Reacting to all the action in NFL Week 5

The top of the AFC was decided in two games on Sunday, and the balance of power shifted with the results. The new kings of the AFC hill are in Buffalo and Los Angeles, while Kansas City and Cleveland are looking up from lofty but precarious perches of their own.

The Chargers beat the Browns, 47-42, in a game almost completely devoid of defense on both sides of the ball. Los Angeles came up with one critical stop late in the fourth quarter and it made all the difference in their win, a game that featured eight touchdowns in the second half. Justin Herbert outgunned Baker Mayfield in the matchup of two of the NFL’s top young QBs.  

The Chargers benefited from a truly terrible pass interference call, but also some poor play calls down the stretch by the Cleveland offense. Between Herbert and an impressive offensive line, the 4-1 Chargers look to be the class of the West. But there is another… 

Buffalo pounded Kansas City in a game that didn’t end on Sunday. A lengthy storm delay couldn’t cloud how impressive the Bills looked in surging to 4-1 and dropping the Chiefs to 2-3 and last place in the West. Josh Allen was the better quarterback over Patrick Mahomes, and the Bills defense was the far better prepared and sharper unit to their counterparts for the home team. 

The Bills needed to prove themselves in a challenging game, something they havent really had this year. Consider that box checked in the thickest Sharpie available. Buffalo looks as complete as a team can through five weeks, Sean McDermott has done a masterful job of getting the right pieces in the right places to do exactly what he wants. His decision to not pressure Mahomes paid off, crowding throwing lanes and gumming up the big-play works. Allen played smart, seemingly always knowing where his best option was on each play.  

Baltimore is 3-1 and plays Indianapolis on Monday night with the chance to move into the conversation at the top too, but right now it’s pretty clear the two best teams are the Bills and Chargers with fewer teams than expected scurrying for the top of the next tier below them. 

It’s going to be very strange in Week 6 when the Seattle Seahawks take the field and Russell Wilson won’t be their starting quarterback. But that’s the mountain the Seahawks must climb for the next few weeks.  

Wilson badly injured a finger in Seattle’s loss to the Rams on Thursday night. He hit Aaron Donald’s hand with his follow-through on a pass, resulting in a torn ligament and a fracture. What happened to Wilson is commonly known as “mallet finger” and, in his case, it required surgery. Wilson will be out for at least four weeks and could miss 8-10 if the progress doesn’t follow the best-case outcome. 

Geno Smith is the new starter in Seattle, the first player to start a game for the Seahawks since Tarvaris Jackson in the final game of the 2011 season. Smith did a reasonable impression of Wilson in Thursday’s loss, matching Wilson’s TD and INT total and looking competent in emergency relief. He’s thrown just 101 passes since 2014 as a vagabond backup and has never really engendered much confidence in extended action, however.

That won’t be good enough for Seattle, which continues to flounder with one of the NFL’s worst defenses. They gave up another 476 yards and 24 first downs to the Rams on a night where L.A. quarterback Matthew Stafford didn’t have his best either despite a gaudy stat line. Now 2-3, losing Wilson for even a month is almost certainly a death blow for Pete Carroll’s Seahawks.  

Sunday’s viewing started earlier than normal thanks to the NFL exporting the Jets and Falcons game to London. After the display of “football” between two of the NFL’s worst, they might not want more anytime soon.  

The Jets and Falcons took to Tottenham and showed the English fans what everyone in America already knew: the Jets are not good at football things. The 27-20 final score is somewhat deceptive; Atlanta raced out to a 17-0 lead after the first three possessions for each team, where the Jets failed to pick up a first down. It was the breakout game Atlanta had been waiting for from rookie TE Kyle Pitts, aided in part by the Jets trying to cover him on a TD reception with DE John Franklin-Myers. Much of what New York tried to do didn’t make much sense to the Americans in the audience. Imagine the poor Brits trying to decipher the intricacies of American football from watching overwhelmed rookie Zach Wilson and the Jets.  

Matt Ryan became just the seventh passer to ever complete 5,000 passes by tacking on 33 against New York. Ryan has a Rookie of the Year award, an NFL MVP and he ranks in the top 10 of nearly every passing category you can list. Yet Ryan never gets mentioned among the top QB historically. Consider that Ryan has 35 more completions on almost 700 fewer attempts than Dan Marino, and the same amount of Super Bowl appearances. But if you tried to tell anyone that Ryan belongs in the same conversation as Marino, you will absolutely get laughed off the stage. Perception matters. 

The NFL announced plans to expand the international series into Germany, perhaps as early as next year. Football in Germany was a huge hit in the old NFL Europe, where five teams were based in the country when that league folded (RIP) in 2007. It’s something the NFL has long sought--a more permanent presence across the Atlantic. The 17-game schedule makes it a natural addition as a neutral-site game for the odd number. 

Fun fact: The Green Bay Packers are the only NFL team to never play in the international series. Look for that to change quickly when the league increases its presence in Germany. 

This is one of those weeks where the off-field action trumped the on-field product for too many teams. And unfortunately, it’s a familiar scene for Washington…

The Washington Football Team saw their training facility swarming with DEA agents this week as part of an investigation surrounding team trainer Ryan Vermillion. The feds executed search warrants and were present at both team facilities and Vermillion’s home in Loudon County. No exact details about the sordid details of the investigation exist yet, but you can find a lot of really fun speculative rabbit holes if you go looking around. Most involve illegal distribution of prescription drugs, which Vermillion is not legally licensed to give out. 

To this point, the focus is strictly on Vermillion, who came to the WFT along with head coach Ron Rivera from the Carolina Panthers. He’s been suspended by the team. The WFT just happens to be where he works, but it’s still unsettling to hear about the lead trainer of an NFL team being the subject of a massive DEA investigation. It’s the same team that was fined $10 million earlier this year for an unprofessional workplace that fostered bullying and lacked accountability. And that’s only partially related to the scandal involving the WFT’s blatant, illegal and illicit sexual harassment of their own cheerleading staff that included a video of outtake reels of the women in various states of nudity. 

The Football Team does still manage to play football despite the chaos surrounding the organization. Well, kind of anyway. After scoring on their first three drives, Washington managed to turn the ball over four times (two INTs, two on downs) and squander the early lead in a 33-22 loss to the Saints. Washington’s defense, which on paper appeared to be one of the NFL’s toughest entering the season, has given up an average of 34 points per game in the last four weeks.  

Washington is tangentially guilty by association to the uproar over Jon Gruden and an allegedly racist email Gruden sent on the subject of NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith. Gruden is in some serious hot water for the decade-old email that dates to his time as an ESPN broadcaster. The email from Gruden was to then-WFT GM Bruce Allen and it predates Gruden’s brother, Jay, working for the WFT as their head coach.  

Raiders owner Mark Davis issued a rather stern statement shortly after the contents of the email surfaced.