The football remains sloppy, and the flags were plentiful (we’ll get to that), but there are still plenty of pieces to pick up from a scattershot Sunday. Our Week 7 Takeaways …
The Steelers are flashing what they can be. And there are tangible results that really back that up. But we’re going to start with an intangible that’s served as the foundation for the team’s last two wins, sandwiching the Steelers’ Week 6 bye.
That intangible is what Mike Tomlin brings to the table, and has forever.
Last year, you’ll remember, Pittsburgh started 2–6. Everyone (present company included) assumed Tomlin would have his first sub-.500 season in 16 years as Steelers coach. Which is right when the Steelers start scratching and clawing their way back to relevance, and nearly to a playoff spot. They finished 9–8 and missed the dance on a tiebreaker. Still, a point was made.
That point—that Tomlin’s Steelers are, and always have been, tough and and hard to kill off—has been proved again in how the offense has come on late in Pittsburgh’s wins over the Ravens before the bye, and the Rams in L.A. on Sunday. As a result, the Steelers are coming on in the AFC North race, too.
Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
“His consistent message is what has always been an eye-opener to me,” quarterback Kenny Pickett told me as the team was leaving SoFi Stadium. “You never have to guess with Coach. He’s always the same guy, no matter what. If it’s the start of the game or the end of the game, he keeps the same message and keeps the same body language and everything. It’s giving off confidence, and we all feed off of that. It’s great to have that in your head coach.”
It also leads to a steadiness that served the Steelers through their sideways starts to the past couple of games. They were outgained 244 to 88 and had just six first downs to Baltimore’s 15 in the first half in Week 5, and turned the tables completely in the fourth quarter, with a blocked kick to generate a field goal, a long drive to set up another field goal and a big scoring throw from Pickett down the sideline to George Pickens that set up the win.
This time around, the Steelers’ offensive fits lingered even longer. Going into the fourth quarter, the Steelers had 110 yards to the Rams’ 329, and 17 first downs to the Rams’ six. That said, they also had a belief in what they were doing and how they’d do it, because they knew and trusted the spots they were being put in by Tomlin and much-maligned OC Matt Canada.
In this case, that trust would pay off on the first play of the fourth quarter.
On third-and-8, Diontae Johnson ran a relatively simple return route and came completely free through the middle of the field, catching the ball and turning it up for a 39-yard gain. (The Steelers had only 72 net yards passing up until that point.) Pittsburgh would score two plays later, on a 13-yard Jaylen Warren run.
“That completely was the spark,” Pickett says. “They were in man. He’s a heck of a route runner. When I see that, I want to give him a chance to win and get open. Nine times out of 10, he’s going to do that. Great route, put the ball on him and then the run after catch is just what we’ve been pushing to get better at. He was awesome at that. It was awesome to have him back.”
That tied the score at 17, and while there was a lot more to the Steelers’ next drive, which covered 80 yards in 10 plays, that one was sparked by big plays in the pass game too, with big gainers of 18 and 21 yards to George Pickens keying a drive that was finished with a three-yard Najee Harris plunge. And after the Steelers’ defense got another stop, Pickett found Pickens for another 31 yards, which got the team’s game-ending 43-yard drive going.
“The chemistry’s there. I know where he’s going to be at pretty much at all times, with how he runs his routes and everything,” Pickett says. “He’s continued to work his route tree and get locked in on a few certain things, which is important for us. He’s an incredible player, so I just want to give him opportunities to make plays. The same with 18 [Johnson]. Those two guys are kind of the same in my thought process."
That gives the 25-year-old Pickett 27- and 22-year-old targets to grow with.
And if you want to know where the ceiling is for those guys as a group, Pickett thinks you’re seeing it in how the Steelers are playing these fourth quarters, which, they know, will eventually have to be seen for longer stretches than these little game-ending windows.
Now, if the Steelers can start the way they finish, maybe another part of Tomlin’s vision, the one that doesn’t come into focus until February, can be fulfilled.
