If you don’t like the team at the top of the heap in the AFC, just wait a week. Heading into the 2025 NFL season, there was a consensus that the teams with MVP-caliber quarterbacks that are perennially atop the conference — the Bills, Chiefs and Ravens — would quickly reestablish their rightful place atop the AFC, a tier above the other 13 teams.
In reality, we’ve had total chaos. The Chiefs started 0-2 and actually sit outside the playoff picture at the midway point as the eighth seed in the AFC. The Ravens opened the season 1-5 before turning things around after their bye. The Bills have beaten both of their frequent playoff rivals, but they’ve also lost to the Falcons and now to the Dolphins, who blew them out on Sunday.
That three-team top tier has given way to a larger, messier group of claimants to the top spot in the AFC. None of them has a foolproof résumé. Some teams that had already seemingly announced themselves as candidates have already fallen out of favor — like the Jaguars, who in Week 5 went to 4-1 with their win over the Chiefs on “Monday Night Football” before losing three of their next four, including a heartbreaking loss to the Texans on Sunday afternoon. Houston scored 28 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to pull out a 36-29 victory.
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Which team should we put faith in at the top of the AFC? Can we default to the Chiefs or Bills because of what we’ve seen in the past? Or should we be ahead of the curve and get behind a team like the Broncos, Chargers, Colts or Patriots — the four teams that have better records in the AFC than the old guard?
I’m here to make a case for that new group of contenders, the teams trying to convince us that it won’t inevitably be the Bills, Chiefs or Ravens competing in the AFC Championship Game. Are they on that level? I’m not sure there’s a right answer, but I’ll try to make the best possible argument for each, and we’ll touch on what happened to them in Week 10. Let’s start at the very top of the standings and work our way down.
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Broncos | Chargers | Colts | Patriots
Week 10: Beat the Falcons 31-25 (in overtime)
Here’s the perfect example of how difficult it’s becoming to evaluate the top of the AFC. Did Sunday’s performance make you more or less confident in the Colts? A win is a win, and the Colts overcame the absence of injured defensive tackle DeForest Buckner (neck) to take down the Falcons in Berlin, prevailing in overtime on Jonathan Taylor‘s third touchdown of the game.
You could spin that victory as a positive. Taylor was incredible, as we’ll get to in a moment. The Colts showed a certain ability to battle adversity and persevere that they haven’t needed to show very often in 2025. After the Falcons took a 25-22 lead with 1:48 to go, Daniel Jones overcame a third-and-21 over two plays and got the Colts in range for a game-tying 44-yard field goal. The defense then stiffened in overtime, and in lieu of settling for a field goal, coach Shane Steichen’s offense drove 57 yards for a game-winning touchdown.
And yet, at the same time, it feels like the new things we learned aren’t positives. Indy gave up 25 points to a Falcons offense that didn’t pick up a single third down all game. The Colts survived by recovering four of the game’s five fumbles, including three of their four lost footballs on offense. Even with new cornerback Sauce Gardner in the mix, the Colts weren’t able to close out the game with a stop of Michael Penix Jr. in the fourth quarter, as the Falcons drove 71 yards without ever needing to even face a third down before Tyler Allgeier plunged in from 1 yard out to give Atlanta a lead.
What was most worrisome, though, was another high-variance game from Jones. One week after he turned the ball over five times and took five sacks in a 27-20 loss to the Steelers, the veteran threw an interception, fumbled three times (losing one) and was sacked seven times on just 33 dropbacks against the Falcons. Jones made a number of big plays, including a 19-yard scramble to help extend the game on the final drive of regulation, but there were more lows than the Colts were dealing with during Jones’ incredible start to the campaign.
Across his first eight starts in a Colts uniform, Jones did an impeccable job of avoiding negative plays. He threw just three interceptions, fumbled twice and took a mere nine sacks, which yielded the league’s best sack rate at the time. Over his past two games? Jones has four picks and eight fumbles. He has been sacked 12 times, more than doubling his total from the prior two months of the season.
