The best, worst and dumbest moments in NFL Week 4, from CeeDee Lamb to foul-mouthed refs

Week 4 of the NFL season gave us our first day of full-on AM-to-PM football. The whole thing started in London with the Colts brutalizing the Commanders, and it ended in Charlotte with the Panthers brutalizing the Lions.

Football-wise, it was great. But I, as a 35-year-old without children or responsibilities, realize that I experience Sundays differently than other people. Not all of us get to go wire-to-wire football, so here are some superlatives of the best, worst, and dumbest things from Sunday.

Button Masher of the Week: Athan Kaliakmanis

Who doesn’t love a new QB3? We have no idea what these guys are going to look like, and they end up doing all kinds of weird stuff … And weird stuff on a Sunday morning? There’s nothing better. 

After Marcus Mariota got hurt in the first quarter, the Commanders introduced us to a new character: Athan Kaliakmanis. He had two moments: one was when he threw a pretty sick 47-yard bomb to Treylon Burks for a touchdown. The other moment was the one that will end up being more memorable.

About halfway through the fourth quarter, he had some open space during a scramble, and he decided to start slapping buttons on the controller. He ended up hitting a pretty sick combo where he cut to the outside and then spun to the inside. 

The technique was slick … except he did it five yards away from the safety … and he got tackled immediately … and he was short of the sticks. There’s a 100 percent chance he was going to try to do a backwards hurdle if he got the chance. 

Quite frankly, it’s selfish of Austin Ajiake to make that tackle instead of letting some random QB3 get a career highlight. Looking back on it, that was mean. 

Thieves of the week: New York Jets offense

The three best ways to get money in the world are to sue an airline after you survive a plane crash, win the lottery, or be on the New York Jets’ offense this week. 

The Jets only played 32 offensive snaps on Sunday… That’s the second-fewest snaps that a team has played since at least 2018 (the Raiders played 30 in Week 7 last season).

In the end, the Jets offense was on the field for 17 minutes, 15 seconds. Luckily for the players, they’re not hourly … So this was a hell of an easy way to make some money. 

Per Spotrac, the Jets are paying their active offensive players $124,883,014 per year. That’s $7,346,059 per game … and in this game, those guys got paid $229,564 per snap or $425,858 per minute.

On the other side of that, their defense played 89 snaps and were on the field for 42 minutes, 45 seconds. That means they were getting paid $63,089 per snap or $131,344 per minute.

All I’m trying to say is that the Jets’ offense needs to get the defense a gift card to Applebee's or something nice like that, because they made out like bandits for the amount of work that they had to do.

Dude of the Week: CeeDee Lamb

Playing the Texans defense is supposed to be like walking from the Shire to Mount Doom. It’s supposed to be a painstaking slog where you’re getting punished at every turn … and right when you think you’re at the finish line, you get slapped in the face one more time. 

The Dallas Cowboys knew what they were in for this week … Except instead of taking the big hike, they just hopped on the back of an eagle and flew to Mordor (and the Nazgûl didn’t see them coming. So shut up, nerd. This metaphor is perfect). 

The Cowboys' eagle, in this case, was CeeDee Lamb. Dak Prescott targeted him 21 times, and Lamb came down with 17 catches for 189 yards. That’s absolutely nuts. That’s the most catches a player has had in a game since Keenan Allen had 18 against the Vikings in Week 3 of the 2023 season.

Dak Prescott was 32-of-45 for 335 yards. That means Lamb accounted for over half of the receptions and passing yards. That’s some real dude stuff right there. 

(Shout out to Tetaioa McMillan for having 14 catches for 192 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday night; that was also super sick)

Life lesson of the week: Never re-punt

Unless a punt is reeeaaaallllllly bad, coaches should never re-punt when there is a penalty. That goes for the team that is either punting or the team that’s receiving. It always feels like the return is worse for you, the punt is worse for you, or there is something else completely different. 

