We made it through Week 5 of the NFL season. We saw the Philadelphia Eagles and the Buffalo Bills lose their perfect records, and we saw the New York Jets become the only winless team.
If you’re not a fan of those three teams, it was probably a pretty good weekend of ball for you.
You've got to win those winnable games
Technically, this first award didn’t happen during the weekend, but it’d be a disservice to society not to bring it up. I don’t know what’s going on across the pond, and I don’t pretend to. Maybe this is some of that high-level dry comedy that they do in the UK… If it is, then hats off to them. If it’s not, then woof.
Clueless-iest: That guy who interviewed Aaron Jones
Technically, this was posted on Saturday, but it still counts: the Vikings had their second international game in a row in Week 5. First was in Dublin, Ireland, and this week it was in London, England.
To advertise that game, the Vikings’ running back, Aaron Jones, did an interview with a guy who does something called “the Career Ladder,” where he asks someone a series of questions and then has to guess what their job is.
In Jones’s video, he’s wearing a Minnesota Vikings hoodie and tossing a football…
Listen… I’m not a soccer guy, and I never will be, but if someone walks up to me juggling a soccer ball and wearing a Manchester United T-shirt… I’m going to assume that he’s a professional soccer player.
Also, it’s a really pathetic move to ask, “What’s the first letter?” It's such a phone-in question…
Again, I’m not a cultured person, but I’d like to think that I could do better than what this cat is doing, especially when a professional football player is standing on a literal ladder with me. This is an all-time bad look for a guy who might as well be wearing a redcoat.
Bad look: A.J. Brown
Wide receivers want the ball, and they are definitely allowed to be mad when the ball doesn’t come to them. The problem is that it’s different for every receiver.
If Jalen Nailor is mad that Carson Wentz isn’t throwing him the ball, it’s easy to push that aside and say, ‘Sure, pal… But Justin Jefferson is on your team, and he’s a whole lot better than you.’
When A.J. Brown is mad that the ball isn’t coming to him, it’s entirely different. When he gets the ball, the Eagles’ offense is infinitely better because he’s an amazing football player.
However, if you’re going to make a scene and ask for the ball (when everyone agrees that you should have the ball), you absolutely have to make the game-changing plays when they are given to you. A.J. Brown did the exact opposite of that.
When the Eagles had a 17-3 lead over the Broncos late in the third quarter, Jalen Hurts took a deep shot to A.J. Brown. Brown beat the Broncos’ safety on a double move, and when he saw Jalen Hurts take a tick in his throwing motion, he stopped running his route.
AJ Brown slows up on a would-be TD 🧐 pic.twitter.com/m6S1zKeILt
— Victor Williams (@ThePhillyPod) October 5, 2025
Hurts ended up throwing to Brown, but he wasn’t where the ball was. It was a weird and bad play, and it is a terrible look for A.J. Brown…
Now, is it A.J. Brown’s fault because he stopped running when he was wide open? Yes. Is it entirely his fault? Not really. Hurts took an extra tick to throw it.
Again, this is undeniably a bad look for Brown, but I’m very curious to find out what the miscommunication was. I refuse to believe that he’s giving up, so there must’ve been something that went wrong with this whole thing.
Wait, what?: Eagles/Broncos refs
One bad call won’t win or lose a game, but a bunch of bad calls will definitely play a role in something. The Eagles were the victims of this on Sunday.
Now, if you just look at the penalty totals and see that the Broncos had 12 for 121 yards, and the Eagles had nine for 55 yards, you might think, ‘121 yards to 55 yards? It seems like the Broncos were the ones getting shafted.’
That’s wrong… mostly.
On the Broncos’ final drive of the game, they faced a second-and-six from their own 47-yard line. Jalyx Hunt got in the backfield and sacked Bo NIx… or he would’ve if Nix didn’t pull the old ‘Coward’s launch’ move.
What should’ve been intentional grounding was called intentional grounding, and then the refs just… ignored that they called it. I was in the stands, they called it, walked the penalty yards, and then just walked it right back up to the 47-yard line, without saying a word. If you’re going to wave off a flag, announce that you’re doing it so everyone can flame you publicly. Cowards.
They weren’t done, though. Zack Baun was called for a questionable late hit, and later, Dallas Goedert was definitely interfered with near the goal line. The DPI would’ve set the Eagles up for a game-winning Tush Push.
Those last two are subjective penalties where the refs make judgment calls. It’s an inherent issue with those massive penalties, but you go into a game knowing that there is a possibility of those calls being made.
The intentional grounding? Buddy… What a blunder by the zebras.
Oh, honey… no: Arizona Cardinals
Per Yahoo Sports, 23.88% of people in their Survivor Leagues picked the Arizona Cardinals to beat the Tennessee Titans. The Cardinals lost. That’s gutting… especially in the way that they did it.
Incredible compilation of garbage from the Cardinals here.
— Zona (@AZSportsZone) October 6, 2025
It’s so painful to rewatch all of these sequences.
via fanalyzesports (TikTok) pic.twitter.com/3fQTBFbOSi
The Emari Demercado fumble into the endzone is wild. The guy finally got his chance to be a starting running back (after James Conner and Trey Benson both got hurt), breaks off a 72-yard run that should be a highlight, except after 71 yards, he lets go of the ball before he gets into the endzone. Unbelievable.
