Just when we were beginning to confidently pick the real Super Bowl contenders, Week 9 shuffled the top of the NFL’s deck.
Four of the five favorites to win this season’s title by ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) lost on Sunday. The only team in the top five to make it through the weekend unscathed was the Eagles — who were on bye. And after Sunday’s series of upsets, each team has at least two losses on its record by Week 9. That has happened only one other time in the past 35 years, a 2010 season where the eventual Super Bowl champion Packers finished the regular season as the sixth seed in the NFC.
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I’m going to break down those four Super Bowl contenders — the Chiefs, Colts, Packers and Lions — who lost in Week 9, including what happened and whether it’s something to be concerned about moving forward. Were these momentary missteps? Or is the race to the Lombardi Trophy as wide open as records around the league indicate?
Let’s start with the latest matchup between the class of the AFC, where the Bills held serve on the Chiefs in the regular season for another year. (I included FPI chances to win the Super Bowl for each team both before and after their Week 9 losses.)
Jump to:
Chiefs | Colts | Packers | Lions
Week 9 result: Lost 28-21 to the Buffalo Bills
Chances to win the Super Bowl before Week 9: 15.2%
Chances to win the Super Bowl after Week 9: 11.1%
It’s become a running gag. After earning the best one-score game record we’ve seen in a single season in 2024, the Chiefs have now lost all four of their games decided by seven or fewer points this season. Sunday’s 28-21 loss to the Bills wasn’t as close as the final score indicated, but after Buffalo’s Matt Prater booted a 52-yard field goal attempt off the uprights to keep the game alive, you could sense the panic and fatalism of what was surely going to happen next permeate through the television. Twenty-two seconds and no timeouts? For Patrick Mahomes? Might as well start preparing for overtime now.
Instead, the Bills quickly closed out their fifth regular-season win over Mahomes and the Chiefs in six tries, knocking him down twice on the final three pass attempts of the game. The story was pressure and what it did to Mahomes, who had a sub-50% completion percentage in a game for the first time as a pro quarterback, going just 15-of-34 for 250 yards with no passing touchdowns and one interception. After years of averaging the shortest pass distance or something close to it, Mahomes’ average throw traveled more than 14 yards in the air on Sunday, the deepest average throw distance of his career.
The Bills pressured Mahomes on more than 52% of his dropbacks per NFL Next Gen Stats, the fifth-highest pressure rate Mahomes has faced in his illustrious career. He went 3-of-16 for 61 yards and an interception under duress Sunday, throwing all three of those completions to Travis Kelce, still the pass catcher Mahomes trusts most when he’s in trouble. Sean McDermott and the Bills created all that pressure despite blitzing Mahomes just three times all day.
This was the Brandon Beane game, though. The Bills’ general manager was excoriated by local fans this offseason and even as recently as October for failing to add playmakers for Josh Allen this spring and summer, as Buffalo’s only notable signing at running back or receiver was Joshua Palmer, who was injured and missed the victory. I ranked the Bills 28th in my playmaker rankings this year, concerned that Buffalo didn’t have a WR who could separate against man coverage or in situations where the Bills needed a big play. That’s essentially code for “against the Chiefs.”
Beane instead loaded most of the money he had into fixing the team’s pass rush, trusting that it would be the way to compete with the Chiefs and slow down Mahomes. In addition to extending Greg Rousseau, the Bills signed Joey Bosa to replace Von Miller and added Michael Hoecht and Larry Ogunjobi (though both players were suspended for the first six weeks of the regular season after violating the league’s PED policy). The schedule wasn’t yet made, but Beane’s plan wasn’t exactly difficult to understand: Win up front, and they have a shot at beating Mahomes when it matters most.
That line delivered, even without DaQuan Jones and Ed Oliver in the lineup at defensive tackle. The Bills have looked notably better on defense over the past two weeks with Hoecht and Ogunjobi active, though the Bills revealed after the game that Hoecht tore his Achilles in the second half, an injury that will end his season.
To be fair, this wasn’t as dominant as the Eagles were against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, where Philadelphia’s star linemen kept winning over and over again at the snap and left Mahomes with no hope. The Bills won the occasional one-on-one immediately for a quick pressure, but most of their pressures were after 2.5 seconds. In the past, that might have been enough time for Mahomes to find a receiver for a short completion and stay on schedule. But with the Chiefs big-play hunting, the extra time needed for those routes to develop gave the Bills a little bit of extra time to get home.
