The Cowboys’ offense couldn’t find any traction in a huge loss to the Broncos, and the Bills couldn’t score a single touchdown in a wild loss to the Jaguars.
Baltimore took Minnesota to overtime after a back-and-forth game, and the Ravens moved to 6-2 after a Justin Tucker game winner.
Plus, they each look at the bigger picture with their current team confidence rating — a 0-10 grade of how they feel about the team’s outlook coming out of the week.
But we’ll know the Chiefs have arrived defensively if they get similar results against Las Vegas’ Derek Carr and Dallas’ Dak Prescott in the next two weeks.
What are the Chiefs’ chances for making the playoffs? At 5-4, they are over .500 for the first time since winning the season opener and are just a half-game behind the Chargers and Raiders, both 5-3, in the AFC West.
The Packers’ defense gave Love chance after chance, even if the special teams did the opposite with two missed field goals show enough to make the Packers feel good about turning things over to Love next season if this is indeed Aaron Rodgers’ last season in Green Bay.
Not that Rodgers needs much, if any, practice at this point in his career, but if you believe continuity and consistency matters in sports, then this loss could be even more damaging.
The Packers had looked like a legitimate 7-1 team and showed their 38-3 loss to the New Orleans Saints in the opener was so far in the rear-view mirror that they could barely see it.
They dominated the Niners on both sides of the ball, but putting up 30 points for the seventh time this season wasn’t expected with so many missing pieces.
Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph has put together a defense that can both complement a powerful offense and carry a team when needed.
Weinfuss’ confidence rating : 9, up from 8.2.
San Francisco’s defense again failed to generate a turnover and whiffed on many tackles, while the offense couldn’t get out of its own way with a pair of costly first-half turnovers.
Will the 49ers ever win at Levi’s Stadium again? Maybe? Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals was their eighth straight at home dating to last season and dropped them to 0-4 in 2021 in Santa Clara.
What to know: The Los Angeles Chargers won their fifth game on a 29-yard field goal by Dustin Hopkins whom they signed during the bye week.
What will the Chargers do about their decimated secondary? It hurt them against the Eagles to be without Asante Samuel Jr.
Defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon is willing to give up passes underneath in order to take away the big play, but quarterbacks are happily taking what’s given to them and are having a field day.
It’s to be determined whether coach Nick Sirianni will stick to the run consistently when there’s more resistance on the other end.
With one of the easiest closing schedules in the NFL, they should remain in wild card contention for the better part of the season.
Down by 14 points early in the second half, Jackson rallied the Ravens with his arm and legs, throwing three touchdown passes and rushing for over 100 yards.
In the first quarter this season, Baltimore has scored a total of 24 points and has reached the end zone only once in the past six games.
The Ravens showed grit to come back against the Vikings, especially after getting embarrassed by the Bengals before the bye.
Minnesota’s defense was absolutely gassed by the time overtime rolled around, having been on the field for nearly 45 minutes, and it couldn’t get a stop once the Ravens got the ball back.
Bynum is still learning how to play the position after four years spent at cornerback in college, but he came away with a diving interception he returned 27 yards to set up the Vikings’ offense inside Baltimore’s red zone late in the first half.
It feels like the same story, with the Vikings’ offense sputtering and the defense failing to get stops at critical times, is bound to repeat itself.
What to know: It was one of their sloppiest games of the season, but the Dolphins did enough to beat a hapless Texans team — even without starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Will Tua Tagovailoa be available against the Ravens? After being limited in practice throughout the week with a fractured finger on his throwing hand, Tagovailoa was relegated to the Dolphins’ emergency quarterback Sunday.
They were good enough to beat the Texans, but I’m not sure how many other teams Miami would’ve beaten today.
One of the reasons rookie quarterback Davis Mills struggled in relief during Taylor’s absence was because he had trouble protecting the football, but Taylor had the same problem Sunday.
It was only one game — and Mills struggled at times in his six starts — but will Culley stick with the veteran quarterback if he no longer feels like he gives Houston the best chance to win? Taylor likely has at least a few games after the bye before Culley would put Mills back in.
Atlanta got the ball back with 1:01 left, and Matt Ryan connected with the team’s best offensive weapon, Cordarrelle Patterson, for 64 yards, and Younghoe Koo kicked the game-winning field goal, giving Atlanta a 27-25 win over New Orleans.
