NFL Sunday awards: KaVontae Turpin, Saquon Barkley, Malik Nabers and Patrick Mahomes among Week 12 headlines

Saquon Barkley’s monster day, Austin Seibert’s kicking hell and Baker Mayfield’s best Tommy DeVito impression – we hand out our NFL Sunday awards after a wild finish to Week 12…

Story of the day…

“Call an ambulance,” said KaVontae Turpin. “But not for me,” he would swiftly add.

The Dallas Cowboys had been staring at their latest instalment of misery as Turpin, backed up on the edge of his goalline, muffed Austin Seibert’s kickoff just moments after Zach Ertz’s touchdown catch had handed the Washington Commanders a 20-15 lead with 3.02 to play. For all their struggles this season, the Cowboys defense had frustrated Jayden Daniels and a supressed, fatigued Commanders offense that continued to come up shy at the end of drives for much of the game. It was about to be an unrewarded effort for Mike McCarthy’s side.

Turpin, the coolest man in the stadium, thought not. He turned, crouched, scooped up the loose ball, tip-toing forward for 10 yards, before pausing for a second and then spinning away from the first Commander to reach him. Suddenly the field had opened up and the Dallas returner was tearing free on the way to a 99-yard house call during which he cracked a top speed of 21.35mph, the third-fastest top speed on a kickoff return this season.

He now accounts for three of the 20 fastest speeds recorded by a ball carrier during the 2024 campaign, having hit 22.36mph on last week’s 64-yard touchdown catch-and-run, which marked the fastest speed by a ball-carrier since 2020. Silky offensive architecture and execution is what modern football thrives on, but sometimes it needs only unadulterated speed to provoke mayhem, and Turpin delivers it time after time.

Turpin signed with the Cowboys in 2022 after being named MVP of the inaugural USFL season with the New Jersey Generals, for whom he recorded 921 all-purpose yards in his one season. Before then he spent time playing for the Panthers Wrocław in Poland as part of the European League of Football, and before then had featured on the indoor football scene with FCF Glacier Boyz and the Frisco Fighters having seen off-field legal issues scupper his NFL hopes following his time at TCU.

On Sunday he enjoyed the biggest moment of his career as a momentary remedy to what has been a painful season in Dallas, in doing so bolstering his reputation as one of the NFL’s most explosive return specialists.

With Turpin magic came Seibert agony, the Commanders kicker first seeing his boot returned the length of the field for a touchdown before then missing the extra point to send the game to overtime with 20 seconds left after Terry McLaurin’s 86-yard score had moved Washington within one. It had the feel of John Carney, the New Orleans kicker who infamously missed an extra point to reach overtime against the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2003 after the Saints had scored an improbable, odds-shattering touchdown by way of three lateral passes as time expired.

Juanyeh Thomas followed up by returning the ensuing onside kick for a 43-yard touchdown to cap a wild sequence in which 38 points had been scored in five minutes and 41 in total during the fourth quarter. One of the games of the season.

The ‘is he the MVP?’ of the day

You may not see a more smug smile on the fact of a quarterback than that of Jalen Hurts after watching Saquon Barkley skip away for a 72-yard touchdown as the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Los Angeles Rams 37-20 on Sunday night. Nobody in the NFL is playing better football than Barkley, who has not only nudged ahead of Derrick Henry in the race for Offensive Player of the Year but might even stake a case for MVP by the end of the season.

Barkley posted 255 rushing yards and two touchdowns from 26 carries alongside four catches for 47 yards, becoming the first player to record 500-plus scrimmage yards over two games since Walter Payton in 1977, according to Opta Stats. He is now up to 1,649 yards from scrimmage on the year, his 302 total yards on Sunday the fifth-most by a running back in a single game in NFL history.

The Eagles and Barkley felt tailor-made for one another, explosive home-run back alongside ground-threat quarterback in an RPO-heavy offense and with one of the league’s best run-blocking offensive lines. A recipe for destruction and now the reason they are cruising towards the playoffs, not to mention being the embodiment of the New York Giants’ worst nightmare.

The unhappy Naber of the day

It is getting uglier and uglier in New York, where a roller coaster week ended in another pitiful performance as the Giants were humiliated 30-7 by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Tommy DeVito endured a largely miserable day as he went 21 of 31 for 189 yards while being sacked four times and hit on nine occasions after taking over as starting quarterback from Daniel Jones, who was benched earlier this week before later being released upon request.

Any hope of DeVito and his charismatic agent delivering another feel-good story was swiftly deflated by a Baker Mayfield-inspired win, the Bucs quarterback even mimicking his counterpart’s ‘Italian hand gesture’ celebration to rub salt in the wound in front of Giants fans after his touchdown run. The Giants product is identity-less and the brand of football enough to turn fans away long before the end of the game; even worse, the franchise’s cornerstone players are beginning to vent their frustration with increasing animosity.

Among those was rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers, who had six catches for 64 yards after not being targeted once in the first half.

“It ain’t about the quarterback,” Nabers said after the game. “Same thing happened when DJ [Daniel Jones] was the quarterback. Go out there, first and second quarter, don’t get the ball, and targets at the end. You can’t do that. Started to get the ball when it was 30-0. What do you want me to do?”

As for his lack of early targets, he added: “Talk to (coach Brian Daboll).”

Star nose tackle Dexter Lawrence meanwhile criticised his team for playing “soft”.

