We’ve doubled the number of games between winning teams from one last week to two this week despite both of the NFL’s unbeatens being on bye! I’ll pretend to care the most about those two games, but let’s be real the only thing I care about this week is my two favorite Ducks in a decade squaring off to see who’s truly Bejeweled…
The NFL’s two highest-scoring offenses look to put on a show as they square off for DMV bragging rights for the eighth time in a series the Ravens lead 4-3. The road team won the last two meetings, thus the Ravens are looking to beat Washington at home for the first time since 2008.
The Commanders lead the NFL averaging 31.0 points per game, up nearly two touchdowns from last season (19.4) while it’s at least 10 points better than they’ve averaged in any season since 2017 (and even then they averaged 21.4). They’ve finished two seasons over 30 points per game in franchise history, both of which ended with 14-2 overall records and trips to the Super Bowl (1983 and 1991).
When I say the Commanders offense came back to Earth last week I don’t mean to say it came crashing down, I mean they were merely very effective after an otherworldly start — Washington had as many punts (4) and more turnovers (2) in the win over the Browns as it did in the first four games the season combined. Their 11 combined punts and turnovers this season remain two fewer than any other team through five games in the Super Bowl era.
The Ravens are second in the NFL with 29.4 points per game, up a point from last year and on pace to edge out 2020 (29.3) for second-highest in a season in franchise history. Only the 2019 Ravens, who averaged 33.2 points per game in Lamar Jackson’s first MVP season, averaged more in franchise history.
Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels is both the reigning Heisman winner and looks like he’ll be the runaway Offensive Rookie of the Year. Incredibly, Ravens counterpart Lamar Jackson will already be the fourth fellow resident of Heisman House to start against Daniels at QB this season and the rookie will look to improve to 3-1 against fellow Heisman QBs (lost to Baker Mayfield, beat Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow).
Both of these top five offenses a year ago have had looked wonky at times this season, but the Lions had by far their best outing the last time out. Dallas will likely need its best since Week 1 to keep up.
Jared Goff went a perfect 18-for-18 (most attempts without incompletion in NFL history) and Detroit scored a season-high 42 points in its win over Seattle last Monday night, 16 more than it had put up in any of its first three games. It was the Lions first turnover-free game of the season and they went 5-for-5 scoring touchdowns in the red zone after entering 5-for-14 this season (7-for-7 last two games after going 3-for-12 in the first two).
Dak’s coming off his second multi-interception game of the season (only had one last year) while Dallas hasn’t scored more than 25 points in any of its last four games. The Cowboys are 15th in the NFL averaging 23.4 points per game after leading the way last year at 29.9. They did have a season-high rushing effort last week in Pittsburgh, but it was only 109 yards (moved from last in the NFL in rushing to 31st at 82.0 yards per game) — about four fewer than last year’s average of 112.9.
Both teams are looking for their third straight win, with the Lions coming off their bye while the Cowboys kept my bestie up way past her bedtime while beating her Steelers Sunday night following a lightning delay.
Detroit is looking to start 4-1 for the second straight season after going from 2012-22 without having a winning record through five games (4-1 was best start since 5-0 in 2011). They haven’t been 4-1 or better in back-to-back years since 1970-71.
All three Dallas wins have come on the road while they’re 0-2 at home after entering the season with 16 straight home wins. They’re looking to avoid their first three-game home losing streak since 2020 (started 32 home games ago) and just their fourth-ever 0-3 start at home (last occurred in 2010, also happened in 1960 and 1989).
The Cowboys are trying to beat the Lions for the third straight season and the sixth time in a row dating to 2016, with this the fifth of those six games to be played at Jerryworld. The Lions scored with 23 seconds left last December to cut the Cowboys lead to 20-19, but failed a potential game-winning two-point conversion (on the third attempt after two were nullified by penalty).