Trevor Ruszkowski/USA TODAY Sports
It feels like the Browns are a quarterback away from being a real AFC contender. Of course, that sounds ridiculous, given that Cleveland gave up three first-rounders (and then some), and a massive, unprecedented, fully guaranteed, five-year, $230 million contract just 19 months ago to get Deshaun Watson to be that guy for them.
But that’s the reality of the situation.
Cleveland’s got a run game that churned out 155 yards on 33 carries against the Colts on Sunday. And do they ever have a defense—the best Myles Garrett says he’s ever played on.
“Up until this point, yes,” the all-planet pass rusher told me Sunday. “Yes, it is.”
Garrett had himself a day, just as DC Jim Schwartz is having himself a year, with how he’s simplified and juiced Cleveland’s defense with his scheme. The former is, and has been, the beneficiary of the latter, and the afternoon Garrett had in Indianapolis is just the latest, and most emphatic, example of that—he had two sacks, two forced fumbles and a blocked field goal in the first half alone. (We’ll have a lot more on Garrett’s afternoon on the site Monday.)
The funny thing about it, though, is it was part of the worst day that defense has had all year. In the 39–38 win, the Browns yielded season highs in points (39), total yards (456), passing yards (288) and rushing yards (168).
“They were getting Gardner [Minshew] involved in the run game a little bit with read action, especially in the red zone, varying the cadence in different ways,” Garrett says. “It was definitely just them coming out very passionate in the run game and very confident in those two guys they’re blocking for. [Zack] Moss and [Jonathan] Taylor are legit. Those guys are ballers in their own right. They found a way to find holes and make plays. Don’t want to take anything away from their O-line.”
Yet, where that sort of effort from the Colts, and hiccup from the Browns, wasn’t enough for Indy, it also proved what Cleveland can be.
As we said, the Browns got the run game going, and PJ Walker had enough, for the second straight week, and the officials gave Cleveland a couple big ones—an illegal contact penalty erased what would’ve been a game-ending strip sack with less than a minute left, and a pass interference call on the next play put the Browns on the Colts’ 1.
And Cleveland could survive because the roster is incredibly well-rounded and loaded with win-now players, a situation that begs for a star quarterback. Watson was supposed to be that star. Instead, he’s still having games such as this one, in which he was 1-for-5 for five yards and a pick, and had another easy pick dropped on a play he got hurt on. The injury situation only highlighted it, with Watson’s taking a hit, going through a concussion test, being cleared, but then staying out, with coach Kevin Stefanski making a call to play it safe with Watson’s existing rotator cuff contusion.
Where does this lead next? That’s incredibly tough to say.
Stefanski affirmed Watson as the starter postgame, and the staff really believed that his Week 3 game against the Titans, when he started taking the layups more often and playing more efficient ball, was the turning point. The injury fouled that up. And based on how Watson played before leaving the game Sunday, and how he left the game, guessing what’s next seems to be a fool’s errand.
What I will say is that the stakes are awfully high here, nearly a season and a half into Watson’s time as a Brown. If he can just be 80% of what he was at his best in Houston, it sure seems like the Browns would really have something.
At the same time, it’s pretty jarring that we don’t know what that looks like.
Brian Fluharty/USA TODAY Sports
The way the Patriots played Sunday is a perfect example of how young quarterbacks succeed—and fail. It’s fair to say that going into Week 7, the narrative surrounding Mac Jones had devolved from questioning whether he was the team’s long-term quarterback, to asking simply whether he’d be next week’s quarterback. And the truth is, that was probably a little unfair to the 15th pick in the 2021 draft all along.
He’s been playing behind a hurt and average (at best) offensive line, there’s no real threat on the roster (either at tight end or receiver) to pull coverage away from others, and Jones is on his third coordinator in as many years.
All of that contributed to how the Patriots quickly put him in difficult spots through the season’s first six weeks—falling behind both the sticks and on the scoreboard consistently, which forced him to play from behind with a shaky cast around him. Very few quarterbacks his age would be able to pull their teams from the fire in such situations, and Jones couldn’t, which shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.
So this week, the Patriots’ coaches tried to address that.