Is some of that variance? Of course. Jones got away with a dropped interception or two during the first half of the season. One of his interceptions against the Steelers was a throw to the flat that was deflected by one Pittsburgh linebacker to another like they were setting up a volleyball spike. When you’re running hot, those balls hit the ground, and when you’re not, they somehow land in the wrong hands.
The sacks, though, are a real concern. The true outlier for Jones versus the player he was in New York was that sack rate. Even as Giants coach Brian Daboll aggressively encouraged Jones to get the ball out quickly and his offenses ran some of the shortest average air yard rates of any team in the league, Jones took sacks on 8.5% of his dropbacks in New York. Those takedowns led to difficult down-and-distances and issues with fumbles and strip sacks.
Steichen had managed to both create opportunities for Jones to throw the football downfield and avoid the sacks that would typically come with those shots. That calculus has shifted over the past two weeks. It’s one thing when the players in front of Jones struggle. Left tackle Bernhard Raimann allowed five quick pressures against the Steelers. Taylor whiffed on a pass block against the Falcons for one sack, while another looked like it came on a broken play, with nobody bothering to block a defender flying up the A-gap. There’s not much Jones can do about that.
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Alec Pierce elevates for incredible TD grab
Daniel Jones throws it deep to Alec Pierce, who comes down with the ball for a touchdown.
Sack rate is a quarterback stat that often transfers from team to team, though, and Jones simply wasn’t careful with the football against Atlanta. Each of his three strip sacks came on plays in which Jones needed to protect the football and did not. He didn’t feel pressure in or around the pocket on two of the sacks and had the ball popped out when he was running toward the sideline on the third. Those are on the QB, not the offensive line or his pass protection. And even if they end up as sacks, Jones can’t let them become strip sacks, because there are no guarantees that the Colts will be able to fall on the football 80% of the time in the future.
This offense has been ruthless all season, but the Colts really weren’t that on Sunday. One Jones fumble just outside the red zone cost the Colts a shot at three points. Michael Badgley missed a field goal and an extra point. Indy failed on a fourth down at the 5-yard line when Taylor was stuffed for a 2-yard loss and on a 2-point attempt when Jones was late to throw the wheel on mesh and gave the Falcons’ defense time to bat the pass away.
The best argument: This is the best offense in football in the middle of a potentially historic run by its best player.
The Colts were bailed out by Taylor, who responded to his worst game of the season in Week 9 by almost singlehandedly carrying the Colts over the line Sunday. Steichen basically turned the game over to Taylor midway through the third quarter, and the running back finished the day with 32 carries for 244 yards and three scores. The best of the day was his 83-yard touchdown, with Taylor getting bottled up around the line of scrimmage, somehow sneaking out of the pile and outrunning cornerback A.J. Terrell Jr. to the sideline and up the field. Steichen and the offensive line have done a great job of setting Taylor up for big runs this season, but this one was all No. 28.
Taylor’s dominant run really started in the final quarter of the 2024 season before extending into 2025. Over that 14-game stretch, he has 306 carries for 1,766 rushing yards and 21 rushing touchdowns. Nobody is within 500 rushing yards or six rushing touchdowns of the Colts star over that span.
Pro-rate that performance out over a full 17-game season and Taylor racks up 2,144 rushing yards, which would be the single-season rushing record. The 26-year-old would get to 26 rushing touchdowns and three receiving scores, which would be 29 scrimmage touchdowns, second in NFL history behind LaDainian Tomlinson’s 31 scores in 2006. Taylor would have a legitimate shot in the MVP balloting if he broke one vaunted record and came close to a second, especially if Jones continues to struggle. That would leave the credit for a wildly successful season to the Colts halfback.
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Jonathan Taylor’s 83-yard TD breaks Colts’ rushing TD record
Jonathan Taylor explodes for an 83-yard touchdown to become the Colts’ all-time leader in rushing touchdowns.
