NFL Week 4 Plays That Stood Out: Dak Prescott Carves Up Houston; Drake Maye Delivers

Just when you think an NFL season is settling into its groove, the league hits us with a slate like Week 4. Drake Maye shook off weeks of intense criticism and took down the league’s hottest team in Buffalo, throwing the AFC East race into chaos. After beating the Texans, the Cowboys could run away with the NFC East, marking a major vibe shift after the ugly opener. And the Chiefs offense seems to have everything figured out after Sunday’s win over the Raiders helped them create separation in the AFC West. Confidence levels are higher for all three of those teams after Sunday, but those results could have easily flipped on one or two plays, completely flipping the narrative coming out of those games. So let’s take a look at the plays that decided the biggest games this past weekend and how they shaped our view of the teams involved. There’s no better show in football than watching Dak Prescott carve up a defense. On Sunday, the vaunted Texans defense was on the chopping block, and Prescott sliced up a good Houston secondary for 331 yards on a 71% completion rate. He threw only one touchdown, but it won Dallas the game. That will be the play that leads the highlight reels for this game, but I wanted to go back two plays for the throw and catch that gave the Cowboys’ win probability a 24.4% boost, per Next Gen Stats: this 22-yard reception for George Pickens. First, high marks for the Cowboys offense all around. Pickens runs a great route and sells the slant before taking off downfield. Prescott adds to the illusion with the shoulder feint, which holds the safety long enough to keep the throwing window open along the sideline. Then Prescott makes a fantastic throw to get the ball up-and-down before the safety can get to Pickens. The post-snap execution was immaculate, but this play was made well before the ball was snapped. Whether it was Prescott, Pickens, or the Cowboys coaching staff, somebody on the Dallas sideline noticed how aggressively Texans cornerback Kamari Lassiter had been playing short routes. Earlier in the game, he broke up a throw on a hitch route thanks to a quick jump. Watch him drive on this (untargeted) slant route in the first half. That looks like good, aggressive coverage, but football is a game of give-and-take. While Lassiter took away the short throws, doing so left him vulnerable to a double move. The Cowboys ran a slant-and-go early in the fourth quarter, but Prescott looked elsewhere. Lassiter and the Texans should have heeded that warning and adjusted. It’s rare for a quarterback like Prescott to miss an opportunity like that. He didn’t miss the second time and set up the game-winner for Dallas. The takeaway: It might be time to soft-launch the Prescott MVP campaign. The Cowboys quarterback will keep putting up big numbers as long as Lamb and Pickens are on the field, and the Dallas defense is bleeding points. Few QBs are built to play in a shootout every week, but Prescott is on that shortlist thanks to his football IQ and comfort in a tight pocket. He’s one of the best dropback passers in the NFL – and I wouldn’t argue with anyone who says he is the very best at it. And look at the quarterback situations across the NFC East. The first-place Giants are rolling with Jameis Winston for the rest of the season. The Eagles’ passing game may be broken beyond repair. And the Commanders are on their third-string quarterback. The Cowboys could run away with this division with Prescott putting up monster numbers. That’s a solid foundation for an MVP argument. Welcome back, Drake Maye. The MVP version of Maye, to be specific. It had been a while since we last saw you. And what better way to bust out of a slump than by outplaying Josh Allen in his own stadium and clinching the game with an off-platform touchdown in crunch time. Let’s state the obvious: This play should not have worked. Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard probably felt pretty good about his blitz call when he saw the free rusher screaming off the left edge as the right-edge defender peeled out of his blitz assignment to follow the running back out to the flat. You can see the middle linebacker also adjust on the fly, picking up the tight end in the middle of the field. That’s teach tape for defensive communication and teamwork. Buffalo played aggressively, but soundly, and had everything covered. At that point, Maye’s only option was to make a play. He did so by rolling out to his left and lofting the ball up to a well-covered Efton Chism in the end zone. The “practice squad player,” as Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson called Chism in a bitter post-game interview, stuck out a hand and the ball stuck to it. The Jimmies and Joes beat the X’s and O’s on this play. Maye was the hero on Sunday, but he didn’t escape Buffalo without adding to his league-leading turnover total. He coughed up another fumble – hand size matters! – and a poorly placed pass bounced off Romeo Doubs’ hands for an interception. Other than those two mistakes, though, Maye resembled the quarterback who nearly won MVP last season. He was accurate, decisive, and made plays out of structure when the situation called for it. The takeaway: Buy your Drake Maye stock now. I don’t think this is a blip. New England has a forgiving slate of defenses through Thanksgiving. Next week’s Raiders game could be a tricky matchup, but games against the Jets, Bears, Dolphins, Packers, and Lions follow. With A.J. Brown expected back in Week 6, the Pats offense could go on a nice run right before a rematch with the Bills in Week 13. That game could be for the division lead. This was a brutal loss for Buffalo, but I’m still bullish on this team. The defense remains a