Ben Johnson’s Three Stages of Team Building Benefit Caleb Will

Having already written about the Patriots’ success and two NFC West teams peaking before a big battle next week, let’s now put a wrap on our Week 10 coverage with the takeaways. Let’s dive in …

The Bears had been carrying Caleb Williams for a while, but in the last couple of weeks, the second-year quarterback has returned the favor. In running off four consecutive wins after the team’s 0–2 start, the rugged run game and defense Ben Johnson and his staff built gave the second-year quarterback room for error, as Williams grew and learned the offense.

That growth is becoming apparent.

Last week, it was with a miracle comeback in Cincinnati, punctuated by a seam pass to Colston Loveland to vanquish Joe Flacco & Co. This week, it was with drives of 91 and 53 yards over the game’s final 6:13, both jump-started by a series of Williams throws. Both ended with big Williams scrambles, with the quarterback breaking to his left, then breaking contain, the first for 29 yards to set up a Rome Odunze touchdown catch, the second a 17-yard touchdown scored by Williams himself.

Odunze told me after the game that Johnson has drilled the players on the three stages of team building—hope, belief and knowing. “We are operating the stage of knowing now,” the second-year receiver said. “When you have gone through it and seen it through, you operate in the knowing.” And explains where they’re getting to with Williams as well.

“Anytime he has an opportunity to make a play for us, he does it,” he said. “It’s been awesome to see. He took it into his own hands, gave us the lead, and put us on his back right there. He’s always had that factor. I’ve seen that on him. Excited to see more of it.”

For now, the Bears are basically even with the Packers and Lions in the NFC North, pending what Green Bay does Monday night against the Eagles. Their progress is certainly further along than I thought it would be.

While we’re there, I’d applaud Dan Campbell doing what needs to be done with his team. Yes, it’s a big story that he’s calling plays for the Lions. But I’m not sure this is the first time he’s had to step in and do it.

After the team’s Week 2 blowout of the Bears, Jahmyr Gibbs told me communication had been cleaned up following the season-opening loss to the Packers. The following week, during the Lions’ 38–30 win over the Ravens on Monday Night Football, I noticed Campbell standing alone while the offense was on the field with a playsheet in hand, talking into his headset.

That didn’t mean he was calling plays. However, it did indicate he was much more involved.

From 2022 to ’24, he didn’t need to be as much. Johnson did his own thing as offensive coordinator. He was entrusted to go into his bunker on Monday and Tuesday and come out with the game plan on Wednesday, and call it on Sunday. So Campbell could be the CEO.

This year, that’s not the case—and a good coach will always give his team what it needs. If that’s play-calling for the rest of the year, so be it. And if yesterday was the first time he’s done it full-on this year, then that was a pretty good start. Detroit finished with 546 yards, averaged 8.0 yards per play, churned out 30 first downs and scored 44 points.

Don’t ignore the effort Aaron Glenn got from his Jets this week. The psychological effect of moving Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams was real—and the team’s first-year head coach didn’t beat around the bush on it. On Wednesday, as Breece Hall explained it to me, Glenn gathered the team and spoke to them matter-of-factly about the events of the week.

More or less, he opened up the meeting by saying, You know what happened. These were great opportunities for those guys, and they brought change for us. Glenn then told the guys that with that change would come opportunity.

For some, it was the opportunity to play. For others, it was the chance to lead.

Hall seized it as much as anyone, accounting for 125 of the team’s 169 yards from scrimmage, and scoring the game-winning touchdown on a screen pass from 42 yards out as the Jets outlasted the Browns 27–20 in New Jersey. Meanwhile, the defense, minus Gardner and Williams, got four sacks from Will McDonald, and a sack apiece for Jermaine Johnson II (who was also on the trade block) and Williams’s brother Quincy (another trade candidate).

“It just shows the buy-in everybody has,” Hall told me. “Two great players, two All-Pros, two future Hall of Fame players—to be able to come out and get a win, that means a lot.”

Remember, Glenn was in Detroit for the Campbell rebirth. That revival started with nine consecutive losses in 2021, and a 0-10-1 mark through 11 games. Detroit split its final six games that year and was on its way. This, for what it’s worth, is two wins in a row for the Jets after a 0–7 start, with a trip to Foxborough for Thursday Night Football up next.

Weird things happen to the other AFC East teams in Miami, but the Bills’ collapse there was hard to comprehend. Buffalo seemed to have stuck its foot in the ground and turned its season the past two weeks, running roughshod over the Panthers and Chiefs, with what appeared to be a layup on tap against the Dolphins in Week 10.

Instead, the Bills are left to wonder what hit them at Hard Rock Stadium.

What went down isn’t too difficult to explain. Miami won the turnover battle, 3–0, and Josh Allen had a couple of head-scratching giveaways—one an interception thrown in the end zone—and outrushed the Bills, 197–87. If you put those two things together—the team dominating the takeaway margin and the run game—it will win.

That said, this was a Bills team that, in wins over Kansas City and Carolina, won at the line of scrimmage, and that obviously didn’t happen in South Florida. One thing it does make you wonder is whether the Bills did enough to try to get defensive tackle help, which they were looking for ahead of the trade deadline.

Up next: a vital two-game, five-day stretch, with Tampa Bay first, then a trip to Houston.

My underrated storyline—what the Chargers are winning with at tackle. We all know how Jim Harbaugh regards offensive linemen. At his first owners’ meetings back in the league, in March 2024, when asked about his first-round pick, he declared that offensive linemen were weapons every bit as much as a receiver or a running back. It was a funny moment, but it preceded L.A. taking Joe Alt with the fifth pick, despite already having a franchise-level tackle (Rashawn Slater) on hand.