McDermott’s game plan required a little more creativity. The Bills created a handful of pressures with three-man rushes while playing zone coverage behind, a tactic Lou Anarumo and the Bengals used to come back against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game in the 2021 season, but the Bills were artful about those looks. They used picks and twists to create opportunities for Bosa to get after the quarterback.
They spied Mahomes on many of those snaps, too — but instead of simply electing a spy and putting him in an obvious spot directly over the center, McDermott found ways to mask the spy’s identity. There were snaps where he would have the spy line up on the line, initially rush and then drop off, while a linebacker from the second level would take his place in the pass rush. And when Mahomes did get on the move, the Bills did a great job of closing him down and either forcing an incompletion or hitting him; the MVP candidate finished with just one carry for 5 yards, a far cry from the numbers he was posting as a scrambler earlier this season.
To pull that off, Buffalo had to hold up in coverage while the pass rush took its time to get home. Facing a Chiefs team that had looked extremely dynamic with Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy in the lineup, the Bills held their own in the back end. Two players were essential for McDermott. One, shockingly, was struggling safety Cole Bishop, who comfortably had his best game as a pro. Bishop closed down receivers on scramble drills, broke up a team-high four passes and came up with a tackle for loss on a throw to Worthy. He also helped break up one of the two Hail Mary attempts that ended the game.
The other player was rookie cornerback Maxwell Hairston, who missed the first six games of the season with a knee injury before returning to the lineup last week against the Panthers. Splitting time in a near 50-50 rotation with veteran Tre’Davious White, the Bills got a shot in the arm from Hairston’s ability to run with Rice and especially Worthy in coverage. The first-rounder picked off a Mahomes deep ball and allowed one catch on three targets for 18 yards across 16 coverage snaps as the nearest defender, per NFL Next Gen Stats.
For the Chiefs, the pressures will raise fears about the offensive line, which has been the weak link in their Super Bowl losses to the Buccaneers and Eagles. This was a problem that was supposed to be fixed after GM Brett Veach invested heavily in the line this offseason, making Jaylon Moore the most expensive swing tackle in league history, Trey Smith the most expensive interior lineman of all time and using a first-round pick on tackle Josh Simmons.
On Sunday, that wasn’t enough. Simmons is away from the team dealing with a personal issue, and Moore allowed a sack and seven pressures in his place. Smith is less than 100 percent as he returns from a back injury, and the Bills atypically went through the star guard easily for a pair of early pressures. Right tackle Jawaan Taylor allowed a team-high eight pressures before leaving the game with an ankle injury, turning things over to deposed 2024 left tackle Wanya Morris, who allowed four more pressures on just 10 pass-block snaps — including one by Bosa on the interception to Hairston.
Without Isiah Pacheco, who was sidelined by a knee injury, Reid didn’t seem to want to overload Kareem Hunt and didn’t really see Brashard Smith or Clyde Edwards-Helaire as anything more than an emergency option. The Chiefs had a reasonable success rate on the ground, but with no explosiveness, they averaged only 3.8 yards per carry on their halfback runs.
It was clear that Reid didn’t trust his running game — or perhaps his offensive line — in a key spot at the end of the first half. After Hollywood Brown ran by Christian Benford for a 47-yard gain, the Chiefs took over on the Buffalo 1-yard line with 20 seconds to go before halftime. Reid ran Hunt on first down, but Jordan Phillips went through Taylor to blow up the play for no gain, forcing the Chiefs to use their final timeout. After two incompletions, they faced fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line with six seconds to go, trailing by 11 points.
This is pretty obviously a clear go-for-it situation. Unless K.C. really felt strongly that a stop would energize the Bills just before they go into the locker room for 15 minutes (without acknowledging that the touchdown might have a similar impact on the Chiefs) or had some preternatural knowledge of how the rest of the game will play out, it’s a simple math equation.
You get three points with a field goal or seven with a touchdown. Leaving aside the potential of a blocked field goal or a penalty and an untimed down for ease of calculations, the break-even rate is 43%. If you think you can convert 43% of the time or more in this spot, you’re better off going for the touchdown than kicking. The league-average conversion rate on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line over the past five years, excluding the sneaks that Reid refuses to run with Mahomes, is 54% … you can decide for yourself if the Chiefs are at least a league-average offense. Harrison Butker kicked the 19-yard field goal.