If you’re arguing that the Colts really are the best team in the conference, of course, that’s where the story begins and ends. Indy’s 3.2 points per possession remain the fourth best for any offense since 2000 through 10 weeks, trailing only the 2018 Saints, 2007 Patriots and 2018 Chiefs. It didn’t end well in the postseason for any of those teams, but by the time we got to January, they were all rightly recognized as offensive juggernauts. The Colts might slip some in the second half, but they’ve been good enough for long enough to be taken seriously as an uncommonly spectacular offense.
The most realistic criticism: They’re missing superstars beyond Taylor.
Jones has struggled badly over the past two weeks, and while I’m not writing off what we saw from him over the first two months of the season after two disappointing games, it would also be foolish to simply discredit everything we saw over six seasons in New York as irrelevant. Jones unquestionably has talent and has made strides in Indianapolis, but he has looked out of rhythm over the past two weeks. The Colts have a very different ceiling with the Jones we saw in September and October than the one who has struggled in November.
Buckner was the focal point of the Indy pass rush and has no clear timetable for return after suffering a neck injury, which might make Gardner’s presence as the team’s new star on defense more essential. The former Jets standout played 100% of the snaps in his Indy debut, allowing three catches for 46 yards as the nearest defender in coverage, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo responded to Gardner’s arrival by playing man coverage at Indy’s third-highest rate of the season, and Penix went 5-of-12 for 59 yards against man-to-man defense. Indy probably needs at least a couple of superstars beyond Taylor and guard Quenton Nelson if they want to make a deep playoff run, though.
The meaningful résumé: 29-28 win over Broncos, 38-24 win over Chargers, 27-20 loss to Rams
In games against stiff competition, the Colts have basically battled their opponents to a draw. They manhandled the Chargers, lost a frustrating one to the Rams in part because of Adonai Mitchell‘s brutal fumble on his way into the end zone and had a game against the Broncos come down to the final snaps, where a leverage call against Denver turned a field goal miss from 60 yards out into a 45-yard kick to win the game for Indy.
Week 10: Beat the Raiders 10-7
If you don’t remember much from Thursday’s tilt in the AFC West, it might be your brain’s way of trying to recover some much-needed space before the holiday season begins. Like the Colts, a win is a win, as Denver took its winning streak to seven games with a victory over its longtime rivals at home. But like the Colts, I’m not sure the game told us anything we didn’t already know in a good way.
The Broncos’ defense completely and utterly stifled Geno Smith, who seemed to take the snap on third downs knowing that a friendly member of the Denver pass rush would be meeting him at the bottom of his dropback. Vance Joseph’s defense sacked Smith six times on 32 dropbacks. When the Broncos pressured Smith, he went 3-of-7 for 8 yards with an interception. And while the Raiders can run their way into their own mistakes at times, the Broncos created 13 quick pressures of the quarterback on Thursday night, including six by Defensive Player of the Year candidate Nik Bonitto. Those quick pressures are lethal unless the opponent has a plan to get the ball out fast, and the Raiders haven’t really exhibited many plans at all this season.
What has been informative, perhaps, is finding out that this defense can survive and even continue to thrive without star cornerback Pat Surtain II, who has missed the past two games with a pectoral injury. Joseph plays one of the league’s most aggressive and man-heavy schemes, in part because he has one of the few cornerbacks capable of covering any receiver one-on-one. Without the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the mix, it was fair to wonder whether the Broncos might be limited on that side of the ball.
Instead, they’ve done just fine. Nico Collins had 75 yards in Week 9, but it took 11 targets for the star Texans wideout to get there. On Thursday, the obvious focal point for the Raiders had to be second-year tight end Brock Bowers. And while the Broncos do excellent work on the outside with Surtain on the field, teams have had success attacking their linebackers in coverage with running backs this season, suggesting that Bowers might have been able to exploit one of the few soft spots the Broncos possess.
