Winners and Losers of week 9 of the NFL season

Welcome back one and all to another instalment of winners and losers. This week officially marks the halfway point of the NFL season. We now stand at a critical point where teams are either fighting tooth and nail to be a playoff/SB contender whilst others should be preparing their draft notes early, figuring out the staffing situations for next year and piecing together a plan to fix the team. With all that said, this is going to be an extremely brief winners and losers column for the week simply because I wasn’t able to watch many of the games nor will I have time to this week. As such, I’ll be focusing on an update to the power rankings column whilst doing a quick winners and losers column here.

Winners: Jets-Seahawks-Titans (the scary potential playoff team no one wants to see), Bears (the underdog trap game)

I sorely wish I could watch this game and figure out exactly what the hell happened. Whilst the Jets clearly have a great defensive line and Sauce Gardner is going to be the defensive rookie of the year with absolute ease, none of that explains how they were able to beat the Bills despite producing little offensively. Zach Wilson continues to be unremarkable but if we’ve learned anything this season, it’s that it’s far too early to be writing him as the answer at QB. Credit must go to the Jets defence who seemed sacked Josh Allen 5 times, the most this season. Allen was also picked off twice (once by Sauce) and has now thrown an INT in 4 of his past 5 games. The win now brings the Jets to just one game back in a stacked AFC East race with Josh Allen hurt and at risk of missing time. There now exists a possibility in which the Jets win the division which seemed like a ludicrous thing to say prior to this game.

Another week, another convincing win by the Geno led Seahawks. It’s hard to even say Geno’s performances are surprising anymore given this is exactly who he’s been in almost every game this season. Despite getting 0 respect from oddsmakers, this Seattle team continues to play consistent football, winning their 4th straight and completing the season sweep of the Cardinals. I caught a bit of this game and was able to witness Geno respond to a pick six by marching down the field three straight drives that resulted in a TD. It’s the exclamation point in Geno’s bid for not just comeback player of the year, but an MVP bid as well. It’s likely he takes the latter given the season Mahomes is having but the fact this is even a point of topic is yet another absurd surprise in a season full of them. Through the halfway point of the season, there’s only a handful of other QB’s playing at the same level as him. Kenneth Walker continues to be a standout as well, grabbing another two TD’s, giving him 7 on the year whilst scoring one in each of his past 5 games. Seattle now seem poised to capture and take control of the NFC West given the failures of the Cardinals and Rams.

Last but not least amongst the scary teams no one wants to see in the playoffs is the Titans. Now I won’t sit here and bullshit you. I was far from a believer in this squad. I don’t think I’ve included them in the winners column once this year despite having only lost 2 games entering week 9. The explanation for this was a pretty simple one though. They had won off the backs of beating up on their abysmal division. Their most impressive performance to this point had been….. the Texans given they started Malik Willis I suppose? It’s honestly difficult to find a win you’d be convinced by. Meanwhile in their two losses, they got smoked by the Bills in week two and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against the Giants in week one. Even disregarding this weeks loss to KC, they still possessed a negative point differential despite being 5-2. With all that said, why on earth have I included them in the winners column for the first time ever despite actually losing? Well because this was clearly their best performance and should be the first line in coach Mike Vrabel’s resume if he's ever somehow fired. Despite trotting out a rookie QB who threw for 80 yards on 5-16 passing, they not only kept the game close, but were in the lead for a large chunk of the game. Tenesse even had the chance to win the game late in regulation and OT but you can only get so far with a QB who’s a long way away from ever becoming a quality backup, let alone starter. King Henry continues his reign as the months get colder and it seems all but certain at this point that the Titans will win the division yet again and prove to be a scary playoff team once Tanehill returns. They aren’t a conventional football team, not by any stretch of the imagination. But they’re extremely well coached who make few mistakes and will play tight football games regardless of the calibre of opponent.

I know what your saying “you haven’t had a loser in the winners column since week one and now you have two in the same week, are you joking”. No dear reader, I am not joking for once again we have an impressive losing team who have proven to be a lot more than we thought they were. My burial of the Bears after week four has been well covered at this point so there’s little point in rehashing the past. Instead, let’s focus upon how the Bears have gone from a team who pined for the era of Jay Cutler to the team who now thinks they possess a new and improved Lamar Jackson. Once again, the Bears lost a game in which it’s offence was highly productive but lost because the defence leaked more than the dam of Isengard at the end of the Two Towers. It’s probably one of the most amusing box scores you’ll ever stumble upon. Fields didn’t even throw for 130 yards but had three passing TD’s which you can’t help but laugh at. Miami likely weren’t laughing at the record setting rushing performance of Fields however. He ran 15 times for 178 yards and a score, averaging almost 12 YPC despite double digit carries. He was the Bears entire offence this game and had a chance to tie the game or send it into OT but couldn’t. This was the result of taking an inopportune sack on back to back drives, something he’ll have to learn and adapt to moving forward lest he inherit the worst traits of Lamar. As it stands, the Bears have lost 5 of their last 6 but oddly enough have such a great sense of optimism moving forward. The race for the division title is almost certainly lost but it’s now become a season purely focused upon the development on Fields for the future.