Now, both Alt and Slater are out for the year.

And you’d never say that doesn’t matter because it definitely does.

That said, the team made it work with Austin Deculus at left tackle and Trey Pipkins III at right tackle. You might be familiar with Pipkins. He’s in his seventh year with the Chargers and has started more than 60 games there. You’d be less familiar with Deculus (or at least I was). He’s now on his fourth team after the Texans drafted him in the sixth round in 2022. Sunday was his fifth career start.

So what happened next? The Chargers rushed for 115 yards and beat the Steelers on Sunday night, 25–10. It wasn’t perfect—the line did allow five sacks. But given the circumstances, it sure looks like a good example of more Jim Harbaugh magic, where somehow, someway, regardless of who is out there, his teams always have the capacity to play to that kind of identity.

One of my pet peeves of 2025 is dead, at least for the time being—there was nothing really “wrong” with the Ravens. I saw TV segments about it, and wanted to throw my remote at the screen. It’s like people didn’t have access to the team’s inactive list.

In their Week 5 44–10 loss to Houston, Baltimore had Roquan Smith, Lamar Jackson, Kyle Hamilton, Pat Ricard, Marlon Humphrey and Ronnie Stanley on the list. That’s over $100 million of the salary cap and 20 selections to the Pro Bowl. I’m not sure there’s a team in the league that would’ve been that much better given the circumstances than the Ravens were at 1–5.

Since that loss, they’ve won three straight, and have looked increasingly impressive, first beating the Bears (a win that looks better by the week) with Tyler “Snoop” Huntley at quarterback, then running away from the Dolphins in the second half the following Thursday and, finally, on Sunday, handling the Vikings on the road, with a strong all-around effort from the group.

Baltimore goes to Cleveland next, then gets the Jets at home, so 6–5 is in the Ravens’ sights. After that, the schedule does stiffen, but Baltimore figures to be on level ground.

Daniel Jones’s busted-up and bloody face typified the sort of win that was for a Colts team now 8–2. In case you missed it, Jones ran into the bench on the Falcons’ sideline in Berlin, giving the world a J.J. Watt–style visual, with the quarterback bleeding through his mouth while leading the Colts from behind, and past the Falcons.

“Grit, toughness, kept fighting and believing,” Shane Steichen said via text from the plane, as Indy prepared to return to the States.

And it wasn’t just Jones who laid it on the line. It was also Jonathan Taylor, who finished with 286 scrimmage yards on 35 touches, and grinded out tough yards, all the same as he broke an 83-yarder (and had the eight-yard touchdown to win it). It was Tyler Warren, who finished with 99 yards on eight catches, including the crucial fourth-and-2 conversion that necessitated a broken tackle with 1:17 left. It was Zaire Franklin, and his sack in overtime, that forced a punt.

It’s an example of a team’s best players delivering when it matters most, which is what the Colts are going to need coming out of the bye after returning from Germany.

That was a season-saving effort from Davis Mills. This is why a backup quarterback is worth paying—Davis Mills, now in his fifth NFL season, is making $7 million this year.

Without him, the Texans are 3–6 today, and looking at a lost season.

With him in there to lead a 26–0 fourth quarter that erased a 19-point deficit going into the fourth quarter. Mills led touchdown drives of 65, 51 and 93 yards in the fourth quarter, and went 11-of-20 for 104 yards and two touchdowns over those 15 minutes, while running for the 14-yard go-ahead touchdown on his own.

Now, the Texans are 4–5, with C.J. Stroud healing up, and a shot to go on a run.

Paul DePodesta’s exit from the Browns closes the chapter on an interesting period in team history. Jimmy Haslam, like many new owners, came into Cleveland wanting to put his team at the forefront of new-age team-building methods, and dealt with fits and starts in trying to find it.

He hired DePodesta away from the New York Mets in 2016, and paired him with Sashi Brown, then dialed back on the model with John Dorsey coming in as GM in ’18, before bringing Andrew Berry back in ’20. Some viewed DePodesta as a mysterious man behind the curtain who worked with Haslam—at one point, things were siloed off where football people didn’t interact much with him, though Berry has worked closely with him.

Over DePodesta’s nine-plus seasons, the Browns went 56-99-1, made the playoffs twice, and won one playoff game. It’s fair to surmise a GM or coach wouldn’t have lasted as long as the team’s chief strategy officer did with that record, though how many of Cleveland’s moves had his fingerprints on them is murky.

And so now, it’s over. The Browns, I’m told, don’t plan to replace him with a new chief strategy officer. That means his impact on the team will remain difficult to ascertain—a lot of people who’ve worked there weren’t even sure what it was while he was their coworker.

Weirdly, it feels like that’s always the way he wanted it.

Let’s wrap up Week 10 with a few more thoughts …

• Tough loss for the Jaguars that leaves you wondering if the new staff has some doubt about Trevor Lawrence (whom I’ve always liked).

• Not sure what’s next for the Giants after another collapse—Monday should be interesting.

• J.J. McCarthy has to clean up his turnover problem.

• TreVeyon Henderson looks great, but he’s better in a running back platoon, which I can attest to from watching every snap he played at Ohio State.

• Don’t pin the Niners’ loss on Mac Jones. This wasn’t midnight for Cinderella.

• Tyler Shough with a nice Sunday in Carolina—and Chris Olave earning that extension the Saints are trying to give him.

• The Commanders have lost five straight, including the last four by 22, 21, 24 and 22 points.

• If there’s one thing I think you can do to honor Marshawn Kneeland, it’s to check in on all of your friends and family. Our best to all those who loved Kneeland. Here’s hoping you can find peace in his memory.

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