Broncos Prove They’re Getting Better With Win Over Eagles

We have no unbeatens left and only one winless team (sorry, Jets). All that, and a whole lot more covered in the MMQB takeaways for Week 5 …

The Broncos have a chance to really build a head of steam over the next few weeks—and as they see it, the lessons from two losses will serve them well. Because a lot of people (me included) expected a lot from Denver coming into the year, the team starting the season 1–2 led to a lot of eye rolls over the big, bad national media building them up. And now, I’d hope, we’ll see the correction to all of that.

Here’s the nuance: Those losses in Weeks 2 and 3 weren’t exactly horrible. The Colts are better than anyone thought, and Denver lost to them on a leverage penalty that negated a missed field goal and set up Indy’s game-winner. The Chargers, meanwhile, pulled a rabbit out of a hat against Denver the next week, with Justin Herbert making an all-time throw to Keenan Allen to tie the game with 2:43 left, before driving his team 43 yards for the game-winning field goal.

Then, Denver smacked the Bengals last Monday night. Six days later, traveling cross-country ahead of a trip to London, the Broncos went into Lincoln Financial Field, fell behind by two touchdowns and outlasted the world champs in their house.

After the game, Sean Payton said the 21–17 victory over the Eagles was about winning when things weren’t perfect. His players knew exactly what he was getting at—they’d just lived it.

“We had very similar situations throughout the first part of the season,” veteran receiver Courtland Sutton told me postgame. “[Early on in the game,] we put ourselves in tough situations with penalties. Any time we got behind the chains, we’d see the situation deteriorate over the course of the possession. … The biggest thing was to stay patient.”

In doing so, the Broncos showed who they were—because lots of teams would lose their heads down 17–3 going into the fourth quarter against the unbeaten Eagles.

Instead, Denver buckled down. On the Broncos’ first touchdown drive, they only had to convert one third down, and it was a third-and-2, as they covered 64 yards in 10 plays. On the second touchdown drive, there was just one more, but this one wasn’t as easy, with a questionable offensive pass interference flag generating a third-and-15. Sutton said the call was “a simple play we practice all the time,” and he caught it over the middle, burst past the sticks and went for 34 yards.

Evan Engram scored on the next play, on a Nix bootleg. Payton then put it in Bo Nix’s hands again in going for two, and Troy Franklin cashed that in on a flat route to put Denver ahead by a point.

“It takes all of us at the end of the day,” Sutton said. “There’s not just one person.”

And it was that way again after the defense got a stop, and the offense drove for another field goal, while bleeding clock, and draining the Eagles of timeouts—converting two third downs and moving the sticks three times, leaving Philly with a four-point deficit, 1:06 to go and no timeouts. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t nearly enough.

So the Broncos, by the time you read this, will be in London for the week, and with the kind of signature win they can build off. They’ll get the Jets this week in the U.K., the Giants and Cowboys at home after that and, if you look at their schedule, could well be 8–2 when the Chiefs come to town on Nov. 16.

Payton has wanted to build a Bill Parcells–ian edge into the Broncos since arriving in Denver two years ago. In the way they rode Sunday out, it looked like he might have it.

“It’s something we knew about ourselves,” Sutton said. “We came apart in Week 2 and 3 with penalties. We shot ourselves in the foot. We had to go into the locker room and say to ourselves, Hey, how do we fix this, these self-infected wounds? At the end of the day, we aren’t playing terrible football, but we can’t keep having these recurring self-inflicted wounds. I think we saw accountability, attention to detail, desire to get better.

“To be able to see that from your team, it’s encouraging. You see it from vets, then the younger guys see that, it becomes part of the culture. … We haven’t been perfect, but we’ve gotten better.”

And that’s the whole idea.

The Patriots followed one of the initial things Mike Vrabel promised upon returning to New England as head coach in January—they were good enough to take advantage of bad football. Could New England at full capacity beat Buffalo at full capacity? At this point, I’d still say the answer to that question is no. But it’s also irrelevant on this Monday morning, because the Patriots did beat the version of the Bills they played Sunday night.

That version committed 11 penalties, many in critical spots, and yielded 90 yards for their troubles. That version turned the ball over three times, with reigning MVP Josh Allen throwing a ghastly (for him) third-quarter interception.

