NFL Week 4: Three Teams Are 4-0, Five Are 0-4, and the Lions Just Slipped
Four weeks into the season the league is already sorting itself into haves and have-nots, and Detroit just gave the have-nots some company at the top of the worry list.
Now listen, sweetheart. Pour yourself something warm, because there's a lot to get through this week, and not all of it is pretty.
The Top of the Class
Three teams are sitting pretty at 4-0 after Week 4: the Minnesota Vikings, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the San Francisco 49ers. That's it. That's the whole unbeaten club, and in a league built to grind everybody down to .500 by Thanksgiving, that's worth noting.
The Chiefs had to sweat for theirs, beating the Las Vegas Raiders 30-27. Kirk Cousins threw for 365 yards and two touchdowns for Las Vegas, and Kenneth Walker III ran for 177 yards and two more scores, and it still wasn't enough. When you can go on the road and survive a game like that, you're doing something right.
San Francisco had a cleaner afternoon, beating the Denver Broncos 24-14 behind Brock Purdy's 218 yards and two touchdowns through the air, with Christian McCaffrey adding a rushing score. And the Vikings grinded out a 15-10 win over the Miami Dolphins, which, I'll be honest with you, is not a score that's going to win you style points. But a win's a win. My late husband used to say a scuffed-up run is still a run, and I think about that more than I probably should.
The Basement Club
Now for the other end of the table, and there's a crowd down there. Five teams are winless at 0-4: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tennessee Titans, the Houston Texans, the Miami Dolphins, and the Los Angeles Chargers. That's a sixth of the league starting the season in a hole, and it's only Week 4. I'm not mad at any of them. I'm just saying, somebody's got a long November coming.
Trouble in the NFC
The one that's going to sting for a while is Detroit. The Lions went into Carolina and came out on the wrong end of a 32-26 final against the Panthers. Jared Goff threw for 412 yards, which is a mountain of yards, but it came with no second touchdown to show for it, and Carolina's Tetairoa McMillan torched them for 192 yards and two scores on 14 catches. The Panthers' Chuba Hubbard chipped in 122 yards and two touchdowns on the ground.
A loss like that drops the Lions to 2-2, and it tightens up the NFC picture a little more than Detroit fans probably wanted this early. Nothing's decided in October, but nobody wants to be playing from behind in December either.
Around the League
Your New England Patriots went into Buffalo and did something they haven't done much of this year: they won a tight one, 29-26 over the Bills. Drake Maye threw for 269 yards and three touchdowns against one interception, and after the rough stretch he's had to open the season, he didn't need to be perfect Sunday. He just needed to be good enough, and he was. That's two in a row of me not yelling at the television during a Patriots game, so somebody mark the calendar.
The Los Angeles Rams went into Philadelphia down 10 in the third quarter and came out with a 24-20 win, with Kyren Williams running for 80 yards and two touchdowns. Down in Houston, CeeDee Lamb had himself a day in a city he calls his second home, catching 17 passes for 189 yards and a touchdown as the Cowboys outlasted the Texans, 34-30.
And one game is still waiting on the clock: the Falcons and Saints play Monday night in New Orleans, both sitting at 1-2, both scoreless as of this writing because the thing hasn't kicked off yet. I'm not going to sit here and guess at it. Watch the game, sweetheart, that's what it's there for.
What I'll be watching the rest of the way is whether those three unbeaten teams stay unbeaten, and whether any of my five strugglers down at the bottom can scrape together a win before the leaves are all the way down. Baseball people like me know a long season can turn on one good week. Football doesn't give you as many of those weeks. Use them wisely, boys.