Like I said above, nothing* matters more to me this week than the game featuring the two best Oregon quarterbacks of the post-Mariota era. Chargers QB Justin Herbert (42 starts for Oregon) and Broncos QB Bo Nix (27) made 69 combined starts for my beloved Ducks from 2016-23, though they also had a head-to-head matchup in college.
This is a chance for revenge some five years in the making after Nix ripped Herbert’s heart and mine out with a last-minute TD pass when they squared off in Nix’s first career start for Auburn, one of two losses the Ducks took during Herbert’s senior season. If Oregon had avoided either one they’d most likely have been dismantled by Joe Burrow and LSU in the CFP instead of winning the Rose Bowl, so it honestly worked out fine.
Herbert’s numbers are mostly down as he adapts to playing in new head coach Jim Harbaugh’s run-oriented offense and also has been hampered by a sprained ankle. He’s got barely half as many pass yards (578) through four games as in any of his first few seasons and also has his fewest passing touchdowns (5) and lowest completion percentage (64.8%) through four games.
That said, his pass TD rate (5.5%) matches his best through four games since his rookie season and his QB rating (96.3) is above average (12th in the league) despite being a career-worst at this stage of a season.
Nix will look to become the first rookie quarterback in Broncos history with an uninterrupted four-game win streak — Drew Lock (2019) and John Elway (1983) each won four straight starts as rookies, but had their streaks interrupted by games started by others. He’s also the only Broncos quarterback I ever gave a personal theme song to when he was in college and you had best believe I’m still (and forever) Bojeweled.
Denver’s tied with Baltimore for the fourth-longest active win streak in the NFL at three in a row. Only the perfect Chiefs and Vikings (5) and the Commanders (4) have Denver’s streak beat.
MetLife wasn’t exactly Bojeweled when he finished with 60 passing yards on 12-for-25 in the Broncos’ 10-9 win over the Jets two weeks ago, but he’s coming off the best game of his rookie season so far, his first multi-touchdown game and first game with a QB rating over 100 in last week’s 34-18 win over the Raiders. My guy Bo’s numbers look pretty good for the win streak compared to the first two games of his career.
The Jets became the biggest story of the early part of the week when they made Robert Saleh the first newly-unemployed coach of the season and eighth NFL head coach changed before November 1st in the last 10 seasons (seven fired for on-field performance and also Jon Gruden). His former defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich will serve as interim head coach, not Aaron Rodgers’ hand-picked offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, because this way it looks a tiny bit less like Rodgers had Saleh whacked fired.
Ulbrich takes over with a chance to pull the Jets into a first-place tie with a win this week. The very small sample of recent October firings suggests they might do it — four of the six teams which cut bait early because of slow starts in the last decade won their first game under the interim.
It got rockier for those interim coaches after the early good feelings — none of those six teams went better than 5-4 from firing through the end of the season (last year’s Raiders went 5-4) and four of the six posted losing records after the coaching change (the 2022 Panthers went 6-6). The sextet (also the 2015 Dolphins, 2019 Washington and 2020 Falcons and Texans) went a combined 26-40 after changing coaches and none of them made the playoffs or finished the season .500 or better.
The Steelers are looking to avoid a third straight loss after their 3-0 start, and in a big ol’ coinkydink Russell Wilson is suddenly a full participant in practice for the first time this season. With Pittsburgh’s offense needing some punch to supplement a very good defense, and particularly with George Pickens catching the eye of the league office (pun very much intended)…wouldn’t it be a great time to bring home a souvenir from Vegas in the form of the Raiders’ disgruntled star?
The Steelers defense is second in the NFL allowing 14.6 points per game, tied for fourth with six interceptions, fifth allowing 91.2 rush yards per game and tied for sixth with eight takeaways. Like I said, the defense is very good.
The Steelers offense is 26th in the NFL averaging 18.4 points per game, 27th averaging 178.2 passing yards per game, 23rd averaging 299.4 total yards per game, 27th in 1st Down pct at 24.2%, tied for 18th with a 50.0% red zone TD rate and tied for 19th with 5 pass TD this season.
