Week 8 didn’t bring much drama. But we did get some revelations. So let’s dive into those, in the MMQB takeaways for the final Monday in October …
Indianapolis Colts
Too many people are looking at the Colts the wrong way. To be clear, Daniel Jones, like any quarterback, is a big piece of the puzzle in Indy, and one of the biggest reasons for the team’s stunning 7–1 start to the season. It’s the reality of his place in that puzzle that, in my opinion, gets misconstrued.
That’s because people aren’t used to seeing the quarterback being the finishing touch.
But if you really look at it, that’s just what Jones is—and I bet he’d appreciate more people noticing what’s around him, too. Because coming off another blowout win, it’s increasingly apparent that the Colts were way better than anyone realized at the other 10 positions inside the offensive huddle coming into this season.
And I’m saying this about Jones not to diminish anything he’s accomplished—he’s been awesome—but because another guy who shined on Sunday, all-world tailback Jonathan Taylor, said something similar about himself, when I pointed out to him that on Sunday he became the 12th player in NFL history to have four separate three-touchdown games in a single season, and it’s only Week 8.
“We have so many new weapons,” Taylor told me. “From Daniel Jones to Michael Pittman to Josh Downs to Alec Peirce, Tyler Warren. It’s so tough to defend us. You kind of have to pick your poison on every single play. Are you gonna defend the pass? Are you gonna run? What are you going to do? When you have great players across the board, like we have, it makes it easy for us to make explosive plays. Now we’re just matched up one-on-one.
“It’s not too many people deep, where there are people in each zone, or too many people stacked in the box. It’s usually just a one-on-one we have to win. It’s made it really tough to defend us.”
The results of that are pretty staggering, too. Jones has thrown for 2,062 yards, 13 touchdowns, three picks and a 109.5 passer rating through eight starts. Taylor’s at 1,056 scrimmage yards and 14 touchdowns, and is averaging nearly six yards per carry to get to 850 of those yards on the ground. Pittman (43 catches, 446 yards, 6 TDs) and Warren (37 catches, 492 yards, 3 TDs) are hovering around pace for 1,000-yard seasons. Downs isn’t far off from that, and Pierce wouldn’t be either, had injury not cost him a couple of games.
Meanwhile, the line has gotten younger, and you might argue better after losing Will Fries and Ryan Kelly to the Vikings in free agency.
The bottom line is, this is a really good group. And bringing it all together is how, as Taylor explains it, the whole becomes even greater than the parts. Taylor thinks how they all play for each other shows up in the chunk plays the Colts seem to be ripping off with regularity these days. Within the Colts’ first four snaps, there was a 12-yard Taylor run, and 19- and 18-yard throws from Jones to Pierce and Downs, respectively. On the team’s next possession, Taylor had runs of 15 and 18 yards, and Warren had a 15-yard catch.
“When you have athletes that we have and you can get your guys in space, and give them that one-on-one matchup, it’s really tough for a defender to actually make that play,” Taylor said. “And of course for us it’s, How can we be efficient? How can we be sure we can win that one-on-one matchup? Studying throughout the week who we’ll be up against, and wanting to start fast, getting those chunk plays and letting the other team know—This is gonna be a long day.”
It most certainly was for the Titans. Those two possessions put the Titans down 10–0 at the end of the first quarter. It was 17–7 at the half.
And then, on Indy’s first offensive snap of the second half, Taylor went 80 yards.
What most of us saw on that one was one of the best backs of his era beating safeties Amani Hooker and Xavier Woods down the sideline. But what he saw was Pierce, Downs and Pittman blocking on the backside of the play, preventing a DB or two from running him down, and the line blocking it up to the point where he got to the sideline untouched, at which point he could turn it into a footrace.
“Those plays right there that people love, it’s usually the wideouts, it’s the tight ends, it’s the backside receiver getting a block,” Taylor said. That’s why we’ve been able to be so explosive—because everyone is fighting and digging for one another. For the running backs, Can you sell a really great fake, to pull one or two people in the opposite direction? We’re all playing for one another.”
Which brings us to the quarterback.
Most of these guys were around last year. So, really, a lot of the elements that have sparked this Colts revival were in place. That makes Jones not the team’s offensive starting point, but more so the guy who wound up bringing the whole thing together.
