The Winners and Losers of the NFL Week 6

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, the Chiefs are finally fun again, the Jets—and especially Justin Fields—embarrassed themselves in London, Baker Mayfield bolstered his MVP case, and more. Welcome to Winners and Losers.

Winner: Andy Reid's Game Plan

With a 30-17 win over the Lions on Sunday night, the Chiefs have scored at least 28 points in each of their last three games. That’s a benchmark Kansas City hit only four times during the 2024 regular season, and only three times in 2023. Even if we’re not witnessing a full-on revival of the Chiefs offense that tore through the league from 2018 to 2022, it does feel fun again. The win also pulled Kansas City back to .500 after an 0-2 start had idiots like me ready to bury them in September.

Patrick Mahomes, who was brilliant once again, deserves most of the credit for the turnaround, but we also can’t ignore what Andy Reid is doing with the offensive scheme. The 67-year-old coach has made some key changes to the offense, including calling for more under-center formations with bigger personnel on the field. Reid especially deviated from his typical approach against the Lions, putting Mahomes in shotgun on a season-low 66.1 percent of the snaps, and playing 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) on a season-low 33.9 percent of plays. The changes seemed to catch Detroit off guard, and the Chiefs were particularly effective when using the under-center run game, which produced 58 yards on a season-high 12 attempts. In response to the Chiefs’ success on the ground, the Lions had no choice but to put bigger defenders on the field, and Mahomes in turn found ways to attack Detroit’s linebackers by exploiting a variety of mismatches in the pass game. Per Next Gen Stats, the Chiefs quarterback completed 13-of-17 passes for 165 yards and a touchdown when targeting Lions linebackers in coverage. It was a great plan by Reid, and Mahomes executed it to perfection.

Now, this is nitpicking on a night where almost every button Reid and Mahomes pressed seemed to work, but the Chiefs not connecting on a single deep pass over 20 air yards is the one thing preventing me from declaring the offense all the way back. But if Reid continues to call the offense as he did against Detroit, and the run game remains effective, the downfield opportunities will increase. It’s only a matter of time before Mahomes starts cashing in on them.

We’re starting to see more consistent contributions from Kansas City’s receiving corps, whether it’s been Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown, or Tyquan Thornton, who’s emerged as Mahomes’s most reliable deep threat this season. With Rashee Rice serving the last game of his six-week suspension on Sunday night, more help is on the way. Rice could also emerge as a deep threat, but it’s likely he will do a lot of work in the short and intermediate passing game, which should take some of the playmaking pressure off 36-year-old tight end Travis Kelce, who turned in a solid 78-yard outing against the Lions. Imagine these plays with Rice on the other end rather than JuJu Smith-Schuster:

But even if Rice doesn’t give the passing game a booster shot directly, his presence on the field could do so indirectly. Rice is a tough player to cover underneath and a big-play threat after the catch. His gravity as a receiver should draw defenses closer to the line of scrimmage and provide Worthy, Brown, and Thornton with more space downfield.

The Chiefs offense may not be back to the full-throttle version we saw through the first five seasons of the Mahomes era—but they’re no longer stuck in neutral, either. And Mahomes is back to producing like one of the league’s best quarterbacks and frustrating defensive backs like Detroit’s Brian Branch in the process.

It was that kind of night for the Lions. Branch, who watched his team get run over by the Chiefs’ ground game and picked apart in the passing game, declined a post-game handshake with Mahomes, and then took his frustration out on Smith-Schuster. An earlier violent blindside block by Smith-Schuster on a run play may have been the root cause of the post-game fight. In the locker room, Branch said he was frustrated by Kansas City “trying to bully [him] out there.”

If this version of the Chiefs offense keeps showing up, Branch and the Lions won’t be the last defense to get pushed around by Kansas City.

Winner: Baker Mayfield’s MVP Campaign

Having led four last-minute comebacks in the first five games, Baker Mayfield has already been farming MVP moments early this season. But in Sunday’s win over the 49ers, he may have produced the signature play of his burgeoning campaign for the league’s most prestigious individual award. With his Buccaneers clinging to a one-point lead in the third quarter and facing a third-and-forever near midfield, Mayfield did this.