Well, I’m not sure the broadcast even said Bowers’ name after halftime. While he did pick up a 31-yard completion to convert a third-and-9 in the second quarter, that reception was Bowers’ only catch of the day — one week after going 12-127-3 against the Jaguars. Bowers was able to command only three targets all game, a testament to how effective Joseph’s defense was at corralling the budding star and forcing Smith to go elsewhere. And by the time Smith started looking there, of course, the pass rush was usually about to get home.
The defense lived up to expectations, but it would be tough to say the same about Bo Nix, who struggled for the second consecutive start. That might have been reasonable against the Texans, who have the league’s best defense by EPA per play, but the Raiders were 22nd in the league by the same metric heading into Week 10. We saw Nix slice up the Cowboys and their moribund defense two weeks ago, so this should have been an opportunity to get right.
2:02
‘This looks atrocious’: Stephen A. criticizes the Broncos’ offense
Stephen A. Smith is not impressed with the Denver Broncos’ offense, saying the team is not as good as its record.
Instead, the second-year quarterback went 16-of-28 for 150 yards with a touchdown pass and two interceptions. One of those picks was off Troy Franklin‘s body, but Nix wasn’t able to consistently move the football. The Broncos failed to pick up even one first down on nine of their 13 drives against the Raiders, becoming the first team with nine three-and-outs in a game this season. The only teams that did it last year were the Browns, Jets and these very Broncos, who had that happen in Nix’s first career start, a 26-20 loss to the Seahawks.
The best argument: This is arguably the best defense in football, and defense wins championships.
It might be better after last season’s Super Bowl to be more specific and suggest that pass rushes win championships, especially if you end up facing a team like the Chiefs along the way. Nobody gets home more often than the Broncos, whose 11.8% sack rate leads the league. Joseph blitzes at the sixth-highest rate, but Bonitto & Co. actually have a slightly better sack rate (12.0%) when Denver rushes four or fewer guys, which seems wild.
The get-off speed for Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper makes them virtually impossible to block at their best. Among edge rushers with 100 pass-rush snaps or more this season, Cooper (0.73 seconds) and Bonitto (0.75 seconds) rank first and third in get-off speed, respectively, sandwiching Myles Garrett and sitting just ahead of Aidan Hutchinson. Combine that with Bonitto’s bend and the sheer force of Zach Allen in the middle, and the Broncos have a handful of snaps per game where they’re completely unblockable. And when the Broncos get at least one sack, the drive usually ends; they’ve allowed just three touchdowns across 39 defensive possessions with at least one sack.
Surtain should be back soon, which would restore the Broncos to essentially a full roster on defense. The only other defensive starter who has missed significant time is linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who played a majority of the defensive snaps for the first time since 2023 against the Raiders. Simply having all your guys around into the second half of the season (and ideally into the postseason) is a huge advantage, especially when the opposition has injury-impacted weak spots to attack. Losing Greenlaw and Jon Feliciano and going without injured safety Talanoa Hufanga in the Super Bowl might have been the difference in San Francisco’s second loss to Kansas City on the biggest stage.
Beyond guys such as Surtain, Hufanga, Allen and Bonitto, though — all of whom are playing at All-Pro levels this year — the Broncos are getting production from their secondary pieces. Malcolm Roach, Dondrea Tillman and Justin Strnad have made meaningful contributions this season. First-round pick Jahdae Barron saw his role expand against the Texans after the injury to Surtain. Other teams have similar high-end firepower, but I’m not sure anybody has the same caliber of talent throughout the lineup that the Broncos defense does.
The most realistic criticism: The Broncos can’t know what they’ll get on any given day — or even on any given pass — from Nix.
No quarterback inspires more graphics with tortured start/stop points. Have you ever wondered which quarterbacks have great touchdown-to-interception ratios over a 10-game span as a rookie? There were graphics all over the place highlighting Nix’s performance over his prior five quarters after the win over the Cowboys. But those endpoints exist because they’re surrounded by wildly disappointing performances.