“When he first got here, it seemed like he had the playbook for six months already.” Taylor said. “So during OTAs, during the summer, we were able to, not blow past any parts of the playbook, but we had a lot of time to work on intricate checks and things that were going along with our scheme. I think now when defenses throw stuff at us, we are able to recall those reps that we got in the offseason and be able to execute at a high level.”
There’s zero question the Colts have done that—and it’s happened on defense, too, with new coordinator Lou Anarumo shuffling the deck.
So you can look at this as some sort of Daniel Jones story if you want.
I’d tell you there’s a lot more to it than that.
Green Bay Packers
I bet, in a weird way, it was cool for Aaron Rodgers to watch what Jordan Love has become as his successor in Green Bay. I’m not saying Rodgers didn’t want to win Sunday night in Pittsburgh—obviously, the Steelers’ quarterback did. And Love’s play, and ability to pilot the Packers’ offense at the level he can now, sure got in the way of that.
But I’m not sure enough people know how strong the bond between Rodgers and Love is, even with all the drama that unfolded around Rodgers’s exit from Lambeau in early 2023.
Even though Rodgers was far from pleased with the team’s communication with him around the selection of Love in the 2020 draft, he made a point not to let things get icy between him and Love in the way things did early on between him and Brett Favre some 15 years earlier. So the two grew close. And even after Rodgers left for the Jets, clearing the way for Love to become the Packers’ starter, the old man continued to be a sounding board for the young quarterback as he settled into the No. 1 role.
So when Love came alive in the second half of Sunday’s 35–25 Packers win, and wound up throwing for 360 yards, three touchdowns and a 134.2 rating, do I think that Rodgers, in his gut, felt a little pride in how the kid played? I bet he did. And after talking to Love after the game, I can tell you for a fact that whatever emotion Rodgers felt about the whole thing … those were absolutely mutual.
“Definitely,” Love told me. “I knew what this week meant, and coming into it what it was going to be. So, definitely, playing well going against A-Rod, and coming out with the win feels great. Just like you said, the time we spent together, everything I learned, it definitely is special for me to go out and be able to play well with him watching. That’s one of those things, I know he’s been watching, I know he’s studied some of the games we’ve played.
“He’s texted me that before—he’s seen some really good things from me, some great growth, and he’s happy for me. We’ve got a pretty special relationship, and anytime I’m able to hear from him, get some good feedback and come out here and play well with him on the other side, it definitely felt good.”
And even better was how Green Bay came from behind.
Love and his offensive teammates gathered at the half, after a first half that the quarterback said “wasn’t up to our standard” left the visitors down 16–7. The main message? Guys weren’t holding the rope, and doing their “one-eleventh,” in Packer parlance. And after the break, the message was clearly received—with the defense starting the second half with a three-and-out, and the offense driving 90 yards in nine plays to cut the Pittsburgh edge to two points.
That, really, was all the Packers needed. Love wound up an incredible 16-of-19 for 214 yards and two touchdowns after the half, and Green Bay won going away.
It meant plenty in the standings, of course, as the Packers stay in first in the NFC North.
But now that the game is over, Love can concede the obvious, and that’s that this one did have more meaning—because of how much Rodgers meant to his career.
“Oh man—so much, so much,” Love said. “I definitely wouldn’t be the player I am today without being able to watch him and learn from him, and just see a quarterback go out there and play at a super high level.”
Which is to say, yes, it felt good for Love to put on a show.
Houston Texans
The Texans are still lingering as that team with a chance. And not just a chance to catch the red-hot Colts in the AFC South. Houston has a chance to become—after flashing potential in the playoffs the past couple of years—a threat to the Chiefs and Bills in the conference.
This is about the talent on hand.
It’s easy to see on defense. “They’re lights out,” veteran tight end Dalton Schultz told me, over the phone from the locker room after the Texans’ impressive 26–15 win over the 49ers on Sunday. It’s been tougher to find on offense, where the team has a boatload of promise, but a rookie left tackle, two rookie receivers playing increasingly significant roles and, most poignantly, a rookie offensive coordinator (Nick Caley) who was brought in to leverage C.J. Stroud’s football IQ.
Last week’s late-night loss in Seattle was a microcosm of where penalties, losses and sacks short-circuited promising drives to the point where the team’s first offensive touchdown didn’t come until there was 2:04 left in the game.