By the NFL Next Gen Stats model, which incorporates a lot more than that back-of-the-napkin math, the decision to kick the field goal over attempting to convert from a yard out cost the Chiefs 7.5 points of win probability. It’s the sort of disastrous decision Reid has typically avoided in recent years, both by trusting Mahomes and keeping track with where the league is going. Was he spooked by the first-down stuff? Did he not trust his line? Did he want to get within eight with 30 minutes to go?
Whatever Reid decided, it didn’t actually help the Chiefs much. They had to attempt a fourth-and-18 later in the game, miraculously converting when the line was so slow pulling a guard to block Bosa that he actually stopped with a free path toward Mahomes and looked around for a screen that wasn’t coming. They picked up a fourth-and-1 later on that drive with a 2-yard Hunt touchdown and then converted a 2-pointer to get within seven points, plays that likely would have been part of the discussion if the Chiefs had attempted the fourth-and-1 at the end of the first half. It was a major tactical mistake, and while the Chiefs have the margin for error to overcome those against lesser competition, they didn’t against the Bills on Sunday night.
The Chiefs defense also struggled to deal with a schematic shift from the Bills offense. Last season, when these two teams played, the Bills leaned into playing out of the shotgun or pistol on about two-thirds of their offensive snaps, which was in line with their seasonal rate. There’s nothing wrong with doing so, especially with Allen and the threat he offers as part of the quarterback run game out of those looks. But it also creates slightly easier paths to the quarterback around tackles, limits some of the run game concepts they can hit and can make it easier to diagnose plays at linebacker.
The league as a whole has shifted more toward under-center drops, but among teams with the same coordinators and quarterbacks, nobody has done so more than the Bills, who have been under center on more than 50% of their offensive plays this season. They were under center nearly 58% of the time Sunday, and Allen’s offense ran a 62% success rate on those snaps. That fell to 44% out of the shotgun.
The Chiefs don’t really have an answer for teams that can go under center yet. Steve Spagnuolo’s defense is fourth in the league in EPA per play against shotgun or pistol snaps, but that falls to 31st when teams are under center. The easiest way for the Chiefs to counteract that is to get an early lead, make the other team one-dimensional with their passing game and force it to work out of the shotgun, but that wasn’t happening against the Bills.
Instead, James Cook III ran for 114 yards on 27 carries. Allen was 6-of-6 for 85 yards throwing under center, including a pair of big completions to his secondary tight ends in Dawson Knox and Jackson Hawes. Primary tight end Dalton Kincaid caught six passes for 101 yards, running away from Drue Tranquill and Nick Bolton in coverage. The Bills flipped the script, throwing deep to their tight ends and underneath to their wideouts for YAC opportunities. Allen had just one designed run all game (his other carries were sneaks, scrambles and kneel-downs), but it went for 11 yards and a third-down conversion.
The Chiefs will have to come up with new answers for what feels like an inevitable rematch in January. They’ll hope the offensive line is healthier, count on more attrition for an already banged up Bills defensive line and do whatever they need to do to work out some sort of an apology to the close-game gods. Nobody’s going to take this loss as proof that the Bills are going to win a rematch after what has happened over the past few years, but this was more a sign that the Chiefs aren’t going to steamroll everybody now that they’ve got Rice and Worthy in the lineup together.
Week 9 result: Lost 27-20 to the Pittsburgh Steelers
Chances to win the Super Bowl before Week 9: 13.0%
Chances to win the Super Bowl after Week 9: 10.1%
Two days after Halloween, you might not have been shocked to see Daniel Jones turn into the proverbial pumpkin.
After playing at an MVP level for the league’s most surprising team over the first two months of the season, Jones had one of his worst games as a pro Sunday. Facing a Steelers defense that has struggled to stop anybody all season, Jones was responsible for five of Indianapolis’ six turnovers in Pittsburgh, throwing three interceptions and losing two strip-sacks. He ended up throwing for 342 yards, but it took him a whopping 50 pass attempts to get there, as the Steelers also sacked him five times.
Is that too simplistic of an explanation for the loss? Yes. The game actually got off to a solid start for the Colts, as Jones hit Alec Pierce for a couple of long completions and Indy converted a pair of fourth downs, with Jones plunging in on the second for a 1-yard score. The Steelers then went three-and-out, and while they picked up a short field after Josh Downs muffed the punt return, the Colts held out and got the ball back on downs. Indy then put together a 17-play drive, including a fourth-and-1 fake punt for a first down.
