Reacting to all the action in NFL Week 8

The Halloween matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints had a few tricks and treats for everyone. The Saints treated the home fans to a huge win in part by tricking Tom Brady into a couple of crucial mistakes and capitalizing on the unexpectedly steady play by backup QB Trevor Siemian. 

New Orleans improved to 5-2 with the entertaining, 36-27 home win over the defending champs. In dropping the Bucs to 6-2, the Saints tightened up the NFC South race by showing they can find ways to win that other recent Sean Payton teams have not been able to discover. The defense made big plays when it had to, despite allowing Brady and the Bucs to get a goody bagful of their own. New Orleans protected the ball, winning the turnover battle 3-0, and avoiding the crippling penalties that plagued the Bucs. It’s not an easy way to come up with a squeaker but it worked for the Saints.

When P.J. Williams took Tom Brady’s second INT all the way back for a game-sealing touchdown, the surprise was real. Brady made the kind of bad throw that Winston is infamous for making. The aggressive Saints closed the game out by refusing to just sit back in a prevent shell on the next drive, icing the game in style. 

For the first seven weeks, the NFC has had a strict stratification. The four division leaders (DAL, GB, ARI, TB) and the one-loss Rams were in a league of their own. The next tier was cloudy with the Saints, Vikings, Falcons, Bears, Panthers and maybe 49ers fluctuating in and out of the conversation. The Saints are the first team to upset the apple cart, and wins over both the Buccaneers and Packers validate their presence in the top tier after eight weeks. 

The game also featured a grisly moment, unfortunately. Siemian was in the game only because of a gruesome knee injury suffered by starter Jameis Winston. Scrambling out of traffic, Winston was horse-collar tackled by (extraordinarily overrated) Bucs LB Devin White and his knee buckled and torqued in a way no human joint should ever do. It was bad enough that Winston was immediately taken to a local hospital for testing. Here’s hoping he’s okay; Winston takes a lot of grief from fans and the media, but the heartfelt reaction from players on both teams tells you how popular and respected he is by his peers. 

Somewhere on Thursday night, Mercury Morris, Larry Csonka and the surviving remnants of the 1972 Miami Dolphins cracked open the celebratory champagne. They do so every year when the final unbeaten team loses its first game, thereby preserving Don Shula’s legacy as the only team to complete an entire regular season and postseason with an unblemished record. 

If Csonka was watching, he witnessed a great game between the heretofore undefeated Arizona Cardinals and the Green Bay Packers. The Packers hung the first loss on the Cardinals in a game that sure felt like a playoff matchup, prevailing 24-21 when Kyler Murray’s pass to an unaware A.J. Green got picked off in the end zone by Rasul Douglas. Just like that, not only was Arizona’s perfect season gone, but so was their standing atop the NFC.

Green Bay seized the top spot in the conference with its seventh win in a row. Considering the massive, embarrassing egg Aaron Rodgers and the Packers laid in Week 1 in New Orleans, it’s remarkable how consistently well they’ve played since. Humbling the Cardinals without top WR Davante Adams is even more impressive. Rodgers and his Green Bay cohorts simply find a way, week after week. It’s not a popular sentiment to praise Rodgers as a leading MVP candidate, but it’s hard to find anyone else in the NFL who is more integral to a very good team being where they are than No. 12 in green and yellow. 

The top of the NFC is absolutely loaded, which makes the cliche of saying “these two teams could meet again to play for the Super Bowl berth” less accurate. But the cliche does hold water--these are two of the NFL’s three best, most complete teams, led by quarterbacks who belong prominently in the MVP race. If we do get a rematch in January, break out the celebratory popcorn, because it’s bound to be another great game.  

The NFL trade deadline is Tuesday. And while scribes like me will barrage you with potential buys and sells for all 32 teams, don’t expect much action of any significance on the trade front. 

Part of the lack of activity comes from the salary cap impact of trades in the NFL. A lot of the teams that fans would love to see as buyers (Saints, Raiders, Ravens) don’t have enough functional salary cap room to acquire anyone without first dumping a player of equal importance. Take the inevitable talks that will come surrounding 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo. If the acquiring team doesn’t have $12M in cap room available already, they are financially incapable of acquiring his contract. As of Sunday night per Over The Cap, four teams--JAX, SEA, PHI, DEN--can make that move. The Saints don’t even have enough cap room to pay Jimmy G’s next weekly game check. 

Some contracts are structured with so many bonuses and timed guarantees that it’s less expensive for a bad team to keep a player than to trade them. That’s true of the Lions and injured left tackle Taylor Decker, who no team in its right mind is trading for regardless because he’s hurt and likely to be out for the season. I can’t rule out the crazy ineptitude of NFL decision-makers (thanks Bill O’Brien!), but a team like the Lions at the beginning of a rebuild isn’t costing itself money to spend in free agency and one of the few quality starters on the team for a middle-round draft pick by selling a player at the absolute lowest possible value. 

Then there’s the gap between compensation and bang for the buck. It’s a tough sell for an NFL GM to part with a Day 2 pick for a player for half a season, especially one coming from a different system that might not translate as well as hoped. Unlike the NHL or MLB, the NFL doesn’t have the history of impactful in-season trades that have elevated teams to titles. Making risky trades isn’t baked into the DNA of NFL decision-makers, right or wrong. 

So don’t get your hopes up if you want your team to buy or sell by the deadline. You’ll probably see a handful of minor moves. A backup OL from a low-rung team could move to a contender with a depth problem for a random late Day 3 pick. There is an odd glut of teams with an odd glut of WRs (looks at Denver and Dallas) and a few teams that desperately lack them (looks at New Orleans and Detroit), and something could shake out there. But blockbuster deals? Forget about it. 

There was an epic struggle in the early Sunday viewing window between the Detroit Lions and Houston Texans to prove which team is the worst in the NFL. No, Houston and Detroit weren’t playing each other. They were taking turns in the lead for “suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked,” to quote Homer Simpson. 

It was quite the race to the bottom. The Lions would surrender another score to the Philadelphia Eagles only to see the Texans quickly match it by allowing the Los Angeles Rams to post another touchdown. The games were tied at 17-0, 24-0, then 31-0 in almost identical real-time play. Detroit’s offense was at least somewhat capable of gaining yards here and there, but the sad song remained the same on the scoreboard until both games progressed into the fourth quarter. 

The Texans proved to be the better team in garbage time. Houston rallied for three late touchdowns to close the final margin to 38-22. My Lions, well…