“The biggest thing for us today was that we were really focused on trying to start fast, which is something we really haven’t done yet this season,” tight end Mike Gesicki said over the cell, an hour after the stunner of the weekend: Patriots 29, Bills 25. “We’ve been playing from behind and had to put together some rallies in the second half. Just tried to get off to a quick start and play ahead.”
Last week, I said on Boston radio that the Bills would beat the Patriots by 30, because I figured they would drive into the same ditch they did against Dallas, and spin their wheels there faced with a more talented team.
Instead, the work Gesicki said the Patriots did paid off big-time.
The Patriots, Gesicki would go on to tell me, worked on the clichéd fast start by emphasizing the first play of periods and the beginning of practices—New England added a fourth last week after a third straight loss—to try to create a coming-out-flying mindset.
It worked. New England opened a 3–0 lead out of the gate, then Jabrill Peppers picked off Josh Allen on Buffalo’s first offensive play. A seven-play, 45-yard drive made the score 10–0 and suddenly the team then had a young quarterback, in Jones, playing a better and more controllable environment.
From there? The Patriots actually didn’t convert a third-and-long until a third-and-8 on the team’s final possession—and that was because they didn’t really need to. They stayed on schedule, which opened up OC Bill O’Brien to continually run more play-action and motion effectively. That, in turn, brought out the Jones that Gesicki has expected to see.”
“I love him,” Gesicki says. “Love playing with him. He has great energy and great leadership. For me, I think he throws a really catchable ball. That makes the job a lot easier as a receiver.”
And that much was apparent on the team’s final drive. That’s where, after blowing a 22–10 lead, the Patriots did need Jones to come through for them. After the drive got going with a 34-yard screen to Rhamondre Stevenson, Jones did convert on the aforementioned third-and-8—throwing a seam to Hunter for 14 yards. “Nobody was playing for overtime … Coach O’Brien called it aggressively,” Gesicki says, “where we could have just ran it and got to the 34, 33 and kicked a field goal.”
Five plays later, O’Brien showed that again, calling “four verts” (four receivers running fades to the end zone) with 15 seconds left.
“I had a two-way go,” Gesicki says. “I could have gone outside and maybe gotten a high ball back shoulder. That’s what I was thinking he was thinking as a defender, me trying to get to his outside. I noticed him, slightly outside leverage. I wanted to threaten that and see if I could beat him inside. That’s what happened.”
And that, for all intents and purposes, is how the game ended, with Gesicki able to box out Taron Johnson for the game-winning points.
But there was a larger lesson there too. Yes, the Patriots asked Jones to lift the team up a little Sunday. The key was that it wasn't on every play. They helped him with the run game, and by managing situations, and with a healthier, more competent offensive line. The fact that better results followed (he finished 25-of-30 for 272 yards and two touchdowns) should surprise no one.
“I’m just happy for him,” Gesicki says. “He’s had some criticism. It’s been unfair, honestly. There’s so many factors that go into winning a football game. Obviously, the quarterback gets the praise when you win and the negative when you guys lose. It doesn’t all fall on his shoulders. I’m just happy that today, back against the wall, we gotta go down there and win the game. That’s exactly what we did. We did it because of him.”
And for a lot of other reasons, too.
The Bears have quietly ridden out the storm of September. You remember all that hit Chicago back then, don’t you? There was the rumor-ridden resignation of defensive coordinator Alan Williams. The drama hovering over Chase Claypool’s status. The back-and-forth with quarterback Justin Fields and OC Luke Getsy (which was genuinely more of a media creation than anything else).
What not as many people seem to have noticed is how the Bears have played since.
After taking it on the chin in Kansas City in Week 3, as all of that swirled around, Chicago’s gone 2–2. Both losses came down to the end of the fourth quarter and were determined by a single possession. The wins came by 20 and 18 points, the latter being Sunday’s 30–12 beatdown of the Raiders. And the foundation, as coach Matt Eberflus sees it, was laid back in the spring and summer, when his team was still coalescing.
