Best, Worst, and Dumbest moments from NFL Week 7: Headbutts, heaves and half-hearted flips

Week 7 was historic. We saw the first-ever NFL game in Paris. We saw the Bengals be especially bad and then especially good. We saw Patrick Mahomes look like a regular old quarterback. It was crazy, and just like every Monday, I reflect on the best, worst, and dumbest stuff we saw on Sunday.

Most of the time, I try to give an award for every game … but there were 12 games, and a bunch of them were kind of boring; they just didn’t have a whole lot of the nonsense deserving of a superlative. Fortunately, the ones that had nonsense had a whooooole lot of it.

We’re going to start in the Eastern Hemisphere with the Saints and the Steelers.

Matchup of the Week: Darnell Washington v. Kool-Aid McKinstry

Remember the first half of the first Space Jam? The Monstars took full advantage of how absolutely massive they were. It was dunk, after dunk, after punch in the face, after dunk … We got a real-life version of that on Sunday morning in Paris. 

The Steelers’ tight end, Darnell Washington (who I will give an award to anytime he does anything), caught the biggest of big-boy touchdowns that you’ll ever see. 

I mean, come on … that’s a 5-foot-11 Kool-Aid McKinstry trying to stop a 6-foot-7, 265-pound (but actually probably 330-ish) Washington. That’s not happening. Ever. It’s bullying, really. 

Penalty of the Week: Cam Skattebo

Cam Skattebo headbutts stuff. That’s just like, his whole thing. There’s even a State Farm commercial where he parks his truck too far away from the curb, so he headbutts it to get it in the right spot (the truck, not the curb … although there is probably a take where he headbutts the curb).

He finally got penalized for lowering his head on Sunday … and if ever there was a headbutt to penalize, it was this one:

He was going full speed in a crowd of guys, and he just dropped his noggin right into M.J. Stewart's torso … Then he crawled away like a possessed psychopath. It rocked, and it was awesome … but SHEESH, that was a hammer. 

Heartwarming Moment of the Week: Tank Dell Catch

672 days ago, Tank Dell had a potentially career-ending knee injury against the Chiefs. DraftSharks says it was a dislocated knee and a torn ACL, but it really seems like it was more than that (look it up on your own; it’s gross).

Well, he made it back. I can’t imagine what that journey looked or felt like, but I’d bet he would describe it as some level of “terrible.”

He ended up having a 43-yard catch in his return, and you can’t help but feel good for the dude … Was the ball actually thrown to him on that play? Don’t worry about it, you pessimistic sourpuss. Just be happy for the guy. 

Scenery Change of the Week … Year?: J.J. McCarthy

We all laughed at the Giants when they traded for J.J. McCarthy. There’s no reason to lie about it. To be fair, there was no reason to think that it was going to work … It's J.J. McCarthy. He stinks.

But buddy, we were wrong. He’s played five quarters of football for the Giants, and he’s gone 31-of-49 for 495 yards. He’s only thrown one touchdown, but the guy is making some really gutsy throws, and he’s not really making any mistakes. 

If you wanted to describe McCarthy when he was with the Vikings, you would describe him as gutless and mistake-prone. He looks different, and he’s playing infinitely better. 

Until further notice, we can classify him as a guy who ‘just needed a change of scenery.’

Scavenger of the Week: Jameis Winston

I’m not going to try to rationalize what the Giants do with their running backs or how they divvy up touches because it seems like nonsense … but it is very important (fantasy-wise, mostly) that Jameis Winston got all of the carries on the Giants’ QB sneaks. That includes one that ended up being a touchdown at the end of a 78-yard J.J. McCarthy-led drive.

If you were one of the people who had the cajones to start McCarthy in fantasy, you deserve all of the good vibes, goodwill, and points… But the fact of the matter is that Jameis yoinked real points away from you … pretty much out of nowhere … and you should be mad about that. 

