Winners and Losers of the NFL Week 7

Every week this NFL season, we will break down the highs and lows—and everything in between—from the most recent slate of pro football. This week, we’ve learned to stop questioning the seemingly unstoppable Colts, Bo Nix delivered another wild fourth-quarter comeback, the Raiders offense flopped in historic fashion, Mike Vrabel got the last laugh in Tennessee, and more. Welcome to Winners and Losers.

Winner: The Colts’ Super Bowl Stock

The Colts are the best team in football. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. At least statistically speaking. After a 38-24 dismantling of the Chargers on Sunday, Indianapolis owns the NFL’s best record with a league-best plus-92 point differential. Since 2000, only 15 teams have outscored opponents by more points through the first seven weeks of the season. The Colts are in a four-way tie for the 16th-best mark with the 2001 Rams, the 2019 49ers, and the 2023 49ers—and all three of those teams made the Super Bowl. The Colts are no longer just the fun surprise team. Shane Steichen’s squad is playing like a legit championship contender, and it’s time we start treating them as such in what looks like a wide-open AFC.

We’ve all been waiting for the other shoe to drop for the Colts offense, which has sparked the team’s dominant performance in the first half of the season, but that decline may not be coming. Its success isn’t based on a gimmicky scheme that will eventually get figured out as defensive coaches gather more film on Steichen’s team. The success is built on the same foundation that has propped up every great offense we’ve seen in the modern era of the sport: a reliably efficient ground game married to an explosively efficient passing attack. As quarterback Daniel Jones said after Sunday’s win, the Colts aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary from a schematic standpoint—they’re just executing at a higher level than their opponents.

Steichen is also reminding everyone why he was so highly thought of as a head coaching candidate after a successful stint as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator. He just needed a quarterback he could trust to execute a game plan. Hell, he couldn’t trust his quarterback to complete a screen pass over his first two seasons. Sunday gave us another Steichen master class in game-planning and play calling. The Colts got whatever they wanted in the run game, with Jonathan Taylor following his blockers as they plowed through the first and second levels of the Chargers defense. Per Next Gen Stats, Taylor averaged a season-high 2.6 yards before contact.

That set up Jones for success in the passing game, with a big helping hand from Steichen’s play designs. Even when the Colts did fall behind the chains, Steichen dialed up a play that broke the rules of Los Angeles’s matchup zone coverages and sprung a receiver wide open. The best example came on a third-and-17 conversion:

The design had Michael Pittman Jr., the receiver at the bottom of the screen, run a deep stop route that occupied the attention of the outside cornerback responsible for the deep third of the field, which unlocked that area for Alec Pierce’s deep corner route. What looked like a coverage bust was really just the result of a meticulously planned and well-timed play call from Steichen.

That was one of 10 explosive plays the Colts racked up on Sunday against a Chargers defense that sells out to limit them—and is usually pretty effective at doing so.

That’s what great offenses and championship-caliber teams do. They impose their will on opponents. While it’s still too early to call this offense great, at least in historical terms, that’s the pace it has set through seven games. Indianapolis is averaging 3.46 points per drive, per TruMedia. That would be the highest mark ever for any team by a comfortable margin. The 2007 Patriots offense that set the league’s scoring record averaged 3.19 points per drive. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to keep this pace up, but after watching how they’ve done it for the past two months, nobody should be surprised if they don’t slow down much for the remainder of the season. —Steven Ruiz

Winner: Fourth-Quarter Bo Nix

We should have known when Broncos receiver Troy Franklin caught a touchdown on a pass that had been intended for—and deflected by—teammate Courtland Sutton 46 seconds into the fourth quarter that shit was about to get real weird in Denver.

Through three quarters, the Broncos had been shut out by the Giants, 19-0. Quarterback Bo Nix struggled with his deep ball and was being thoroughly outplayed by New York’s Jaxson Dart, as the Giants built their lead by exploiting rare breakdowns in Denver’s defensive coverage.

But as the Eagles learned two weeks ago, Nix has a knack for becoming an entirely different quarterback in the fourth quarter. His touchdown pass to Franklin—albeit an unconventional one—was just the start.