And considering what the team’s past has largely been known for, perhaps that’s not a bad start for Atlanta as it tries to reconstruct the culture of the Falcons.
What to know: A crushing loss for the Saints after they rallied back from a 24-6 deficit over the final 10 minutes to take a brief lead — only to squander it in the final minute by allowing a 64-yard pass to Cordarrelle Patterson.
Will the Saints consider switching to Taysom Hill But the Saints need to get Taysom Hill more involved in a package of plays, at the very least, after he provided a spark during a small sample in the fourth quarter.
Then it ended with both the offense and defense showing some warts on the field — though they did make things awfully exciting in the end.
He still held a perfect quarterback rating of 158.3 in the third quarter as the Browns became the first team since 2012 with three touchdown plays of 60 yards or more.
Can the Browns rekindle their 2020 formula? This time last year in the same stadium, Cleveland turned its season around almost immediately after Beckham was lost for the year with a knee injury.
It continued a rough stretch that started in Week 8 against the New York Jets, when Cincinnati surrendered points on the Jets’ final five possessions.
While things have looked awful lately, with Cincinnati entering the bye week, the Bengals still have eight games to figure things out.
What to know: Beating the top team in the AFC despite missing left tackle Cam Robinson and running back James Robinson — especially after playing so poorly last week in Seattle — is a major step forward in the rebuild for a franchise that can’t seem to get out of its own way.
DiRocco’s confidence rating : 4, up from 1.9.
Going into the fourth quarter, Allen had been pressured on 14 of 38 dropbacks and went 2-of-9 passing for 9 yards, one interception, three sacks and two scrambles.
Can the penalty issues be fixed? The defense had a fine day overall, holding the Jaguars to nine points and allowing quarterback Trevor Lawrence to convert just 2 of 12 third downs.
The team that beat the Cowboys on Sunday fought off a long list of in-game injuries — including an ankle injury to guard Graham Glasgow and a knee injury to TE Albert Okwuegbunam — to play the kind of grind-it-out game they’re equipped to play, especially on offense.
The Broncos will have to get the ball out of Bridgewater’s hands more quickly, more often and do their best to keep him out of harm’s way.
OK, two wins in a row with this one on the road over the Dallas Cowboys shows this team has some grit.
He was intercepted once but did throw two touchdown passes to Malik Turner — though the touchdowns came in the fourth quarter when the outcome had already been decided.
The Broncos had more than that in the first half and finished with 192 yards, by far a season high.
Archer’s confidence rating : 8.4, down from 9.6. Maybe later in the season when the Cowboys are enjoying a long playoff ride, they will look back at this game as an anomaly.
And maybe most importantly for the future of the franchise, quarterback Daniel Jones is doing what is necessary under adverse conditions to win games.
Is it possible for them all to be healthy post-bye? It would give the Giants a much better opportunity to truly evaluate Jones, even if the offensive line has its deficiencies.
What to know: Derek Carr said it was going to be hard to compartmentalize, given the week of emotions the Raiders experienced with former receiver Henry Ruggs III cut and facing felony DUI and reckless driving charges after he was involved in a car crash that killed a woman and her dog.
After a pre-bye 5-2 start, the Raiders play host to the potentially resurgent Kansas City Chiefs in a Sunday night game in Las Vegas.
And again, not to minimize anything, but we’ve all seen this movie before, a blah post-bye game and late-season collapse.
Most impressive from the Patriots’ defense — which opened in a base 3-4 — was how it stopped the run and bottled up running back Christian McCaffrey in his return from injured reserve.
It seems unlikely the Patriots would claim Beckham on waivers due to his salary, but if Beckham clears and becomes a free agent at a lower cost, they should at least explore the possibility.
Even with Christian McCaffrey back in a limited role, the quarterback continued to make the kind of poor decisions that lose games.
Walker the rest of the season? They should, but it spoke volumes about what they think of Walker by starting Darnold on Sunday after he was limited all week in practice .
With the defense struggling, the Colts may have to rely even more on the running game to keep the opposing offense on the sideline.
Imagine what Josh Allen, Tom Brady, Derek Carr and Kyler Murray could do against a Colts defense that continues to rely more on forcing turnovers than getting off the field on third down.
You can’t say the Colts are turning the corner when they couldn’t dominate the Jets from start to finish.
But one trend is becoming clear: The defense, exposed in Thursday night’s 45-30 loss to the Colts, is light-years away from being a winning unit.