Panthers' Moton, Broncos' Nix, and a Jaguars Patch Job: NFL Roundup
Three clubs, three different flavors of trouble, and only one of them gets fixed with reps. Carolina is sitting on a health scare at right tackle, Denver has a quarterback diagnosing himself in public, and Jacksonville is plugging holes with a roster shuffle that does not touch the one spot that actually matters.
Start with the Panthers, because Taylor Moton coughing up blood before the clot was diagnosed is the sentence that should stop you. Clots do not show up on a Wednesday injury report. They show up when something goes wrong inside the body, and Carolina found out the hard way. My read: this is a human story first, and the football part only starts once the club knows whether he is playing again this season. Right tackle is where the pocket gets squeezed fastest, and if Moton misses any stretch, the pass protection on that side has to be rebuilt from scratch against edge rushers who are licking their chops. The run game's strong-side concepts go with it. I would treat Carolina's right side as an open question until the Panthers say otherwise, and I would not expect the club to rush a man who was spitting blood.
Denver's issue is cleaner. Bo Nix says he needs to simplify his approach and play faster amid a rocky start, which is the single most useful thing a struggling quarterback can say out loud, because it comes with a fix attached. Simplify means fewer full-field reads. Play faster means the ball comes out before the rush becomes a problem. That combination helps the receivers who work the short and intermediate area, and it lightens the box for the run game if linebackers have to respect the quick throw. It costs the deep shot, and it costs the offense any pretense of being multiple. Fine. An offense that cannot protect long enough for a deep concept is not running one anyway. Here is the catch: if Denver's problem is protection rather than Nix's processing, playing faster just means throwing earlier into the same mess. I think Nix has correctly identified his own issue, and I expect Denver's offense to look more like tempo and quick game in the coming weeks. If it doesn't, the diagnosis was wrong.
Jacksonville's Oct. 13 moves tell a story the Jaguars probably don't want told. Anton Harrison went on injured reserve, taking the left tackle spot with him, and the response was signing safety Kaevon Merriweather to the active roster and long snapper Jacob Bobenmoyer to the practice squad. Those are back-end and specialist moves. Neither one puts a body between the quarterback's blind side and an edge rusher. You can read that as Jacksonville trusting its internal options at tackle, or as the club not having a good external one this time of year. I lean toward the second, and here is the consequence: every opponent on the schedule now knows where to line up its best rusher. Harrison's absence is the most damaging thing in this roundup that nobody is going to talk about on a highlight show.
My call on the day: Moton's health is the story, Nix's quote is the one most likely to be vindicated, and Jacksonville's is the one that quietly costs the Jaguars games they should win. If I'm wrong on the Jaguars, it's because somebody already on that roster holds up at left tackle, and I have not seen the evidence for it yet.