The Broncos scored 33 points in that wild final quarter and escaped with a 33-32 win, as Wil Lutz’s 39-yard kick was good as time expired. If you’re a Broncos fan, it was possibly the most entertaining and exhilarating (or, if you’re a Giants fan or player, the most frustrating) 15 minutes of football of the season. So, what happened? How exactly did the Broncos pull this off? What weird moments did you miss? Let’s get into it:

Somehow, Franklin’s touchdown was not the only score off a deflected pass in the quarter! Less than four minutes later, Dart’s short pass over the middle of the field was tipped—right to tight end Theo Johnson, who ran past Denver’s defense for a 41-yard score that gave the Giants a 26-8 lead with more than 10 minutes remaining.

Nix led three consecutive touchdown drives—the second and third of which each took less than a minute. Nix scored two of those three touchdowns by running it in himself. With just under two minutes to go, Denver had its first lead, at 30-26.

The Giants’ ensuing drive was nearly a disaster: Dart took a sack on first down, missed receiver Jalin Hyatt on second down, and took a delay of game on third down before missing a deep throw to Wan’Dale Robinson. But on fourth-and-19, an impossible down and distance for any quarterback, let alone a rookie in his third start, Dart hit Robinson for a 19-yard gain. The Giants added 15 yards on top of that after Denver’s John Franklin-Myers was flagged for roughing the passer.

The Broncos defense forced the Giants into third-and-long once again, but Denver cornerback Riley Moss was called for defensive pass interference on a deep incomplete pass, giving the Giants the ball at the 1-yard line. Broncos head coach Sean Payton was so incensed by the penalty call that he went onto the field near the end zone to argue with the officials, drawing a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Dart dived for the end zone on the next play. Officials originally ruled that Dart was stopped short, but replay review showed that Dart stretched the ball across the goal line before his knee was down. With 40 seconds remaining, the Giants had the lead once again, but—and this is important—kicker Jude McAtamney missed the extra point. (He is a kicker who wears no. 99. This sort of thing was bound to happen!)

There were 33 seconds on the clock when Nix took over, with no timeouts. He quickly found Marvin Mims Jr. for 29 yards and Courtland Sutton for 22 yards (with a defensive encroachment on the Giants sandwiched in between) to set up Lutz’s game-winner.

Nix threw for 174 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for 46 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and he emerged from the game as a hero for the Broncos on a day when their defense was uncharacteristically shaky. But this is a risky way for Payton’s Broncos to live—even if they’ve established themselves as a dangerous fourth-quarter team after coming back from double-digit deficits to beat the Eagles and Giants. Waiting till the fourth quarter might be working for Nix so far, but it probably won’t work forever. —Lindsay Jones

Loser: Mike McDaniel

If the Dolphins plan on ending the Mike McDaniel era at some point this season, this might be the appropriate time. The offensive performance in Sunday’s 31-6 loss to the Browns was even uglier than that final score implies. By EPA, it was the unit’s worst game since McDaniel took over as head coach in 2022.[1] It was also the worst game of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s career by EPA, and he was mercifully pulled from the game after his third interception ended any chance of a comeback.

It’s fitting that this rock-bottom moment came on a rainy, windy day in Cleveland. McDaniel’s Dolphins have never been suited to play in those types of conditions. Even when it was at its dynamic peak two years ago, McDaniel’s offense could really only play one way, and when defenses have been able to take away passing windows in the middle of the field and limit explosives in the run game like the Browns did on Sunday, Miami’s offense has sputtered. The scheme and the personnel aren’t built to grind out games, and Tagovailoa doesn’t have the skill set to play efficiently in poor weather. After the game, McDaniel said Miami will change its “style of play” if needed. Even if that were possible at this point in the season, it’s about two years too late.

The inability to adapt has been McDaniel’s biggest failure as a play caller, but it doesn’t fully explain his failure as a head coach. The never-ending talk about the need for a culture change—which dates back to McDaniel’s first season in Miami, when the ping-pong table was removed from the locker room to improve focus—has been the biggest red flag in his first (and maybe only) head coaching stint. After players and coaches spent the last two offseasons discussing the need to improve the culture, the issue now seems to be bigger than ever. After last week’s loss to the Chargers, Tagovailoa revealed that members of the team were still showing up late to player-sanctioned meetings. It’s hard to say what’s worse: that Tagovailoa felt the need to put that out there or that showing up on time for meetings is still an issue after it was made a point of emphasis during this year’s round of offseason culture talks.

McDaniel’s capacity to lead an NFL locker room was questioned even when things were going well in Miami, but he always had a productive offense to point to as proof that he could do the job. Now, even that’s gone by the wayside. The Dolphins rank 25th in EPA per play, 29th in success rate, and 22nd in explosive play rate. Resurrecting Tagovailoa’s career had been the crowning achievement of McDaniel’s time in Miami, but the quarterback is now playing even worse than he did under Brian Flores. And after a 1-6 start to this season, McDaniel’s career record has fallen back to .500, and it might be in everyone’s best interest to end this whole thing now before his record dips into the red and the offense falls farther down the statistical charts.

We may have to wait a few days—or even a few weeks—before the official end of McDaniel’s tenure, but Sunday will be remembered as the day it came to its spiritual end. —Ruiz

Winner: Mike Vrabel’s Revenge Game

By the end of the Patriots’ 31-13 win against the Titans, a solid constituency of New England fans in the stands was loud enough that chants of “Vra-bel! Vra-bel!” rang through Nissan Stadium. That sums up Mike Vrabel’s return to Tennessee to face the team that, despite his 56-48 record over six years, fired him at the end of the 2023 season. And less than a week ago, the Titans fired Brian Callahan, the man they hired as Vrabel’s replacement.

Before Sunday’s game, Vrabel had downplayed the significance of the Week 7 revenge subplot. “We’re not trying to win one for the Gipper here,” the first-year Patriots coach said. (Mike, none of your players know this reference.)

But Vrabel is probably right—mostly because the Patriots are currently playing for prizes better than revenge. After the win against the Titans, New England is 5-2, in first place in the AFC East, and on a four-game winning streak. Drake Maye, whose 21-for-23 passing day set a Patriots record for completion percentage in a game with at least 20 attempts—a relatively trivial accomplishment until you remember that the previous record holder was Tom Brady—is blossoming as a second-year quarterback. It’s still early in the season, and New England has had the benefit of an easy schedule, but the Patriots are currently barreling toward the playoffs, and Vrabel is in what looks like a two-man race with Shane Steichen for Coach of the Year.

For the Titans, at least the timing of Callahan’s firing early last week saved them the embarrassment of watching him lose to Vrabel head-to-head. Interim head coach Mike McCoy may have lightly tweaked the offense to try to better play to quarterback Cam Ward’s strengths, adding more play-action and getting off to a faster start, but the Titans don’t have a competitive roster right now, and they finally seem to know that. According to Dianna Russini of The Athletic, Tennessee is open to trade offers for any player other than Ward and star defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons (who injured his hamstring on Sunday). That Vrabel’s surprising firing came, at least in part, as a reaction to his anger over how the roster had been dismantled over the years seems a tad ironic now. Tennessee is in line for a full rebuild, but Vrabel has New England ahead of schedule. —Nora Princiotti

Loser: The Raiders’ Nonexistent Offense

Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs delivered a vintage offensive performance in Rashee Rice’s season debut (he was previously serving a six-game suspension for his role in a serious multicar crash in 2024), cruising to a 31-0 win against the Raiders. The Chiefs offense was humming right away, with long, methodical drives that seemed to crush the Raiders’ spirit well before halftime. Rice caught his first touchdown of the season at the end of the Chiefs’ nine-play, 92-yard drive. He caught a second touchdown just before halftime, the capper to a 16-play, 94-yard drive. In between those possessions, the Chiefs had a 17-play, 84-yard scoring drive.

By the time the game was over, the Chiefs had 30 first downs, the second most by any team in a game this season. That figure is impressive enough on its own, but then compare the Chiefs to the Raiders, who had just three first downs—the fewest in any game this season by a considerable margin (the dreadful Titans even managed seven in their Week 1 loss to Denver). [2] But that was far from the only ignominious stat for the Raiders:

By EPA added per play, it was the worst performance by an offense in a game this season. Yes, worse than that Jake Browning Bengals game against the Vikings.

The Raiders’ offensive success rate on the day was just 14.3 percent—nearly 7 percentage points worse than the second-place team (the Dolphins, on Sunday against Cleveland).

Las Vegas ran just 30 offensive plays—the fewest in a game since at least 2000, and three fewer than the Carson Wentz–led Chiefs in Week 18 last season.

The Raiders had the ball for just 17 minutes and 52 seconds, the lowest time of possession for an offense this season (no other team is below 21 minutes). Quite an easy day’s work for the Chiefs defense.

In many ways, this game was reminiscent of Chiefs-Raiders games from early in Mahomes’s tenure as a starting quarterback, when Kansas City won by scores like 35-3 and 40-9. Kansas City laid the foundation of its dynasty by throttling its divisional opponents and has won the AFC West for nine consecutive seasons. A 10th straight crown is starting to feel inevitable.

The Chiefs are now 4-3, one game back of the Broncos. They are tied with the Chargers (though L.A. owns the head-to-head tiebreaker thanks to its win in Week 1), but unlike the Chargers, the Chiefs are trending way up. With Rice fully in the fold and clearly healthy for the first time in nearly a year, it feels like it won’t be long before the Chiefs are back in control of the division. —Jones

Winner: Philadelphia’s Offensive Solutions

For the first time since the Super Bowl in February, the Eagles offense stopped playing scared. The football gods repaid that courage with a 28-22 win over the Vikings that Philadelphia desperately needed.

The Eagles offense is at its best when it is able to push the ball downfield, when Jalen Hurts is able to attack mismatches for receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. That tandem combined for 304 yards and three touchdowns against the Vikings, a reminder to the rest of the league (and their own coaching staff, probably) that there is no better pair of receivers out there—and the Eagles’ best chance to build a Super Bowl–caliber offense this season is to feature them. If offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo ever has a second thought about creating an aggressive game plan in the future, he should just rewatch the film from this game.

Hurts capitalized on Patullo’s play calling and delivered what might have been the best game of his career (and that’s including his pair of excellent Super Bowl performances). Hurts finished with a perfect 158.3 passer rating for the first time in his career and threw for 326 passing yards and three scores. And he was able to show off just how much he’s improved his pre-snap processing, tearing up Minnesota’s blitzes throughout Sunday’s game. Against the blitz specifically, he completed 10 of 12 passes for 220 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Philadelphia had no offensive identity for the first two months of the season. It’s like Patullo was trying out one style after another to no avail, and this week he finally accepted that there’s no need to change what’s worked for years. The threat that Hurts can deliver the deep ball to Brown and Smith is what makes magic for the offense, and once that’s working, the run game will open up for Hurts and running back Saquon Barkley once again, even if that wasn’t the case against Minnesota.

Philadelphia may have stumbled into an offensive innovation on Sunday as well: putting Hurts under center more often. The Eagles ran 20 plays from under center, tied for the second most in a single game in Hurts’s career. Minnesota sold out to stop Barkley, and Hurts used play-action out of those under-center looks to amass 129 yards on just four throws. If under-center passes become a real part of this offense, Philadelphia can put to bed any accusations of the offense being too predictable.

This offense is back, and it was too talented to ever be as mediocre as it was in the first six weeks of the year. Now that we know this team is capable of dominating its opponent, even without its run game, I can stand by my feeling that no fan should accept performances below Philadelphia’s standard of excellence. —Diante Lee

Loser: Jacksonville and its Unforced Errors

The Jaguars knew they had to stop beating themselves after last week’s loss to the Seahawks. Then they flew to London and did it all over again, dropping a 35-7 stinker to the Rams at Wembley Stadium.