Mayfield escaped two sacks and shook two more defenders in the open field to move the chains. He had just a 3.7 percent chance of picking up the first down, according to Next Gen Stats. And if that effort wasn’t award-worthy on its own, Mayfield followed it up with a thunderbolt of a touchdown throw to seventh-round rookie Tez Johnson, who made a hell of a catch to finish off the play.

That sequence seemed to wake up Mayfield after a sleepy start to the game. After missing on a handful of throws in the first half, he locked in over the final two quarters. He averaged 15.3 yards and 1.13 EPA per dropback in the second half to put the game out of reach. And Mayfield did it without rookie receiver Emeka Egbuka, who left the game in the second quarter with a hamstring injury; veteran WR Mike Evans, who hasn’t played since Week 3; and WR Chris Godwin, who injured his fibula last week. Mayfield has also had to make do with a makeshift offensive line for most of the season. This has all the components of an MVP narrative, and now Mayfield has the third-best odds to win the award, behind only Buffalo’s Josh Allen.

Losing its top three receivers hasn’t had much of an effect on the Bucs’ passing game. Even on Sunday, when Egbuka, Evans, and Godwin were off the field, Mayfield had plenty of open receivers to throw to. Per Next Gen Stats, he completed 12-of-14 passes for 215 yards and a pair of touchdowns when targeting receivers with at least three yards of separation. First-year offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard deserves some credit for helping Tampa Bay work around horrible injury luck and dialing up open throws for Mayfield, but it’s the quarterback who has to make the throws. These past two weeks, no quarterback has been better at hitting them.

Loser: 49ers’ Super Bowl Chances

But the Bucs were not the most injury-riddled team in that game. The 49ers lost another key piece on Sunday when Fred Warner left the game after a grisly ankle injury. After the game, Kyle Shanahan confirmed that his star linebacker had suffered a dislocated ankle that would require season-ending injury. San Francisco was already leading the NFL in cap spent on players on reserve lists. That number will only grow when Warner joins Nick Bosa and George Kittle on the list—which doesn’t even include Brock Purdy, who’s missed four starts with a nagging toe injury but remains on the active roster

We’ve seen Shanahan and the Niners work around injuries in the past, but Warner might be the one player they couldn’t afford to lose. He had been the best linebacker in the NFL this season and was a candidate for Defensive Player of the Year before the injury. Warner held the defense together through the first five weeks, and there was a noticeable dropoff in both pass coverage and defending the run after Warner went down on Sunday.

The revival of quarterback Mac Jones—who may have turned back into a pumpkin after throwing two interceptions in Tampa—got a lot of attention during San Francisco’s 4-1 start, but the Niners defense quietly played a significant role in it. But without Warner, this is a mediocre unit with maybe a handful of above-average players on the depth chart. While San Francisco is 4-2 and very much in the thick of the NFC playoff race, any hopes of a Super Bowl run probably ended along with Warner’s season.

Loser: Justin Fields

I’m submitting to the league office a formal request for an indefinite reprieve from Jets-Broncos games going forward. A year after the two teams gave us one of the most unwatchable offensive displays in recent memory—a rain-soaked 10-9 clunker that Denver won last September—they ran it back on the international stage. The Broncos prevailed once again, 13-11, dropping Aaron Glenn’s Jets to 0-6.

While Bo Nix and Co. didn’t cover themselves in glory in the game played at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium in London, scoring just 13 points and averaging 4.3 yards per play, they looked like Peyton Manning’s Broncos in comparison to the Jets, who averaged just 1.4 yards per play. That’s the worst mark for any game this season and also the seventh-worst performance of the century, per TruMedia.

There were a lot of disappointing performances from the Jets’ offensive players Sunday morning, but quarterback Justin Fields was undoubtedly the star of this shit show. It was a tour de suck for the former 2021 first-round Bears pick who is in his first season in New York. He finished 9-of-17 for 45 passing yards and had no touchdowns. Yet that stat line doesn’t really capture how bad New York’s passing game was. This does, though: Fields lost 55 yards on nine sacks, meaning he finished the game with –10 net passing yards. That’s the worst mark since 2000, per TruMedia. I let out a belly laugh when I saw his passing map from the game.

Fields’s last attempt of the game—a pass on third-and-8 that fell incomplete—is a good example of why he’s struggled throughout his career and why it’s unlikely he’ll turn things around after signing a two-year, $40 million contract in March.

