The 49ers won’t have quarterback Brock Purdy in the lineup this weekend, but they don’t expect him to be out for an extended period of time.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the 49ers believe Purdy’s right shoulder injury will improve enough for him to play against the Bills in Week 13. Purdy was ruled out for this week’s game against the Packers on Friday.
Purdy’s shoulder issues did not spark a great deal of concern early last week, but he did not throw at practice on Wednesday and he remained a limited participant before ultimately being ruled out. It will be the first game that Purdy has missed due to injury since becoming the 49ers starter during the 2022 season.
Brandon Allen will start in place of Purdy and Josh Dobbs will be the backup.
The Giants benched quarterback Daniel Jones for business reasons, not for football reasons. And the Giants allowed personal feelings to interfere with what would have been the best business decision — prevent him from going elsewhere and proving the Giants wrong, Saquon-style.
But they’re going to waive him. Even though they haven’t done it, the owner has said it’s going to happen. (The reason for the delay isn’t clear, but it’s clearly coming.)
While many have adopted the narrative that Jones stinks, he doesn’t. He hasn’t. He helped lead the Giants to the playoffs in 2022. With Jones at the helm, the Giants beat the Vikings in Minnesota in the wild-card round. His struggles have typically traced to subpar offensive line play.
Once he’s released and clears waivers (he absolutely will), Jones will be free to sign with any team at any time. He’ll first need to ask whether to join a team now or wait.
Waiting would allow Jones to get a better feel for who the real contenders will be — and it might give him a chance to play sooner than later, if a starter gets injured elsewhere.
Regardless, consider the backup situations for the various contenders and ask whether a guy who earned a contract that paid $40 million per year and won a playoff game would be better than the current No. 2.
Buffalo: Mitch Trubisky. (Probably.)
Miami: Skylar Thompson/Tyler Huntley. (Yes.)
Baltimore: Josh Johnson. (Yes.)
Pittsburgh: Justin Fields. (Yes, but they seem to be committed to Fields as current backup and potential future starter.)
Houston: Davis Mills. (Yes.)
Kansas City: Carson Wentz. (Probably.)
L.A. Chargers: Easton Stick. (Yes.)
Denver: Jarrett Stidham. (Yes.)
Philadelphia: Kenny Pickett. (Yes.)
Washington: Marcus Mariota. (Probably.)
Detroit: Hendon Hooker. (Yes.)
Minnesota: Nick Mullens. (Yes.)
Green Bay: Malik Willis. (Yes, although Willis has played well this year.)
Atlanta: Michael Penix Jr. (Yes, but they likely wouldn’t do it.)
Tampa Bay: Kyle Trask. (Yes.)
Arizona: Clayton Tune. (Yes.)
Seattle: Sam Howell. (Yes.)
San Francisco: Brandon Allen. (Yes.)
L.A. Rams: Jimmy Garoppolo. (Probably.)
So, yes, someone who is currently contending should want Jones. Jones can afford to take his time. To wait for a clear shot to potentially contribute on a team that has the ability to go deep into the playoffs.
And maybe to wait to see if/when a starter gets injured and an immediate need arises for Jones to play, sooner than later.
The Bills got a big victory over the Chiefs on Sunday and one of their defensive players was a key part of things.
Linebacker Terrel Bernard has been named AFC defensive player of the week for his performance in the 30-21 win.
Bernard had eight tackles, a sack, and the interception at the end of the fourth quarter to seal the game.
Per the NFL, Bernard was the only player with a sack and an interception in Week 11.
Bernard has now won two player of the week awards, also earning one for Week 3 of 2023.
In his third season, Bernard now has 57 total tackles with four tackles for loss and two interceptions.
At 9-2, Buffalo is on its bye in Week 12.
Sunday’s Chiefs-Bills game drew the NFL’s biggest audience so far of the 2024 regular season.
The CBS broadcast drew 31.2 million viewers, according to Sports Business Journal.
Outside Thanksgiving and Christmas games, that was the biggest audience the NFL has had for a regular-season game since a 2007 matchup between the 8-0 Colts and 8-0 Patriots. That was a Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady game, which always drew huge audiences for the NFL, and now Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen is proving to be a similarly major TV draw for the NFL.
Chiefs-Bills aired nationally on CBS in the 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff window. In the early window, CBS also got a huge audience on Sunday, with 19.8 million viewers, most of whom were watching the Ravens-Steelers game on their local affiliate. That was CBS’s biggest regional window audience since 1992.
The Bills will need to come up with $1.2 billion, and counting, for the team’s new stadium — due in part to more than a half-billion in cost overruns. One way to make some money is to peel off some equity.
Via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the Bills have deals in place to sell more than 20 percent of the franchise. A group of business executives will buy 10.6 percent of the team, and private-equity firm Arctos Partners will buy 10 percent.
Both transactions will require NFL approval.
If the deals are approved, Terry and Kim Pegula will continue to own more than 79 percent of the team. They paid $1.4 billion for the franchise in 2014, buying it from the estate of Ralph Wilson.
