12 NFL awards from all 3 of this year’s Thanksgiving games

Thanksgiving is a time for family, feasting, grateful reflection and, in 2019, underwhelming NFL matchups. This year’s turkey day lineup was downgraded from “promising” to “underwhelming” thanks in part to injuries, lackluster quarterback play, and whatever the hell the Falcons are doing.

That’s doesn’t mean there aren’t still some silver linings to the holiday’s three-game lineup. This year’s Thanksgiving games offered a healthy distraction from awkward family conversation and the perfect white noise for a post-gorge nap. It also gave some overlooked players a chance to shine for teams often neglected by the Red Zone Channel.

Who shined the most? Who did the least with their opportunity? We’ve got a list of the top performers from the trio of Thanksgiving games:

One of the unintended consequences of recent rule changes to make kickoffs safer was that onside kicks became dang near impossible. Successful tries have been few and far between in 2019.

So it was pretty disappointing when an honest-to-goodness onside kick recovery for Atlanta was taken away by a bogus offsides penalty. But then the Falcons went and did it again!

That actually looked pretty easy for the Falcons. Apparently it was, because Atlanta did it AGAIN just a couple minutes later!

Are the Falcons onside kick gods? Are the Saints horribly lost on special teams? Whatever it was, you probably won’t see back-to-back onside kicks work out again for a team any time soon, and that doesn’t even count the third one that was taken away. Bravo.

Nothing is more American than a 300-pound man running with a football. Saints defensive tackle Shy Tuttle got that moment Thursday night and made it even better by stiff arming Matt Ryan into a different zip code.

Hero.

Hill’s reputation as a Swiss Army knife is well established at this point. So much so that it’s almost easy to forget how hilarious it is that a third-string quarterback can be the most important player in a game without throwing a pass. Alas, that was Hill on Thanksgiving.

Less than two minutes into the game, Hill blocked a Falcons punt. Just a few plays after that, he caught a hot potato pass from Drew Brees and turned it into a 3-yard touchdown reception.

Before the end of the first half, Hill added another touchdown — this time on a direct snap rush up the gut from 30 yards out.

That’s a whole lot of offensive success that has nothing to do with throwing the football. The Saints allowed Hill to throw a pass before the game ended, but it fell incomplete. Long live, Taysom Hill, the quarterback who does everything except quarterback.

After a 13-9 loss to the Patriots in Week 12, there was plenty of criticism heaped on head coach Jason Garrett. His painfully conservative ways cost the team late in the game and owner Jerry Jones had no problem telling reporters that the Cowboys were outcoached in the game.

Dallas — and Garrett, specifically — desperately needed a bounce back game in Week 13. Losing 26-15 to the Bills fanned the flames instead.

The Cowboys drove the field with ease on their opening drive of the game, finishing it with an 8-yard touchdown for Jason Witten. The success pretty much ended there. While Dallas finished with 426 yards of total offense, they didn’t score again until about four minutes were left in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, the Bills maximized their opportunities and built an insurmountable lead.

After the game, Jones wouldn’t say a coaching change was coming.

But it’s up to you whether you believe that or not. Patience has to be running thin in Dallas and expectations are much higher than the team’s 6-6 record. Garrett’s not gone yet, but it feels like a tremendous run in January could be the only way for him to keep his job.

Beasley spent the first seven years of his career with the Cowboys, piling up more than 3,000 yards and 20 touchdowns in his time there. But when his contract expired after the 2018 season, there seemed to be no interest in bringing him back to Dallas.

So he signed with the Bills, where he’s having a pretty good season. He added some big numbers to that season on Thanksgiving. This was probably his best play:

If Beasley knows how to do anything, it’s how to find the soft spot in the zone. Credit to Josh Allen for the fantastic read and throw between three Cowboys players, but it was a great route from Beasley that sealed the deal.

Beasley finished Sunday’s game with six receptions for 110 yards and a touchdown on seven targets.

They weren’t quite as disruptive in the second half as they were in the first, but they also didn’t need to be. Every time a Cowboys drive stalled, it felt like Ed Oliver was mauling an offensive lineman or Lotulelei was doing something stupidly athletic for someone his size.

