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1. Cincinnati Bengals
2. Pittsburgh Steelers
3. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
4. Jacksonville Jaguars
5. Buffalo Bills
6. Denver Broncos
7. Detroit Lions
8. Indianapolis Colts
9. Baltimore Ravens
10. Quick-hitters

Week 8 is almost done—there’s a big game tonight (Bears-Seahawks) to wrap it up—and so are we after an interesting Sunday slate of games. Here are the takeaways.

Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals won a game Sunday that would have extended their string of inexplicable losses over the past few seasons. They lost to the Titans in 2023, to the Patriots to open 2024 and to the Jets and Browns last year—losses that, even with injuries or bad luck, would be hard for the Cincinnati players and coaches to explain outside of some stock “That’s the NFL” cliché.

So if you want to believe this year is different for coach Zac Taylor’s crew, and maybe a little more like 2021 and ’22, then Sunday would be a good one to highlight.

The Bengals fell behind 13–0 in the first quarter to a 1–6 Titans team that traded its best player for draft picks three days earlier. They then scored three unanswered touchdowns but blew that eight-point lead, too, falling behind 28–23 early in the fourth quarter. After retaking the lead, 29–28, they fell behind again, 36–29, with less than four minutes left.

They responded again.

Joe Burrow and the offense went 81 yards in seven plays to tie the game at 36 with 1:17 left, and first-year Bengals DT Dexter Lawrence II got a sack to end the Titans’ bid to win at the end of regulation. Burrow then took the offense 70 yards in five plays in overtime, and the defense forced a four-and-out after that to finish off a wonky and sloppy but ultimately educational 43–36 win.

“This game gave us an opportunity to show that we can be mentally strong, through all the change of possessions, all the change of leads, going into overtime and finishing the game,” Lawrence told me postgame. “I think this just gave us a perspective that we can be mentally strong and that we’ve just got to keep our heads in the game always.”

Lawrence is the guy, by the way, the Bengals traded for to be the centerpiece of a defensive overhaul and the guy who declared to his teammates on the first day of OTAs back in April that he was there to win a championship. His seven frustrating years of chasing one in New York ended with just one playoff appearance and one playoff win.

And his big play to end the Titans’ last threat was just one in a slew of them down the stretch against Tennessee. Which, truth be told, is what Lawrence expected of the teammates he joined in the spring with such high hopes, and especially of Burrow, to whom he voiced that expectation Sunday when things were looking their iffiest.

“I just looked at him and told him, Be a legend, be legendary,” Lawrence recounted. “And he showed up. And that’s what you want from one of the best quarterbacks in the league.”

They all stepped up in what looked like a lost Sunday. Burrow was 17-of-19 for 246 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter and overtime—finishing like Secretariat after throwing three picks in the game’s first three quarters. Ja’Marr Chase had five catches for 77 yards, and Tee Higgins had 68 yards and a score on four catches over that same short stretch. The defense got stops from Boye Mafe and Jordan Battle and of course Lawrence himself.

On the flip side, the Bengals know they can’t keep messing around. They got themselves into a similar mess against Miami a few weeks ago, having to hang on against an inferior team, and it’s not great that they found themselves in another such dogfight so soon.

Which only means there’ll be plenty of lessons to take from this one for Burrow and company.

“A few weeks ago, we lost a game like that,” Lawrence said. “We lost a close game. So my mindset is, How are we going to act in close games? And today we finished, and that’s just the start of that. Every game isn’t going to be a blowout.”

But if you look close enough, you’ll see they all do have lessons you can take from them.

That’s how Lawrence and his teammates are trying to see this one.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers are now the only team ahead of those Bengals in the AFC North, and for good reason. Mike McCarthy’s group has won four straight, the latest being Sunday’s 27–6 rout of the Browns. And they’ve done it in a unique way—amid a steady stream of very public, very bombastic real talk.

There was Aaron Rodgers’s initial comments after a Week 2 loss to the Patriots that he needed to tell McCarthy what was and wasn’t working play-calling-wise, then a widely discussed on-field spat in a Week 4 loss in Cleveland, during which McCarthy seemed to call his quarterback a “f---ing a--hole”. Then there was Jalen Ramsey, ahead of the Steelers’ Week 5 game against the Colts, saying there was a “disconnect” between the coaches and the locker room.

And while that stuff was later further explained and cleaned up, there’s a realness to it that you simply don’t see very often in today’s overly PR’d version of the NFL.

Dig deeper and you might even find it refreshing.