Jacksonville committed 13 penalties for 119 yards—pushing their league-leading average to 9.3 penalties per game. That tally included a block-in-the-back flag that negated a Parker Washington punt return touchdown and a rare double-penalty on Jourdan Lewis, who committed both pass interference and a face mask with one swipe of the hand. That's back-to-back weeks the Jags had a touchdown wiped off the board by penalty … and the self-inflicted wounds didn't stop there. The Jags dropped four passes against the Rams, giving them a league-high 20 drops on the season. Kicker Cam Little missed a 50-yarder after missing both a field goal and an extra point against Seattle last week. Little now has four missed field goals in seven games.

There were also multiple plays where quarterback Trevor Lawrence wasn’t on the same page with his receivers, which has been a theme all season—especially with second-year wideout Brian Thomas Jr., who caught three balls for 31 yards on seven targets with two drops before leaving late in the fourth quarter with an apparent shoulder injury. The 2024 first-rounder posted over 1,200 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, but Thomas has been a shell of himself in year two. Head coach Liam Coen wanted to get no. 2 pick Travis Hunter more involved in the offense this week, but he couldn't get him going until the game was already getting away from the Jags in the second half. Hunter recorded career-highs in catches (eight) and yards (101) and scored his first career touchdown—all after the Jags were already trailing 21-0.

But just as troubling as these repeated unforced errors is that Jacksonville’s offensive line and defense have both taken a step back over the last two weeks. After being pressured at the third-lowest rate in the league through Week 5, Lawrence has been pressured at the third-highest rate over the last two weeks. Against the Rams, Lawrence completed just 23-of-48 passes for 296 yards while taking seven sacks. On the other side of the ball, after forcing 14 turnovers through the first five games—four more than any other team—Jacksonville has failed to record a takeaway in back-to-back weeks.

The Jaguars have their bye next week and the hapless Las Vegas Raiders after that, giving them some much-needed time to self-scout and clean things up. But it won't matter who they play if they continue to shoot themselves in the foot with penalties, drops, and whatever other boneheaded miscues they come up with next. —Austin Gayle

Losers: Beleaguered Quarterbacks

With injuries to Bryce Young and Jayden Daniels, plus benchings for the uncompetitive Geno Smith, Tua Tagovailoa, and Justin Fields, it was a tough day for many of the league’s beleaguered quarterbacks. This meant on Sunday we saw Quinn Ewers, Kenny Pickett, Andy Dalton, Tyrod Taylor, and Marcus Mariota play meaningful snaps. (We also saw less meaningful snaps from Joshua Dobbs—who completed one pass while Drake Maye got checked for a concussion—and Gardner Minshew, who did clean-up duty for the Chiefs.)

Daniels injured his right hamstring on a fumble in the third quarter of Washington’s 44-22 loss to the Cowboys, but Mike Florio reported on Football Night in America that the injury is not considered serious, and it is notable that Daniels’s knee injury from earlier this season was on the other leg. Even before the hamstring injury, it was a disappointing afternoon for Daniels. The usually hyper-efficient quarterback completed just 54.5 percent of his passes and the offense scored on just two of the eight full drives in which he played.

Young, meanwhile, injured his right ankle taking a sack in the third quarter. He reportedly has an ankle sprain that leaves his status in doubt for the Panthers’ Week 8 game against the Bills. Andy Dalton, who played decently well last season when he replaced Young, only to lose the starting job when he injured his hand in a car accident, completed 4-of-7 passes for 60 yards in relief on Sunday. That included a 33-yard deep pass to Xavier Legette that iced the 13-6 win against the Jets late in the fourth quarter.

Now let’s get to the benchings. Not only did Smith get pulled midway through the fourth quarter of that awful offensive showing, but his backup Kenny Pickett fumbled his first snap of the game after taking over for Smith. Fields briefly left the game against Carolina to be evaluated for a concussion, came back in, only to be pulled for performance at halftime. Jets head coach Aaron Glenn said after the game that the offense “needed a spark,” but backup Tyrod Taylor didn’t produce much of one. Taylor had five drives in the second half: punt, interception, field goal, interception, punt. Glenn did not commit to a starter for the Jets’ Week 8 game against the Bengals.

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