He was fantastic in that final quarter against the Giants and ripped up the Cowboys’ defense, but he had been dismal in his prior three quarters against New York and didn’t do much at all over the ensuing eight quarters against the Texans and Raiders. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting a hot streak by a player, of course, but the guardrails are more instructive here for Nix, because he can run more white-hot and frigidly cold than just about any other quarterback in the league.
It’s clear that Sean Payton is still doing a lot of work in managing the game for Nix and trying to minimize the burden being placed on his second-year starter. This offense has a seemingly endless array of screens, swing passes, jet sweeps, bootlegs and RPOs designed to create easy completions for Nix and YAC opportunities for his receivers. Payton then uses that eye candy and Nix’s arm to create shots downfield. Outside of Steichen in Indianapolis, I’m not sure anybody is creating more wide-open looks downfield on a weekly basis for potential big plays than Payton.
Nix just isn’t hitting them. He’s running a minus-19.8% completion percentage over expected (CPOE) on passes traveling 30 or more yards in the air this season, the worst mark in football for passers with 10 or more of those throws this season per NFL Next Gen Stats. Nix is 3-of-27 on those passes, with one touchdown throw and three picks. The NFL Next Gen Stats model suggests that he has left five of those long completions on the field, and I’d argue that number is low.
As ESPN’s Mina Kimes mentioned, Nix’s off-target rate on throws traveling 10 or more yards downfield is 39%, which is 32nd in the league. He’s also 32nd on those throws from a clean pocket and again on first downs, where his off-target rate is a whopping 45%. That last figure is the third worst for any QB in a single season over the past decade.
The problem isn’t that Nix can’t throw accurately or hit deep throws. His arm isn’t an issue at all. Watch some of Nix’s best throws, like that 93-yard seam shot versus Cleveland’s Tampa 2 coverage from last season, and you’ll see the sort of zip and accuracy anyone would want from a young QB. When Nix is set and gets his body into a throw, he looks great.
The difficulties lie with Nix’s propensity for moving around the pocket and what that subsequently does for his footwork. Payton indulges Nix’s habits of scrambling around, extending plays and trying to create off-platform and/or out of structure, which can sometimes create huge scrambles and big plays when the ball goes where Nix wants. When Nix is stopping and starting as he ambles around, trying to make a throw on a scramble drill, or tossing passes with one foot in the air, there’s no telling where the ball is going to go, though. Those passes lead to off-target throws and difficult-to-catch passes that result in incompletions and interceptions.
The hope was naturally that Nix would have things slow down a bit — that he’d be more consistent and intentional with his footwork and movement in Year 2. But I’m not sure he looks any different than he did in Year 1. When Nix is in rhythm and playing confidently, that can lead to brilliant stretches of play. And when he isn’t, as was the case against the Raiders, it can lead to games where even Broncos fans wonder whether they have the right guy.
As ESPN’s Seth Wickersham wrote in “American Kings,” the one subtle big positive for Nix is avoiding negative plays. Nix has thrown eight picks this season, which is a slight uptick in terms of interception rate from where he was a year ago, but he’s taking sacks on a league-low 2.8% of his dropbacks. The best version of Nix is scrambling for easy first downs and hitting big shots downfield, but if he can cut down on the interceptions and end his drives with kicks, the Broncos’ defense should be able to do enough to win games most weeks.
The meaningful résumé: 29-28 loss to Colts, 23-20 loss to Chargers, 21-17 win over Eagles.
Like the Colts, the Broncos have won one of their games against stiff competition in narrow fashion and lost another in a heartbreaker. Nix missed a big throw that might have set up the game-winning field goal against the Chargers, who then drove downfield for their own game-winning kick.
It’s a little easier than Broncos fans might care to admit to poke holes in Denver’s résumé during this winning streak. They started things off by beating Jake Browning and the Bengals. A comeback win over Jalen Hurts and the Eagles was impressive, but the Broncos trailed for a chunk of the day against Justin Fields and needed late comebacks to beat the lowly Jets and Giants. They scored 44 points on a hapless Cowboys defense, then narrowly beat the Texans, even after C.J. Stroud was knocked out of the game with a concussion. You just saw them struggle to put away the Raiders, who missed a 48-yard field goal that would have tied the game with 4:30 left.