What looked like a game the Colts were controlling quickly unraveled because of turnovers. T.J. Watt got underneath Braden Smith to strip-sack Jones and recover the ball. After the Steelers scored a touchdown on the ensuing drive, Jones tried to work both sides of the field and didn’t see Payton Wilson drop into a throwing lane for an easy interception. The Steelers scored again from a short field, and when Jones narrowly missed Pierce on what should have been a 42-yard completion on the next drive, Indianapolis went three-and-out.
When they got the ball back again, the Steelers smelled blood. Jones converted a fourth-and-1, but Alex Highsmith and Joey Porter Jr. sacked him on consecutive plays to force another punt. Jones converted another fourth down on the next drive, but he tried to throw a quick screen to his slot receiver on second-and-1, and Wilson batted the pass into the air. Jack Sawyer caught it for what might be considered a bad-luck interception. The Steelers scored a touchdown from that drive to go up 24-7, and that turned the Colts into a one-dimensional offense the rest of the way.
More than anything, if you’re looking for a reason why Jones struggled so much, I’d point to the game script and the lack of a run game. Before Sunday, Jones had been trailing on just 27.3% of his dropbacks, the second-lowest rate in the league behind Sam Darnold, another quarterback who similarly benefits from being in advantageous game scripts. The Colts have been able to lean on Jonathan Taylor, play-action, the RPO game and the threat of the run to create conflict for defenses. Those problems have kept opponents from throwing their exotic looks at Jones and limited their ability to rush the quarterback. And to his credit, Jones has done a great job of executing the offense, getting the ball out quickly and hitting throws downfield, which were problems for him with the Giants.
Trailing for most of the day, Jones was stuck in obvious passing situations without the run to slow down Pittsburgh’s pass rush. The Steelers did a great job of limiting Taylor’s explosive runs, holding him to 45 yards on 14 carries. They kept Jones from moving around, as he failed to attempt a single pass outside the pocket. And with play-action mostly out of the picture as the game wore along, Jones had to beat the Steelers from the pocket as a dropback passer, which is not where the Colts want him operating.
If anything, the Colts’ defense should be applauded for keeping its team in the contest. While the Steelers didn’t score on that short field after the muffed punt, they did score touchdowns on two drives that started from their own 44-yard line and another from the Indianapolis 14-yard line. They added a field goal on a possession opening from Indy’s 34-yard line and lost a fumble on another drive that started in Colts territory. The average Steelers possession Sunday began with just 53 yards to go for a touchdown, the second-best starting field position for a team in a game all season.
Steelers fans (and players) who have heard their defense derided over the past few weeks will have a piece of evidence that the oft-frustrating unit is turning things around, too. This was the best game of the season for the starters in the Steelers’ pass rush, as Highsmith racked up four of Pittsburgh’s 10 quick pressures on Jones. Without DeShon Elliott (knee), the Steelers inserted newly acquired safety Kyle Dugger into the lineup, as the former Patriot played 72 of 74 snaps. Jalen Ramsey moved from cornerback to free safety on a full-time basis, taking over for the benched Juan Thornhill, and the Steelers didn’t allow a single completion on a throw traveling 20 or more yards in the air.
At the same time, it’s still fair to note that this defense is turnover-or-bust. Mike Tomlin’s team forces turnovers at the second-highest rate in the league, which is great, but it is still 25th in points allowed per drive when it doesn’t force a turnover. The Steelers aren’t going to recover three of the four fumbles they force or have their front-seven players intercept two passes every week, and it remains to be seen if they can turn the defense around during the games where that doesn’t happen.
And while I referred to the pumpkin at the beginning of this breakdown, I don’t think this proves that Jones and the Colts are about to fall apart. It might be more realistic to point out that this reflects the limitations of what the Colts can ask Jones to do and how much of the load he can carry. On a day where the Colts weren’t able to run the ball consistently and their O-line was overwhelmed, Jones couldn’t transcend and make magic happen in the way that many of the quarterbacks aside him in the MVP discussion have been able to do.
The Colts have just one turnover across their seven wins and seven of them in their two losses. They might not be able to survive two or three turnovers in a game, let alone six.