“That’s losing ball, right there,” Schultz said. “For us, it’s making sure everyone does exactly what they’re supposed to do. It’s super simple, it’s so cliché, but we got guys going to the wrong spots—it’s super simple clean-up stuff. Frustrating as it is, it’s super correctable. We’ve been so close on so much s--- since Week 1.”
The good news, like Schultz said, is it’s explainable. The Texans are young in key spots, and in a new offense that’s melding the West Coast pass game they had the past couple of years with elements of the New England run game and protection scheme, all wrapped in a new language everyone’s had to learn.
“It’s an identity shift from what we were doing,” Schultz said. “But at this point, it’s almost halfway through the season. It’s go time. You’re gonna get left behind.”
And the Texans looked to be playing with that urgency against the Niners. Stroud was at his best, going for 318 yards, two scores and a 106.6 rating, while getting three teammates five catches, and another two four catches—with the aforementioned rookie receivers, Jaylin Noel and Jayden Higgins, in that group. He also did it without No. 1 target Nico Collins.
“You give him a clean pocket and a space to throw,” Schultz said, “kid’s gonna light it up.”
Meanwhile, Houston grinded out 157 yards rushing and ran up 41 minutes of possession.
The defense did its thing, holding the Niners to 223 yards and 15 points, all of which opened a window into where the team can go. For the rest of us, anyway—Schultz knows where that sort of navel gazing can lead a team that’s fighting through it.
“Everyone’s getting better week to week. If you aren’t getting better, someone else is,” Schultz said. “You can’t step back and look at the entire picture, you’ll lose focus on what you are trying to do. So I think for us it’s been the biggest thing. Clean your own locker, make sure your s--- is right. Because if you are on it, and whoever is next to you is on their s---, we will be rolling.”
And maybe, coming off this game, the Texans will finally show they already are.
Buffalo Bills
The Bills needed that one. In case you missed it, Sean McDermott’s crew came into Carolina on Sunday, playing the organization he and GM Brandon Beane were once plucked from, and promptly stole the red-hot Panthers’ lunch money. And there was no better example of how it happened than through the 64-yard touchdown run from James Cook that broke the game open in the second quarter.
On the play, center Connor McGovern worked to the second level and walled off linebacker Christian Rozeboom, while receiver Tyrell Shavers got downfield and cut off safety Nick Scott, creating an alley that Cook came through like he was shot out of a cannon.
The play was so well-blocked, Cook started jogging at the Panthers’ 25, cruising from there.
In the smaller picture, it gave the Bills a 12–3 lead in what would become a 40–9 laugher, snapping a two-game losing streak that Buffalo rode into its bye. In the bigger picture, it brought to life exactly what the coaches and players were trying to accomplish after a sloppy Sunday-night loss to the Patriots was followed by a stagnant effort in a Monday-night loss to the Falcons, which left a lot of people questioning Josh Allen & Co.
“We just went back to the fundamentals and just stayed true to us,” Cook told me, after exploding for 216 rushing yards and two touchdowns in Charlotte. “It showed today. We had a long, hard week of practice, a great week of practice, probably the best week of practice since I’ve been here. We just gotta keep grinding and keep working hard, and see how it goes.”
Fair to say, on this Sunday, it went well for the AFC’s preseason favorite.
As for exactly what went into the best week of practice of Cook’s NFL career, he said it was: “Urgency. The attention to detail in how we were working. Just getting back on track was our main thing.”
Specifically, on offense, that meant finishing blocks and runs in both the run and pass games, something that was perhaps best illustrated by the aforementioned downfield blocking, both from linemen hustling past the line of scrimmage and skill players staying on their blocks. On defense, it was guys along the front doing a better job than they did earlier in the month of focusing on their gaps.
The two-to-one disparity in run-game success (the Bills rushed for 245 yards, the Panthers went for 114) showed the progress.
Then again, this was a beatdown in every way imaginable. The Bills had 410 yards from scrimmage, the Panthers just 244, with even that low number padded in the fourth quarter by a 67-yard Carolina touchdown drive with the score at 40–3. Buffalo also had seven sacks to the Panthers’ two, three takeaways without allowing Carolina one, and a seven-minute advantage in time of possession.
