The NFC West race is already over. Making claims like that in the modern cold-takes environment we live in is begging to get dragged a few months from now, but watching the Los Angeles Rams play, it's impossible to fathom anyone else making a run in the division.
After rolling into Seattle and fending off a frisky Seahawks team, the Rams are now 5-0, a full three games clear of Seattle, who fell to 2-3 with the loss, and holding the tiebreaker. Los Angeles isn't going to be some berserker smashmouth that spends the season covering double-digit road spreads, but the Rams are the best team in the NFL.
And they know it.
"Nah, nobody can stop this offense. We've got the best coach in the world, best offense. Best, quarterback, O-line," Todd Gurley told FOX Sports' Joy Taylor on the field after the game. "We found a way -- lost two great receivers and we found a way to do this in Seattle, which is hard to do."
Those receivers in question -- Cooper Kupp and Brandin Cooks -- were both battling concussions. And it required the Rams to try and find a different way to win, getting involved in a comeback effort against the Seahawks that ended up with the two division rivals swapping haymakers in a game that ended with the Rams coming out on top 33-31.
Prior to today, the Rams largely spent the first quarter of the season strolling their way through a softer schedule, throttling the Raiders, Cardinals and September Chargers. They got into a shootout against the Vikings 10 days ago, but they controlled that game for the most part. This was different, and it was on the road in a hostile environment too, as Gurley noted.
The Rams continuing to produce despite Kupp and Cooks going down is a testament to their depth and balance. Josh Reynolds, a highly-touted draft pick who has been pushed down on the depth chart, stepped in and made plays. Robert Woods piled up 56 yards on an end-around. And they leaned on Gurley, of course, with the running back finding paydirt three times behind the Rams' stout offensive line.
Los Angeles came into this game as a seven-point favorite, a surprising number given how good Seattle has been over the last half decade plus, particularly at home. The Rams were never really in danger of covering, barring a pick-six or some such late, but covering as a home dog without winning won't count as a moral victory for the Seahawks.
Seattle had their hopes snuffed out on an impressive playcall by Sean McVay, who continues to show he's one of the best young coaches in football. On fourth-and-1 with 1:39 left, the Rams initially sent out their punt team, up 33-31 to send the ball back to Russell Wilson. McVay, after the Seahawks called a timeout, ultimately bailed on that plan and sent his offense back out. Jared Goff, a tall quarterback who is stronger than people think, picked up a first down easily. The Rams went out there and relied on their strongest personnel to get a single yard instead of letting Wilson have the ball back with less than two minutes left, on his homefield and only needing a field goal to get the win.
For a team with a tough schedule coming up, it was a huge divisional win that might have snuffed out any hope for the rest of the teams in the west.
Offense beats defense
The Chiefs, the only other undefeated club left in the NFL, won in different fashion: they handled their business at home and used their defense as a method of stifling the Jaguars, who many people believed would come in and smother the stout Chiefs offense. Jacksonville provided a speed bump for Patrick Mahomes and Co., but the Jags' real problem was getting out of their preferred gamescript.
Blake Bortles threw the ball 61 times. This shouldn't be surprising, but Jacksonville doesn't win often when Bortles has to throw a bunch: they are now 3-14 when Bortles has 40 or more pass attempts in a game over the course of his career.
Jacksonville started the game out by going punt, punt, turnover on downs, interception, interception, which means there was almost no chance of being able to lean on the run game and defense to win. Jacksonville thrives playing as a front-runner because it can unleash pass rushers and run downhill.
Instead, Andy Reid and Mahomes continued to innovate on offense -- a very creative and well-designed first drive ate up 5:23 of the clock, lasted 10 plays, went 73 yards and ended with Mahomes diving into the end zone for his second career rushing touchdown.
But, again, it was defense that really ruled the day. K.C. managed 12 quarterback hits, five sacks, five turnovers and the best interception celebration I've seen this year.
This was the same unit that served as a sieve for opposing offenses during the first month of the season. K.C. isn't going to turn into the '85 Bears all of a sudden, and they won't get a short-handed Jags team on the road every week either. But they will hopefully see Eric Berry come back at some point in the near future, and there are enough pieces to suggest they keep gelling on that side of the ball. This team is not as one-sided as some would have you believe.
Panthers last drive, Odell drama
I am entirely unsure what Ron Rivera and Norv Turner were doing on the Panthers' final drive against the Giants in what would become a 33-31 win for Carolina. The Giants had no business being in this game, but Cam Newton threw a pair of bad interceptions, Eli Manning blacked out and forgot he was washed for a few hours, hitting Saquon Barkley for a touchdown, and all of a sudden New York looked like it might steal another road win.
Carolina got the ball back with 1:08 left at their own 25-yard line and took an incomplete deep shot on first down. Cam then hit D.J. Moore for 20 yards, followed by a Cam incompletion, followed by a completion to Christian McCaffrey for nine yards, followed by the Panthers' final timeout with 30 seconds left. On the next play -- a third-and-1 -- with the ball now on the Giants' 45-yard line (and therefore quite out of field-goal range) and, again, no timeouts left, they ran a draw play to McCaffrey that picked up a single yard. Confounding stuff, really. They needed the first down and got it, sort of.
The refs just gave this to the Panthers and never reviewed it or stopped the clock to confirm the first down. Newton sprinted up to the line and spiked the ball as FOX was running a "4th and 1" graphic on the screen. Everyone was very confused, except Giants fans, who were very angry.