That all changes Sunday, when the Broncos get another home game against the Chiefs. The defense slowed down Patrick Mahomes last season and a late drive had the Broncos in position to kick a game-winning field goal, only for the Chiefs to pull out a stunning victory by blocking the kick. The Broncos won the rematch in a blowout, but that was with Carson Wentz and Kansas City’s backups on the field. Get a win over Mahomes and the Chiefs, and it both creates more separation for the Broncos atop the AFC West and legitimizes their case as a real contender.
Week 10: Beat the Buccaneers 28-23
The Patriots bandwagon keeps taking on more customers. After Sunday’s victory in Tampa Bay, Mike Vrabel’s Pats have won seven straight, establishing a two-game lead in the AFC East over the Bills with the tiebreaker favoring New England. The rematch between these two teams, which comes after the Pats’ Week 14 bye, takes place in Foxborough. Between now and then, the Patriots face the Jets, Bengals and Giants — three teams that have a combined record of 7-21 this season. It would hardly be a surprise if the Patriots hit that Buffalo rematch with a 10-game winning streak and an AFC playoff berth in hand.
Sunday was a chance to prove themselves to some nonbelievers. The Bucs aren’t a great team, but they’ve beaten the Seahawks and 49ers, and Baker Mayfield has been able to coax the team to victories when things have been close. Going to Tampa Bay in rainy conditions was going to be a test of whether the Patriots could take their act on the road against stiffer competition.
The results were mixed. The positives came with big plays at exactly the right time. More than half of Maye’s 270 passing yards came on three plays: a 72-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Williams, a 54-yard completion to Mack Hollins and a 26-yard throw to DeMario Douglas. Maye also hit Stefon Diggs for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal just before halftime when on first down it looked like Maye had deliberately tried not to score to run clock and keep the Bucs from getting the ball back. (Vrabel denied it after the game, but if the Pats were trying to score, I’m guessing the coach wasn’t impressed with Maye’s efforts on the sneak.)
TreVeyon Henderson added a pair of huge plays in his breakout game. The rookie running back took a carry 55 yards to the house in the third quarter, then added a 69-yard pitch to seal things up in the fourth quarter, seemingly asking the bench whether it wanted him to go down to run clock over the final few yards before sheepishly crossing the goal line. In all, the Pats had four 50-plus-yard gainers on Sunday, the most any team has had in one game since the Dolphins went for 70 points against the Broncos in 2023.
Big plays are great, but there’s a reason those Dolphins scored 70 and the Pats managed only 28. What happened between the big plays wasn’t very impressive. The Patriots had a 33.9% success rate on offense against the Bucs, which was comfortably their worst mark of the season. While Maye has been excellent hitting shots downfield throughout the season, no offense can count on spiking four 50-plus-yard gains each week. The Pats will need to be more consistent on offense when they do play tougher competition.
Their prior success rate low was 41.2%, which came in the Week 3 loss to the Steelers, a day where the Pats made big plays but turned the ball over five times, including twice near the goal line. Maye took a big hit in that game and then shortly thereafter threw an ill-advised pick in the end zone. He did the same thing against Tampa Bay. The explosive plays gave the Patriots some margin for error. Maye also struggled early with his accuracy when the game was being played in heavy rain, something to watch for when the Patriots inevitably play in uncomfortable conditions in December and January.
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TreVeyon Henderson asks sideline if he can score on 69-yard TD
Before TreVeyon Henderson scores a 69-yard touchdown, he looks to the Patriots’ sideline to see if he needs to get down or score.
It also wasn’t a banner day for the defense, but as we’ve seen in other key spots this season, the pass rush came up with a big play when the Pats needed to seal things up. After Maye’s interception, the Bucs drove downfield and faced a fourth-and-3 in the red zone with 1:55 to go. The free agent additions made the difference for New England, as the Pats ran a twist with edge rusher K’Lavon Chaisson and defensive tackle Milton Williams, both of whom got through the line. While the two defenders weren’t able to sack Mayfield, they forced him into a desperate throw to Rachaad White, losing 3 yards. The two teams traded touchdowns in the final two minutes, but after Diggs recovered an onside kick, the Pats were 8-2.
