Don't expect a 'boring' Week 6 to last for long
Week 5 in the NFL got us into our “New Normal,” where teams like the Commanders and Falcons are good, and teams like the Browns & Bengals are bad. In Week 6, is it possible that the New Normal is just…boring?
There wasn’t actually a lot that surprised us this weekend (other than the Cowboys getting absolutely massacred at home…which at this point shouldn’t be that surprising, right?). But most results we saw coming:
The Niners beat the Seahawks
The Bengals beat the Giants
The Ravens beat the Commanders (albeit not without a fight from the Commanders)
The Texans beat the Patriots
The Packers beat the Cardinals.
And many of them were not close. You get the point. Week 6 was, well, kind of boring. Luckily we had a back and forth, hail mary completing, Monday night game that saved us. And it is there, with the Jets, where we start our Week 6 takeaways:
The Jets are a disaster, and an interim Coach and Davante Adams aren’t going to save them. What a week for the Jets. They fired their coach. Named a new play caller, and then hosted the Bills on Monday Night Football in a division game they really needed to have to turn the momentum around on their season. It turns out they did everything they were supposed to do – ran the ball comfortably, got Garrett Wilson loose in the passing game, even completed a hail mary at the end of the first half to essentially give them 7 free points. Any normally functioning team wins this game…except, the Jets didn’t. They managed to do all the things that undisciplined, poorly coached teams do. They missed field goals, had big penalties for first downs, and turned the ball over. When it came time to make the plays they needed to make to win the game, they couldn’t. Now they’re a full two games back of the Bills in the east, and lost to them at home. On Monday, they went all in on Davante Adams, in hopes that somehow he will save their season. Could a team, an owner, and a Quarterback look more desperate? The problem is, this team isn’t an aging wide receiver away from Super Bowl contention. Yes, the offense got better last night. But the defense got worse. And once Todd Downing and the new look, post-Nat Hackett offense is on film, that advantage is likely to go away. It’s time for Woody Johnson to face the music, and realize the rebuilding job in Florham park isn’t a quick fix.
The Eagles are still in trouble: The Eagles won on Sunday. So they should be in our weekly takeaways on a positive note for being able to ‘right the ship’ over a bye week, right? Wrong. Definitely wrong. Yes, the Eagles won on Sunday. They hung on for dear life to beat the lowly Cleveland Browns and the corpse of Deshaun Watson. They beat the Browns 20-16. At home. Coming off a bye week. This is the same Browns team that has been beaten by the Giants, the Raiders and the Cowboys. The same browns team that is last in Offensive DVOA by a country mile (literally it’s not even close). If the Eagles wanted us to take them seriously, they needed to come out and handle their business in this one. Instead? They barely won, and embattled coach Nick Sirianni did the most unserious thing he could – talking trash to Eagles fans on the sideline after the game. The Eagles could EASILY lose their next two – at the Giants, at the Bengals – at which point I don’t think Nick Sirianni will be as confidently brash with fans. In fact, he might be sitting at home, thinking about what he’s going to do next.
The Cowboys are not a serious football team: From bad to worse in the NFC East, where the Commanders are clearly the class of the division. The Cowboys have now been blown out in embarrassing fashion in 4 straight home games, dating back to the 2024 post-season. They have trailed by more than 15 points at half-time in ALL 4 of those games. All four! How are we supposed to take this team seriously. The Lions beat the Cowboys 47-9 on Sunday, and somehow it wasn’t even as close as that score indicates. The Lions were running routes with multiple offensive lineman. They were having linemen throw hook and ladders to other linemen. And when they wanted to just run the ball, they could do so for 10+ yards a pop. It looked like the Lions we’re playing their JV team, and wanted to embarrass all the underclassman. Well – mission accomplished Detroit. The reason we can’t take the Cowboys seriously is because they don’t do anything that we expect real, playoff-contending NFL teams to do. They can’t run the ball. They can’t stop the run. They can’t control tempo. They can’t convert 3rd downs (because every third down is a third and long because they can’t run the ball). Which means they start every game behind by 15 points by halftime. Things have gone from bad to worse in Dallas, and Jerry is at the point where he’s blaming (and threatening to fire) media members. Not a good look Jerry. Perhaps you should focus some of that energy inward. Your team could use it right now.
Detroit very much is a serious football team. Perhaps the most serious. Let’s start with an important point: losing Aidan Hutchinson to a gruesome lower leg injury is a major blow. Hutchinson is leading the league in sacks, and brings it on every down for a Lions defense that needs to pressure the quarterback to complete what they’re trying to do on back end. He’ll be hard, if not impossible, to replace. That injury was ugly, and we wish him the best. Regardless of that loss, Detroit might just be the team to beat in the NFL right now (let’s ignore the Chiefs for a weekend while on a bye). This team is physical to the point of being downright dominant. You rarely see this, as other NFL teams are hard to overpower. They are also paid professionals. But Detroit is making a habit of over-powering everyone they play, and Ben Johnson has gotten back to what this offense does best. Run the ball, make life easy for Jared Goff with play-action, easy throws to an exceptional group of playmakers. Rinse, repeat, score lots of touchdowns. But again – what the rest of the league should be most frightened by is this Aaron Glenn coached secondary starting to round into form. The Lions invested a lot of resources into suring up the weakest part of their team last year, and the early returns are VERY positive. Yes, Dak, CeeDee and the Cowboys offense are extremely out of sync. But let’s not pretend the Lions secondary didn’t have something to do with that. This team looks complete, and ready to march into the post-season once again.
The Mighty Norse: Is it possible the four best teams in the NFC all reside in the North? I’m mostly joking – I’m going to need the Bears to beat someone other than Carolina and the Jaguars before we elevate them to that lofty status – but for the other three teams? In my book, they are 1, 2, 3 in the NFC. This division is a combined 17-5. We just talked about how scary the Lions are. The Vikings are 5-0 and might be the most balanced, well-coached team in the league. And the Packers? They might just be better than both of them. Jordan Love is finding his form, seems to have put his week 1 knee injury behind him, and seemingly has a different young playmaker fall out of a tree every week. It literally doesn’t matter who he throws to (a problem for our model, btw), they’re all dynamic. There is no doubt these teams will start to beat up on each other as we get into divisional play (it is a statistical certainty), but it’s time we start asking ourselves if the NFC North can put 4 teams into the playoffs. Especially when the West looks shakier than we all expected, no one appears to be any good in the East other than a team led by a rookie QB that we all expect to regress at some point, and who knows about the South. I, for one, am fired up to see how this division plays out. It will not disappoint.
I think that’s it for Week 6. Finally, if you are a square bettor you did well this weekend. All the favorites covered, no big upsets. Boring. A word to the wise, though. Boring doesn’t last for long in the NFL. The script writers won’t let it. So get those moneyline parlays out of your system now, and get fired up for a wild week 7. You can count on it.
As always, we look forward to the conversation, debate and your feedback. Hit us at @fieldvisionmi on X, @fieldvisionsports on Instagram, or on our website www.fieldvisionsports.com.