Here you have a veteran roster, full of decorated players who aren’t afraid of confrontation or hurt feelings, and a battle-tested coaching staff that can take the bullets. If it doesn’t look right to you, that’s O.K. Because it sure does seem to be working fine for the Steelers.

“It definitely is,” veteran linebacker Patrick Queen told me after the win over Cleveland. “I think it’s because everybody has the same end goal, and that’s to hold the trophy up. And once you go through things so many times, you’re not trying to go into this insanity, you’re just trying to find a new way to do things. We understand that with all the Alphas in here, nobody’s selfish. That’s the biggest thing. … Everybody wants to win and everybody understands how we got to win.”

There was a prime example of it this week on the defensive side of the ball.

On Friday, coordinator Patrick Graham went in front of the guys and told them how he planned to call the Cleveland game. “We ain’t changing anything,” he told them. He asked for their trust, and said they just had to play better.

Then the first Cleveland game came up, and after a solid start—punts forced on the Browns’ first two possessions—selfishness crept in and led to guys playing outside the scheme. Graham asked the players to look in the mirror.

They did. The results were obvious. The Steelers held the Browns to 34 rushing yards, and many of Deshaun Watson’s 324 yards were empty calories, gained while playing catch-up.

“P.G., since Day One, was just talking about the trust that it’s going to take time to build, but that’s something he’s willing to work toward,” Queen said. “So it really started with him, but me being here for three years and getting to know the guys, this is the most comfortable I’ve been around these guys. It’s just like you learn more and more stuff about them personally then it translates to the football field, communicating and just having them steady talks every single day. Always trying to get better.”

Similarly, Queen will have those talks with McCarthy as part of the leadership council.

Sometimes those talks can be more direct, or more confrontational or contentious than other times. Which is fine. Because the idea is always just that—to get better.

“Sometimes they’re heated conversations, but at the end of the day, all of us come to see eye-to-eye and just understand that we got to trust the plan and the process,” Queen said. “And then sometimes he’s got to trust us and he’s got to hear us out as well. So the communication and the trust is something that’s still climbing, and it’s in a great place right now. And we all trust Mike McCarthy because he’s been doing it a long time, he’s won, we know what he has established in his league, so just trust in his plan.”

It definitely has worked out so far, and a lot better than most folks figured it would.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The weirdest result of the week was definitely Tampa dispatching the Falcons,16-0, in a soaked Raymond James Stadium—without completing a single forward pass. The last time that happened was on Sept. 29, 1974, when Joe Ferguson went 0-for-2 in a 16–12 win for the O.J. Simpson-led Bills over the Jets at a windy, rain-soaked Rich Stadium in Buffalo. Joe Namath, not to be outmatched, had the game’s only two completions, but he also threw three picks. Meanwhile, Simpson rushed for 117 yards.

Until Sunday, that was the only time a team won a game without completing a pass in the Super Bowl era. Now it has happened twice. And while the Buccaneers certainly don’t want to replicate how it played out, there was plenty to be proud about from the anomaly.

“It’s rare. I think it’s historic, right?” veteran linebacker Alex Anzalone asked me. “Since 1970 or whatever? So yeah, it says a lot about our guys. The buy-in that we have. We knew what type of game it was going to be and we just had that mentality that this is how it’s going to go down. And Coach [Todd] Bowles was painting a good picture of how it was going to go down early in the week, so we were ready for it.”

Bowles didn’t reinvent the wheel. He saw the forecast. He told the guys to be prepared, and that whoever ran the ball effectively and stopped the run would probably win.

He, like everyone else, couldn’t have imagined how bad it would actually be.

But he didn’t miss on the rules of engagement the conditions would dictate.

“We didn’t know how much it was going to rain,” Anzalone says. “But definitely a seven-stud game, we had our screw-in cleats on. I had my all-weather gloves on, thankfully. And it was just one of those games that you’re going to have to run the ball and stop the run and it’s going to be hard to complete a pass.”

Anzalone, for what it’s worth, didn’t bring backup cleats, so he had to wear the same pair throughout—some guys swapped out at halftime—though he did change socks. He and his teammates certainly looked more ready for the elements than the Falcons.

Following Bowles’ plan, Tampa chewed up 324 rushing yards and, like those 1974 Bills, they leaned on turnovers, picking off Michael Penix Jr. four times—and as he alluded to, Anzalone’s gloves served him well in snaring two of those picks. The Bucs also showed, as they did last week against Carolina, how physical they are.

“That’s the strength of our team,” Anzalone said.

