Grant and Danny
Our Top 5 NFL Games Of Week 4
Here's your best five games of the slate as far as I can see and we'll look at some of the other matchups on the other end. This was actually tough to rank though. There's some really good games around the National Football League. I think the best game most interesting game as far as storylines go is Minnesota Green Bay. The Vikings are three and oh they just throttled the Texans. Now they're playing the Packers one of the two teams in the NFC North that was expected to finish better than Minnesota. If the Packers get Jordan love back I think this is actually going to be a pretty telling game. If they don't and it's Malik Willis again well then Minnesota may well win and therefore no and you can kind of explain it away. But I still think the Vikings are starting to turn heads more than just they did early in the season when it was a cute story to the point where people are now going like Kevin O'Connell coach of the year. Sam Darnold one of the best stories in the early part of the season. Who knows he keeps playing like this all year. Maybe he's looking at a franchise tag. What do you do with him? What do you do with JJ McCarthy? And what's going to happen in this division? The flip side is the Packers have won twice without love. Yep. Matt floors done an incredible job. If they're to get loved back and get a win. Now you're three and one. You're even with Minnesota and they're in a really good spot moving forward to start hitting their stride and climb North in the North. So I think this is just a revealing game and I'm really excited to watch. That's a huge game. Opened up is Packers four and a half point favorites. That's now moved to three two and a half depends on your book. This is a a huge because the Green Bay can survive this stretch with or without Jordan love it at 100%. I'm not sure if he plays this weekend or not. If he if he does, I don't know how close to 100% is going to be. But for Minnesota, you know, stacking the hay right at this at this stage, right? They're doing things when people didn't think they would do and their schedule is really hard out of the gate and it gets it's often's up as the season goes. But if they end up four and oh, you got to change your eye line for them a little bit. You already do. You already have to kind of put some respect on their name in terms of what they've done defensively. Certainly, we're not used to that. And Kevin O'Connell, as you said, early leader for coach of the year, taking everyone else's leftovers many times over in Sam Donald and fit into your scheme and system and getting pretty good production. Pretty amazing. Just another of the great offensive minds who came through this Washington building. The bills are three and oh, they travel to Baltimore up 95 to take on the Ravens. Baltimore lost their first two games and then got their season back on track with a win against the Dallas Cowboys. They are now one in two. They've got more to play for, frankly, more on the line than the bills do goes without reason reasoning that, you know, one in three, you're in big, big trouble from a playoff standpoint. So that hunger makes me lean toward Baltimore. But the bills have actually been exceptional. Josh Allen's playing the best football of any quarterback in the league. He's got seven touchdowns, no interceptions, and they're doing it without their receivers of a year ago. It's kind of a very diversified offensive attack. He's playing point guard. He's running a little more than he did. They're running the football a little better than they have traditionally. I liked the way the bills are playing. Bill's Ravens is going to be fun. Bills have been terrific through three games. 64 point point differential. The best in the AFC certainly through three weeks and among the best in the NFL, they have been fantastic on both sides of the football. I thought they would not be. I thought they got older, a little bit more attrition in terms of injury. I thought they were worse in terms of playmaking. And you know what, it doesn't matter when Josh Allen goes, and that's what's happened. He's the MVP through three weeks and change now that we've gotten week four started officially. The Ravens really put themselves in a bad spot by losing in week two, giving up a lead in the fourth quarter to the stupid Raiders. They played even pretty evenly with the AFC defending and Super Bowl champ's Kansas City Chiefs were a toenail away from being tied going and overtime, maybe winning it with the two point conversion. But that's a bad loss in week two. So now you because you're at such a premium where you have to harvest some of these nuts here to get yourself back into a playoff picture, they are more desperate than Buffalo, I think to your point. Yeah, they almost have to be Buffalo just to make up for the Ravens game, essentially. The Seahawks and Lions have played two of the more entertaining football games in the entire league the last two years. Scores where both teams are in the forties, just really great back and forth shoot outs. And the NFL saw that and said, we're going to put them on Monday night. Yeah, it's like a big 12 game Seahawks at the Lions. Seattle's three and over there. They haven't really played anybody. They'd be Denver by six points in week one. They survived the Patriots overtime field goal win. And then they just completely bullied the dolphins in week three, but there was no to a 21 point deficit for Miami in that game. So now they really get tested and we're going to find out if Seattle is any good against the Detroit Lions. Meanwhile, Detroit is two and one. They lost that game. They want back to the Buccaneers or they outplayed, but golf had a clunker. I actually didn't think Jared golf was great against the Cardinals either. So they need him to get back to playing like he did really frankly over the last two whole years to try to advance to three and one going into their bi-week post Seattle. Yeah, Detroit, it's, it's been strange for them because you would take every metric possible that they put up in the week, the week to loss against Tampa Bay. But again, they lost to Tampa Bay, 463 total yards. Every, everything said that they were going to win