Week 9 result: Lost 16-13 to the Carolina Panthers
Chances to win the Super Bowl before Week 9: 11.0%
Chances to win the Super Bowl after Week 9: 6.1%
It’s never easy for the Packers, is it? After blowing out the Lions and Commanders to start the season, Matt LaFleur’s team slopped up a home loss to the Browns and threw away a late lead in a tie with the Cowboys. Week 8 brought a comprehensive victory over the Steelers and a stretch of 20 consecutive completions for Jordan Love, and with the Panthers coming to town, the hope was that the Packers would easily stretch their winning streak to four games before a “Monday Night Football” tilt against the defending champion Eagles next week.
Well, the Panthers were apparently the Miguel Rojas to the Eagles’ Shohei Ohtani. I’m not sure trap games are much more than some selection bias, and the Packers have shown us that they’re perfectly capable of laying an egg without some important game to look forward to the following week, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for characterizing Sunday’s loss as a team impudently looking past a lesser opponent in a game everybody expected it to win. Lose to a .500 Panthers team at home as the potential top seed in the NFC, and you’re going to attract those sorts of headlines. But in reality, I would say that it was a more impressive performance by the Panthers and a bit more bad luck for the Packers than that story would suggest.
Dave Canales and Carolina deserve credit for what they did to win this game. Canales made a tough decision after last week in essentially removing Chuba Hubbard from a 50-50 running back rotation to give Rico Dowdle the lead role, even though the organization paid Hubbard much more on an extension last winter than they did Dowdle on his one-year contract this spring. Dowdle has been the more productive player, and in the lead back role, he gashed the Packers for 130 yards on 25 carries. Per Next Gen Stats, he generated 44 rush yards over expectation (RYOE), taking his season-long total to 172, third in the league behind Cook and Taylor.
Canales also made a key decision at the beginning of the game that paid off later. The Panthers took the ball to start the game with the idea that it would allow them to pick their choice of which goal to defend in the second half. The winds were gusting up to 30 mph at Lambeau Field, and that made a big difference, as Ryan Fitzgerald’s 49-yard field goal attempt to win the game came with the wind at the rookie’s back in the fourth quarter.
Obviously, the Panthers couldn’t have known that they would be in position to kick a field goal at the end, but they did a good job of managing the game as a massive underdog. The Panthers converted a pair of fourth-and-1s in their own territory in the first quarter, though one was called back by a holding penalty. Canales kept the offense out for another fourth-and-1 in the second quarter, with Dowdle picking that one up and then scoring a touchdown two snaps later.
The Panthers leaned into the run and played the game at a snail’s pace, as they took an average of 42.5 seconds between the start of one play and the start of the next, the fourth-slowest rate of any team in Week 9. With the Packers managing long drives on offense, both teams were limited to just seven drives, the fewest for any team since Week 1, when the Colts marched all over the Dolphins. Shortening the game reduces the opportunities that a dominant team has to exploit their advantages.
It also creates the chance for variance to play a bigger role in deciding the outcome, and the Panthers undoubtedly had some breaks go their way. They recovered both fumbles in this game, including a Savion Williams fumble in the red zone that ended Green Bay’s opening drive. The other fumble briefly saved a red zone possession for the Panthers, though Bryce Young did throw a wobbly interception in the end zone two plays later to end the drive. Brandon McManus missed a 43-yard field goal with the wind to his back in the third quarter, while Fitzgerald hit his only kick of the day. Those little swings of luck mean a lot more in a seven-possession game decided by three points than, say, the 47-42 Bengals-Bears shootout, where both teams moved and scored at will.
Though it’s not reflected in the final score, the Packers moved the ball effectively throughout this game. Love’s offense picked up 40 or more yards and multiple first downs on six of their seven drives. An offense that ranked seventh in red zone touchdown conversion rate heading into the game made it into the red zone five times Sunday. Before the Panthers game, the Packers had failed to score on only two of their 30 trips inside the 20-yard line.
So naturally, they failed to score twice in five tries here, converting for just one touchdown and two field goals. Williams lost a fumble to end one drive without any points. On another, the Packers threw a screen into a favorable look on third-and-3, but despite having three blockers against safety Tre’von Moehrig, the Carolina safety overpowered Malik Heath and blew up the play for a loss of 5 yards. Derrick Brown then ruined the fourth-and-8 play with a quick pressure past guard Jordan Morgan, and while Love scrambled away and kept the play alive for more than 11 seconds before getting a rid of the football, it took a miraculous drop from Panthers cornerback Mike Jackson to avoid an interception.
