The Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered Week 5 winless. They left Thursday Night Football with a 24-16 win over the Dallas Cowboys, and they got it the old, boring way: 241 rushing yards as a team.
Bucky Irving did most of the damage. Pro Football Talk logged him at 165 yards; Yahoo had him at 175 with two scores. Even at the lower number, he's the reason Tampa Bay is off the schneid, and Todd Bowles should be sending him a fruit basket. My read: the Buccaneers just discovered the offense they should have been running all along. Jameis-era volume passing isn't coming back. Irving is the identity now.
The win nearly got away anyway. Bowles passed on a chance at a three-score lead late, a decision that took heat from the NFL world and let Dallas hang around. I'm with the critics here. When your defense has spent a month not stopping anyone, hoarding points beats sitting on them, and the only reason that call is a footnote instead of a headline is that the Cowboys couldn't punish it.
Dallas is the story of the week, and not in a good way. Jerry Jones called the loss "extraordinarily disappointing," which in his vocabulary is not a shrug. The NFL world pinned it on head coach Brian Schottenheimer and called the performance inexcusable. Former defensive tackle Breiden Fehoko defended Dak Prescott while pointing at the defensive mistakes and costly errors, and a stadium worker reportedly muttered "embarrassing" at Prescott as he walked off, per reporters who witnessed it.
Here's the part Dallas won't want to hear: the anger is pointed at the wrong man twice over. Prescott didn't give up 241 yards on the ground, and the worker who heckled him is yelling at the guy who kept it from being a blowout. Schottenheimer is the one on the clock. Fehoko is right, and the people booing Prescott will figure that out around the time the defense does.
Across the Atlantic, the Philadelphia Eagles head into their Week 5 game in London against the Jaguars on a two-game losing streak. London games are a real tax: the preparation week gets compressed, the body clock gets wrecked, and whatever home-field edge exists disappears. The Eagles need this one badly, because the alternative is a losing streak that outlasts the flight home. I expect Philadelphia to lean on the run game and shorten the game. If they come out throwing it 45 times, they've learned nothing.
Antonio Brown fired off a four-word reaction to Bruce Arians taking partial blame for his infamous 2022 exit against the New York Jets. That's the entire exchange, and it's still the loudest thing on the internet.
Credit where it's due: Arians volunteering fault years later is rarer than it sounds. Coaches don't do that. But Brown's reply is the tell. Whatever reaction he chose, it's not the sound of a man closing a door, and this will be a permanent fixture of Buccaneers and Jets discourse whether either franchise wants it or not.
In New Orleans, Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley pushed back hard on Troy Aikman, who said on Monday Night Football that Staley "just simply doesn't have any answers." Staley's response: "I have no idea what he's talking about," plus a flat denial that the criticism is true.
I'll take Aikman's side of the silo. A coordinator who has answers doesn't spend a Tuesday explaining that a broadcaster is wrong. The Saints' defense has to settle this, because Staley's words can't. My prediction: this gets replayed on the next Saints broadcast, and the only way it dies is a shutout-adjacent performance. Talk is cheap in October. Staley needs a Sunday.
The league-level read on Week 5 is that the heat has moved from players to the men standing on the sideline. Bowles survived his bad decision, Schottenheimer didn't survive his loss, and Staley is arguing with a Hall of Fame quarterback instead of watching tape. That's my verdict: of the three, only Bowles bought himself anything, and he bought it with Irving's legs.
I'd bet on Dallas being the loudest story again next week. That's the shape of a season going sideways.