And for the first time since the first half of Week 3’s Thursday-night game against the Dolphins, the Bills looked like one of the best teams in the league.
So what’s the impact of this one in the grand scheme of things? Cook wouldn’t bite on that one, giving me the stock answer that he’s “just taking every game one game at a time.”
But, the Bills know they could have bigger things ahead, and this was a good step in pursuing those.
New York Jets
I don’t know if Aaron Glenn is going to be the Jets’ coach for the next decade, but I do know discussion of pulling the plug this early is asinine. It’s also, quite frankly, how bad franchises stay bad—and that’s where the Jets are, and have been, as the organization with the NFL’s longest active playoff drought.
Maybe some of that foolishness will die down now that Glenn has his first win, one that came in wild fashion, as his team fought back from deficits of 17–3, 24–10, 31–16 and 38–24 to beat the resurgent Bengals by a final of 39–38. Rightfully, this particular victory has been explained in the context of the tragedy the club went through Sunday morning, with news spreading of franchise icon Nick Mangold’s death. But there was more than intangible value to this one.
And the story of how it relates to the larger plan Glenn is trying to execute takes us to the team hotel on Saturday night, less than 24 hours before the Jets would take on the Bengals. Glenn summoned veteran DT Harrison Phillips to the front of the meeting room to address his teammates, and Phillips, who was drafted by the Bills in McDermott’s second year there and was in Minnesota for Kevin O’Connell’s first three years, didn’t disappoint.
“I really emphasized a lot of the things AG has been talking about with grit,” Phillips told me, recounting the speech. “The definition he’s put up there often has been patience and perseverance towards a long-term goal, and sustaining that long-term goal, so I talked about playing the long game. I talked about depth perception, and how sometimes if you think something is far away, you’ll keep it there. If you think getting to the playoffs is a long-term, far-off thing, you perpetuate that and you’ll never go get it.
“If you think about how close it really is, you go change one play from a couple of the games we had, we’re a 5–2 football team, or a 6–1 football team, if you could go back and change it. So I try to let the guys know, you might have beat me yesterday, you might beat me today, you might beat me again, but you will not beat me in the end.”
The Bengals didn’t beat the Jets in the end and, again, that ability to roll with the punches showed up again and again and again. The best example of it? How the defense put its foot in the ground in the game’s final seven minutes. Over the first 53 minutes, that group had yielded 398 yards, 7.8 yards per play and 38 points to the Bengals. Then, somehow, the Jets summoned the strength to force a three-and-out and a game-ending turnover on downs, while allowing Cincinnati just one first down in those two possessions.
That opened the door that Justin Fields, who may have been benched were it not for Tyrod Taylor’s injury, to lead touchdown drives of 60 and 58 yards and win the game, days after owner Woody Johnson publicly questioned his ability to be the guy.
“It’s tough when you haven’t seen the result you wanted but all the time the belief team is there,” Phillips said. “To have an 0–7 team have that belief is incredible. And that’s the culture AG’s trying to build here.”
So now, the Jets are 1–7, which only means they’ve still got a long, long way to go.
But it’s a start, and both Glenn and Phillips know how those go. The coach was in Detroit for the start of Dan Campbell’s tenure as Lions coach, so he remembers 0–8 and 0-10-1 starts in 2021, and a 1–6 start in 2022, all of which became a preamble to the success that franchise is having now. Likewise, Phillips saw such retoolings in Buffalo and Minnesota, so he knows how these go.
“I believe in AG,” Phillips said. “I’ve been around Sean when he was young; I was around KO when he was young in his career. He possesses those same traits. And there hasn’t been success here for a long time. It takes a while to do that. That’s why when we are creating this culture, it’s about getting the right people, it’s about developing the right people and you want a culture that elevates your talent, not a culture that hinders your talent.
“That’s what we’re creating.”
And that doesn’t happen overnight.
Nick Mangold
While we’re on the Jets, we need to recognize the shocking Sunday morning news of Mangold’s depth. I knew Mangold a little bit, but not much. I was a graduating senior at Ohio State the summer the future All-Pro center was coming in, then crossed paths with him a bunch covering the Jets over the years. So I could tell you what I know about the funny, caring, tough and loyal Mangold.
