Week 7 has 13 more games on the slate, and the ESPN guide has picks for all of them, including Cowboys at Eagles, Bengals at Ravens and Steelers and Saints in Paris. The wire will spend the week on the quarterback debates. The roster holes are what decide these games, and Sunday's news cycle delivered a pile of them.
49ers headline: San Francisco ruled out WR Evans, DE Bosa and WR Samuel for the Atlanta game, with WR Kirk possibly returning. My read: Bosa is the one that changes the plan. Losing a pass rusher against a Falcons offense that wants to throw means sending extra bodies, and extra bodies means coverage stress on the back end. Samuel's absence has stopped being news and started being a weekly assumption. Kirk's possible return matters more than the headline suggests, because somebody has to move the chains on third down while the outside receivers are thinned out. If Kirk plays, I expect him to lead the 49ers in targets. If he doesn't, this becomes a slog.
Giants: LB Tremaine Edmunds is out for the year with a chest injury, per a source. He leads the team in tackles, which undersells it. The leading tackler is usually the guy wearing the green dot and making the checks in front of the safety. New York can replace the tackles. Replacing the communication is a multi-week problem, and I expect the Giants to be shopping for a veteran linebacker body rather than trusting a young room. My read on the defense the rest of the way: more chunk plays allowed between the numbers.
Seahawks: Seattle ruled out RB Zach Charbonnet for the Chiefs game. That's a shorter Sunday for the run game, and against Kansas City the math was already tilted toward throwing. Charbonnet's value in this specific matchup was the ability to stay on schedule and keep the opposing offense on the sideline. I expect the Seahawks to be one-dimensional by the second quarter, and that's a bad place to be against Andy Reid.
Chiefs: Reid said Broussard hurt his hamstring the day before and will be out, that Ott fills Broussard's spot, that Rishi Rice will be out, and that Jayla Moore remains in the concussion protocol and will most likely be listed as out. That's a lot of options gone from one offense in one week, and Reid naming Ott as the replacement tells you the staff trusts him to hold the role rather than rotate it. Here's the part I'd push back on: the popular read is that Kansas City's depth absorbs this. It absorbs it in the regular season. It does not absorb it cleanly against a Seattle team that will now sell out to stop the run. Ott is the name to watch.
Falcons: A vertical stripe pattern the Falcons used in a social media post will appear down the middle of the throwback helmets, and the backlash was immediate because some saw similarity to Nazi Germany imagery. I'm not going to pretend this is a both-sides design debate. Once that comparison is in the air, the stripe is gone, and the only question is whether Atlanta kills it this week or after the throwback game. The real failure is procedural: a design that touched that imagery cleared internal review in a building that employs people whose job is brand risk. My prediction is the stripe is removed before the helmets ever see a regular-season field. The Falcons should get ahead of it Monday.
The slate: Thirteen more games, and the Paris trip for Steelers and Saints is the one the league is selling hardest. I'll take the Cowboys at Eagles game as the only one with real seeding weight.
My verdict for the week: the teams above with holes at linebacker and pass rusher lose more than the teams missing skill players. Depth at the line and in the middle of the defense is what survives October.