And that has been enough to pump life back into the Buccaneers’ season. Once 0– 4, they have gone 3– 1 since and now sit just a half-game back of the first-place Panthers in the AFC South. One of the Buccaneers coaches joked with Anzalone afterward that he had more catches on Sunday than Mayfield’s receivers did. Funny, sure, but also indicative of how the Tampa Bay coaches and players worked in lockstep the last month to pull themselves out of a ditch.

Anzalone said it started with a team meeting before the Thursday-night game against the Cowboys, with Bowles letting players stand up and address the room. Everyone got their feelings out.

Subtly, and with intention, Anzalone believes Bowles was handing them the baton.

“When you have a player-led team, you can do great things,” he said. “I know Coach Bowles knows that.”

Sunday proved that again, even if it wasn’t necessarily pretty.

Jacksonville Jaguars

The Bucs weren’t the only Florida team to make a splash in the rain—the Jaguars punked a Colts group that was stripped down by a couple trades last week. Yeah, that does give you reason to start pointing out the caveats, that Indy lost two longtime captains a week after firing its GM, then came south as a dome team into the stormy weather.

Whatever. The numbers tell the story here.

The Jaguars were up 28–0 at the half and scored five touchdowns before the Colts scored one in cruising to a 42-7 win. Jacksonville grinded out 183 rushing yards, and quarterback Trevor Lawrence was a spectacularly efficient 10-of-14 for 210 yards and three touchdowns. The defense turned seven Indianapolis first-half possessions into five punts, an interception and a lost fumble.

Once again, we all got to see the might—and ceiling—of the Jaguars. And how coach Liam Coen’s group would respond to a gut-wrenching loss, having fallen 34–31 to the Texans on the back half of their doubleheader of London games in Weeks 5 and 6.

“The biggest focus coming from London and the loss was sticking to the details, cleaning stuff up on offense, defense, special teams and just being us—correcting the film and making the plays that we need to make when we have the chance to,” said running back Bhayshul Tuten, who rushed for 104 yards, 94 of them in the first half alone. “It’s just being us, having the aggressive, attacking mindset and imposing our will on the defense or the offense, just on the other team, period.

“It’s been building up. It’s been a constant, how much we needed it. But I think it was just that the next team is just going to feel how we play.”

The Colts sure did.

And now, if you want to run the resumes of teams in the AFC, the Jaguars are way up in the pecking order. Their two losses were nail-biters fought to the end, and they have wins over the Bengals, Browns and Eagles, and now Sunday’s blowout of the Colts. Next, they’ll play the shorthanded Ravens on Thursday night, which will give them another shot to show the nation who they are. Win that one and it’s possible they’re 8-2 when they play in Chicago on Dec. 6.

That’s maybe even probable based on how well they’ve played, how balanced their roster is and their approach seems to be.

“We’ve noticed it for some time now: We’re a very complete team—offense, defense, special teams,” Tuten said. “And it starts with playing our brand of football and doing the things that we need to do right and harping on the details. And with the level of aggression we play with, flying around, we’re playing good. But we have not reached our ceiling yet.”

They’re getting closer to it, though, and looking awfully tough to beat.

Buffalo Bills

Speaking of ceilings, the Bills are still chasing theirs. We know how good quarterback Josh Allen is, and the Buffalo offense, too. What was less certain coming into this year was how good the defense was going to be under new coordinator Jim Leonhard.

The early results weren’t great. Buffalo came into Sunday’s AFC showdown with the Bills leading the league in scoring but ranking 30th in points allowed. Somehow, their total defense ranking—31st—was even worse. And so the guys huddled during their bye week, after a week-long trip out West to beat the Rams and Raiders, to fix it.

“Yeah, man, like you said, new staff, new scheme,” defensive captain Terrel Bernard told me Sunday. “They’re trying to settle in and just understand what we’re doing, communication from the front to the back and making sure that we’re all situationally aware. I think the bye was good for us; it came at a perfect time. We had the trip to L.A., stayed there, trip to Vegas. And no, the defense didn’t really play to the standard that we wanted.

“But I think the bye really helped us out, coming back and figuring out things we need to get better at, areas for improvement. I feel like we came out this week and put it on tape.”

The tape, Bernard explained, would show ramped-up communication, a result of the players watching tape together the last weeks, both at the facility and away from it. The statistical results certainly follow.

