The Skeptic's Guide to NFL Week 9

In this jam-packed Week 9 edition of NFL Walkthrough:

• Oh, that’s right. Daniel Jones.
• The real J.J. McCarthy is not merely the friends we made along the way.
• The Packers offense dawdles. The Panthers offense Dowdles.
• The Patriots take a break from feasting on creampuffs to nearly choke on a cupcake.

And much more!

Let’s start with the game everyone watched but no one honestly believes matters very much.

Bills False Optimism Bowl IV: Buffalo Bills 28, Kansas City Chiefs 21

What Happened

It was a Bills-Chiefs regular-season showdown like any other, only more so:

• Josh Allen reigniting his latest MVP campaign with near-flawless passing and two rugged rushing touchdowns? Check.
• The Bills looking like the better-balanced, less-superstar-reliant team than the Chiefs by getting big plays from James Cook and the defense? Check.
• Patrick Mahomes producing some video-game-caliber highlights, but relying too much on scrambly miracles while not getting enough help from his offensive line or running game? Check.
• The Bills taking a solid lead while outplaying the Chiefs, but never quite putting them away? Check.
• A missed field goal to give Bills fans a late-game coronary? Check.
• Some Patrick Mahomes Hail Marys in the final seconds to send the Bills fans who did not suffer coronaries into shock? Check.
• A general sense, even when the Bills led by two scores, that both of these teams are so much better than 75% of the NFL that they are almost playing a different sport? Check.
• A creeping dread that this Bills win, convincing as it was, is just a prologue for a soul-crushing playoff disaster? Checkity-checkity-checkity-check.

What It Means

Nothing. The Chiefs are going to beat the Bills in the AFC Championship Game again. It’s preordained by the cosmos.

No, Seriously, What It Means

For the Bills: Let’s focus on a tangible new development.

First-round rookie cornerback Maxwell Hairston took over for Tre’Davious White early in the game. Hairston did a solid job covering Xavier Worthy and other receivers, picking off Mahomes when pressure by Joey Bosa caused an underthrown fourth-quarter pass.

Hairston missed the start of the season with a training camp knee injury. Many contenders are thin at cornerback right now; the Bills themselves were without Taron Johnson on Sunday. Hairston could become a real asset down the stretch.

For the Chiefs: Right tackle Jawaan Taylor suffered a leg injury that should be monitored as the week progresses. The Chiefs have been without left tackle Josh Simmons for weeks due to a personal issue. Things get weird when Mahomes cannot rely on his tackles.

We can shrug our shoulders and claim “The Chiefs are The Chiefs” while joking about how they will beat the Bills in the playoffs all we want. But the Chiefs now have three conference losses and are in third place in the AFC West. If the playoffs started today, THE CHIEFS WOULD NOT BE PARTICIPATING. (The Jaguars, with a better winning percentage AND a head-to-head tiebreaker, would be the seventh seed.) This is not business as usual.

What’s Next

The Chiefs have a Week 10 bye. The Bills have a Week 10 bye against the Dolphins.

The Skeptic’s Guide to Week 9

Silly schedules. Sudden success. Troubling injuries. Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities. There are sound reasons to be skeptical of many of the teams in the playoff chase at the midpoint of the 2025 NFL season.

Fortunately, several of this season’s surprise successes faced off against each other in Week 9. Would these teams silence the skeptics or be exposed as snake-oil salesmen? Let’s investigate.

Minnesota Vikings at Detroit Lions

Reasons for Vikings skepticism: Remember how Carrie Fisher died before the final Star Wars movie, but the filmmakers spliced together a few minutes of leftover footage to try — unconvincingly — to make it look like Princess Leia was still an integral part of the saga?

Well, J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings have been giving off some real Rise of Skywalker vibes over the past month or so.

Reasons for Lions skepticism: The trade deadline is approaching, but Brad Holmes once again has his phone on the charger in his padlocked downstairs office, with the ringer off and the voice mailbox full.

Final Score: Vikings 27, Lions 24

McCarthy lives! He earned the third start of his two-year career on Sunday. The results were … Eventful? Eclectic? Entertaining? Enervating? Let’s go with “encouraging.”

McCarthy delivered some fine throws on meticulously-designed Kevin O’Connell passing concepts. He got the usual diving/leaping help from Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison a few times, and he benefitted from a healthy offensive line, something Carson Wentz never enjoyed. He juked a Lions defender on a rollout and scrambled for a third quarter touchdown.

McCarthy also benefited from a pair of roughing fouls, threw an interception behind his receiver, bounced a pass off Aidan Hutchinson’s helmet and endured five sacks, one of which ended with a reverse somersault. The good was good. The bad looked a little goofy.