And New England was good enough to steal a 23–20 as a result. So, yes, there were pieces that related directly to that. A dumb (and questionable) offensive pass interference penalty on Khalil Shakir in the third quarter moved the Bills from the Patriot’s 9-yard line to the 19, down 13–10, and into second-and-19, and Allen promptly threw a pick. That said, that foot-shooting was followed by New England promptly going 90 yards in 11 plays to make it 20–10.

But then, there was a whole lot of good beyond just that for New England as well.

First and foremost, Drake Maye was off the charts in the second half, completing 13-of-14 passes for 184 yards, going a perfect 6-for-6 for 90 yards in the fourth quarter. His great escape/falling-down throw to Stefon Diggs for 12 yards to start New England’s game-winning drive gave him a signature moment, and he made high-level throw after high-level throw at Highmark Stadium.

Diggs, too, showed his worth. Even the Patriots saw him as a player who, at this stage of his career, should be almost exclusively a slot—and while that’s probably still the case, he had at least one night of old-school Stef in him on this night, with 146 yards on 10 catches.

And the defensive front showed its worth, too, with Christian Barmore and Milton Williams pushing the pocket all night.

In the end, for Buffalo, this will probably be a night to look back on with some regret, and a whole lot to correct and improve on. For New England, the hope would be that it’s the start of something bigger—and even if it takes a little while to get there, this was a good step in that direction.

The Buccaneers are ultra-impressive and still getting better. To me, there were two things that really highlighted that in Sunday’s wild win over the Seahawks, on the other side of the country.

The first was, of course, the quarterback.

Baker Mayfield did more than play well—his numbers made that part obvious, with 379 yards, two touchdowns and a 134.7 rating on 29-of-33 passing as part of Tampa’s 38–35 win. He carried the team. The Bucs didn’t have Mike Evans, nor did they have Bucky Irving or starting linemen Luke Goedeke and Cody Mauch. The run game only mustered 56 yards on 24 carries. The defense allowed 463 yards and 27 first downs.

Mayfield needed to be great for the Bucs to beat a really good Seattle team. He was.

“He brings swagger,” veteran linebacker Lavonte David told me postgame. “It’s a certain type of attitude, it’s his passion and will to win. It shows. It gets everyone turned up. Me being a defensive player, I definitely want to play hard for guys like that.”

So, as you’d expect, Mayfield gave the offense its signature play, pulling a Houdini act on a second-and-1 from the Seattle 11, with the team down 35–28 and less than two minutes left, getting away from the rush and throwing against his body to Sterling Shepard to tie it.

What you might not have expected, based on how the defense played, was for that unit to follow with one of its own. But there was the wily vet David to collect one, picking off a Sam Darnold throw that skimmed off teammate Logan Hall’s helmet two plays later, to give the Bucs the ball back on the fringe of field goal range. Three Rachaad White (standing in for Irving) runs later, and Chase McLaughlin was lining up a 39-yard field goal to win it.

“I had to lock in,” David said. “It hit my teammate’s helmet—Somebody got pressure on the QB and it hit someone’s helmet. I knew the ball was coming in my zone because I had eyes on the QB, I tracked it with my eyes. There were moments where I didn’t come down with those but I’m happy I came down with that one.”

Add those things together, and the next question would be whether this is the Tampa team that’ll finally break back through, after four consecutive division titles have led to playoff runs stopped short of the NFC title game.

The good news is there are enough guys still around who were there the last time the Bucs did it, back in 2020 when Tom Brady led the franchise to its second Lombardi Trophy. The hope would then be that young guys who’ve come up underneath them have learned from their older teammates, something that they believe showed on Sunday.

It’ll be a while, of course, until we know for sure. But the older guys still around got another reason to believe Sunday, a week after a frantic comeback against the Eagles fell short.

“We’ve just gotten younger,” David said. “Guys still have that same mentality, that same grit, that will to win. It’s definitely a testament to the guys who come from that culture Tom helped build.”

David, of course, being one of them.

The Vikings’ salvaging of their two-week Euro trip is proof positive of what separates the NFL’s top programs from everyone else. The fantasy-football-obsessed public will see Minnesota’s win over the Browns in London, drill down on throws Carson Wentz made to Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson, and believe this is only a story about the great environment that Kevin O’Connell has created to maximize quarterbacks in the Twin Cities.