On Sunday, the Las Vegas Raiders made the mistake. On the Chiefs' first drive, they punted to Vegas’ one-yard line, and it was returned to the 16. But they were called for an illegal formation, and the Raiders had them re-punt. 

For some reason, the Raiders dropped three more guys deep (in addition to the actual punt returner), and the Chiefs did a fake punt that resulted in a first down.

The Chiefs ended up turning the ball over on downs a few plays later, so it was no big deal in the long run … But we’re all rooting for the ragtag Raiders. It’d be cool if they made good decisions. 

What’s your deal?: The refs

Hey refs … What’s your deal? Like, what’s the whole thing that you’re doing? You got a problem? You got beef? What’s going on? Sunday gave us two really weird situations with the refs being weird/mean/aggressive to players. 

One was when a ref was cussing out Trey McBride while McBride was heading to the sideline:

That was Line judge Jeff Seeman … Hey, Mr. Seeman … What's your deal, dude? Why jackin’ that jaw like that? You got a problem?

The second ref thing was when Referee Adrian Hill got all weird with the Vikings linebacker Eric Wilson, after Wilson accidentally (kind of) ran into him. 

What are you doing? What’s your deal? You saw the whole thing coming. You saw that he pulled up … And now you’re going to wave in his face? You dork. Get over yourself. You’re wearing zebra stripes like a nerd. Falling over is not the most embarrassing thing you have going on. 

Never wrong, just early: Emanuel Wilson owners

In general, the most important thing you can do when you have a take is never back down, no matter what anyone says or what actually happens. The problem is that in fantasy football, there are very real repercussions. 

This year, we’ve seen that the Seahawks love Emanuel Wilson as their goal-line and redzone running back, we’ve seen that they want to run the ball … and we’ve seen that they’re actually pretty bad at running the ball.

Us smart people? We recognized that since Week 2, Wilson was a guy worth rostering on our teams because he’s got some big upside… It hadn’t paid off, like, at all … and quite frankly it’s been a detriment and lost us games …

But this week? We Eman-gelicals are laughing all the way to the bank. Wilson ended Sunday as RB5 with 81 rushing yards and a touchdown, and three catches for 39 yards and a touchdown.

Most hurt team: All of them. 

Sunday was a bloodbath, and everyone you know and love got hurt. These are just household (or borderline-household) names that got injured on Sunday:

Saquon Barkley, Quinyon Mitchell, Jonathan Greenard, Tank Bigsby, Arden Key, Jaylin Lane, Marcus Mariota, Charles Omenihu, Eric Murray, Andrew Wingard, Braxton Berrios, Chauncey Golston, Paris Johnson, Brandon Cisse, Edgerrin Cooper, Reuben Bain Jr., Lamar Jackson, Marlon Humphrey, Andrew Vorhees, Durham Smythe, Donovan Jackson, Christian Darrisaw, Rashee Rice, Kyle Juszczyk, Pat Bryant, Pat Suratin II, Riley Moss, Joe Alt, Ladd McConkey, Rashawn Slater, Tee Higgins, Ja’Marr Chase, and I’m sure that there are some other guys that I missed too. 

It’s not an injury report; it’s a dadgum obituary. None of this is fun, and it’d be cool if people stayed healthy.

Clone of the Week: George Kittle

If there’s one thing that’s defined the early part of this season, it’s that a bunch of the guys who had would-be career-ending injuries last season look phenomenal this season. Sunday showed us that George Kittle might be the most extreme example of this.

Back in January, he tore his Achilles. On Sunday, he caught a ball behind the line of scrimmage and ran it 56 yards for a touchdown. During that run, he hit a new gear and ran 19.84 miles per hour (per Next Gen Stats) … He burned the entirety of the Broncos' defense.

Does that seem like something a 32-year-old man should be able to do? No. No, it doesn’t. Does that sound like something the three-week-old clone of a 32-year-old man should be able to do? Yeah, actually that sounds a whole lot more reasonable than the alternative. 

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow