NFL Roundup: Eagles Slide, Jaguars' Historic Run Defense and Will Anderson's DPOY Case
The loudest team in the league this week is one that keeps losing, and the best defensive player in the league is on a team doing the same. Week 6's buzz runs through Philadelphia. The tape worth your time is in Jacksonville and Houston.
ESPN's Week 6 buzz column carries intel on Philadelphia's three-game slide alongside the three remaining unbeaten teams. I'll take the other side of the panic. A three-game slide in October is a headline, not a diagnosis, and I'd still bet on the Eagles being alive in January. What a slide actually changes isn't the roster. It's the menu every defensive coordinator in the league now works from when they get to Philadelphia's film. The Eagles have to answer that on the next snap, not in a press conference.
Cincinnati has the most useful piece of tape from the weekend, and it came with a receipt. Bengals safety Jordan Battle intercepted Malik Willis twice on Sunday after saying before the game that he would time Willis's passes because of how Willis pats the ball before throwing. Willis says he doesn't believe he has a tell. He's wrong, or at least it doesn't matter what he calls it. Battle put the diagnosis on the record before kickoff and then collected two interceptions off it. That's a scouting report now, filed for every defensive staff in the league. The fix is mechanical: kill the pat or change its cadence. Willis is a smart enough player to make that change, which is exactly why I expect him to be fine and the Bengals' two picks to read as a one-week windfall rather than a formula.
Jacksonville's run defense has done something nobody has done since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger: no 40-yard rusher allowed in the first five games. The quieter number is the better one. Opposing backs have 83 carries for 210 yards against the Jaguars, 2.5 yards per carry. Here's where I split from the consensus: the no-40-yard-rusher streak is the record that breaks, because one busted gap ends it and streaks like that die on a single play. The 2.5 is the part that's real and repeatable. Any running back facing Jacksonville in the next month should be downgraded, and the Jaguars' front is the reason their season is still worth watching.
Houston is 1-4 and Will Anderson is playing like the best defender in football anyway, leading the NFL in tackles for loss and in sacks while sitting atop the betting odds for Defensive Player of the Year. Voters say team record doesn't matter in that race. My read is that it does, and it's the only reason Anderson's case is contested at all. If the Texans stay pinned near the bottom, he'll be the best player on a defense nobody watches in December, and some voter will hand the award to a winner instead. If Houston climbs toward .500, he wins going away. I'll take the climb, and I'll take Anderson to be holding the trophy in February.
New Orleans got loud on the record this week. Tyler Shough said Wednesday he shares owner Gayle Benson's frustration with the Saints' 1-4 start, one day after Benson called that start "unacceptable." Owners don't use that word in October to describe a locker room. They use it to describe a building, and everyone with an office in it heard the same thing the quarterback did. Shough agreeing publicly is the right move and the only move a starting quarterback has, but it also puts the next month on the coaching staff. Frustration is cheap in Week 6. Losses are not.
One non-football item worth tracking: a civil verdict Tuesday found Tyreek Hill responsible for two counts of battery and directed him to pay $500,000, and Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio cast doubt on Hill's return timeline because of it. This is a calendar story, not a football one. The legal exposure doesn't cost him snaps. It costs him the ability to control when the next chapter starts.
Put the day together and the shape is obvious. The league's best defensive players are on teams that aren't winning, its most frustrated owner is on a team that expected to, and its most talked-about club is the one that keeps losing. I'll say it plainly: by December, the Eagles' slide will look like noise, Jacksonville's run defense will look like the best unit in football, and Will Anderson will be the best player on a bad team. My byline is on all three.