That’s part of the story. But there’s more to it.

Yes, Wentz led a 10-play, 80-yard drive to beat Cleveland on Sunday. And yes, a beautifully placed 50-50 ball that Jefferson claimed for 21 yards was its catalyst, setting up a 12-yard dart to Addison to win the game. Having those guys would help any quarterback.

However, what made all this even more impressive was who was in front of Wentz. Justin Skule started the game at right tackle for Brian O’Neill, then flipped to left tackle for Christian Darrisaw, who was on restricted snaps since returning from a torn ACL and MCL last year. When Skule made that move, second-year man Walter Rouse came in at right tackle. Guard Blake Brandel was in at center for Ryan Kelly, who’s been out with a concussion. Undrafted rookie Joe Huber was in for first-rounder Donovan Jackson at guard, leaving Will Fries, at the other guard spot, as the only regular starter.

Yet, somehow, that group held up against Myles Garett and Mason Graham in a series of clear pass-first situations for the offense, and paved the way for that unit to drive 80 yards on 10 plays to win the game.

“We knew coming in that we were down a few guys,” Wentz told me from the locker room in London. “I’m so proud of the guys. To move from right tackle to left tackle against the best defensive end in the world, the way Justin [Skule] did that, unbelievable. Walt coming in late in the game playing right [tackle]. Blake playing a new position, in center. The way the guys stepped up and gave me chances to find these open dudes down the field was sweet.”

It’s also a reflection of why the Vikings can do right by their players. Whether it’s giving J.J. McCarthy through the bye to heal his high ankle sprain, keeping Darrisaw on a strict pitch count or managing through safety Harrison Smith’s absence earlier in the year, there’s confidence that they’ll find a way. It’s allowed the staff to handle the roster in a way that’ll give the Vikings the best chance to have the best team at the end.

And it’s because they can acquire players such as Skule, Brandel, Rouse and Huber at a point where they can coach around any weaknesses they have, and still leverage the strengths that remain. That it happened Sunday in a position group where no team has great depth, and one that the Vikings spent a lot to improve this offseason, only punctuates the point.

“One, that goes to the coordinators upstairs and, two, the coaching,” Wentz said. “They do a great job of having guys ready. Everyone coaches their tail off for each and every guy. There’s no denying the game plan changes because of it, and they do a tremendous job recognizing what we need to do, tweaking it, how to attack a defense every single week with the players we have on the field. I think they did a great job today. It wasn’t perfect, it was tough, and we shot ourselves in the foot a couple times …”

However, it was damn impressive, and as such, the arrow is pointing up on the Vikings, as they return to the U.S. with a 3–2 record after a split of their international games.

The Colts look for real to me. And for their own players, it was actually last week’s loss to the Rams that, in a funny way, affirmed that. The final was 27–20, but there were a million ways the Colts could’ve won the game. There were the two Adonai Mitchell miscues that took touchdowns off the board. There was the 10-man defense for the Rams’ 88-yard go-ahead touchdown. There was the holding call on the final kickoff return.

But there was also the fact that, despite all of that, the game was a fight until the very end on the road against a playoff-battle-tested team.

“In a weird way, it was a growth of confidence for us,” eighth-year Colt Zaire Franklin said Sunday night. “We looked at L.A. as a test for us, sort of a measuring stick. That’s a team with a Hall of Famer at quarterback, playmakers all across, offensively, defensively. After a performance like that, it gave us the confidence that we’re that team to beat, we are the test for those guys, as long as we play to the standard that we are capable of. I think today we wanted to put that on tape—that we are a dominant team.”

Sure enough, they were that team Sunday, smacking the Raiders around and cruising to a breezy 40–6 win. But this sure wasn’t the first time they’d shown it.

In Week 1, they routed the Dolphins 33–8, only allowing a garbage time touchdown, in a blowout that was worse than the final score indicated. Then they snuck past the Broncos in the aforementioned 29–28 game that ended with a do-over field goal, and beat the brakes off the Titans, 41–20.

It’s just that, up until now, some level of doubt has lingered on the legitimacy of Indy’s record.

So there are a few things that Franklin himself would point to as reasons that this year’s operation is different from those of years past. On Sunday, as the old linebacker saw it, the team’s red zone defense was one example of it, and its ability to take the ball away was another. Then, on the other side of the ball, there is, of course, the new quarterback.

“He’s the calm, steady person on offense,” Franklin said of Daniel Jones. “He takes care of the ball, he’s tough. Like I said, L.A. gave him confidence. He throws that pick then throws that tough ball in the red zone—things like that build confidence in your QB. He’s shown he’s got that dog mentality and is ready to go to war with us.”

Next up for the Colts is Arizona, then the Chargers and Titans, meaning the idea of heading to Pittsburgh on Nov. 2 at 7–1 isn’t that outlandish.

Few saw the Colts this way before the season. Now, they’re starting to see themselves that way, if a bit cautiously.

“We’ll take it week by week,” Franklin said. “I’ve been in this league long enough to see 7–1 teams miss the playoffs. It’s a long season, and we want to make sure we play our best ball come December to January. This was a step in the right direction.”

If they stay healthy, it definitely looks like Indy has more of those coming.

Sunday was a great example of how people angry with how their football team is playing have clouded judgment—primarily in what we saw in Arizona. There are a lot of dumb stories this time of year about needing to fire this person or that person. And I’m not saying that everyone should’ve simply given Titans coach Brian Callahan and his staff a pass for a pretty listless start to their second season in Nashville.

But I also didn’t understand the need to extract their pound of flesh now.

It’s not even Columbus Day yet. Firing someone in October, in most cases, only means killing hope for having a real football season for your team, and getting a few marginal advantages in starting a coaching search extra early.

The temperature on all that has been turned up into triple-digits in Nashville, and only got hotter Sunday as the Titans fell behind 21–3 early against the middling Cardinals. But then, a funny thing happened. A couple of things broke right for a young team still learning to play together, the rookie quarterback got hot and, by now, you know the rest of that story—Tennessee rallied for a thrilling 22–21 win behind No. 1 pick Cam Ward.

But what you may not know about is all the honest conversations that took place behind closed doors last week that helped set the stage for it.

On Wednesday, with talk on his job status ramping up, Callahan called in captains Calvin Ridley, Tony Pollard, Jeffery Simmons, Amani Hooker, Cody Barton and Morgan Cox for an extended conversation on the state of the team. He let them air grievances and look for deeper investment in what the Titans are doing. He also took personal responsibility for a team that was playing competitively, but lapsing too often and allowing games to slip away.

“We all had to do better—of coaching, of playing,” Callahan told me postgame. “It’s everybody. I have to do better. Our best players have to make plays. It doesn’t have to be perfect. We aren’t looking for perfection. We are looking for precision. I think the precision part of it is critical.”

At the same time, Callahan reiterated what he said to me Sunday: “I love our team.” He knew the players were doing things the right way and that it would take time. Having that patience, amid all the noise around him, was key Sunday.

Even with the team down 21–6 in Arizona, after taking a 26–0 shellacking last week against the Texans, that was clear.

“I saw the look in our eyes,” Callahan said. “We didn’t flinch—never flinched, kept pushing. That mentality has sunk in. It’s, No panic, no press. We played together, trusting each other. We stole a little bit of the thunder with blind trust. You have to trust the guys to do their job next to you. I think I saw that today through the course of four quarters. They finally realized what it could look like if you do those things.”

And so the comeback came. First with an 80-yard drive, then with Tyler Lockett recovering a fumbled interception for a touchdown, and then with a 38-yard dime to Calvin Ridley to set up Joey Slye’s game-winning, 29-yard field goal.

All that went down in the fourth quarter.

So with it went the goose egg in the Titans’ win column and comments Ward made last week about the state of the team (“We ass”). For what it’s worth, Callahan did discuss the sound bite with Ward, telling him he appreciated his will to win, but he should be cognizant of how his comments might affect other people, and that he could polish what he says a bit. Ward, for his part, felt like the remarks did serve their purpose.

“I just think we needed that. We needed it known how we weren’t complementing each other on both sides of the ball,” Ward told me. “We weren’t playing our best. The biggest thing is that the guys in the locker room respected it. They know how I feel, we weren’t on our P’s and Q’s on offense. And we just have a bunch of individuals that take it to heart, but in the good way, as far as just holding each other accountable and being resilient.”

And at least for one day, on Sunday, it showed.