A long Myles Price kickoff return set up the first Vikings touchdown. A David Montgomery fumble on a third-and-long handoff deep in Lions territory set up McCarthy’s scrambling score.

The Vikings defense held the Lions to a 5-of-17 third-down conversation rate, but the Lions offense made things easier for the Vikings with some eccentric play calls, 10 penalties and a blocked field goal down the stretch.

What It Means for the Vikings

Somewhere between the always-injured, kinda-maybe-sometimes-benched vaporware version of McCarthy and the ultracompetitive, sparkly-winnersauce-smothered version of McCarthy lies an NFL quarterback with tangible strengths and weaknesses.

Sunday’s Vikings win won’t help us find him or discover them. If anything, it probably ping-ponged the conversation right back to Mister Gutsy Magical Winner Guy.

McCarthy’s performance was not nearly as good as the results or highlights would suggest. He was better than Wentz, however. The Vikings must take that and build on it.

What It Means for the Lions

The Lions offense kept getting stuck in third-and-long situations and calling plays that were too clever by half. There were too many motion penalties, sacks, and handoffs/completions for negative yardage. Throw in the penalties and lapses on defense, and the Lions executed so poorly so often that they were practically begging to get upset.

The usual harangues about the Lions’ unwillingness to make a splashy trade to help Hutchinson and their injury-ravaged defense still apply. Holmes and Dan Campbell can talk all they want about culture, toughness, continuity or whatever. The Lions are 1-2 in the NFC North. They are in danger of being forced to go on the road in the playoffs. That’s an issue that they should at least try to address in the next 36 hours.

What’s Next

For the Lions: trade deadline silence (probably), followed by a tough Commanders-Eagles road trip where an extra edge rusher or cornerback could really make a difference.

For the Vikings: A week of not worrying about what’s going on with their quarterback (hooray), followed by a visit from the lean and hungry Ravens (uh-oh).

Indianapolis Colts at Pittsburgh Steelers

Reasons for Colts skepticism: The Giants left Daniel Jones out on the curb like a bag of wet leaves 345 days ago, and roughly 99.9% of us said “About time.”

Seriously, this team and all of its principal characters have been noodling around for years without distinguishing themselves. Skepticism is sometimes just your brain reminding you that the Alice-in-Wonderland-sized toadstool that sprouted overnight in your front yard after a heavy rain probably ain’t a portabello mushroom.

Reasons for Steelers skepticism: Soft schedule. Spongy defense. An offense that looks like one of those tower-defense video games where you must protect the spell-casting sorcerer from getting one-shotted.

Final Score: Steelers 27, Colts 20

Daniel Jones re-Dimesified, with three interceptions and two strip-sacks. Josh Downs added a muffed punt. The six turnovers were the most committed by the Colts since a six-interception game by Peyton Manning (!) in a loss to the Chargers in 2007.

Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers offense looked the way it usually does. If you like swing/screen passes with six offensive linemen and a 300-pound tight end on the field, you loved it, and there’s also a good chance that your father also founded a major shipping company. For the rest of us, it was like watching a tractor on a muddy freeway onramp. But it was enough to produce touchdown drives of 14, 41 and 56 yards after Colts turnovers.

What It Means for the Steelers

The Steelers thrive on reality-check victories like this one. You never want to face them as an upstart contender on a hot streak. They’ll drag you down into a muckfest on their chewed-up field.

The Steelers are now 3-1 in the AFC. Wins over the Patriots and Colts could loom large in the playoff tiebreaker scenarios.

What It Means for the Colts

Jones’ turnover spree is an obvious worry. No one can describe it as “out of character.”

Also a concern: a strange gameplan that saw Jonathan Taylor rush just 14 times against a porous Steelers run defense. Even when the game was close, the Colts over-committed to the pass. It looked like Shane Steichen and coordinator Jim Bob Cooter grew too accustomed to coasting with the lead and panicked a bit on offense when this game started getting away from them.

Maybe the Colts coaches will take a lesson away from this loss. Or maybe the team’s bubble just popped.

What’s Next

The Steelers visit the Chargers in another important battle of AFC middleweights. The Colts host Michael Penix’s Barely Upright Citizens’ Brigade.

Atlanta Falcons at New England Patriots

Reasons for Falcons skepticism: Tens of thousands of years of evolution have granted homo sapiens the power of rational thought, which in turn has taught us not to eat rocks, lick fire, attempt hot-’n’-heavy snugglebunnies with saber-toothed crocodiles or place even a modicum of faith in the Atlanta Falcons.

Reasons for Patriots skepticism: Their schedule is so soft that I ran out of schedule-so-soft jokes three weeks ago.