Scott Van Pelt’s One Big Thing – No more unbeaten teams in Week 6،
What a strange Sunday in the NFL.
Outside of the Miami Dolphins’ video game antics, the offensive highlights weren’t particularly evident. Defenses were forced to resist repeated movements to their side of the field. In Cincinnati, the Bengals forced the Seattle Seahawks to go 1 of 5 in the red zone and held on. In Atlanta, Washington’s commanders also held their ground. Same phenomenon in Houston, where the Texans held the New Orleans Saints to 0-for-3 in the red zone during a 20-13 victory. As an aside, the Las Vegas Raiders and Baltimore Ravens each won, but each was only 1-for-6 in the red zone.
But the headline that emerged from a mostly blah day was that both NFC titans — the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles — suffered road losses in games they led late. The Niners lost Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey to injury. They had some very sketchy penalties called against them late and still would have won a game in which Brock Purdy looked very ordinary if they had managed a 41 yard FG near the end. They did not do it.
Philadelphia has been very effective at erasing double-digit deficits on the rare occasions when it finds itself behind. On Sunday, they fell to 20-2 under Nick Sirianni while holding a double-digit lead. They gave up a 14-3 lead against the New York Jets, whose defense really stood up. By the way, New York now has two home wins against the Buffalo Bills and Philly, and I think we’re all trying to figure out how they got them. Philly is generally much more buttoned-up than Sunday – one missed FG and one pick trying to put the game away. This will get you beat in the NFL. Hurts now has more choices than all of last year.
Those losses, combined with an impressive road win for the Detroit Lions in Tampa, mean the Lions’ record is tied for first in the NFL. I don’t know if this is a scoragami, but the Lions have now won two of their first six games by the exact same score of 20-6. This seems quite random.
In a game where the RB team was thin due to injury, Jared Goff was excellent, throwing for 353 yards and two touchdowns with no picks. It was his 17th career game as a full-time starter with at least 350 passing yards — more than anyone other than Patrick Mahomes in that span.
The culture we saw build from “Hard Knocks” last summer through the 2022 season, when the Lions won eight of 10 to finish the season, has not slowed down, and we will be in Detroit for ” Monday Night Football” in a few days. weeks, the day before Halloween. I can not wait to go there ; They’ve been waiting for a season like this forever. It’s still early, but the Lions seem to have the goods.