But I figured it’d be better to have our mutual friend Bobby Carpenter do it for me. Carpenter, like Mangold, was a member of Ohio State’s star-studded 2002 recruiting class, and the two played four years together in Columbus, were All-Americans together, were first-round picks and NFL players together, and maintained their close bond through the years since.
Thanks to Bobby for taking the time to write this tribute at what’s obviously a difficult time …
Long wild hair, an untamable Viking beard, and standing 6'4", weighing 320 lbs … Nick Mangold was a mountain of a man. Yet he was really the everyman, and it’s no surprise he was beloved by Buckeye nation and the J-E-T-S faithful alike.
He was a seven-time Pro Bowler with the Jets and an All-American with Ohio State, but that’s not what we will remember about Nick. From the first moment that anyone met Nick, they were immediately captivated by his personality. He was the “Big Guy.” Reminiscent of Vince Vaughn from his early-2000s run, he was the teddy bear. His quick-witted humor and ability to engage an entire room was lost on no one. While poor college students, Nick somehow talked our way into the booth scene in Vegas with some MLBers—and had them pouring us drinks after 15 minutes.
He was a hugger. He had an opinion about everything and would engage with anyone that wanted to chat. Any bad day was instantly made better when Nick asked you to bring it in for the real thing. Despite his demonstrative stature, Nick had an approachability and connectability that endeared him to every person. It’s why he was such a fan favorite, but more importantly a connector in the locker room. You always felt better after a conversation with Nick. He was the eternal optimist … and that was the biggest driver of his athletic success.
Nick never knew a stranger. And it’s why his teammates adored him. He embodied everything Billy Joel sang about: “He was quick with a joke, or to light up your smoke.” But the place he’d rather be was always with his friends and family. His unrelenting loyalty was his finest trait. No matter the time or distance, when you saw Nick it was like hopping on a moving train. Your friendship and connection never waned. It’s why we all loved him.
The Jets lost a legend.
Buckeye nation lost an All-American.
But his teammates and friends lost the best of us.
Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins haven’t rolled over yet—and a lot of people figured they would as Mike McDaniel’s job security seemed to evaporate in recent weeks. I’ll be the first person to raise a hand and say I didn’t expect to see Miami routing the Falcons 34–10, or outgaining the Falcons 338 to 213, dominating time of possession, the line of scrimmage and just about every other facet of Sunday’s showdown at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Indeed, what was supposed to be a burial became at least a temporary rebirth. And some Dolphins players will point to that result if you ask them whether they still have McDaniel’s back.
“Yes—today we showed that,” linebacker and team captain Jordyn Brooks told me. “Us, as leaders, we drive that point, to have his back. Whether we agree or disagree, we gotta have his back. As leaders, we can’t be pulling away from that and contradict what Mike’s message is, because now you’re leading the team in confusion. Whatever Mike is being criticized for, we’re there to enforce it as leaders and everyone will follow suit.
“Absolutely we have Mike’s back.”
There is, of course, a lot of water under this bridge. There’s the residue from a star-friendly culture that created friction with the team’s rank and file in 2023 and ’24. There was the resulting firing of defensive coordinator Vic Fangio after ’23, and revamping of the roster after ’24. There was friction stemming from the changes, and the perception, at least, that McDaniel wasn’t taking the bull by the horns when things started off on the wrong foot this year.
And then you have a Sunday like this one, where it all comes together.
I asked Brooks about the team meetings (plural) that Tua Tagovailoa referenced last week, and he politely declined to dive into that. But he did say there was room for tough conversation, and real reflection, after last week’s rock-bottom loss in Cleveland that forced everyone to take personal responsibility for a 1–6 start that was getting worse by the week.
“We allowed ourselves to feel it and not hide from it,” Brooks said. “You have to be real with yourself and real with others. I thought we had some things we addressed toward each other, as a team, being real with each other as players, coaches, etc. And watching the film and seeing how we had to get better, we made an emphasis on how we had to stop this upcoming team, the Falcons.
“The secret was coming back to work, emphasizing what we need to emphasize and keep pressing forward.”
Whether it lasts remains to be seen. The Dolphins will play the Ravens on Thursday, and those stand-alone games sometimes take on outsized importance from a storyline perspective. Miami has the Bills after that. So the wheels could come off again.
So what did Sunday really prove, then? That this group is fully capable of putting those wheels back on.