Back-to-back Cowboys drives ended with turnovers in the first half, and both were caused by Lotulelei and Oliver. The first was this surprisingly athletic interception:

He wasn’t able to advance it because he was down, but it gave the Bills the ball in good field position. Unfortunately, Steven Hauschka missed the field goal, so Buffalo didn’t get any points out of it.

On the next Dallas drive, Oliver ate Dak Prescott alive:

That fumble, recovered by Trent Murphy, gave the Bills the ball with under two minutes in the half. They had five plays for 39 yards before a touchdown that put them up, 13-7. Oliver had two sacks and a tackle for loss on the day,a s well.

So, tackling Josh Allen is hard sometimes. Apparently, he’s some sort of “mobile quarterback” who can run and also break tackles, even when he’s barely moving.

Observe:

That was a fourth-down play where Allen fumbled the ball, picked it back up, tried for the second-effort push to get it the 1 yard he needed, then somehow a third effort when the Cowboys failed to tackle him.

Allen ended up with a pretty great game overall, both as a runner and a passer. He finished 19-of-24 for 231 yards and a touchdown, with 10 carries for 43 yards and a touchdwon.

That fourth-down conversion ultimately led to a touchdown on the next play, which, speaking of ...

There’s nothing quite as fun as a well-executed trick play. They’re becoming more frequent, to the point where you might as well not call them trick plays at this point, but few work as well as this one did late in the first half of Bills-Cowboys:

That came immediately after the Allen rush on fourth down. Allen handed the ball to Andre Roberts on the reverse, then Roberts tossed it to John Brown, who was executing the double reverse, followed by a strangely impressive throw to running back Devin Singletary for a touchdown. Good stuff.

Blough didn’t need much time to make an impact in the first NFL action of his career. His second pass of the day was a 75-yard touchdown strike. It only took two drives to put his name alongside some former and future MVPs — albeit for a very specific reason.

Blough couldn’t keep that pace and softened after those first two drives, but he showed off some composure in the pocket as the Lions slid into their two-minute drill trailing 24-20. He made a handful of pinpoint throws downfield to drive Detroit 57 yards downfield in the game’s waning minutes and give the team a chance to pull off a fourth-quarter comeback — only to be undone by a timely blitz that blotted out the rookie’s fleeting glimpse of daylight.

He finished his day with 22 completions on 38 attempts, 280 passing yards, two touchdowns — but none after the first quarter — and one interception on a last-gasp throw on fourth-and-22. That’s pretty good from a third-string QB acquired for a swap of seventh-round picks this preseason. But part of his big NFL debut was thanks in part to the next winner on this list ...

Stopping Kenny Golladay is a big task. The third-year pro was on pace for a 1,280-yard, 14-touchdown season before Matthew Stafford left the Lions’ lineup with a back injury. He cooled off a bit playing alongside Jeff Driskel, but the deep-ball savant was expected to play a major role for third-string quarterback Blough Thursday.

Amukamara’s coverage on Blough’s second-ever NFL pass effectively put a “THROW HERE” neon sign over Golladay’s head:

Blough’s first NFL completion turned out to be the Lions’ longest pass play since 2013. One drive later, Amukamara let Marvin Jones run by him and then watched none of his teammates pick up the slack for another stupidly easy Detroit touchdown:

The Bears shifted their lineup to throw a whole bunch of different defenders on Golladay — Buster Skrine, Kyle Fuller, and more — but none had much of an impact. The Detroit wideout finished his day with only four receptions, but he gained 158 yards in the process. That made Thanksgiving 2019 the most productive day, in terms of pure yardage, of his NFL career.

This brutal shoulder-to-helmet hit on Mitchell Trubisky went unnoticed by Boger, even though it happened directly in front of him:

Fortunately for the Bears, this non-call didn’t affect their drive. An official review overturned the fumble that ended the play, and Trubisky stepped up in the pocket for a 14-yard completion to Allen Robinson. The possession would stall out in Detroit territory minutes later.

The Lions turned that opportunity into a field goal, thanks in part to a roughing the passer penalty on third down that barely met the minimum definition of the foul.

Who made the call on that roughing foul? Boger.

“How about if you’re Mitch Trubisky. You spent your first three years constantly being compared to Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. And now you’re gonna be compared to (three full seconds of chuckling) ... David Blough.”

Damn, Troy.