Fields had receiver Garrett Wilson wide open on an out route that would have pushed the Jets into range for a game-winning field goal attempt. Here’s an all-22 screenshot of the moment Wilson comes out of his break:

That’s an easy pitch-and-catch if Fields can just get the ball out on time, but he was about a half second too late. Here, that half second was the difference between a chance at a game-winning field goal and a desperation fourth-and-8 that ended with the ninth sack of Fields.

Glenn scoffed at a postgame question about Fields’s job security, but the first-year coach doesn’t seem to trust his quarterback. Glenn opted to let the clock run out at the end of the second quarter rather than let Fields try to lead the offense into field goal range. It was a bizarre sequence, especially after Glenn had (presumably) signed off on a fake punt just moments earlier.

Glenn looked like a coach in over his head at that moment, which was made worse by Wilson confronting his coach about it on the way back to the locker room. Wilson said after the game that he was “disappointed” in Glenn’s explanation for sitting on the ball and running out the clock.

In a season full of ugly losses for Glenn, this one might be the ugliest.

The same goes for Fields, who had been playing decent football coming into the game. He was anything but decent in London, averaging –0.71 EPA per dropback with a 13.8 percent success rate. That stat line is eerily similar to the line Nix put up in last year’s game against the Jets, when he also averaged –0.71 EPA per dropback with a success rate of just 11.5 percent on a rainy day in the Meadowlands. It’s a reminder that all sorts of quarterback atrocities are possible when the Jets and Broncos get together, which will happen again in 2026—but not if the NFL intervenes for the sake of the forward pass.

Loser: The Justin Herbert Crunch-Time Narrative

Before Mayfield’s ridiculous escape and scramble in the late afternoon slate, Justin Herbert had the play of the day. With his Chargers trailing the Dolphins by a point and still 20 yards from field goal range with just 34 seconds remaining, Herbert faced instant pressure from the Dolphins’ rush. His right tackle was beaten cleanly, which forced Herbert to step up—right into the arms of Miami’s Jaelan Phillips, who had beaten the right guard and was already in the pocket. But Herbert turned what looked like a sure sack into a 42-yard gain by shaking the 6-foot-5, 263-pound edge rusher off him and completing a short pass to Ladd McConkey, who raced past several defenders for the game’s biggest play.

Cameron Dicker’s chip-shot field goal split the uprights and gave Los Angeles the win. It was the 18th game-winning drive of Herbert’s career since he entered the league in 2020—that’s tied for second-most over that span behind only Patrick Mahomes, per Pro-Football-Reference. That’s not bad for a quarterback who supposedly shrinks in the biggest moments. Herbert has yet to win a playoff game, which contributes to the “choker” narrative, but the numbers suggest he’s been one of the league’s most reliable passers in the clutch throughout his career. The numbers would be even more impressive if his defenses could hold a lead:

Herbert’s heroics weren’t wasted on Sunday, thanks mainly to offensive coordinator Greg Roman coming to his senses after a run-heavy first half. After passing on 56.7 percent of the offensive snaps in the first half, Roman called 13 consecutive pass plays during a stretch that helped Los Angeles push its lead to double-digits. With Roman trying (and failing) to ice the game with the run, Miami snuck back into the game and took a late lead on a Tua Tagovailoa touchdown pass to Darren Waller.

But the Dolphins left too much time on the clock for Herbert, the quarterback that Miami general manager Chris Grier passed on to draft Tagovailoa in 2020. Grier had to watch the quarterback he passed on lead a game-winning drive, while the one he drafted (and has subsequently signed to a large extension) threw three interceptions in the loss.

If that wasn’t bad enough for Miami, after the game, Tagovailoa revealed that teammates either no-showed or arrived late for a recent players-only meeting. Miami’s season was already doomed before Herbert delivered Sunday’s gut punch, but the Chargers quarterback left no doubt.

Winner (by Proxy): Josh McDaniels

McDaniels is a winner because he gets to coach Drake Maye, who followed up last Sunday night’s breakout performance against the Bills by playing even better in a 25-19 win in New Orleans. The second-year pro threw for 261 yards and three touchdowns on 26 attempts and completed 69.2 percent of his throws, which actually brought his season-long completion percentage down. He averaged 0.58 EPA per dropback, which led all passers this week through Sunday’s games.

