10 NFL Week 3 awards and superlatives that we'll be arguing about all week

Week 3 of the NFL is almost in the books. There's a Monday night showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and the Detroit Lions still to come, but we got 14 games on Sunday to react to. Not all of them were good, and not all of them were pretty, but just about every single one of them was awesome — and featured at least one award-worthy performance. 

Unfortunately, we have a self-imposed limit of 10 awards to give out. These are those awards.

Comebacks and beatdowns

There’s only one place to start, and that’s with the best game of the weekend. Each Sunday this season, we’ve had a game that stood out more than the rest. In Week 1, it was the Bills and the Ravens; in Week 2, it was the Cowboys and the Giants. Week 3 gave us the Eagles and the Rams. 

Game of the Year of the Week: Eagles 33, Rams 26

When these teams went into the locker room at halftime, the Rams had a 19-7 lead, and the Eagles had a total of 33 yards, almost all of which came from their first drive. It was one of the most pathetic performances that you could ever imagine from the defending Super Bowl champs, and if Sean McVay had any backbone or shred of confidence in his offense, that lead would’ve been much, much bigger. Instead, he chose to kick four straight field goals deep in Eagles territory (which was incredibly foreboding).

During halftime, one of two things happened in the Eagles’ locker room: They all had some Space Jam moment where they touched a football and got their talent back, or Jalen Hurts took offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo into a back room and worked him over until he promised to call a play where A.J. Brown gets the ball. 

Whatever the case, Philly came out of the locker room looking like a Bugatti rather than the Toyota Tercel Wagon they were in the first half. Hurts looked like himself and threw three touchdowns to erase a 19-point deficit and take a 27-26 lead. But that was far from the end of this one.

The Rams were cruising down the field on their last drive and got to a spot where they could kick a field goal to win as time expired. Unfortunately for them, the Eagles have a 6-foot-6, 330-pound leviathan of a defensive tackle named Jordan Davis. He blocked that attempted game-winning field goal (his second block of the day) and returned it for a nonsensical touchdown. The Eagles won 33-26. It was awesome … unless you’re a Rams fan. Then you’re probably pretty sour about the whole thing. 

Pay the Man: Peloton

Speaking of Jordan Davis: the dude hit 18.56 miles per hour on his touchdown run. That’s insane, but it’s not completely unusual for him. 

At the 2022 Scouting Combine, Davis blew everybody’s pants off with an unbelievable 4.82-second 40-yard dash. Then, in 2023, he hit 16.96 miles per hour while running Josh Allen out of bounds at the end of an Eagles win over the Bills.

Speed has always kind of been his thing, but conditioning has been a problem. Every offseason, there's always a story about how he lost weight, and he’s going to come into training camp rejuvenated and ready to roll for the next four months. This season, the story was about how he started doing (using?) Peloton. 

After the cameras caught A.J. Brown reading Inner Excellence on the sideline last season, sales for the book went up 53 million percent. That’s just a sample size of one, but it shows us that when one of the elite Eagles uses something to be better on the field, that thing gets a huge bump in sales. 

Davis has been playing more this year than in any other season of his career, he’s playing at a super-high level and apparently it’s all due to a stationary bike. This is a call to action for Peloton: Strike while the iron is hot and pay Jordan Davis. He deserves to be a spokesperson. Historical data tells us that an endorsement like that will bump up sales by 53 million percent. 

Rookie of the Week: Cam Skattebo

When I’m awarding someone Rookie of the Week, it’s not all about the numbers; I also take into account the vibes, and how much fun they are. Browns defensive tackle Mason Graham had a half-sack and a QB hit in Cleveland's upset over the Packers. It was a good game for him, but … ehhh, not award-worthy.

Cam Skattebo, on the other hand: That guy plays like a lunatic (which is so much fun to watch), and he’s good. He had 60 rushing yards, 61 receiving yards and a touchdown as just about the only bright side for the Giants in an ugly Sunday night loss to the Chiefs.

Sharks don’t have any bones in their body; it’s all cartilage and muscle. There’s a legitimate chance Skattebo is built the exact same way, except instead of cartilage, it’s just more muscle. Also, instead of a brain, it’s also just more muscle. 

Newton’s Third Law: Russell Wilson

Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same holds true for football. 

In Week 2, Russell Wilson threw for 450 yards and three touchdowns. It was an unbelievable performance. But it turns out that Isaac Newton’s not a Giants guy, because in Week 3 against the Chiefs, Wilson was 18-of-32 for 160 yards, zero touchdowns and two interceptions. He skyrocketed, and then absolutely plummeted back down. 

Things hit rock bottom on New York's penultimate drive of the game. The Giants made it down to the Chiefs goal line looking to make it a one-score game, and then Wilson just started hucking the ball to nobody.

That’s the kind of red zone quarterbacking that’ll get you fired. Which is super convenient because this game was their home opener, and the Giants fans (those of them who still had some life in them) were very eager to boo and let everyone know they want Jaxson Dart to be the starting quarterback.

Wreck-It Ralph: Isaiah Rodgers

Wreck-It Ralph’s whole thing is that he just smashes stuff and makes a whole mess of things. If you can get a player who has Wreck-It Ralph tendencies, you’ve got yourself a good player. That’s Vikings cornerback Isaiah Rodgers.

He had three solo tackles and two passes defended, which is a good day at the office on its own. But he also had a very early 87-yard pick-six to give the Vikings a 14-0 lead, and he wasn't done scoring yet.