work in progress, which is to be expected with a new defensive coordinator who’s making significant changes to the scheme this unit ran under Sean McDermott. Super Bowls aren’t won in early October. Leonhard and the Bills defense have a few months to figure this out. We know Allen and the offense will be ready in January. I haven’t abandoned hope that the defense will be up to snuff by then. The Chiefs offense is fun again, and we have Kenneth Walker to thank. Patrick Mahomes, who’s playing out of his mind, has helped Kansas City’s offensive glow-up as well, but it’s Walker’s arrival that has helped Andy Reid and company rediscover the explosive element this unit has lacked since Tyreek Hill left town in 2022. In Sunday’s win over the Raiders, Walker added four more explosive runs to his league-leading total, including the two biggest plays of the game. His 76-yard run late in the third quarter set up the go-ahead score. Walker followed that up with a 22-yard touchdown jaunt that pushed the lead into double digits late in the final frame. A keen eye will notice that the Chiefs ran the same play on both of Walker’s game-changing runs. Kansas City has three tight ends on the field, and Mahomes is lined up under center. It’s the kind of look Chiefs fans and analysts have been begging Reid to get into more often. And the veteran coach has dabbled with more under-center looks over the past few years. They just haven’t been effective. As we’re learning this season, replacing Isaiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt with Walker makes a massive difference. Just look at those two runs. Per Next Gen Stats’ “expected rush yards” model, which uses player tracking data to measure how well a running play is blocked, Walker was expected to gain only five yards on the play he turned into a 76-yard explosion. On his game-sealing score, Walker was “expected” to gain three yards! He’s doing a lot of heavy lifting for a Kansas City offensive line that has been fine. The Chiefs signed Walker in the offseason hoping he’d be a home-run hitter, and he’s been freaking Aaron Judge. Not bad for a three-year, $43 million investment that looks like the move of the offseason a month into the season. The takeaway: Mahomes is already enjoying life with Walker in the backfield, and I’m not sure if he’s felt the full benefit of having a game-changing running back just yet. Defenses are still playing a lot of two-high coverages against the Chiefs, but they’ll eventually adjust if Walker keeps burning those light boxes for big gains. Losing wide receiver Tyquan Thornton to a gruesome ankle injury on Sunday could hurt the deep passing game, but Tyreek Hill is just a call away, it seems. If Hill returns and still has any juice, this version of the Chiefs offense could be even better than the one that wowed us in the early days of the Mahomes era. That may be a long shot given the trajectory of Hill’s career over the past few years, but it’s still a scary thought for opposing defenses. 1. Jalen Hurts had no answers for the Rams blitz in Sunday’s loss, but this play against a four-man rush should concern the Eagles coaching staff most. It’s the first third down of the game, and wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks is running into a void in the zone. That should be an easy pitch-and-catch, but Hurts, staring right at Wicks, doesn’t make the throw. While some of the complaints about Philadelphia’s offensive design are valid, there’s little a coaching staff can do to scheme around a quarterback who can’t make that play. It was always going to be a tough day for Hurts, who was without wide receiver DeVonta Smith, right tackle Lane Johnson, tight end Dallas Goedert and running back Saquon Barkley, but there were plays to be made. Per Pro Football Focus’ charting, at least one Eagles receiver got open on 30 of his dropbacks. Hurts completed a pass on just 37% of those plays. That was easily the lowest rate of any starting quarterback in Week 4. 2. Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle was already on the fast track to a head coaching job before the season, but the early returns have accelerated the process. A week hasn’t gone by without football nerds celebrating a slick play design from the 30-year-old. Week 4 was no different. This one was my favorite: Baltimore comes out in a Wildcat formation, which has the Titans defense geared up for a run, only for Lamar Jackson to motion to under center. The ball was snapped just 0.4 seconds after Jackson settled under center, per Next Gen Stats. So, Tennessee had a fraction of a second to adjust. Before anyone on the defense could do so, Jackson hit a wide-open Mark Andrews for the score. Doyle’s overarching philosophy makes him such an effective play-caller, but these little displays of creativity will capture the attention of coach-needy teams across the league. Enjoy him while you can, Baltimore. 3. I’m giving Giants defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson my “brave play-call of the week” award, which I just made up. He earned it by going with an all-out blitz on the final play of New York’s win over Arizona. That’s how you end a ballgame. The Giants didn’t give Jacoby Brissett time to consider his options, and they shut down every exit route from the pocket. They forced the Cardinals quarterback to decide quickly, and he targeted a slant route that cornerback Deonte Banks smothered completely. That’s the fourth interception thrown in the red zone against Cover 0 this season, per Pro Football Focus. That puts us on pace for 17 for the year. There were just 22 such interceptions over the previous three seasons combined. Defenses are fighting back when their backs are against the wall. As a fan of aggressive defenses, I support that schematic development.