Bryan Knowles's Articles

This is not supposed to be happening right now. At this point last year, the Houston Texans were fighting for the top pick in the draft – a battle they lost. They were forced to settle for second-choice quarterback C.J. Stroud. A new head coach in his first time in the job, an offensive coordinator […]

It’s time once again, boys and girls – time for the annual Joe Thomas Draft! My favorite time of the year, by far. We started the Joe Thomas Draft on our old website in memory of Thomas’ long, fruitless career; one of the best to ever play the game toiling away in the Factory of […]

With just one week to go in the 2023 season, 20 teams remain alive for the Super Bowl. That’s not quite historically unprecedented, but it’s close. In the DVOA era, it’s tied for the second-most teams still alive entering the final week of the season. The only year with more was 1982, where the player’s […]

I hope everyone enjoyed their pack of games this Christmas weekend. It was a great one if you happened to live in Baltimore or Las Vegas; perhaps a little less so in Kansas City or San Francisco. The NFL has made Christmas Day it’s latest outpost in its attempts to dominate the sports world every […]

Welcome back to part two of this year’s best possible Pro Bowl rosters! We covered the offense earlier this week; now, we have to dive into the muck that is the defensive side of the ball, as well as the mysterious land of special teams. There’s not a lack of quality choices here, mind you; […]

The Pro Bowl matters! OK, the Pro Bowl game doesn’t matter, which is why it no longer exists. The Pro Bowl Games last year were surprisingly entertaining, in a “put the game on in the background while doing other things” sort of way. A smorgasbord of skills competitions and some flag football games were more […]

“Most Valuable Player” is kind of a weird name for an award, isn’t it? There’s no reason the NFL needs to call its biggest award that. We could be talking about the most outstanding player in the league or the most important player or the most useful player or the most exceptional player. We could be handing […]

To be a fly on the wall in the New York Jets’ quarterback room. They’re not content to just be the worst passing offense in football, with a -27.6% DVOA. Oh no. They’re not content to be pushing for the worst passing offense in franchise history, either, tied with the 1995 Boomer Esiason squad in […]

One benefit about the NFL’s bizarre 18-week, 17-game schedule is that it breaks the season nicely into three thirds. That’s aesthetically pleasing to me; every season is its own story, and a three-act structure is a fun way to view the year from 20,000 feet, as it were. You have all your important characters and […]

How do you prepare your turkey? I’m a stickler for brining; the number one problem with a terrible turkey is having it dry out and brining it helps it absorb extra moisture and make a juicer, more flavorful bird. But there are dozens of ways to go about it. I’ve enjoyed deep-fried birds, spatchcocked birds, […]

Things change fast in the NFL. Last week, as we broke down the midseason award leaders, we noted that, all else being equal, the default choice for MVP should be the player leading the league in passing DYAR. And that was one Patrick Joshua Allen. Yeah, so, about that… You might argue that take aged […]

It’s Week 10 in the NFL. Do you know where your MVP is? Handing out midseason awards isn’t about actual hardware or anything – no one celebrates being MVP in October. But it’s a good framework to reflect on what we’ve seen over the first 136 games of the season and try to figure out […]

Set your alarm clocks and break out the coffee, because the best game in the NFL this week comes to you from Frankfurt. It was never the league’s explicit plan to give Germany the best game of the week, and one of the best games of the year, when they scheduled the Kansas City Chiefs […]

We need to talk about Sam Howell. But before we do, we need to talk about David Carr. Since 2002, the record for most times sacked in a season has belonged to Carr and the Houston Texans. Behind a legendarily bad expansion line, with a top-pick pedigree and no one worth starting behind him, Carr […]

The NFL trade deadline falls on Halloween this year, which is fitting because the dead walk amongst us. Don’t be confused if they’re still technically upright, shuffling their way listlessly through the season. Don’t be alarmed if they cause a contender or two to trip over their lifeless corpses. Don’t even be shocked if you […]

The San Francisco 49ers will lose a game. Eventually. Probably. It doesn’t feel like that at the moment, as the 5-0 49ers were crowned king of all power rankings on Sunday night. What was pegged as a battle of two of the top Super Bowl contenders in the league quickly became a laugher, the latest […]

CalfWatch 2023 continues, as Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals watch the season slowly drain away. Sunday’s 27-3 loss to a Titans team that can best be described as “uninspiring” isn’t quite the nadir of Cincinnati’s season – their -56.8% DVOA in Week 4 was ever-so-slightly higher than their -59.1% mark in Week 1 – […]

With both Anthony Richardson and Bryce Young missing Week 3 with injuries, all attention in the rookie quarterback race was on C.J. Stroud. Honestly, it felt like a minor miracle that Stroud was healthy, too. Entering last week, Stroud had been sacked 11 times and hit 19 times, tied for most in the league. Stroud […]

On Sunday, Rams rookie receiver Puka Nacua broke a record you had definitely heard about before that afternoon. His 25 receptions through two games are the most ever to start an NFL career, taking the crown from Earl Cooper of the 1980 San Francisco 49ers. He has more catches than Justin Jefferson or Tyreek Hill […]

Week 1 is in the books, and National Jump to Conclusions Week is in full swing. Every year, going from zero games played to one sets off wild speculation and immediate hot takes, forgetting entirely that at this point last season we had ‘learned’ that the big-name additions to the Los Angeles Chargers defense would […]

Bryan Knowles: This looks…familiar.  Vaguely familiar, at any rate. Welcome friends old and new to the FTN DVOA preseason award picks! For years at our previous home, we have gone through the NFL’s list of end-of-season awards, carefully pieced through all of our DVOA projections and data, used careful consideration to account for all possible […]

If you’re a regular at Over the Cap or Spotrac, then this one is for you. While every season brings with it its own sense of contract drama, the volume this year has been louder than usual. Running back value, in particular, has been a headline-driving force. Holdouts by Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley, as […]