“We started in the spring time building relationships and taking time to do that,” Eberflus told me on his ride home Sunday. “I know that sounds like it’s coachspeak, but we would spend time with each other getting to know each other. How we did that was we did these groups. We’d take 30 minutes each day in the spring time and we’d say Hey, who’s your hero? What’s a hardship you had? What’s a highlight for you? Those guys could speak about anything they wanted to, all three of those topics. I intermixed the team six times during that time talking about that.
“The guys loved it where they could get to know each other, at different positions. That’s really what we relied on during this time of adversity, those relationships that we built.”
So when the team faded late against the Packers and Buccaneers, then got blown out by the Chiefs, and as the drama mounted, the coaches saw their guys coming together, rather than splintering.
If this sounds a little like kids doing trust falls at summer camp, so be it. It worked for the Bears, and that much was obvious not just in how they came out flying in the first half against the Broncos in Week 4, but then how they responded against the Commanders four days later, after blowing the 21-point lead they built on Denver.
This time around, it had to happen with Fields out and an undrafted rookie in at quarterback. This was after Eberflus, last Monday, tried to illustrate for his team just how well it was actually playing, regardless of what folks on the outside were saying.
“I said, Guys, we’re a team on the rise,” Eberflus says. “They kind of looked at me funny. I was like, No, we are a team on the rise. Look at the scoring. Look at the scoring offense. Twenty-seven points a game. Look at the scoring defense in the last three weeks. Obviously we had to take off some of the defensive touchdowns they scored against us with takeaways, but we were like 15 points a game on defense. I said, Look at the run offense and look at the run defense. We’re doing a lot of good things.”
And in support of that rookie quarterback, Tyson Bagent, they did those things well again on Sunday. They rushed for 173 yards, even without Khalil Herbert. They only allowed 39, even with Josh Jacobs on the other team. They won the turnover battle, as they did against Washington. All of which allowed Bagent to play an easy, controlled game.
The results followed.
That puts the Bears at 2–5 and—like Eberflus said, and inexplicably considering all that happened a month ago—very much on the rise.
Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports
Lamar Jackson is playing really, really good football. The MMQB Lead this week is going to feature the Ravens’ annihilation of the Lions. But I couldn’t let the Takeaways pass without pointing out the show Jackson put on in the 38–6 win. He was 21-of-27 for 357 yards, three touchdowns, and a near-perfect passer rating (155.8).
Add in a rushing touchdown, and he had his hand in four of the team’s five scores, and the cool thing is each one came in a different fashion. The first came with Jackson sprinting to the pylon on a bootleg around lead blocker Ronnie Stanley. The second was classic Jackson, scrambling to buy time to throw, then finding Nelson Agholor in the back of the end zone for a 12-yard score. The third came with Jackson rolling right and dumping the ball off to Mark Andrews. And the fourth was a pocket throw down the pipe to Andrews, who roped it in near the end line.
“I just think that’s Lamar,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh told me over the phone postgame. “That’s what he’s capable of. He’s been playing in the league for five years now, and you’ve seen that kind of stuff from him for five years. He works really hard, and he’s like any quarterback. If you work hard and you’re locked in with what you’re doing, and you care, you improve. You get better. Next week’s a new week and he’ll be looking to do his best next week just like he did this week.”
One thing that’s interesting here, of course, is the presence of new coordinator Todd Monken, who’s added the kind of creativity the Ravens’ run game has always had to the team’s passing game. Again, we’ll dive more into that Monday, but it’s pretty clear that Jackon has taken to the new ideas he’s had coming his way.
And he’s not the only one doing so in Baltimore.
All of that was pretty obvious Sunday, in how the Ravens took the NFL’s newest bullies and stuffed them in a locker—and implicitly announced themselves as a real threat in the AFC.
The A.J. Brown trade is looking increasingly incredible for the Eagles. You don’t need me to rehash what you saw Sunday night in the Eagles’ 31–17 win over the previously 5–1 Dolphins. You probably know he had 137 yards and a touchdown on 10 catches. You may even have already heard that was his fifth straight game of more than 125 yards.
So here’s what you might not know: Brown made Philly coach Nick Sirianni do something he’d never done before this week.