Is that bad luck or bad play? A bit of both, of course. It’s on the Packers to block up screens. Morgan was run through by Tershawn Wharton for a sack that set another Packers red zone trip back and eventually led to a field goal. Tight end Tucker Kraft was late getting off the ball on another snap, and when Love scrambled from a relatively clean pocket, he had nowhere to go with the football. In most cases, if the Packers get to the red zone on more than 70% of their possessions and allow 16 points on defense, they’re going to win. That didn’t happen here.
Injuries on the offensive side of the ball are beginning to become a real concern for LaFleur, too. The Packers just got Christian Watson (knee) back, but they’re already down Jayden Reed (clavicle/foot) and Dontayvion Wicks (calf) at wide receiver. First-round WR Matthew Golden left the game early in the third quarter and didn’t return, which is why Heath was on the field for 27 snaps. Guard Aaron Banks left the game with a stinger after playing just nine snaps, the third time this season the free agent addition has been forced from a game.
The big one, of course, is the torn ACL reportedly suffered by Kraft. One week after what amounted to his national coming-out party in the win over the Steelers, it looks like the Packers lost their star tight end for the season. In addition to losing Kraft’s ability after the catch, his injury limits what the Packers can do schematically. Since the start of the 2024 season, the Packers have run 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TEs, 2 WRs) at the sixth-highest rate in the league. Unless they’re going to build that around Luke Musgrave and John FitzPatrick (or can add someone like David Njoku before the trade deadline Tuesday), that’s going to change. This will need to be more of an 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WRs) offense moving forward.
It’s a frustrating time to be a Packers fan, of course, but I’m reminded of the team I mentioned in the introduction. The 2010 Packers were 8-6 in mid-December, and three of their losses were to teams that finished with seven wins or less, including teams quarterbacked by post-Eagles Donovan McNabb, Chad Henne and Drew Stanton. Aaron Rodgers had shown a lot of promise, but in the middle of his third year as a starter, he had gone 8-15 in one-score games, including a 51-45 loss to the Cardinals in the playoffs. It felt like you couldn’t trust the Packers, but then they rolled off six straight wins for a Lombardi Trophy and went 15-1 the following season, and Rodgers was on his way to the Hall of Fame.
If Love gets hot, the Packers can go on a run like that. It’s just going to be harder to get hot without Kraft in the mix.
Week 9 result: Lost 27-24 to the Minnesota Vikings
Chances to win the Super Bowl before Week 9: 8.7%
Chances to win the Super Bowl after Week 9: 5.4%
Detroit’s hold over the rest of the NFC North is getting shakier. After going 5-1 against the Packers and Vikings over the past two years, the Lions have now lost their opening games against both of their divisional brethren in 2025. And while this game was closer than that blowout loss to the Packers in Week 1, the story of how the Vikings slowed down the Lions and their high-powered offense was similar.
To stop the Lions, start with run defense. The Vikings invested heavily in the interior of their defensive line this offseason, signing Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave to big deals, and I have to imagine that beating the Lions was one of the goals they had when making those decisions. Hargrave had his best game of the season Sunday, racking up a sack and two tackles for loss, including one where he squeezed through a double-team and snatched Jahmyr Gibbs down for a 2-yard loss.
Gibbs and David Montgomery combined for only 65 yards on 20 carries against the Vikings, with just 25% of their carries producing successful runs by the NFL Next Gen Stats model. There wasn’t much to be gained — the two backs finished with only minus-5 RYOE, suggesting they basically got what was available. But their longest run of the day was also just 11 yards, and that ended with Montgomery fumbling the ball away to the Vikings.
Hargrave was excellent, but it was a team effort. Minnesota’s cornerbacks — including Fabian Moreau, who had played just three snaps before Sunday — did a good job holding up against blocks and forcing those potentially devastating outside runs by Gibbs and Montgomery back inside. The outside linebackers, including the returning Andrew Van Ginkel, didn’t get shoved backward to create soft edges very often. Jalen Redmond played a season-high 92% of the defensive snaps as part of bigger Vikings defensive fronts.
The average Lions run came with just 2.1 yards before first contact. The only game where they’ve had less space to work with, unsurprisingly, was that Week 1 matchup against the Packers.