Los Angeles Chargers
Joe Alt is one of the best players in football. It sounds a little outlandish to say that about a second-year offensive tackle just 22 starts (21 regular season, one playoff) into his NFL career. But if Thursday night’s 37–10 obliteration of the Vikings showed us two things about Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers team, they are these …
1) The personality of the team runs through its offensive line.
2) Alt is central to that personality, and became even more so after Rashawn Slater was lost for the season during the summer.
Simply put, absent Alt and Slater, the Chargers were stripped of their identity. The No. 5 pick in the 2024 draft went down in the first quarter of the team’s Week 4 game against the Giants. Los Angeles lost that game, and then two of its next three with Alt on the shelf and working his way back from a high ankle sprain.
With Alt’s return, it looked like L.A. flipped a switch, and the Vikings stood no chance Thursday.
“Credit goes to a lot of those other guys,” general manager Joe Hortiz was sure to remind me Friday night. “And Joe [Alt] would tell you if you got him on the phone, Hey man, I just did my job. But he does it well, and it is like, Hey, we got Joe back, man. It gives you a boost.”
No one felt that more than Justin Herbert, who was right back at an All-Pro level with his blindside bodyguard back in the lineup. Herbert’s numbers bear the difference out.
• With Alt: 94-of-138 (68.15%), 1,110 yards, 9 TDs, 2 INTs, 108.06 rating.
• Without Alt: 107-of-158 (67.7%), 730 yards, 7 TDs, 5 INTs, 97.35 rating.
Maybe most stark in there, too, was the difference in yards per attempt, a good metric to measure a quarterback’s efficiency. Herbert is averaging 8.04 with Alt and 4.62 with him.
And that brings us to the second piece of this. That’s the value of having a great left tackle in general—and it just so happens the Chargers have two. There’s been a lot of chatter in recent years on whether the position is as vital it once was. The truth, to me, really lies not in what happens when you have one, but what happens when you don’t. A lot of so-so lines have been propped up by a great one. Conversely, not having a competent one is trouble.
The Chargers’ first eight games are a microcosm of that.
“Listen, maybe it’s not as important as it used to be,” Hortiz said. “Maybe not, because teams attack where weaknesses are, and everyone recognizes how important the offensive line in general is. Yeah, other positions have become appreciated more. The left tackle, that was your best blocker back 20 years ago. But when you don’t have one? You ask any right-handed quarterback … a lot of them will tell you.”
Herbert included.
Lamar Jackson injury reporting
I don’t know that the NBA gambling scandal will mean much to the NFL, but the Ravens’ injury reporting situation certainly shines a light on how thorny this all is. To be clear, I don’t think Baltimore’s slipup in listing Lamar Jackson as a full participant in Friday’s practice, rather than as a limited participant, has anything to do with gambling. My guess is the next time John Harbaugh knows the over/under on a Ravens game will be the first time.
That said, it certainly affected betting lines. Baltimore went from being a 6.5-point favorite to, at one point, a 1.5-point pick. So people in the know, as others have pointed out, would have a gaming edge, being able to take the Bears and the points at the higher number before what was inside information became public (that hypothetical gambler with the info could even then hedge his bet with a bet on the Ravens at the lower number).
And in an era during which—just a decade after the league was declaring sports betting an existential threat to the game—the league is clearing every nickel it can make from gambling companies off the table, these sorts of irregularities are going to be scrutinized. (That the Ravens won by 14 and cleared even the original spreads are irrelevant.)
That’s the bed the NFL has made for itself, and the league now has to lie in it— which it will do willingly because of all the money there is to be made.
So what’s next, after the FBI’s bust of professional basketball revealed players and coaches involved in both legal and illegal betting, and sports and non-sports gambling? I asked a bunch of team presidents this week, who’d just arrived home from the NFL’s fall meeting (staged before the NBA story broke). Here’s a sampling of their takes, collected via text before the Jackson news broke Saturday.
NFC team president 1: “The NFL has their gambling deals up for renewal. I would assume not much changes but they will put pressure on coaches to keep reporting injuries, etc.”
NFC team president 2: “It only heightens the attention to absolute compliance with our gambling policy. Should scare anyone straight.”