And then the interception, turned fumble, turned Titans’ touchdown? Woof. When bad teams win games, it’s because of crazy, stupid, and crazy-stupid stuff like that.
Gravity Victim of the Week: Jaxson Dart
Jaxson Dart had a pretty little debut in Week 4 against the Chargers. He threw for only 111 yards and a touchdown, but he also ran for 54 yards and a touchdown. That’s the kind of stuff that’s expected when a rookie quarterback (a quarterback with no tape) gets his first start.
That came crashing right back down to Earth in Week 5. Dart went from doing that against an undefeated Chargers to losing to a completely defeated Saints.
In that game, he did throw for 202 yards and two touchdowns, but he also threw two gutting interceptions in the fourth quarter that killed any chance of a comeback.
Chalk this one up as a win for the ‘Don’t trust anything that you see in the preseason’ people.
Football makes sense: Ravens
You can’t go into a game with a decimated roster and expect to win. It happens sometimes, and those are the games that make you angry at the football gods. When the hurt team does lose, there’s a sense of relief that all is right in the world.
That’s what happened when the Ravens, who were down seven very key players, lost 44-10 to then 1-3 Houston Texans.
Their offense had 10 total drives, four of which were three-and-out punts, three ended with interceptions, one was a missed field goal, one was a made field goal, and one was a touchdown.
On the other side of the ball, the Texans had eight straight drives where they came away with points before they sat their starters.
It was an ugly, ugly game for the team that was supposed to be the class of the AFC North… and somehow, with a 1-4 record, they are still the favorites to win that division. Crazy.
Game of the Year of the Week: Buccaneers/Seahawks
67 combined passes, 57 combined completions, 720 combined passing yards, six combined passing touchdowns, 178 combined rushing yards, three combined rushing touchdowns, eight lead changes… and one game-sealing interception with 58 seconds left in the game.
THAT is how you have a Game of the Year of the Week. It’s hard to give it to any other game, especially when both Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold had one of, if not the absolute best, games of their careers.
On the other hand, this game was an unbridled disaster for both defenses… But that’s forgivable when the Mayfield/Darnold show comes to town.
Winner (if the game was 15 minutes): Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals are bad, and in Week 5, they got to play a monster of a team in the Detroit Lions. If this game were just 15 minutes long, and that 15 minutes were the last 15 minutes, the Bengals would’ve been walking away with a 21-9 win.
But football isn’t a 15-minute game, and the Bengals actually lost 37-24.
Fortunately, two of those fourth-quarter touchdowns were from Ja’Marr Chase. It looked like picking him in the top five of your fantasy draft was going to be a death knell. He’s still not going to be the juggernaut you thought he would be, but if he can be a garbage-time merchant, he’ll be worth something (if you’re in my fantasy league and reading this, I’m absolutely not trying to puff up his value so I can trade him away).
Revenge game winner: Stefon Diggs
Everyone loves a good revenge game, but sometimes the subject of a revenge game can get a little fuzzy. Like in Week 3, was it a revenge game for the Cowboys against Micah Parsons, or was it a revenge game for Micah Parsons against the Cowboys?
There’s no secret when it comes to Stefon Diggs. The guy is a lunatic, and he absolutely took the Bills trading him to the Texans before the 2024 season as a personal affront.
It wasn’t just that the Patriots beat the Bills; it’s that there was nothing the Buffalo defense could do to stop Diggs. He ended up with 10 catches for 146 yards, which was his best game since Week 6 of the 2022 season.
To top it off, he wasn’t a total jerk about it either. He played like a killer and didn’t absolutely stunt all over his former team. Pretty sweet night for the dude.
Moveable object meets a very stoppable force: Panthers/Dolphins
Going into Week 4, we knew that either the Ravens or the Chiefs were going to start their season with a 1-3 record. It ended up being the Ravens. Going into Week 5, we knew that either the Panthers or the Dolphins were going to start their season with a 1-4 record. It ended up being the Dolphins.
No one really wanted this game, and it was a pretty good move for the NFL to kind of bury it in the middle of the early slate of the Sunday games.
Early on, the Dolphins had a 17-point lead after they strip-sacked Bryce Young and then picked him off the next drive. They had the whole thing under control… except for the part where they forgot about the Panthers’ secret weapon: their RB2, Rico Dowdle.
Dowdle ended the game with a totally normal 206 rushing yards and a touchdown off 23 carries. Going into this game, he had four games with over 100 rushing yards, and his best game was when he had 149 yards against none other than the Carolina Panthers.
Maybe they knew something about the guy, and they waited until an incredibly winnable game to unleash him? Regardless, the Panthers came back from a three-score deficit and beat the Dolphins in the ultimate game of ‘Who doesn’t want it more?’
Rookie of the Week: Bill
There’s a decent chance the Commanders found themselves a little gem with Bill Croskey-Merritt. There were 24 running backs drafted before Washington grabbed him in the seventh round, with the 245th pick.
In Week 5, he had 111 rushing yards and two touchdowns, which was a stark comparison to the Chargers’ rookie running back, Omarion Hampton, who had just 12 carries for 44 yards.
Now, you could make an argument that the Buccaneers’ Emeka Egbuka should be the Rookie of the Week because he had seven catches for 163 yards and a touchdown… That’s a good argument.
My only counterpoint: What’s easier? Is catching seven passes from Baker Mayfield harder than rushing for 111 yards behind the Commanders’ offensive line? Who’s to say?