Fall is here, clocks have been turned back, and the NFL is absolutely sauced. It’s officially the second half of the regular season, and the league pivoted from tipsy to drunk. The celebration of parity in football led to an all-night rager, and we’re still lost trying to clean up, determining if anyone in this league is actually really dominant this season, or if everyone is just flawed — but in different ways.
In an ode to this absolutely chaotic season in the NFL we’ll spin around the big winners of the week in games nobody expected to go the way they did.
We kick things off in Detroit where the struggling Vikings somehow found a way to march into Ford Field, with J.J. McCarthy back from injury to hand the Lions their third loss of the season. All the focus will be on McCarthy’s play, which was … fine. If we’re being real there wasn’t anything particularly dynamic coming from the quarterback position for either team in this game, but it’s a continuation of a theme in the NFL this season where elite game-long quarterback doesn’t really matter in the final score. The story has been that you actually want a solid running game, and a player under center who is clutch enough to make a key, chain-moving throw on 3rd-and-7 rather than someone who can hoist a 50-yard bomb in the first quarter, then largely be quiet for much of the game.
This was the M.O. for McCarthy on Sunday. All three of Minnesota’s touchdown drives were extended because the young QB made a big play on 3rd-and-long. Two times these were deep passes to beat an overload blitz from the Lions, and one time he scrambled for a touchdown. That ended up being the difference offensively for the Vikings in this slugfest.
The real flowers from the Vikings win go to Brian Flores, who once again proved why he’s one of the best defensive coordinators in the NFL, especially when it comes to scheming around his team’s deficiencies. Honestly, what he’s done consistently with such an average group of players in Minnesota is why he deserves a shot to head coach again in 2026. Flores takes a bend-don’t-break concept of stopping the pass, and marries it with chaos and confusion. His linebackers attack from odd angles, his fronts often don’t make a lot of sense, and he changes up his schemes so frequently that it’s tough to even learn much from watching film on the Vikings defense.
This resulted in Detroit’s running game absolutely crumbling, and from there it didn’t matter that Jared Goff played phenomenal football. Like I said, this season is defined by running the ball and being clutch. The Vikings won that battle, and the game as a result.
This was precisely the same story a few hours to the west where the Panthers came to Lambeau Field as 14-point dogs to the Packers and walked away with the win. This was such a weird game from top to bottom, but this was both a case of running the ball resulting in a win, and also head coach Dave Canales playing a fascinating game of chess that will go overlooked around the league this week.
To start the game the Panthers made the curious decision to pick direction, rather than decide whether to kick or receive. You don’t see this often, but Carolina made a gamble that they could keep this game close, and that gusts in Green Bay would lead to critical fourth quarter decisions, and they wanted the favorable wind when the game came down to it. This was a brilliant call, because sure enough the game came down to the wire and was decided on a 49-yard field goal as time expired, which crucially came with the wind behind the back of kicker Ryan Fitzgerald.
Much like McCarthy in Detroit, Bryce Young was just okay. He’s still nursing the ankle injury he sustained two weeks ago, and it showed — but the big thing that’s been ignored when it comes to Young’s play is just how clutch he’s become. There are few quarterbacks in the league who want the ball in their hands with the clock running down more than Bryce Young, who has made clutch football the preeminent feature of his game.
Young was 4-for-6 on the day in making positive plays on 3rd and long. These are either defined as picking up the first down with his arm or legs, or taking a 3rd-and-10+ situation and getting the ball within one yard, which was then picked up on fourth. In addition he made two 10+ yard passes on the final drive of the game to set up the game-winning field goal. It was Young’s 11th career win, and nine of them have come on game winning drives. None of the stats really matter if you’re leading your team to wins.
It helped that Rico Dowdle had another massive game, which again tells us the key to the NFL this season. Say it with me, folks: Run the ball and make clutch plays.
To round out the week of surprises we have the major loser of Week 9, which was obviously Daniel Jones. I don’t know if he decided to go as his past self for Halloween, but the best quarterback in the NFL this season was a total mess against the Steelers.
A large part of that was a Steelers defense that totally dominated the Colts offensive line in a way we really haven’t seen this year, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that Jones threw three picks, fumbled three times (losing two of them) and was a total mess from top to bottom.
Know what we haven’t talked about in this game? Maybe you can guess from the theme we’ve had this week? Yep, running the football. This was the first game where Indianapolis had to deal with the fact that Jonathan Taylor got completely shut down — running the ball just 14 times for 45 yards. When that happens the offense becomes one dimensional, and at least in this week, Daniel Jones was just abysmal.
It’s not worth freaking out about if you’re a Colts fan. We’ll see if this was just aberrant, or if this is the beginning of a new normal once more.
Now let’s look around the rest of the league in Week 9.
The Bengals defense is an absolute joke, but we still have to give credit where it’s due. A week after one of the worst performances of the season, Williams bounced back and showed that he can be a game-changing quarterback when the conditions are right.
Against Cincinnati he finished with 280 passing yards, three touchdowns and caught another touchdown on a trick play. There was a level of creativity and panache to the Bears this week that we really haven’t seen much of with Ben Johnson at the helm. This could be a real sign that the first year head coach is learning to work with his quarterback and devise new offensive schemes — which could be incredible for Chicago in the second half of the year.
We mentioned him a little earlier, but Dowdle has been a revelation this season. The Panthers running back has returned to being the No. 1, which should have been a foregone conclusion with the tear he was on — but despite being briefly spelled with Chuba Hubbard he returned to the feature role in a big way.
Dowdle was the engine that led the Panthers to a win on Sunday. Finishing with 130 yards rushing and a career-high two touchdowns he simply made everything else on offense a lot easier with his energy hitting the line and picking up yards.
Carolina are far too inconsistent to be a team to watch, but damn if they aren’t hanging in games and dragging teams into deep water.
There aren’t any superlatives left for Sam Darnold this season. He’s playing absolutely phenomenal football and proving that he’s on the Baker Mayfield path to greatness. In the first half against the Commanders he was functionally perfect, finishing 12-for-12, 282 yards, and 4 TDs. While he slowed down in the second, it didn’t really matter.
Darnold was the best signing of free agency and it’s not remotely close. Just a mammoth performance.
Loser: Everything about the Washington Commanders right now
The vibes are so off with the Commanders right now. The mounting injuries are one thing, but the coaching staff seems lost as to how they can right the ship. It’s been a horrible year for a team we all expected to take another step forward in 2025.
Sitting at 3-6 it’s going to take an absolute miracle to make the playoffs this season. We all had them pegged to be a 10+ win team, and it’s a shame to see it all implode like this.
I wrote all this right before Jayden Daniels was injured. Things keep going from bad to worse.
There really isn’t any margin for error with Kansas City right now. They put themselves in a hole to start the season, and are desperately trying to dig their way out — but things just aren’t looking great right now. There’s no shame to lose to the Bills, but it’s bad on an afternoon where both the Chargers and Broncos win, making their path to the playoffs that much more difficult.
The Chiefs will find a way, we know they will — but the number of losses they can afford is drastically shrinking.