“This week at practice, A.J. was having an unbelievable practice, and I went up to [owner Jeffrey] Lurie and I go, There’s no way I ever thought this would come out of my mouth, but thanks for the $100 million to pay A.J. Brown,” Sirianni told reporters at his postgame presser. “I really appreciate that. A guy from Jamestown N.Y., I never thought I’d say, Hey, thanks for the $100 million to pay A.J. Brown.”
And that wasn’t the only person Sirianni wanted to give thanks to.
“A.J. is a phenomenal player,” he continued. “He just has this unbelievable ability to come down with the football. Nobody catches the ball as pretty as A.J. Brown. Nobody. I can’t tell you how many times [I see it] in practice. I’m just in awe of good wide receivers, and the skill that they have. Nobody goes and snags the football like him—nobody I’ve seen. And it’s so much cooler in person to see that when it’s on your team. He’s on a tear right now.
And the other guys are playing good, too. Why is he on a tear? Well, because DeVonta Smith is on one side and Dallas Goedert is in the middle and D’Andre Swift is in the backfield, and now Julio Jones is over there. So I’m appreciative of Howie, too.”
Howie Roseman, the team’s GM, deserves credit on this one, for sure, and maybe more for his humility than anything in doing what he did to get Brown.
Remember, the Eagles spent a second-round pick on J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in 2019. Then, they took Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson in the first round in 2020. Finally, they hit on one the year after that, in trading up for Smith.
And for most teams, that’d probably be it for spending that sort of capital on that position for at least a little while.
Instead, Roseman saw an opportunity when contract talks broke down between Brown and the Titans and aggressively moved to get him (as we wrote about in detail at the time). That took guts, of course, but it also took a willingness to accept being wrong with a couple of the others, and Roseman showed that willingness in a big way with his actions.
His reward for that might just be the best receiver in football. If, of course, it’s not the smaller guy in aqua whom Brown and the Eagles played against Sunday.
Jay Biggerstaff/USA TODAY Sports
The Chiefs are what the Patriots used to be. Think about it. We’ve heard about the adjustment Kansas City is making at tackle, and whether the decision to flip those positions, with Donovan Smith and Jawaan Taylor coming in, was the right thing. And the lack of a true No. 1 wideout, even if Travis Kelce’s really the one in that role. And how the young defense is still going through some growing pains.
Yet, here we are, seven games in, with the Chiefs at 6–1. They’re three games up in the AFC West already, and it feels like the division is wrapped up. That gives them plenty of time to work those problems of theirs out, with “problems” very clearly a relative term.
“There’s still just little things here and there—the first-drive penalty, it just hurts,” Patrick Mahomes told reporters after Sunday’s breezy 31–17 win over the Chargers. “We play big games like this, those can be really big. And then the second half, just little miscues here and there. If I can hit Rashee [Rice] on that one, when they’re triple-teaming Travis, he’s probably gonna score. So just little things here and there that I have to get better at. But we’re definitely taking steps in the right direction.”
Mahomes then smiled, and kept going: “I would just say the interception, no one look at Quez [Marquez Valdes-Scantling], because that’s who I was supposed to throw to. And it was probably another touchdown, so just cut him out of the picture when y’all look at it.”
All kidding aside, this is exactly how we used to look at the Patriots—digging through for any dents in the armor, trying to see if there was somehow a way they wouldn’t be back at the mountaintop at the end of the season.
Meanwhile, they keep chugging along, with the two teams that have paced with them the last couple years, Buffalo and Cincinnati, struggling to keep up. And that they do, I’d say, does deserve our praise, because it’s been like this for a while now for the Chiefs, and it’ll almost certainly continue to be like this for some time to come.
The Commanders are at a crossroads. That much, if you listened to Jonathan Allen on Sunday, was pretty clear, after the Giants outlasted Washington 14–7 at MetLife, dropping the visitors to 3–4 on the season.
“They whooped our ass,” Allen told reporters. “Plain and simple.”
Allen was then asked whether the loss frustrated him.
“F--- yes it does,” Allen replied. “I’m f-----g tired of this s---. F------ tired of this bull----. It’s been seven f------ years of the same s---. I’m tired of this s---.”