Bouncer of the Week: Brandon Cisse

One of the cooler things a defensive back can do is take a wide receiver who has caught the ball and throw them out of bounds before their feet hit the ground. Interceptions and blitzes are cool and all … but using your physicality to turn a reception into an incompletion is a different level of radness.

Brandon Cisse, the Packers’ rookie corner, did exactly that to Jameson Williams on Sunday:

Cisse straight-up threw him out of the club. He might as well have grabbed Williams by his collar and his belt and heaved him five yards out of bounds. That was some grown-man football right there.

And it was on a fourth down too. JaMo waited all that time to get to the front of the line, just to be told his name wasn’t on the list, and get rejected in front of everyone. Woof.

My Bones Hurt: Calijah Kancey

There are a lot of things that football players do that us normies can’t do. Play after play, these guys are running full speed and colliding with other superhuman athletes, just to line up and do it again 30 seconds later … But every once in a while, they do something that looks semi-human and more or less relatable. 

Calijah Kancey gave us one of those moments: Bryce Young got strip-sacked by Al-Quadin Muhammad, and Kancey picked it up for a scoop-and-score. But right before he made it into the end zone, Kancey decided to do a front flip into the …

The problem is that he looked like any of us trying to do a front flip:

He got halfway over and then just backflopped onto the ground, had a little bounce, and then slid a few feet. He obviously popped up after that, but man … that made my back hurt. If I did that, my tailbone would crack, my fillings would shift, I’d pop a lung, have an air bubble in my chest cavity, and cough up blood for two months.

Great Time to be Great: Tony Pollard

We’re probably going to see some running backs move before the trade deadline, and one of the names to look at is the Titans’ Tony Pollard; he’s going to be a free agent in 2027, and Tennessee is a dead team. 

So if you’re the Titans and you want to get the biggest return in a trade, you want Pollard to play out of his absolute mind the closer we get to Nov. 8th. And as luck would have it, he did exactly that. 

He had 25 carries for 129 yards and three touchdowns (and it should’ve been four). It was not just one of the best games that he’s had as a Titan, but it was one of the best games that he’s had in his career.

Showing competitive teams that you still have juice and that your legs still have life in them is a hell of a way to apply for a new job.

Deserved Outcome: Trey Smack’s first missed Field Goal

One of the bigger stories coming out of the Packers/Lions game is going to be how the shafted Green Bay multiple times … But what if they deserved it? What if the refs’ brains were affected by the football gods? Hear me out:

The Packers' first drive ended with their rookie kicker, Trey Smack, missing a 26-yard field goal. That alone is brutal, but that was a 26-yarder because the 21-yarder they kicked was called back for a delay of game … a 21-yarder … from the three-yard line.

You might be thinking: ‘Jake, that’s crazy. No one kicks a field goal from the three-yard line. That level of cowardice is a crime.’’

Matt LaFleur did, and he was punished for it. Not just with that miss, but with another missed game-tying 35-yarder and a handful of pathetic personal fouls. LaFleur reaped what he sowed.

Question Answered: What if the Chiefs can’t run? 

No one knew that the Chiefs adding Kenneth Walker III in free agency was going to turn out as good as it has … However, we all kind of knew that they didn’t do anywhere close to enough with getting Patrick Mahomes pass catchers. 

After a month and a half of the season, their running offense has been transcendent, and the passing offense has been just fine.

But what if Kenneth Walker got shut down? Well, the Seahawks answered that … and it turns out the Chiefs' offense is incredibly bad.

Mahomes was in a similar hell to Super Bowl LIX; the offense was wildly inefficient, he couldn’t find anyone open, and the completions that he did find weren’t explosive or efficient. It was as bad a regular-season game as we’ve seen from the Mahomes-led Chiefs.

Luckily, Seattle’s defense is operating on an entirely different plane of existence than any other defense in the NFL. So they do have a kryptonite, but their kryptonite is rarer than Francium (which is super rare, by the way).

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