Maye is now tied for sixth in EPA per dropback, and he leads the NFL in success rate, which should put him in the MVP conversation going forward. Typically, we’d credit the offensive coordinator for helping a young quarterback make the leap, but I’m not sure that’s warranted in this case. McDaniels’s play calling has been fine. He hasn’t generated much of a run game to make life easier for Maye. In fact, the ground game has had the opposite effect. New England ranks dead last in EPA per run and is tied for 28th in run success rate, but Maye’s excellence as a passer on second and third downs has made up for it. That was the case again on Sunday in New Orleans, as New England’s running backs scrounged up just 45 yards on 22 attempts. McDaniels did set Maye up for success with a few well-timed deep-shot plays against the Saints, but Maye didn’t require wide-open windows to complete them. His first-quarter touchdown pass to Kayshon Boutte was thrown into a nonexistent window after Maye evaded the rush in a crumbling pocket.

Per Next Gen Stats, all three of Maye’s touchdown passes were made under pressure and traveled more than 25 air yards downfield. Maye made it look easy against the Saints, but the degree of difficulty couldn’t have been higher.

And now, McDaniels is living the offensive coordinator dream once again. After he got to call plays for Tom Brady in the mid-2000s, which turned McDaniels into a rising coaching star, it looks like he has attached himself to another generational quarterback talent. If McDaniels hadn’t burned so many bridges in his two failed stints as a head coach, I’d tout him as a potential hot name in the next hiring cycle thanks to Maye’s play. I don’t know if there’s any outcome for Maye that could convince a third team to give McDaniels the keys to the franchise. But calling plays for Maye should be a fun way to spend the next decade.

Outside of Maye, it was a mediocre performance for the Patriots, and head coach Mike Vrabel said New England showed just “glimpses of good football” on Sunday. It was enough to get his team to 4-2, and the Pats will have games against the one-win Titans and Browns in the next two weeks. They’ll also get the Falcons, Jets, Bengals, and Giants before their Week 14 bye, which leads into the rematch against Buffalo. New England is a contender in the AFC.

Loser: Matt Eberflus

Eberflus has been the NFL’s most generous defensive coordinator. His Cowboys defense helped Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson turn around the vibes in Chicago. It helped Russell Wilson turn back the clock and deliver his best performance in years. And on Sunday, it allowed Panthers running back Rico Dowdle to put together one of the best revenge games we’ve ever seen. Earlier in the week, the former Cowboys running back, who signed with Carolina earlier this year, warned that Dallas would have to “buckle up” for what he was bringing on Sunday.

And after racking up 239 total yards on 34 touches in his team’s 30-27 win, Dowdle had a simple explanation for why the Cowboys defense looked powerless to stop him.

They sure weren’t. Dowdle ran for 183 yards, and 122 of those came after contact, per Next Gen Stats. Pro Football Focus credited him with forcing only four missed tackles, but watching the game, it felt like much more than that. The Cowboys didn’t look interested in tackling Dowdle, and they also forgot to cover him on a 36-yard touchdown catch after he sneaked out of the backfield.

A free runner has become an all-too-familiar sight for Eberflus’s defense, which has allowed 53 explosive plays through six games. Only Miami has allowed more, per TruMedia. The stat is concerning on its own, but it’s even more concerning considering that Eberflus runs a defense that majors in soft zone coverage designed to take away the deep ball. After three coverage busts against the Bears in a Week 3 loss, Eberflus said he simplified his defensive calls to avoid communication breakdowns in the future. The simplified calls didn’t help on Sunday. The Cowboys had coverage busts on three plays against the Panthers, including the Dowdle touchdown.

After Sunday’s loss, the Cowboys now rank last in defensive EPA and success rate, meaning they both give up big plays and aren’t good on a down-to-down basis. Eberflus is known for a bend-but-don’t-break style, but his defense is bending and breaking—and it could end up wasting what’s shaping up to be a career season for quarterback Dak Prescott.

Winner: Mike Macdonald

The Seahawks were the only NFC West team that enjoyed their Sunday. The 49ers lost their game and their best defensive player. The Cardinals lost a heartbreaker in Indianapolis. The Rams beat the hapless Ravens but didn’t earn any style points in doing so, and their star receiver, Puka Nacua, suffered an ankle injury that could keep him out of next week’s game against the Jaguars in London. Seattle is technically behind the 49ers in the standings because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, but it’s first in vibes after a 20-12 win in Jacksonville.