But fortunately for those Giants fans, the Panthers were too far away for a field goal. Right? Wrong. Graham Gano trotted out for a 63-yard kick and buried that bad boy to give Carolina a win and send the Giants reeling.
The 63-yard kick is tied for the longest game-winning field goal in NFL history and tied for the second-longest field goal in history. And the Spanish radio announcers calling this play were just marvelous.
Carolina should have handled a bad football team, but the Panthers love to let teams hang around like this sometimes. For the Giants, this now sets off what could be a firestorm for the next few weeks. Odell Beckham made some comments before the game that clearly insinuated concern with Eli Manning's ability to throw the ball down the field.
Win the game, and it goes away. Lose, and Pat Shurmur has to give a fiery speech telling people to stop asking him questions about Beckham's comments.
"I'm gonna answer all the drama questions right now. I addressed it with Odell. I addressed it with our team. I publicly declared that I didn't agree with his comments. And I asked anyone who was interested if they want any clarification, go to Odell, because he's a big man," an emphatic Shurmur said after the game. "Now, I'm not going to give the public a pound of flesh on this. That would make me small, not strong. These are the kinds of things, in my opinion, when you have the locker room that we have, that will help galvanize them. Because the locker room took care of it. So that's all I'm saying. Finito. Done."
It would be nice if it worked like that for Shurmur. But it won't in this market, with this player and this drama. The Giants have four days to get ready for a hungry Eagles team coming to town. Best of luck.
Punt You Very Much
When two teams make it to overtime, we often refer to it as "free football." Nothing about the Texans and Cowboys spending an extra 15 minutes together on a football field felt free last night, primarily because watching Jason Garrett and Bill O'Brien battle it out in a series of bad coaching decisions was just painful.
For O'Brien, the biggest calamity was the red-zone playcalling, something he admitted was lacking at halftime. The Texans made it to the red zone five different times and came away with a single touchdown last night; they now have 22 trips to the red zone on the season, securing just eight touchdowns, good for a 36.4 percent touchdown rate on red zone trips, second worst in the league. It's actually worse than it looks too: five times on Sunday night the Texans made it inside the Cowboys five yard line and they managed to score a total of 16 points.
Houston won the game in overtime thanks to another field goal (from the red zone, duh) but it should have never been close. They gave Dallas a chance to stay in the game.
Garrett wanted no part of the offer, taking part in one of the most cowardly coaching decisions you will ever see from an NFL head coach. On fourth-and-1 in overtime with his team having been severely outplayed for most of the night, Garrett elected to punt from the Texans 42-yard line.
Second-guessing is part of this business, but no one was second-guessing Garrett in this instance: all of the guesses were of the first variety, with the whole world wondering why a team like the Cowboys -- one that is heavily invested in its offensive line, with a stud running back (Ezekiel Elliott) who was a top five pick, with a quarterback (Dak Prescott) who is 6'2" and 240 pounds -- wouldn't try and pick up a yard in overtime to score the win.
Even Garrett's boss, the unfailingly loyal to his boy Jerry Jones, was critical of his coach on Sunday night.
"We were being outplayed. It's time for risks at that particular time," Jones said.
Garrett defended his decision by claiming it "was a long" yard he had to get, which is the worst excuse I've ever heard. It stands in stark contrast to the decision by McVay to have the Rams win the game, and don't think Jerry will ignore comparisons to the flashy, undefeated team against a 2-3 lunker this week.
Defending Doug Pederson
Another situation involving coaching decisions and aggression in game theory popped up in the Eagles-Vikings game on Sunday, with Doug Pederson going for a two-point conversion attempt after Philly cut the Vikings lead from 14 down to eight with a touchdown.
People were up in arms about Pederson's move, but it actually makes sense, if you buy into the idea you should be aggressive. Kevin Cole of RotoGrinders wrote about the decision here from a probability angle and I recommend you read that. And I saw multiple people I like and respect arguing about it on Twitter, so let's try and sort it out here.
So, if you're down 14, prevailing conventional logic would say you need to score two touchdowns and kick two extra points to tie the game. Easy enough. But let's walk through the three different scenarios here and look at the chances of winning.
Scenario 1: You kick twice. In this case, if you happened to score two touchdowns and kick two extra points and you stop your opponent from scoring again, the game would go to overtime. The conversion rate for two extra points is in the mid 90 percent, and it's a literal coin flip once you get to overtime, so for ease of use let's say you have a 50 percent chance of winning with this route. Easy enough right?
Scenario 2: You go for two on the first score. This is what Pederson did. Is it fair to say the success rate for the Eagles getting a two-point conversion is 50 percent? If we're rounding up it's basically that. Going for two and getting it gives you a 62 percent chance of winning, so taking a 50-50 risk -- which you are doing anyway with overtime! -- you give yourself a chance to increase your odds of winning by 12 percent. That is significant and makes the decision worthwhile.
If you don't get the two-point conversion, you're down eight, which means if you score another touchdown, you once again have another 50-50 chance of tying the game. You don't necessarily hurt yourself.
There is one hidden bonus as well. Pederson went for two with 12 minutes left. He got it and the Eagles were down six points. With that much time, it's not unreasonable to think Philly could have two possessions, and his decision brings the option of kicking two fields to tie the game into play. Score a touchdown, kick and you're probably winning.
Minnesota made it null and void by kicking a field goal to take a nine-point lead before ultimately holding on to win the game. But Pederson made the right call, and it's not a call many NFL coaches would make.