Davante Adams could probably help here! Since he entered the league in 2014, only three players have more receiving yards than his 10,990 (Mike Evans, DeAndre Hopkins and Travis Kelce), only Evans (99) has caught more touchdowns than his 96 (no one else has more than 77) and he has 10 more red zone receiving touchdowns than anyone else in the league (67, next is Kelce with 57).
The Bears look for their third straight win after routing the Panthers 36-10 last week as Caleb Williams continues to show Chicago how bright its future could be. They’ll face a rudderless Jaguars team which could be poised to follow the Jets on the London news dump firing train if it falls to 1-5.
Williams is coming off his second 300-yard passing game in last week’s win over the Panthers, the first time he’s hit that plateau in a win and also his first time throwing 2 TD in a win. The Bears are 3-0 this season when he doesn’t throw a pick but he had four of them in their two losses.
The Jaguars avoided an 0-5 start in last week’s win over the Colts, but it still feels like the post-London bye is a very dangerous time to be Doug Pederson unless he wins this week. The Super Bowl LII winner is 19-20 in his three seasons as Jaguars head coach, but more to the point is 2-9 dating to last December and 4-10 since starting last season 6-2.
In the Belichick era, doing something like “playing the #2 overall draft pick quarterback for the first time against a division-leading defense which already ate the #1 overall pick alive” would’ve been a four-dimensional chess move which inevitably had him laughing last. Under first-year head coach Jerod Mayo, I worry he’s just gonna get Drake Maye killed.
The Texans defense doesn’t have a great overall PFF pass rush grade (22nd in the league), but has the 12th-most pressures in the league (47) and is also 12th in the league with 16 sacks. A season-high 15 of those pressures and three of those sacks came in their Week 2 win over the Bears and Caleb Williams.
The Patriots offensive line has a terrible PFF pass blocking grade (30th in the league), 20 spots behind the Bears line which allowed 15 pressures to the Texans and 15 spots behind the Bills line which let them rack up 11 pressures and 8 sacks. The Pats OL will in fact be the first one the Texans defense has faced which ranks lower than 20th in pass block grade.
I enjoyed last week’s final-storyline lightning round, so it only feels appropriate to run it back for these matchups with shares of the division lead on the line for teams trying to get to .500 on the season. Here’s one interesting thing about each team if I can find one.
The 49ers need a win to become the fifth out of the last six Super Bowl losers to start exactly 3-3 in the subsequent season, with last year’s Eagles snapping a four-year streak with their 5-1 start (I am legally obligated as an Eagles fan to remind that the 2023 Eagles are not a positive exception). With a loss, San Francisco will be the first team to have a losing record through six games the season after losing the Super Bowl since the 2015 Seahawks were 2-4 after six games.
The 12th Man hasn’t been making Seattle one of the league’s toughest venues at night lately after earning a reputation for it. Seattle’s lost four of six primetime home games since 2021, tied for 23rd in the NFL in primetime home win percentage in that span. The Seahawks went 21-3 (.875) in primetime home games over the previous 10 seasons (2011-20), 2nd-best in the NFL and best among teams with at least 15 such games (Ravens had the best record at 13-1).
The Bucs are the NFL’s ninth-highest scoring team at 25.4 points per game despite being held to 7 points two weeks ago in a loss to the Broncos and having dropped two of three since starting 2-0. They’re 19th in total yards per game, but 6th in 1st Down pct (32.2% of plays resulting in 1st Downs) and 7th in 3rd Down conversion pct (44.8%).
Derek Carr’s utterly horrendous interception Monday reminded me that there should be five different statistical categories of intercepted passes: Tip Drill (Defense), Stone Hands (Offense), Arm Punt, Dope Defense and Brain Farts. Can you guess which one Derek’s would fall into?
*Oh wait I still have an asterisk dangling from way back in storyline #3! If you made it here I’ll confess the Eagles game of course matters the most to me, but isn’t broadly interesting enough to write about. Go birds anyway.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.