The Commanders gutting out wins now should pay off later. Based on the way he and GM Adam Peters constructed, and aggressively built, their 2025 roster, there’s no way Dan Quinn expected to be where he was Sunday afternoon—down 10–0 to the Chargers and staring a 2–3 start in the face as the second quarter started at SoFi Stadium.

Of course, he also couldn’t have forecast the tough strokes of luck his team had dealt with, either, losing Jayden Daniels for two games and being on a second without Terry McLaurin.

But the relentlessly positive coach saw it a little differently than some might. There was a chance there to see what his team was made of. He’d felt like, at this point, versus where the team was at the same point a year ago, the Commanders were more connected. And if they could dig out of the hole they were in, and win a different way, maybe they’d show that.

“That is the sign of a connected team—to say, If we have to run, and throw it less, then that’s what we’ll go do,” Quinn said. “I was pleased to see that in the second quarter. We were playing our way.”

What did he mean by our way? When I asked, he said it was the ability to have one unit leaning on another, and a complementary game following. Sunday, in that second quarter, it showed up in Quan Martin forcing a fumble and Marshon Lattimore recovering it, on defense, and the offense then cashing in with a nine-play, 74-yard touchdown drive to swing momentum and cut the hosts’ advantage to 10–7.

It was also, as Quinn said, with McLaurin out, having the ability to pull another lever within the offense, with the run game churning out 163 yards on 28 carries, and rookie Jacory “Bill” Croskey-Merritt breaking out for 111 of those yards and two scores on 14 carries.

And it was having that run game rolling to the point where it served as the foundation for a 13-play, 99-yard drive that sucked the life out of the Chargers in the fourth quarter, a march that just so happened to follow another Commanders takeaway (this one a pick from Mike Sainristil). When Washington got the ball back, it was up 20–10, and there was 7:40 left. By the time the visitors gave the ball back, it was a 17-point game and there was 1:08 to.

“Tonight, for the first time, to close the door and drive down the field was a big deal,” Quinn said. “For us to own the ball at the end of the game was what I was most proud of—Bill has uniqueness in him and it’s good to see that come together. We will get some guys back, but if that’s how we have to win this type of game, it’s nice to know we can lean into that.”

Which Quinn believes, in the end, will make his team better when it matters most.

Of course, no one wanted to see Daniels or McLaurin miss time. But if there’s a benefit to going through it, it could show up there—with a team that’s become more well-rounded, because those absences forced it to be.

There’s no way I could possibly have a take on what happened with Mark Sanchez—it sounds bad all the way around, and I’d wait for more information before I’d say much about it—but I do think Fox’s call to the bullpen was a good one. And maybe I’m biased here, because I know he’s a good dude and I’ve worked with him plenty, but Brady Quinn should 100% be doing more NFL stuff.

So I figured it would be interesting to give you a little look into how this all went down, as the network navigated a really difficult situation.

Quinn, the 2007 Browns first-rounder who played eight years in the NFL, was in Ann Arbor on Saturday morning, on the desk of Big Noon Kickoff ahead of Fox’s broadcast of Michigan-Wisconsin. At 9:55 a.m. ET, five minutes before BNK went live, he was made aware that the network needed someone to take Sanchez’s spot at the Colts-Raiders game at 1 p.m. ET in Indianapolis on Sunday. Given the timing and Quinn’s proximity to that game, he really was the best, if not only, option the network had, so he agreed to it.

Logic would hold he could get on a puddle-jumper from Detroit to Indy—but, again, the timing.

Quinn didn’t have a suit, and if he was going to do it, he thought the best chance he had at doing the best job he could would be if he could go home to Columbus and watch tape in his office to prep, and make phone calls from the car. Quinn has a Sprinter van, and uses the car service Jeevz to drive it for him to work locations that are close, so he can work in transit. So in mid-afternoon Saturday, he left Ann Arbor in the van, did Zoom calls from the road, and arrived back in central Ohio around 7 p.m., then dug into the tape on Vegas and Indy.

Between 7:00 and 11:00 p.m., he worked through the tape and talked with Colts coach Shane Steichen, and a bunch of younger assistants he knows from both sides to fill in the blanks. At 11:00, he went to sleep, woke up at 3 a.m. to do a feeding with the youngest of his and his wife Alicia’s five kids—eight-month-old Cade Quinn—and got up for good at 5 a.m. By 6 a.m., he was on the road for the three-hour straight shot down I-70 from Columbus to Indy.