The Ravens lost quarterbacks Lamar Jackson (more on him in a bit) and Tyler Huntley early, so the forthcoming numbers do come with qualifiers. That said, the Bills were able to hold the Ravens to 144 total yards, less than 3 yards per play, and just 10 first downs. And they kept their nemesis, running back Derrick Henry, in check, holding him to 53 yards rushing after he gashed the Bills for 368 yards in the two prior games he played against them as a Raven.

That reflected the work done.

“You got a bunch of guys that have to be on the same page every play,” Bernard said. “You have a mess-up or a bust here or there, you give up points in this league. I think that was the main point of emphasis, locking in and making sure that we’re all on the same accord, doing the same thing. We spent some time through the bye week, spending time with each other and really locking in on that. And I feel like we did a good job.”

That good job moved the Bills to an NFL-best 6–1. And if all this is any indication, it sure stands to reason that they’re going to keep getting better.

Denver Broncos

The Broncos showed their toughness and know-how when it mattered most on Sunday’s marquee stage. Denver was down 24–13 going into the fourth quarter against a Chiefs team that bludgeoned them in the opener. If they lost, the Broncos would have been a game and a half behind Kansas City, with the Chiefs having the tiebreaker with the sweep.

A grizzled group of vets—and one precocious rookie—wouldn’t let it happen at Empower Field at Mile High.

In the final nine minutes, Bo Nix engineered a nine-play, 80-yard touchdown drive, Harrison Butker missed a 54-yard field goal and fourth-round running back Jonah Coleman covered 56 yards as Denver came back to take its first lead since the first quarter (51 of those yards on a clever, blitz-beating screen, and the remaining five yards on a touchdown run). Then the defense stoned Mahomes and the Chiefs at the goal line.

That last stand was punctuated by a Malcolm Roach sack, a result of star edge rusher Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper forcing Mahomes to step up and right into the clinching takedown by the big defensive tackle.

“I mean, the fact that we just have been in this position multiple times,” Bonitto told me postgame, “we knew, eventually, when we were able to tackle and get out of our own way defensively, our offense was going to level up, and that's what happened today.”

Bonitto is right, too—they’ve already been in this sort of situation plenty in 2026.

To raise the resume thing again, the Broncos now have wins over the Chiefs, Jaguars, Rams and Seahawks, with their only losses coming against Kansas City and the Niners. That’s probably as impressive of a hit list as any in the NFL.

Denver also keeps showing an ability to win different ways, which really matters in January.

Now, it’ll just have to maintain that as the schedule softens.

“I feel like it's no different than last year,” Bonitto said. “This is around the time where we usually start getting in the groove of things and seeing what we like, being the team that we want to be. We're just continuing to build off of that and it's showing itself right now.”

As for what they want to be, Bonitto quickly answered: “We’re just a gritty team, man.”

That much was apparent when it mattered most on Sunday.

Detroit Lions

I want to give the Lions their credit, but first address what happened to fourth-year linebacker Jack Campbell. The 26-year-old husband and new father injured his neck on Sunday tackling Vikings WR Jauan Jennings and TE T.J. Hockenson on consecutive third-quarter plays. On the first, he hit Jennings over the middle and their heads collided. On the second, Campbell drove at Hockenson’s hip and his head bent back.

On impact, it looked like the Pro Bowler’s body went limp. Trainers and doctors came out. Players on both sides were clearly shaken. He was placed on a backboard and loaded onto a cart, then an ambulance, and taken to a Detroit hospital.

An hour later, after the Lions beat the Vikings, Dan Campbell addressed his players in the locker room on the win, then said, “All right, I wanna do this, I’m gonna lower this mood a little bit. I do not have any more information on Jack. We don’t know anything else at this point. So here’s what I wanna do, man. We’re gonna take a knee. I wanna pray for Jack. OK, and let’s keep him in our thoughts and prayers, man.”

After the prayer, Jared Goff, voice trembling, broke the team down with this: “Hey, I love you boys. Stick together. I know that’s tough with Jack. Stick together. Lean on each other, alright?”

Later, the Lions put out a statement that was ominous in its lack of information on progress.

Here’s hoping Campbell is on the road to recovery soon.

As for his team, I figured we’d save most of our thoughts, given the circumstances, on them for our Tuesday notes. But I will say that to rush for 230 yards on the Vikings and put together a seven-play, 69-yard dive to win the game in the fourth quarter was damn impressive. And as is the case with the Bills, if Detroit’s defense—which has Brian Branch back, is getting Kerby Joseph soon but may be without Campbell—can be more competitive, you really might have something.

As it is, they’re right in the thick of a hyper-competitive NFC North chase.

Indianapolis Colts

The Colts’ situation bears watching. As we mentioned, they already traded away two captains. Could they move a third?

