronounced them dead. But this isn’t just an overreaction to a two-game winning streak and their 34-31 win over the Jaguars in London on Sunday. It’s an acknowledgment that they may have solved their biggest problem: QB C.J. Stroud. He was outstanding on Sunday against a strong Jaguars defense, completing 24 of 34 passes for 312 yards and three touchdowns. In fact, over the past three weeks, he’s started to look like he did as a rookie in 2023 — a version the Texans have been waiting for three years to see. Over these three games, Stroud has averaged 313 passing yards. He’s got five touchdown passes in the past two games, too. But most impressive is how comfortable he looked against a blitz-heavy Jacksonville defense. He has been bludgeoned behind bad offensive lines in his career. (He’d been sacked 14 times through the first five games this season.) But he stood strong in the pocket on Sunday and just kept firing away. In the end, he was an impressive 10 of 11 for 118 yards and two touchdowns under pressure, according to NextGen stats. And for the first time this season, he wasn’t sacked once. Yes, he threw a costly interception on a lazy pass into the end zone which could’ve given the Texans a 10-point lead with 3:53 remaining. But it was also his first interception of the season, after a franchise-record 216 straight clean passes. And that was very reminiscent of 2023 when he set an NFL record with 191 straight passes without an interception to start his career. Stroud has weapons now, too, after the Texans took a flier on former first-round pick Marvin Harrison Jr. (3 catches, 34 yards), who joins go-to target Nico Collins (3-74) and impressive second-year receiver Jaylin Noel (4-107-1). In fact, Stroud had four completions of at least 20 yards on Sunday. That gives him 25 on the season — most in the NFL. He might not be able to solve all of Houston’s problems. The Texans’ running game was bad even before running back David Montgomery got hurt. And DeMeco Ryans’ defense sure isn’t what it used to be. The Texans have now given up 399 or more yards in three of their six games — including 412 to the Jaguars. It’s a mark opponents had reached just once in the previous 38 games. But Houston’s upcoming schedule is weak, Stroud is playing strong, and that could be enough to get this team back into contention. And that is remarkable, because just two weeks ago, the Texans didn’t have much hope at all. It was never going to be enough for QB Caleb Williams to just return to the field. He was going to have to look like his same old magical self to really give the Chicago Bears the jolt they needed. And that’s what he gave them on his first drive Sunday against the Falcons when he escaped a collapsing pocket, rolled to his right, contorted his body and zipped a pass through two defenders to tight end Colston Loveland for the first touchdown of the game. Plays like that are what keeps defenses on their heels and will keep the Bears (4-2) in Super Bowl contention all season long, as long as Williams really is fully recovered from the hamstring injury that kept him out the past three games. He looked pretty healthy in the Bears’ 31-23 win in Atlanta, completing 30 of 36 passes for 305 yards and a touchdown in what was a 31-7 rout with 10 minutes to go. Notably, Williams didn’t run the ball at all — he had just three carries for 2 yards before taking a knee on the last snap. That’s hardly unprecedented for him, but a big change from the 15 carries for 107 yards and two touchdowns he had in the first two games. Whether that was intentional or not, he used his legs enough to give Ben Johnson’s offense the explosiveness it lacked with Tyson Bagent and Case Keenum. Even without Williams, these Bears are probably a good team. But they have a chance to be a great team if they can keep him on the field. So, how long exactly is jet lag supposed to last? Because the Rams’ dumb idea to fly 15 hours to Melbourne and play their opening game 24 hours later was a convenient and easy excuse for their slow start to the season. But at this point, it’s Week 6 and their entire season has turned into an awful slog. It’s almost hard to believe that a team this talented could struggle as much as they have, or capable of gaining just 286 yards in a stunning 18-16 home loss to the Arizona Cardinals. That’s the 2-4 Cardinals, by the way, who now hold a tiebreaker over the last-place Rams (2-4) in the NFC West: an unfathomable truth even after L.A.’s  Week 1 disaster. But what we all failed to take into account is that the Rams are an old team, with an average age of 27 — one of the oldest in the league, in fact. They are capable of greatness in short bursts, such as their late-game comeback in Philadelphia two weeks ago, their fourth-quarter rally against the Bills last Sunday, and even on their final touchdown drive against the Cardinals. But sustaining the greatness everyone expected all season against a brutal schedule and an unprecedented travel itinerary was probably always going to take its toll. The Rams always thought they’d have a chance to get things right when they hit the soft spot in their schedule. But that five-week stretch just began with an unthinkable loss this weekend. That’s not to say the Rams are done. Probably far from it. But it’s probably time everyone considerably lowered their expectations. Because old and tired doesn’t usually improve over time. And these Rams have to face the Seahawks (twice), the 49ers and the Chiefs in December and January. If they don’t get back in the race soon, there’s just no way they’ll survive that. The Philadelphia Eagles are going to get a good look at life without Jalen Hurts over the next four weeks, at least. It should be enough to scare them into preparing for life without Hurts in a few years. Not that they didn’t have enough offensive problems before Hurts got hurt, but it sure isn’t going to get any better under backup Tanner McKee. He’s a fine backup, but he needed 45 passes to throw for 215 yards on Sunday in an ugly 25-14 loss at home to the Carolina Panthers that dropped Philly to 2-4 on the season. With its injury-riddled offense in shambles, McKee’s just not good enough to get much done. Now don’t misunderstand this: Hurts’ time in Philadelphia is far from over, even with him out indefinitely because of a blood clot in his calf. He’s only 28. He’s under contract for two more seasons. And the Eagles couldn’t even think of getting rid of him until after the 2027 season given the cap ramifications. But now is the time to start planning for that possibility, because the hardest thing to do in pro sports is to transition from one successful franchise quarterback to another. Most teams, aside from the Green Bay Packers, only excel in finding ways to screw that up. That’s why GM Howie Roseman needs, more than ever, to take advantage of this opportunity, to sell off some players so he has ammunition in the next draft. Then he can select Hurts’ eventually successor, like the Packers did with Jordan Love when Aaron Rodgers was still their quarterback, and like they did with Rodgers when Brett Favre was still there. Roseman did that once as well, of course, using a second-round pick on Hurts in the 2020 draft when Philly still had then-27-year-old Carson Wentz. The Eagles were still Wentz’s team back then. But they made sure they were ready for when they weren’t anymore. Now they need to do it again.