And at 9 a.m., he was at Lucas Oil Stadium to call the game, lending a hand in a challenging situation made even stranger by his own connection to people involved. During the summer of 2013, Quinn was signed by the Jets after Sanchez was injured, and brought in to help mentor rookie Geno Smith. Twelve years later, he was replacing Sanchez again, calling Smith’s game, and, obviously, working through circumstances that weren’t ideal.

“It’s been a whirlwind to say the least—not much sleep and mixed emotions,” Quinn said via text, from the van, heading home. “Obviously concerned for Mark’s health and the well-being of all those involved, but at the same time excited for the opportunity to call a game. However, it’s not ideal. I pride myself on preparation, and there’s not enough time to prepare in the manner I am accustomed to. I’m very appreciative of all the folks behind the scenes at Fox and coaches on both teams who went out of their way to help.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was another twist, in that the crew, helmed by Chris Myers, was without a sideline reporter this week, “So it was just Chris and me talking ball for three hours, which I love. Hopefully, the fan bases enjoyed the call. You can never make everyone happy, especially in lopsided outcomes, but given the circumstances, I thought everyone did very well.”

And Quinn got an interesting story to tell.

The Texans-Ravens game pulled one contender off the mat, and I wouldn’t bury the other team involved yet, either.

So C.J. Stroud finished with 244 yards, four touchdown throws, no picks and a 143.9 passer rating Sunday. He hit eight receivers, and seven of them multiple times. The Texans were up 24–3 at the half and went on three touchdown drives that covered at least 65 yards. The defense was great, is great and should continue to be great. But then … there’s the competition.

The Ravens’ inactive list, between the seven players on there, had a combined 20 Pro Bowl appearances. It also included guys at traffic-directing spots such as safety (Kyle Hamilton), middle linebacker (Roquan Smith) and, of course, quarterback (Lamar Jackson). So the temptation would be to discredit the progress Houston made.

I just wouldn’t do that yet.

But, on the flip side, I would say the Ravens’ position now is precarious. On Sunday, they’ll get a hungry Rams team, smarting from a TNF loss to the Niners. They have their bye after that. Going into the off week at 1–5 would be tough, regardless of who you have coming back from the inactive list.

Which is to say, in a weird way, I may be more optimistic about the Texans’ lot in the NFL right now than the Ravens, which I wouldn’t have expected a month ago.

My quick-hitting takeaways are ready to roll. So let’s roll ’em out …

• The weirdest trend is the Panthers’ score trend I found. Carolina started the season being outscored 53–13, then scored 55 consecutive points, then were outscored 59–7, then outscored the Dolphins 24–7 down the stretch of Sunday’s 27–24 win. Which brings a new definition to a team being “streaky.”

• Relying on Darren Waller (5 catches, 78 yards, TD) is a good sign that Miami misses Tyreek Hill.

• Shout out to Brandon Staley for his Saints defense generating five takeaways, on the way to the first win of the Kellen Moore era in New Orleans.

• In the process, the gunslinger in Jaxson Dart came out, and not in a great way. Giants coach Brian Daboll has some experience working with young quarterbacks like that, and was able to coach a lot of it out of Josh Allen. I think a big part of it is being able to differentiate situations where you can try to make the big play versus the spots where you should.

• Dak Prescott is quietly playing very, very well in adverse conditions (no CeeDee Lamb, shaky defense, etc.). If the Cowboys are playing meaningful football in November and December, he’ll obviously be a massive reason why.

• The Lions are a great example of how Week 1 doesn’t mean anything.

• I’ll say it again: The Bengals should trade for Kirk Cousins. Anything to get into the playoff bracket with Joe Burrow at quarterback is worth it.

• The NFL’s officiating is becoming a problem. The constant conferences and discussions, and over-explanations of rules, make for awful TV. And it’s over and over and over again.

• Monday night’s Jaguars-Chiefs game is a little like Bills-Patriots. The Jaguars can, like the Patriots did, get a nice legitimizing win in prime time after their 3–1 start.

• Two weeks left until K.C. gets Rashee Rice back, and we get to see what they’ll become.

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