Colorful language aside, Washington’s got some decisions to make over the next eight days. The Commanders are just a game under .500, but they host the Eagles on Sunday, so they could very easily be 3–5 with the trade deadline looming two days later, and attractive pieces on the roster.
To me, other teams should turn their focus to the defensive end position, where the Commanders have two megatalents, in Chase Young and Montez Sweat, who are scheduled to hit free agency in March. I can’t imagine Washington would let both go. But with only one franchise tag, there’s a good chance at least one of the two won’t be a Commander come March.
Would it make sense to pull the Band-Aid off now? It certainly might, if they’re two games under .500 and someone offers something good for one of the two.
But then the question will become whether new owner Josh Harris, who inherited Ron Rivera, Martin Mayhew and Marty Hurney, will let the current football brass make the call on those guys. Or whether those guys would be enthused to deal off players for picks they may not get to use.
It is, most certainly, a complicated situation.
Jordan Love had a really shaky finish to the Packers’ ugly 19–17 loss in Denver. He threw his last ball, on second-and-20, into a Broncos team meeting to end the game with a pick. That was after his only touchdown pass came when Romeo Doubs couldn’t handle a red zone fastball at point-blank range, and the ball ricocheted into the waiting arms of Jayden Reed—and an uneven afternoon, in general, for the Green Bay offense.
Love voiced his frustration postgame. Coach Matt LaFleur echoed that, adding that what lies ahead is a “true test for all of us.”
I know this: The Packers are smitten with Love as a person. Everyone there wants him to succeed, and I feel confident saying that. But as for where he is as a player, when I’ve asked, there’s been a lot of “We’ll see.”
Now, the flip side of this. Aaron Rodgers went 6–10 in his first year starting. Through a year and a half, he was 10–14, and then he took off. And while all that was going on, Brett Favre looked great first with the Jets (before he got hurt) and then with the Vikings; and the Packers stuck with Rodgers through it without wavering much (outside of spending draft picks on Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn that first spring).
Obviously, that had its rewards. But it’s certainly not an easy thing to do, and probably is harder now than it’s ever been with all the nonstop noise out there on anything NFL.
We’re wrapping up the Takeaways with our quick-hitters, as usual. And here they come …
• The Bills’ offense looks different when James Cook is running the ball more consistently, and it definitely makes me wonder whether the Bills could use another hand at that position. I love watching Josh Allen line up in shotgun and sling it as much as anyone, but it’s hard when you’re doing it nonstop.
• It’s weird to call that a terrible loss for the Bills—based on all the history New England and Buffalo had for 20 years—but that’s exactly what it was.
• We can afford the Lions a mulligan. Their schedule’s pretty manageable for a while from here, and they have the reeling Raiders visiting on Monday night in Week 8.
• Russell Wilson, for what it’s worth, continues to not be the problem for Denver. He’s playing fine, just not the level of his contract, which is how he’ll be judged when the Broncos have to make a decision on him after the season.
• Tua Tagovailoa was in third-and-long a lot Sunday night in Philly, just like he was in the Dolphins’ loss to the Bills. Which, predictably, brought for a performance downshift (87.5 passer rating).
• Rookie CB Devon Witherspoon is going to be a star, if he’s not one already, and the Seahawks are way more talented than you may think.
• Give Desmond Ridder credit for bouncing back from a ugly fourth quarter against the Commanders. Didn’t hurt having the vaunted Falcons run game, even sans Bijan Robinson.
• Bradon Staley’s Chargers are 2–4. And I’d bet he’ll have to hear about his job security all week.
• The Cardinals are still fighting. And Trey McBride’s got some serious hops.
• One leftover from the owners’ meetings, on international games. NFL exec Peter O’Reilly mentioned last week that the league was looking to give the Mexico City game (which can’t be played there in 2024 due to renovations to Estadio Azteca) either to Spain or Brazil. My understanding is that if it’s Spain, then the venues that house Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid would be considered. In Brazil, the game could be played at a number of stadiums in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo.
