1. Even if this story wasn’t personal for you—and it unfortunately is for me—you should be infuriated with the Philadelphia Eagles for allowing Jalen Hurts to risk his life for a football game in London two weekends ago. They reportedly flew him to London with a superficial clot in his left calf, then kept him awake for 36 hours for fear of the clot traveling to his lungs and potentially killing him, then allowed him to play a football game in which hard contact to his leg could’ve dislodged that
clot and killed him anyway. Whether a doctor works for a football team or not shouldn’t matter. The oath says, “Do no harm.” That sometimes means making those hyper-competitive humans take a seat for their own well-being. They’re lucky their decision to green-light him to play only cost Hurts’ season, maybe his career, rather than his life. Regardless, someone needs to be held accountable for this.
2. Passing charts have turned into the new box-score watching for quarterback evaluation, and Caleb Williams’ game on Sunday is just the latest example. Except that, even if you didn’t watch the game, you should be able to see the difference between Williams going 30-for-26 for 305 yards and a touchdown versus Bo Nix barely topping 107 yards on 27 throws, right? There are multiple ways to have a really good game as an NFL quarterback. Taking risks and throwing the ball into tight windows down the field—something Williams has proven time and again he can do—is one way. Taking what the opposing defense gives you when they’re clearly trying to take away the deep part of the field, which is what Williams did yesterday, is another. The bottom line: if you don’t like a guy and want to see him fail, just say so. Don’t pretend to be objective. In the end, you’re mad that Williams now leads the league in completion percentage, which means you can’t use that argument against him to defend your fav. Cry more.
3. Personally, I have no problem with what Ryan Fitzpatrick said about Nix after the Broncos quarterback’s Thursday night performance in an overtime win against Seattle. And sure, maybe it is a little biased because I never thought highly of Nix coming into the league, plus he might still be rounding into form after the injury he suffered last year. But pretending he’s doing anything else but playing objectively terrible football is just wrong right now. If this were any other third-year quarterback averaging 174 passing yards a game, we would say that guy isn’t an NFL starter, record be damned. Why should Nix get a pass?
4. Y’all might find this mean, but I don’t care: L.J. Collier celebrating after recovering a fumble and getting tackled on that Rams two-point conversion attempt makes me mad. You cost your team two points because you wouldn’t give the ball up to a faster player who would’ve scored, and you’re happy about it? Someone lower his Madden Awareness rating to -2. That man’s lucky those two points didn’t come back to bite his team.
5. Remember back when Chris Ballard and Ryan Pace were both up for the Chicago Bears general manager job all those years ago? Wild to see Ballard finally out in Indianapolis after all that time, with the Colts just relieving him of his duties after their latest loss. This isn’t to disparage either of those two or Pace’s successor, Ryan Poles, but to point out the truth in something Ballard pointed out after Andrew Luck’s retirement: hitting on the quarterback is everything. Pace failed at it with both Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields. Ballard struggled to replace Luck but ultimately squeezed enough out of veterans to keep him employed until this year. And Poles arguably would’ve been fired already if not for landing Caleb Williams, which has helped people forget his misses at other positions. Remember that.
6. Thanks to the aforementioned Colts, there will be no 0-17 season this year. And I really do mean “Thanks to the Colts,” because the Tennessee Titans’ offense putting up 26 points on 186 yards of total offense is just offensive. Cam Ward’s 102 passing yards marked the fewest this season for a winning starting quarterback who played the entire game. There’s so much wrong with that team that it’s hard sometimes to parse between Ward being bad and everything else around him being awful. At least they know they’re not about to make the wrong kind of history.
7. In other news: maybe Ben Johnson and the Bears offense really are that good (when healthy). Remember that 59-point outing they put on the Carolina Panthers in Week 1 that had us all questioning what planet we were living on? Turns out Carolina has literally been one of the best units in the league since that point, holding opponents to just 16 points per game following that season opener. The NFL can change so dramatically from week to week that any one game can’t be taken as a complete picture of what a team is. For example, that next week against the Vikings on a rainy day, the Bears looked disgustingly bad. But who doesn’t want to believe the Bears could just randomly drop 60 on any defense they choose?
9. Count me among the people who questioned whether Travis Hunter could legitimately be a factor as a cornerback and wide receiver after starring in both roles at the University of Colorado a few years ago. As it turns out…he can. And is. According to NFL Communications, Hunter is the third player since 1970 with a touchdown reception and interception in the same game, joining Pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins (Sept. 29, 2002 with Philadelphia) and Roy Green (Sept. 20, 1981 with the St. Louis Cardinals). Shoutout to Liam Coen for having the gumption to actually use him in both roles and being creative enough to pull it off. What a player.
10. Question for the group: when’s the last time you saw a player fall off harder than Justin Herbert? And no, you don’t get to say “he was always bad,” because he wasn’t. Nothing approaching this, certainly. I’m having a hard time thinking of anyone. But we don’t have to ask that question about coaching falloffs, because Jim Harbaugh does it every four years. His flamout just arrived a year early this time.