A few drives later, he forced a fumble, recovered it himself and returned it 66 yards for a touchdown. 

Technically, that counts as a fumble, but he straight-up yoinked that out of Noah Fant’s hands. There’s a difference between a cornerback doing a desperation Peanut punch and a cornerback just taking the football from a tight end.

The Vikings ended up winning the game 48-10, and Rodgers’ two defensive touchdowns to give Minnesota a 24-3 lead before the half are what wrecked the game for Cincinnati. What a performance.

The ball is in your court: The Weiner’s Circle

Before the Thursday night game between the Bills and the Dolphins, some guy tweeted, “Ollie Gordon scores an anytime touchdown and I’ll text my ex, who is getting married on Saturday, that I still love her.” Ollie Gordon scored, and we’ll never know if he texted his ex. I prefer to think that he did. 

The Weiner’s Circle, a hot dog joint in Chicago, saw that and did its own thing, but for Caleb Williams.

Three things about that. One: Caleb Williams had only thrown four touchdowns in a game once in his career, in Week 6 last season against the Jaguars. Two: The Bears were playing a very, very bad Cowboys defense. Three: If you’re going to make a statement like this, you have to be prepared.

Anyways, Williams did throw four touchdown passes in Chicago's 31-14 win over Dallas.

In his post-game press conference, Williams said: “I’ve heard about this four touchdown thing … Congrats everybody. You got free hot dogs.” 

The last thing that The Weiner’s Circle tweeted about this promotion was asking if Vienna Beef could help them out. The problem there is that Vienna Beef is not active on Twitter; the last thing on their profile is a White Sox retweet from Opening Day 2024. It seems like help might not be coming after all.

We are less than 12 hours away from Tuesday; the clock is ticking. The ball is in your court, The Weiner’s Circle. You made your bed, and now you have to sleep in it ... and you better not do some kind of mini-weiner thing as a cop out.

Really real: Colts

Over the first two weeks of the 2024 season, the Saints had a historically awesome offense. They outscored their opponents 91-29 and looked like world-beaters. That ended up falling off a cliff in the worst way possible, and they ended the season with a 5-12 record and a -60 point differential.

To just about everyone’s surprise, the Colts started their 2025 season with a 33-8 win over the Dolphins and a 29-28 win over the Broncos. If there was a time for them come crashing back down to Earth, it would be in their Week 3 game against the Titans. 

“Crashing down to Earth” is relative in this circumstance, because the Titans are a bad team. The Colts could’ve crashed and still won this game. Butt they didn’t crash: They beat the life out of Tennessee in a 41-20 victory. 

It might be time to take the Colts seriously. They’ve dominated the teams they should dominate, and they got a win against the one good team that they’ve played so far. Next up for them is the Rams, which is another good test. If they pass that one … yeesh. They might be a real problem.

Wish I could have that one back: Falcons

In Week 1, Falcons kicker Younghoe Koo missed a 44-yard field goal to tie the game as time expired. In Week 2, he was benched for Parker Romo, who was 5-of-5 in a Sunday night field goal fest in Minnesota.

On Friday, September 19, Atlanta released Koo after seven seasons with the team. In that time, he made 176-of-202 field goals (87.1%) and 164-of-171 extra points (96%). He was just an all-around good kicker, and there’s only one thing that can happen when a team gets rid of a player like that: his replacement stinks.

In Week 3, Romo had his comedown. He missed a 49-yarder and a 55-yarder, two kicks that Koo is more than capable of making. It ended up not really mattering a whole lot because the Falcons lost in a 30-0 blowout and Michael Penix stunk, but still: Maybe you shouldn’t cut a kicker after one missed kick in a Week 1 game. 

This couldn’t have been the plan: Spencer Rattler and the Saints

There are some quarterbacks that make you say, "I don’t think that guy should be throwing the football this much." The problem is that typically those quarterbacks are on bad teams. Bad teams are typically losing, and losing teams typically throw the ball more to try to win the game. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Spencer Rattler is one of those quarterbacks, and he’s had the third-most dropbacks (131, per NFL Pro) of any quarterback in the NFL this season. The guys around him are Joe Flacco (134), Dak Prescott (134), Drake Maye (130), Russell Wilson (127) and Justin Herbert (127). Rattler is clearly the outlier, skill-wise, in that group. 

We all knew the Saints were in trouble with their quarterback situation going into the season, but now that it’s actually here and we’re in the thick of it, it’s so much worse than you imagined.

You could argue that their offense isn’t really built to do anything well, but it’s definitely not built to have Spencer Rattler drop back to pass nearly as much as he does. 

Humbling: Green Bay

There’s a real chance that professional athletes don’t know the definition of the word "humble" or "humbling." You'll hear guys something like, "When [insert team here] paid me $35 million, it was really humbling." That’s not humbling. That’s actually the exact opposite of humbling. Humbling is defined as "lower (someone) in dignity or importance.”

Over the first two weeks of the season, the Packers looked like the team to beat in the NFL. They traded for Micah Parsons on the eve of Week 1, and he immediately was the difference-maker you thought he’d be. On the other side of the ball, their offense was crushing it. 

They were on top of the world, and in Week 3, they were going to Cleveland to play a winless (and bad) Browns team.

The Pack ended up losing, 13-10, when the Browns kicker Andre Szmyt nailed a game-winning 55-yard field goal as time expired. That is humbling.