that game. And then of course they didn't. And you know, they were fine against Arizona, but again, couldn't really punch the ball in enough and had some, some self-sapotage and some things. They haven't played their best yet, but they're still, I think pretty well regarded and rightfully so as one of the best teams in the NFC and kind of a challenge to San Francisco, whoever happens to else be up there at the top. But these games with Seattle, you stole the words right out of my mouth, have been unbelievably entertaining over the last couple of seasons. So normally you'd go, ah, three, these two teams Seattle, Detroit, it's all my lister games of the week. I've got that one circled because that has been perfect theater the last couple of years. It's been one of those one o'clock games. It's available in a couple of markets, but it's a red zone fest. Yeah. You know, it's just Scott Hanson talks about that game like 84% of the time it's on that one and they're back in the red zone again. So the NFL wised up and said, all right, let's show it to everybody. Let's do it. I'm time time. So that's my number three game of the week. So you got Vikings, Packers one, Bills, Ravens two, Seahawks, Lions three, we're going to go back to the NFC here, NFC heavy because the games in that conference are just great this weekend. Saints Falcons is my number four game. This is going to be an important game in the NFC South. New Orleans is two and one. They lost the game. They probably shouldn't have to Philadelphia this past week. They could easily be sitting at three and oh, they've been awesome offensively going into that third game against Philly and they crash back down to earth. They were washing in before Washington. They were the team not punting. They scored on every single one of their drives for the first two games of the season. Think about that. That having been said, they got a tough customer perhaps in Atlanta at home. The Falcons played with almost could have should have would have beat the Chiefs this past week. Wrong end of a bad call or else maybe they would have. But the Falcons are one and two and they don't really have margin for error this week. The good news for Atlanta, I guess, is both of their losses have been AFC teams. So as you go forward this year, if you're tiebreaker friendly, the season's gone about how you would design it with a one and two record. They beat the Eagles in the conference. They lost to the Steelers and the Chiefs, but they've got three consecutive division games coming up. New Orleans, Tampa, Carolina, with the next two at home, they really could benefit immensely from beating New Orleans and Tampa. That would get them to three and two, three and oh in the conference, two and oh in the division going into a game with Carolina, but it starts with a Saints team that's probably better on paper and yet still an underdog via the sports book. Yeah, this one's wild. So it's one of those things where when you get off to that start that the Saints did, right, the third or fourth most points in history through two weeks and then you come back down to earth. And if you lose in week four, everyone's like, yeah, I knew it was a joke. I knew it was fraudulent. I knew those guys weren't that good. And this is just, you know, a weird early season hiccup. It doesn't matter. But if you win and you look pretty good doing it, I'm not saying you got to score 45 points, that'd be pretty sweet. But if you win this game, you're three and one in command, you probably should be four and oh, kind of to your point. And the only fluke then is the weird loss to Philadelphia where two of you guys ran into each other. And now you're in charge of that weird NFC South from Atlanta's perspective, kind of same deal, right? You need some validation, you need some a few things after that weird week one performance where Kirk Cousins didn't look his part. Next thing you know, you could be right up at the top of this. Again, Herka jerky bizarre division with Tampa having a tough opponent as well. Speaking of Philly, the Eagles cracked the list here. The Eagles in the box in Tampa game number five. So four of these five games are NFC only games, but Philly and Tampa has a chance to be really good. Two and one Eagles leading the NFC East, two and one Tampa leading the NFC South, right? A Philly coming off of a impressive win where they bald out defensively, as you've said, against the Saints. I still don't think they're that good and they're not quite healthy. So they're right for the taking for Tampa Bay, but the bucks were horrible last weekend. They looked great against Washington, dominated them. They looked really good against Detroit, got outplayed and stole a win. And then they got beat by 19 by the bonic led Denver Broncos 26 seven. That game, by the way, was at home where they're home again against the Eagles. I actually like them to beat Philly. I love when Pete teams are at home, two straight weeks. I also hate when teams are on the road, two straight weeks, Philly, second straight game away from home, whereas the bucks are at Raymond James for the second time and as many Sundays. So I think the bucks win this game against Philly and get to three and one. They've owned Philadelphia late. I can't point to all the numbers, but it just they that playoff dropping from a couple seasons ago as Philadelphia was swooning down the stretch. I was last. I mean, last year, but this is a, again, an important game for Tampa, because they played worse each week. They probably didn't deserve to beat Detroit in week number two. They did. You don't take it away from them, but their worst game of the year is their most recent game. So this, you know, they're puffing up their chest a little bit the first couple of weeks, telling everybody, see nobody respected. So one believed in us. Well, you could also be two and two here through, through four games for Philadelphia. Again, they're probably thinking we're getting by right now without AJ Brown, without Devante Smith, without Lane Johnson, without a couple other bodies. If we could somehow be a group that's given us some fits over the years, we'll be three and one through a tough stretch and be feeling pretty good about ourselves.