It was the kind of display that will heighten concern over the future of both head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen.

The ‘Shanahan might explode’ of the day

Kyle Shanahan may have never looked as ready to roundhouse somebody on the sideline as he did on Sunday at the sight of the San Francisco 49ers defense being flagged for having 12 men on the field… on back-to-back plays. Pre-snap penalties are inexcusable in the NFL at the best of times, but such negligence during a defining stage of the season for a limping team is enough to send a head coach into untold realms of insanity.

The 49ers are wounded and teetering towards a playoff-less season on the back of February’s Super Bowl heartbreak, falling to 5-6 at the bottom of the NFC West after a 38-10 defeat to the Green Bay Packers, inspired by three Josh Jacobs touchdowns. San Francisco were without Brock Purdy, Nick Bosa and Trent Williams, but even their absence could not excuse another display of shoddy tackling, missed assignments, nine penalties and the open invitation they offered to the Packers ground game.

“This is probably one of the worst ones I’ve been a part of,” said linebacker Fred Warner. “It is embarrassing. You’ve got to take it on the chin, take it like a man, and move on.”

They have six games to save their season, within that run being a daunting road trip to face the Buffalo Bills, a divisional round clash with the Rams, a meeting with the Tua Tagovailoa-revived Miami Dolphins and the small matter of facing the league’s best offense in the Detroit Lions.

The ‘who?’ of the day

There is always an interesting stage during the second half of the NFL season when obscure running backs begin to appear on the field, whether it be in light of injury or losing teams seeking to find out what they have on the roster.

Sunday staged the NFL debut of Since McCormick as he ran for 33 yards from five carries for the Las Vegas Raiders in their 29-19 loss to the Denver Broncos. The 24-year-old was taking his first-ever NFL snaps having signed as an undrafted free agent out of UTSA in 2022, with both Alexander Mattison and Zamir White absent.

Recent weeks have also thrown up a reminder that Ameer Abdullah remains in the league, with the veteran Raiders running back making five catches for 37 yards and a touchdown alongside eight carries for 28 yards while featuring in 88 per cent of snaps. Abdullah has been in the league since being drafted by the Detroit Lions as a second-round pick in 2015, since which he has also spent time with the Minnesota Vikings and Carolina Panthers. A welcome throwback, particularly for the Fantasy Football players among you.

Midnight thought of the day

Yet again, Tua Tagovailoa’s absence has underlined his true value to the Miami Dolphins, who somehow remain alive in the playoff hunt thanks to the return of their starting quarterback. Miami looked down and out amid a mess of a backup plan as Tagovailoa missed time due to a concussion earlier this season, but three straight wins have them back in the mix at 5-6 in the AFC East.

Their star quarterback, who it should be reminded was in the MVP race at one stage last season, went 29 of 40 for 317 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Dolphins to a 34-15 victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday. He has now completed 77 of 104 passes for 812 yards, eight touchdowns and just one interception over the last three outings, lifting an offense in which the likes of Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle had become mere bystanders without him under center.

He remains one of the NFL’s slickest processors while armed with one of the sharpest releases in football, as much contributing to Mike McDaniel’s window-dressing system in lifting Miami’s offense back somewhere close to the standards expected of it. Sunday saw the Dolphins employ motion at a season-high rate of 93.7 per cent, leading to all four of Tagovailoa’s touchdown passes; Miami are getting their spark back, and look a completely different team with Tua piloting things.

Monday morning coffee thought of the day

You can line up against the Kansas City Chiefs with the best of intentions, you can blanket Travis Kelce on the out-route or the crosser, you can drop two safeties high to eradicate Xavier Worthy, you can double up on DeAndre Hopkins, you can stack the box to take on Creed Humphrey and co. All for Patrick Mahomes and his not-so-blistering speed to carry him to a field-flipping scramble. It’s infuriating, and he does it better than anybody.

He scrambled twice in overtime during the Chiefs’ game-winning drive against the 49ers at the Super Bowl, he reeled off a 26-yard run to set up the game-winner against the Eagles the year before, and on Sunday broke Carolina Panthers hearts with a 34-yard burst down the sideline to tee up Spencer Shrader’s decisive kick in the final seconds just moments after Chuba Hubbard had found the end zone to keep the game alive.

His feel for the pocket, for the field and for the development of a play is an unsung trait to his greatness, and a devastating weapon to have in his back pocket. One-score games at the death are his playground, and in many ways why he is the best. It came on one of his more efficient days through the air, Mahomes finishing 27 of 37 for 269 yards and three touchdowns, including his scramble-and-strike bullet to Hopkins for a crucial red zone score in the third quarter.

A nod, too, to Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, who produced one of his better performances since entering the NFL as he finished 21 of 35 for 263 yards and a touchdown with some glimpses of the playmaker we saw at Alabama.

The best week of the year… of the day

Thanksgiving Week is here! Here is your reminder that you can watch EIGHT NFL games live on Sky Sports this week, including a triple-header on Thanksgiving Thursday followed by the Kansas City Chiefs against the Las Vegas Raiders in a Black Friday matchup from 8pm.

Your usual service resumes with two exclusive games on Sky Sports at 6pm and 9.25pm on Sunday, before the Bills face the 49ers in Sunday Night Football and the Cleveland Browns take on the Denver Broncos in Monday Night Football.