Macdonald deserves the bulk of the credit. His defense, which has had an up-and-down season, did most of the heavy lifting on Sunday while the offense turned in a disjointed performance. The Seahawks were without three-fourths of their starting secondary, with Riq Woolen, Devon Witherspoon, and Julian Love all inactive due to injuries, so Macdonald put the game on his defensive line. Macdonald sent blitzes with at least five pass rushers on 14 percent of Trevor Lawrence’s dropbacks, but largely Seattle went with a traditional four-man rush with disguised coverages behind it. That did the trick. Lawrence appeared to hold on to the ball a beat longer than normal as he tried to diagnose Seattle’s zone coverages, which gave the Seahawks’ rushers time to get home. Lawrence averaged 3.2 seconds per throw and was pressured on 46 percent of his dropbacks. Only the Chiefs forced him to hold it longer and put him under more pressure this season, per TruMedia.

It was Macdonald’s best coaching job of the season, which came a week after his worst in a 38-35 loss to the Buccaneers. That was the only game in which Seattle has given up more than 20 points this season.

Thanks to the offense, which has been at the top of the league’s statistical charts all season, Macdonald hasn’t consistently needed elite results from his defense like he did on Sunday, when the Seahawks struggled to run the ball on early downs and convert on passing downs. Running backs Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet combined for just 58 rushing yards on 22 carries, and Seattle went 1-for-12 on third-down conversion attempts. But with the Jaguars defense selling out to stop the outside-zone running game, offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and quarterback Sam Darnold were able to hit on just enough play-action shots to pull away, including this 61-yard dime to Jackson Smith-Njigba.

That’s really the only facet of the offense that was effective on Sunday. Darnold averaged a ridiculous 21 yards per dropback on nine play-action snaps, per TruMedia, while averaging just over 5 yards per dropback on his 20 non-play-action snaps. Macdonald’s shorthanded defense took care of the rest and pushed Seattle to a 4-2 record. Next up is a winnable game against Houston.

Winner: Shane Steichen

If you’re waiting for the Colts’ bubble to pop, you’ll have to give it another week. After a surprisingly tricky game against the Jacoby Brissett–led Cardinals, the Colts are now tied for the league’s best record at 5-1 and own the best point differential at plus-78. I’m still hesitant to say Indianapolis is for real, but the metrics are pointing in that direction.

Sunday’s 31-27 win was another strong outing from Shane Steichen’s offense. The Colts averaged over 6 yards per play and 3.1 points per drive. While Daniel Jones did throw his third pick of the season—on the type of throw we were used to seeing out of him in New York—he otherwise played a clean, if unimpressive, game. He averaged a season-low 6.8 yards per dropback and hit just one pass of 15 or more air yards. The Colts’ run game picked up the slack, producing five explosive gains against Arizona. Running back Jonathan Taylor, who’s been the frontrunner for Offensive Player of the Year for a few weeks now, had three of those runs, including a 16-yarder that put the game on ice with 41 seconds remaining. Rookie tight end Tyler Warren, who’s got the fourth-best odds in the Offensive Rookie of the Year race, chipped in with 63 receiving yards and a touchdown.

Steichen is getting the best out of his stars. And, unsurprisingly, he’s the heavy favorite for Coach of the Year after six weeks. His play calling has been enough to earn him the plaudits, but Steichen also deserves credit for how he’s handled the potentially awkward situation in the quarterback room after Jones beat out Anthony Richardson for the job in August.

He’s also won, and while Sunday’s victory over the Cardinals wasn’t as statistically dominant as others this season, it may have been its most gutty performance. The Colts didn’t just overcome a frisky Arizona team; they also overcame perhaps the most bizarre pregame warmup in recent memory. First, they lost Richardson to a serious eye injury in an accident with a resistance band at the stadium. Richardson suffered a broken orbital bone and had to go to the hospital. Also in warmups, starting cornerback Charvarius Ward suffered a concussion after a collision with a teammate and was unable to play.

Losing two players to injury before kickoff looked like a bad omen from the football gods, but even they can’t seem to slow this Colts team down.

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