NFC team president 3: “I think it reminds the league to be vigilant on all of these matters. The player prop element is very different though in the NFL, because you don’t have load management, and guys don’t necessarily control if they get the ball. But I think it’s a reminder that illegal gambling is just as prevalent as online gambling, which is easier to track. But the makeup of the NBA player props is much easier … 82 games, less importance of each game, easier to manipulate the system.”
AFC team president: “It probably just brings it even more top of mind—bit of a wake-up call to what can happen if you’re not proactively monitoring it. I know integrity of the game is a top priority for Roger [Goodell], so I don’t think the NFL hasn’t been on top of it, but the NBA thing will amplify the need to stay on top of it.”
I did ask the second NFC team president if it made sense to ban player props, on a better-safe-than-sorry premise. He surmised that the union probably wouldn’t sign off on that.
“Teams and the leagues are all making too much money from legalized betting to follow old rules,” he texted. “I agree it’s a problem, but too late now. I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that the NFL compliance is much higher than the other leagues [since there’s] much more betting on our games than other sports.”
In other words, this is their new world. And the NBA situation is probably just the start of the rest of us seeing what’s inside Pandora’s box. Which, in an interesting twist, we’re now getting to do in part because the legal form of gambling is much easier to track than the illegal kind.
Weird how that’s worked.
Quick-hitters
The quick-hitters are hitting right now. Away we go …
• The Ravens are 2–5 and in better shape than you think. If they beat the Dolphins on Thursday, they’ll have the mini-bye to get Lamar Jackson and everyone else healthier, then they’ll play the Vikings, Browns and Jets. The Minnesota matchup is thorny. The other two, less so. So the idea of running off four straight isn’t out of line here, and that would put Baltimore at 6–5 heading into the Thanksgiving-night game against the Bengals. And if the Ravens can just sneak into the bracket, with the talent they have …
• You’d say the same thing about the Bengals, had they not just laid a dinosaur egg against the Jets. Still, they have the Bears, Steelers (whom they already beat) and Patriots before that Thanksgiving game, too. So they could also be 6–5, if they can find a way not to vanish like they did down the stretch Sunday.
• Drake Maye is creeping into the MVP conversation. That he was able to throw for 282 yards, three touchdowns and a 135.8 passer rating on a day during which Myles Garrett sacked him five times is pretty incredible. Patrick Mahomes would be my MVP right now. But Maye’s in the mix after that, with guys such as Baker Mayfield and Jared Goff.
• I said this on Twitter Sunday night: I’d feel worse for Garrett if he didn’t say what he did about wanting to go to a winner in February, only to take $40 million per year to stay in Cleveland, knowing it wasn’t the best place to go trophy chasing. I actually think the Browns have a decent plan in motion now, but it’s going to take time. And Garrett’s turning 30 in two months.
• Kirk Cousins didn’t look great on Sunday, and that Falcons team is impossible to get a great read on. Atlanta goes to New England next.
• I don’t have hard proof on this, but it sure feels to me like players, and quarterbacks in particular, are being handled more carefully this year than ever before. It’s a byproduct of having a 17-game season, and will only get worse if/when an 18-game slate is introduced, and the league sees it as a problem behind closed doors. Why? Because every game is a piece of real estate the owners are trying to sell, and the idea that teams are increasingly “load managing” their players affects that real estate’s value.
• The Broncos are becoming so coldly efficient that they really don’t need Bo Nix to be a star to win most of their games. But if you’re really paying attention, you can see the progress, maybe most visibly in how he’s incorporating rookies such as Pat Bryant and RJ Harvey into the offense.
• The Bucs took the Saints apart methodically on Sunday, and New Orleans wound up turning to rookie Tyler Shough, whose audition for the job in 2026 probably starts right now.
• Maybe it’s just me, but I think the fact that DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown combined for 300 yards and Jalen Hurts had a perfect passer rating last week against the Vikings, and this week the Eagles turned around and rushed for 276 yards against the Giants, should be terrifying to opponents. That’s the type of team—one that has the most answers—that dominates in the playoffs.
• We’re still a ways off from the NFL coaching carousel spinning, but it already looks like it’s going to be a wild December and January in the industry with LSU, Florida and Penn State already open in the college ranks.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Week 8 NFL Takeaways: How People Are Looking at the Colts the Wrong Way.