Taking the run out of the equation forces Jared Goff into the dropback pass game, and like Daniel Jones, that’s not where he wants to live. In the past, the Lions have been able to pick apart the Vikings and their exotic blitz looks by getting the ball out to their dynamic playmakers and using motion to create conflict. Last season, with the Vikings tormenting teams by loading up the line with pass rushers and either sending the house or playing safe two-deep coverage behind, Detroit went back to the days of the mid-aughts Patriots in pulling out a protection using its wide receivers in motion to protect Goff and create big-play opportunities downfield.
You can imagine Flores spending weeks this offseason building pressures to attack the interior of the Lions’ O-line, especially after Detroit lost Frank Ragnow to retirement. Whether it was an offseason project, a few extra days of prep after the Vikings played on Thursday night last week or the return of a key player in Van Ginkel, Flores’ defense was back on its 2024 level. It sacked Goff five times, and four of those sacks came from initial pressure through the middle on twists or cross-dog rushes.
Minnesota’s linebackers, led by Eric Wilson, ran at and through Gibbs, who spent most of his day in pass protection, for a handful of pressures. And when the Lions tried to run screens and quick-game concepts to get the ball out before those looks could get home, the Vikings generally did an excellent job of tackling. Minnesota hit Goff 11 times and had a whopping 10 tackles for loss. Across his two games against the Vikings last season, Goff went 29-of-35 for 298 yards, two touchdown passes and two picks against the blitz, taking just one sack. On Sunday, he was 7-of-12 for 61 yards and a sack in those same spots.
The quarterback on the other side of the field also had something to prove. Few quarterbacks have inspired stronger opinions in shorter periods of time than J.J. McCarthy, who was making his third career start after dealing with a torn meniscus in 2024 and a high-ankle sprain in 2025. The optimistic side noted that McCarthy had won NFC Player of the Week in his debut win over the Bears and battled the ankle injury and the exhaustion of being a new parent in Week 2. The pessimistic side pointed out that McCarthy had been a replacement-level QB in seven of his first eight quarters as a pro.
I’m not sure how one can draw any meaningful conclusions on a quarterback after two pro starts, but the talk that the Vikings were going to realistically consider benching their 2024 first-round pick after two games for Carson Wentz was always absurd, even before Wentz went down with a season-ending shoulder injury.
Making that much-anticipated third start, McCarthy gave both sides of the argument some more material. He put together an underwhelming stat line, going 14-of-25 for 143 yards, with two passing touchdowns, an interception and five sacks. He was pressured on more than 58% of dropbacks, occasionally because of his own predilection for moving outside of the pocket. That would be fine if it worked, but McCarthy went 1-of-7 for 7 yards on throws outside of the pocket.
Yet at the same time, McCarthy made some unquestionably impactful plays. On the opening drive, he read blitz and got the ball out quickly to Aaron Jones Sr. on a screen to convert a third-and-9 for a first down, then hit Justin Jefferson with a fade that only the star receiver could catch for a 10-yard score. McCarthy found Jordan Addison downfield on third-and-9 on the next drive for 31 yards before tossing a 7-yard score to T.J. Hockenson on a boot concept in the red zone. With Jefferson briefly injured in the third quarter, McCarthy ran away from pressure, juked out Alex Anzalone and scrambled to the end zone for a 9-yard score.
Want to anoint McCarthy as the next sensational young quarterback? He led three touchdown drives on the road against one of the best teams in football and then hit Jalen Nailor on a back-shoulder throw on third-and-9 to seal the victory. Want to be skeptical? The Vikings converted three short fields off a long kickoff return, a fumble recovery and a blocked field goal (and subsequent return) into 17 of their 27 points. They had just one drive rack up more than 36 yards all game and were 15th out of 26 teams in EPA per play on the offensive side of the ball. I’d like to see more games before I actually form any sort of meaningful opinion about McCarthy, but if you want to have a strong stance after three games, Sunday gave you something to chew on, regardless of which side you take.
The Lions have more pressing concerns. Some things did go their way Sunday. The Packers weren’t able to stretch their lead in the NFC North, and the Commanders, whom the Lions travel to face next week, won’t have Jayden Daniels after the second-year quarterback suffered a gruesome elbow injury in their blowout loss to the Seahawks. First, though, GM Brad Holmes has to face the trade deadline and decide how aggressively he wants to add to this Lions team as it tries to get over the hump in the NFC.