The financial terms of the minority deals have yet to be reported. The valuation presumably is much higher than the price tag from a decade ago. The reality is that the Pegulas will recover most of what they paid for all of the team by selling off a little more than a fifth of it.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen added another signature moment to his highlight reel on Sunday when he sprinted 26 yards for a touchdown with just over two minutes left in the team’s 30-21 win over the Chiefs.
Allen has made plays like that many times during his run in Buffalo and longtime Bills watchers could be forgiven if they’ve started to take some of his achievements for granted. Wide receiver Amari Cooper is a new arrival, however, and he’s still getting used to sharing the field with a player capable of making the kind of magic that Allen routinely pulls off.
“The Josh Allen experience, with this magnitude — it’s been phenomenal, man,” Cooper said. “Like I said before, he’s a great player. The old adage, big-time players make big-time plays in big-time situations, and that’s exactly what he did.”
Cooper said that Sunday was the “first time in a long time that I’ve actually felt joy” during a football game and called it amazing to be part of a team filled with so many players stepping up in big moments. Allen sets the tone for those efforts and Sunday was a reminder that it’s hard to find players who do it better than the Bills quarterback.
The Chiefs couldn’t pull the rabbit out of their hat this time.
A lot of late heroics propelled the Chiefs to a 9-0 start, but Bills quarterback Josh Allen scored the late touchdown on Sunday and the Bills sent the Chiefs home from Buffalo with a 30-21 loss that ensured no team will run the table in the NFL this season.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said that he hopes the loss provides “fuel” for a team that has been squeezing by their opponents for too much of the season.
“It’s a good football team, so there’s nothing to hang your head on,” Mahomes said. “We feel like we can play better, so we will get back to work and try to use this as a spark so that we can be a better football team in the end. The undefeated thing was cool, but that’s not our ultimate goal. . . . I’m hoping that it is a benefit. I’m not going to say I or we relaxed, but at the same time I feel like we were just coming away with these wins at the end of the game. I think it’s going to spark us to have more urgency, especially at the start of football games, especially with the offense, and that comes from me and turning the ball over on the first drive. It’s something you can’t do in big games like this.”
The Chiefs can take solace in knowing that they’ve dropped other regular season games to the Bills in the past, but bounced back to win in the playoffs. That scenario could be in play again this year and Mahomes has no reason to doubt his team’s ability to pull through when it counts the most.
Fifty-two years later, 32 NFL teams keep chasing history. None of them will catch it in 2024.
With the Chiefs losing for the first time since Christmas Day 2023, the Dolphins’ 17-0 season of 1972 remains unmatched by perfection.
The Dolphins tweeted an image of Hall of Fame running back Larry Csonka drinking champagne in commemoration of the Kansas City loss. And while the Chiefs still had a long way to go to finish 20-0, it was feeling like it was destined to happen, more and more each week.
It ended today, thanks to a Bills team that has now beaten the Chiefs four times in the regular-season in the Josh Allen/Patrick Mahomes era — but that has yet to slay the dragon in the playoffs.
Will there be another rematch in January? We can only hope.
The Chiefs will not finish the season undefeated.
They lost for the first time since Christmas Day 2023, falling to the Bills 30-21 on Sunday. The Chiefs dropped to 9-1, while the Bills improved to 9-2 and within a half game of the best record in the AFC.
The Bills won the game, rather than the Chiefs losing it, when they decided to go for it on fourth-and-2 at the Kansas City 26 while leading by two points with 2:27 left. Josh Allen faked a quick throw left and then ran right, going untouched for a 26-yard touchdown as the Chiefs had no defender spying him.
It gave the Bills a two-score lead with 2:17 left.
The Chiefs had won an NFL-record nine games in a row after trailing by seven points or more, including the postseason. The Bills weren’t about to let that happen Sunday, with Terrel Bernard picking Patrick Mahomes on fourth-and-13 with 1:07 left.
The 1972 Dolphins can celebrate being the last team to go undefeated as the Chiefs took their first loss since the Raiders beat them 338 days ago.
Allen went 27-of-40 for 262 yards with a touchdown and an interception. He ran for 55 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. Khalil Shakir caught eight passes for 70 yards, and Curtis Samuel had five catches for 58 yards and a touchdown.
The Bills outgained the Chiefs 366 to 259.
Mahomes was 23-of-33 for 196 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions. It was his 40th career game with at least three touchdown passes.
Xavier Worthy caught four passes for 61 yards and a touchdown, and tight end Noah Gray had two touchdowns on four catches for 23 yards. Kareem Hunt ran for 60 yards on 14 carries.
The Chiefs had only 50 yards in the third quarter. They had 66 on their first drive of the fourth quarter.
Chiefs tight end Noah Gray scored his second touchdown of the day, a 1-yard reception from Patrick Mahomes that cut the team’s deficit to 23-21 with 7:53 remaining.
The Chiefs also benefited from a pass interference penalty on Christian Benford, who clearly grabbed DeAndre Hopkins’ waist. The question was whether the pass was catchable as it hit the back wall, but the 4-yard penalty set up Gray’s short touchdown catch.
It was Mahomes’ third touchdown pass of the day. He has 40 games with at least three touchdown passes, which ranks 15th all time.
He is 20-of-28 for 178 and also an interception.