Sunday’s listless performance certainly seems to swing open all possibilities.

And as a result, star running back Jonathan Taylor’s name is going to be out there this week. Indy has let teams know they’ll have to be blown away to trade him. Losing another leader would be a tough blow for the locker room to absorb. There’s also a business element to losing a face of the franchise, with Taylor standing as one of the few draws the franchise has for its fans.

That said, as the great pro wrestler Ted DiBiase used to say, everyone has a price. To me, Taylor’s price might be around what Christian McCaffrey went for in 2022. There are similarities between the two, for sure. McCaffrey was in his sixth season when he was dealt before the deadline four years ago. Taylor’s in his seventh season. McCaffrey had three and a half seasons left on his contract when he was traded, which is where Taylor is now.

McCaffrey was dealt for second-, third- and fourth-round picks in the 2023 draft and a fifth-round pick in the 2024 draft. Maybe Taylor’s price would be around there. Maybe interim GM Ed Dodds would insist on a first-rounder to replace the one lost in the Sauce Gardner deal. Either way, this should be interesting over the next few days.

For what it’s worth, the Giants and Vikings have been most aggressive in looking for running backs on the trade market the last couple weeks.

Stay tuned.

Baltimore Ravens

The Lamar Jackson injury sucks. First the high-ankle sprain, now a thumb injury that’ll require surgery and is “potentially” season-ending, per Ravens coach Jesse Minter.

If it is, that means Jackson will finish 2026 having started just four games.

And the next obvious question would be whether or not the Ravens re-sign their two-time NFL MVP quarterback, with 2027 looming as a contract year.

Normally, that would be a no-brainer. But this one’s more complicated than most. Jackson, of course, doesn’t have an agent. He missed four games in 2025, and has already missed four this year, with more to come as he heads to injured reserve.

Perhaps the biggest question here, though, is what Jackson wants. My understanding has been that the Ravens wanted to negotiate a long-term extension with Jackson after Minter got the job. Jackson balked. He also has a no-tag clause in his contract. So if he wants to hit the market as an unfettered free agent in 2028, all he really has do is … nothing.

If he plays it out, and wants to get to the market, health-permitting, he can.

In that scenario, would he look to go home to Miami? It’s a ways off, and I’d expect the Ravens to make a real effort to get him locked up. But again, he holds a lot of the cards here. And all this will only get more interesting with every day between now and March 2028 that he doesn’t sign a long-term deal.

Quick-hitters

Time for the quick-hitters …

• Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on blowing a 24–10 fourth-quarter lead to Arizona: “It’s really bewildering to have the opportunities we had to win this game and not get it done.” Indeed.

• Love the effort and the spunk of Cardinals coach Mike LaFleur’s first team. And the physicality shows up here: Arizona averaged 7.5 yards per carry Sunday, Dallas was at 2.4.

• The Eagles are all alone in last place in the division this late in the season for the first time in forever. And while I have a hard time seeing running back Saquon Barkley on this list, there are a number of guys on one-year deals (Dallas Goedert, Tariq Woolen, Hollywood Brown) who should be available.

• The Josh Jacobs thing is murky. The league wasn’t aware of the previous incidents and found out the same way the media did—through a Freedom of Information Act request. It sounds like the Packers weren’t apprised of all of it either. Which isn’t great.

• Credit to Drake Maye for pulling a messy win out of the fire, with a MASH unit around him. Without A.J. Brown, Romeo Doubs, TreVeyon Henderson and (for the most part) Hunter Henry,  Maye went 16-of-20 for 199 yards, two touchdowns and a 141.5 rating. His leading receivers: Efton Chism III and DeMario “Pop” Douglas.

• The Rams are back to level ground at .500, and with wins over the Commanders and Cardinals can go into their bye at 6–4. Getting Myles Garrett back in the coming days will help, too. But there’s one lingering issue, in my mind, and that’s the lack of explosive plays (and overall speed) on offense. Against the Chargers, they had just two plays of over 20 yards, and one was a 23-yard run by Blake Corum.

• The clock seems to be ticking on Jets coach Aaron Glenn now.

• Conversely, Commanders coach Dan Quinn has been able to settle some choppy waters. Yeah, the Eagles aren’t the Eagles right now, but the Commanders flat out looked like the better team Sunday night.

• Hat tip to Titans coach Robert Saleh and his staff. Heck of an effort after the week they had.

• And finally, can’t wait for tonight’s big game. Bears-Seahawks should be phenomenal!