NFL Week 6 Roundup: Bills' Gardner-Johnson Ejected, Chiefs' Moore in Concussion Protocol, Giants' QB Call Pending
Six weeks is exactly long enough for the league to be certain about everything and correct about almost none of it. Sunday handed us a spitting ejection in Buffalo, a Kansas City right tackle in the concussion protocol before halftime, a New England receiver getting publicly graded by his own coach, and a New York head coach who won't pick a quarterback. Here's what each one actually changes.
Start with the overreaction business itself. ESPN's Week 6 file asks whether the Daniel Jones and A.J. Brown deals already look like regrets. That's the genre working exactly as designed: the same column that called a signing a coup in March calls it a mistake in October, and nothing about the contract changed in between. What changed is the sample. I don't grade a decision on six weeks unless the player is visibly unable to do the job, and a bad Sunday in Week 6 is not that. The people who should be worried are the ones whose jobs depend on the standings, not the ones holding the pen.
Buffalo has a real problem, and it isn't the penalty yardage. C.J. Gardner-Johnson was ejected from the Bills-Raiders game for spitting at Brock Bowers in the final minute of the first half, and it's the second ejection of his career. Once is a bad moment. Twice is a pattern, and Ryan Clark and plenty of others around the league said so out loud. The Bills sold themselves on Gardner-Johnson as a tone-setter, and he is, right up until the tone costs them a defensive back mid-game. My read: Buffalo's secondary depth gets tested immediately while the league office reviews the tape, and I'd expect a fine at minimum. The help goes to whoever faces the Bills next.
Kansas City's issue is more straightforward and less fixable. Right tackle Jaylon Moore left the Chiefs-Chargers game before halftime, entered concussion protocol, and was ruled out for the rest. The protocol has no calendar, which is the worst kind of injury for an offensive line, because you can't shuffle protection for a guy who might be back Wednesday or might miss a month. The Chargers' edge rushers are the beneficiaries here, and every team after them. I expect Kansas City to reshuffle internally rather than reach outside the building. Depth at tackle is where the Chiefs are thinnest, and everybody in the AFC West just got a copy of that tape.
In New England, Mike Vrabel was critical of A.J. Brown's performance in his return from injured reserve, then backed him. That combination is deliberate, not contradictory. A receiver coming off IR gets one game of grace from the public and none from his head coach, and Vrabel saying it out loud is a message about standards rather than a repudiation. Brown is the reason the Patriots' passing game has a ceiling at all. I think the targets follow. The thing that would make me wrong is if the criticism becomes a weekly press-conference habit, because that's when a receiver stops listening.
Then there's the Giants, where John Harbaugh says he isn't ready to name a Week 7 starter between J.J. McCarthy and Jameis Winston. McCarthy replaced Winston against the Saints, and the fact that the reasoning hasn't been shared publicly is the whole problem. Not naming a quarterback is a decision, and it's the wrong one: it hands the locker room a week of speculation and hands the next opponent nothing to prepare for that they weren't already preparing for. I'd start McCarthy. He's the one who took the field, and a young quarterback who gets the job in October needs the job said out loud.
My verdict: McCarthy starts Week 7, Buffalo hears from the league office before the Giants announce anything, and Kansas City's protection is the story of their next month. If I'm wrong on McCarthy, it's because Harbaugh saw something in practice this week that the rest of us can't.