Losers: Vegas, Packers, Rams- The death of playoff aspirations.

It may only be November but April can’t come soon enough for these teams (well, except for the Rams). For the one AFC team on this list, their loss saw them fall to 2-6 whilst possessing a 17 point lead. It’s the third instance this season that the Raiders blew a 17 point lead and yet it isn’t even their most embarrassing loss in the past month. Just last week Vegas not only lost by 24 points, they got shut out and didn’t cross the 50 yard line until the final garbage time drive of the game. Even when they were leading 17-0  against a team who shoots themselves in the foot almost as often as Vegas does, it never seemed like a convincing lead. Indeed it wasn’t as after gaining that large lead, the Jags scored points on their next four possessions whilst Vegas got shutout in the 2nd half. They had 4 possessions in the 4th quarter and barely even sniffed FG range throughout all of them. Carr had just 36 yards in the 2nd half as this team saw any glimpse of playoff aspirations wither and die. As they look to April, they must now reconsider their HC, the GM, the QB all while trying to rebuild the offensive line.

Green Bay has become has replaced Denver in the weekly losers column it seems. They’re now the losers of 5 straight games and ust when it seems like the play from Rodgers can’t get any worse, it does. This time around, it was 3 red zone INT’s that gave the Packers their lowest scoring game all season despite playing the worst defence in the NFL (by far). This Lions defence at it’s best surrendered 24 points and had averaged over 30 points heading into the game. But in playing against the dragon Aaron Rodgers, had held to just 9 points. Even the run game wasn’t working as Rodgers wound up being the leading rusher as Aaron Jones and AJ Dillion both averaged under 3.5 YPC. Two of their past three games were meant to serve as “get right games”. Instead, they’ve lost them both in comically disappointing fashion and face a brutal part of the schedule that could potentially see them go on an 8 game losing streak before their bye. Even the Bears who this squad typically owns, is now far from a guaranteed victory. The Vikings have all but sealed the division at this point. It’s unbelievable that the idea of throwing out Jordan Love for the rest of the season to see how he fairs no longer seems like an insane notion. I know I’ve been premature on the death sentence this season but it would be remarkable if GB were somehow able to dig themselves out of the grave they find themselves in.

Last of the agenda for today is the reigning, defending, undisputed SB champions from last season. It was clear from the first game this season that the Rams weren’t going to be that same team. Whilst they kept it close in the first half against the Bills, that was in spite of the Bills turning it over 3 times. Since then, the story has been core star players still playing an incredibly high level whilst all the surrounding pieces have faltered. That didn’t change against Tampa this week. Kupp was once again incredible. Bobby Wagner, Ramsey and Donald all helped keep this game to an abysmally low score. But you can’t score 13 points and expect to win, even against a Tampa team that’s plagued with it’s own issues. The game appeared to be a rather dull one up until the final drive of the game as each team only managed to score a single TD. Unfortunately for the Rams, the Bucs happened to have theirs on the final drive of the game as Brady looked like a discount version of the vintage Brady we’ve seen throughout his career. It was still janky and a little ugly but they got it done with just 9 seconds to spare.

Stafford was unremarkable yet again and has failed to produce a comprehensive performance all season. It’s hard to blame him though given the inept offensive line that can neither pass nor run block. Kupp is now his only option on offence and it’s not like Stafford played at a sky high level last year during their SB run. This Rams squad are in the bottom third of just about every offensive metric there is and it’s hard not to lay some of the blame at Mcvay’s feet given what other coaches have done this season with sub optimal talent. Their remaining schedule is a mixed bag of easier and extremely difficult games. While they’re only three games of Seattle and only a game behind the 49ers, it’s tough to see a path for a playoff appearance given how stacked the NFC appears to be.

That’s going to do it for the winners and losers’ column this week. Apologies for the abbreviated version of it but I couldn’t watch as many games as normal nor did I have the time this week to put in the hours catching up on the games. Hopefully an updated form of the power rankings will come out on Sunday. Until then, I’ll catch you next time