The best argument: They might have the NFL’s best quarterback.
I laid out Maye’s MVP case in my awards column last week, and while he fell just short for me, I wouldn’t have any issue with voters picking Maye given his résumé. The second-year quarterback has been excellent as a downfield thrower and scrambler. He leads the NFL in QBR on deep passes (99.9) and against the blitz (94.1).
Maye is operating at a different level than other quarterbacks in the 2024 draft class, both in terms of what the Patriots ask him to do and his effectiveness in executing the full operation of an upper-echelon NFL offense. He’s a much better and far more consistent dropback passer than Nix, Penix or Caleb Williams, and while Jayden Daniels was better as a rookie, Maye was outplaying the Commanders star in 2025 before Daniels suffered his elbow injury. And J.J. McCarthy is still essentially a mystery box. If the league redrafted 2024 all over again, it’s difficult to imagine Maye not being the player most teams would want to take with the first overall pick.
The offense could get even better as the season goes along. It has been sloppy with fumbles and inconsistent pass blocking, especially at running back. Henderson is still trying to establish himself as a reliable blocker, but his explosiveness was a much-needed burst for a team that hasn’t reliably had that sort of runner in the backfield. Rhamondre Stevenson is going to figure into the mix when he returns from his toe injury, and I would have liked to see the Patriots land a viable third back before the trade deadline with Antonio Gibson done for the year. But Henderson should improve the rushing efficiency of this group as his role expands in the second half.
Fellow rookies Will Campbell and Jared Wilson should also improve as they grow more comfortable with the speed of the game up front, and Kyle Williams made his presence felt after catching just two passes in the first half of the campaign, but I’m intrigued to see if a veteran receiver can make a bigger leap. Maye has been entirely comfortable cycling through different receivers as his primary option on a weekly basis. On Sunday, that was Hollins, who led the team in targets (10), receptions (six) and receiving yards (106).
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Kyle Williams ends 1st quarter with 72-yard TD
Drake Maye throws to Kyle Williams, who takes off for a 72-yard Patriots touchdown to end the first quarter.
Could Diggs emerge as a more consistent No. 1 in the weeks to come? The Pats have been careful about monitoring his workload as he gets back to 100 percent off last season’s torn ACL, with his snap total falling between 27 and 41 plays per game. Diggs is averaging just over 21 routes per game, which isn’t much compared to the league’s top wideouts. Drake London, for example, is averaging more than 33 routes per game for the Falcons, while Ja’Marr Chase is on the field for nearly 38 routes per game in Cincinnati.
Diggs is fourth in the NFL among regular wide receivers in yards per route run (2.6), though, virtually tied with CeeDee Lamb and ahead of players such as London, Jaylen Waddle and Amon-Ra St. Brown. He’s also second in ESPN’s receiver score metric, trailing only Puka Nacua. On a route-by-route basis, Diggs has been an elite receiver for the Patriots this season.
Of course, we can’t just assume Diggs will be equally as effective if the Patriots just suddenly up his snap counts to play on an every-snap basis. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is surely spotting Diggs and making sure to use him in spots where he’s more likely to get the football. Diggs also probably derives some benefit from resting more than other starting receivers, allowing him to stay fresher for the routes he does run.
At the same time, though, this isn’t a Marvin Mims Jr. or Deonte Harty case, where a gadget or limited receiver racks up a gaudy yards per route run figure in a situational role. Diggs was a top-five receiver by these metrics before joining the Patriots, often on an annual basis. He was fourth in the NFL in receiver score during his lone year with the Texans before he tore his ACL. Diggs is capable of being a complete receiver. And if he’s healthy enough to play a snap share above 75% or 80% down the stretch, don’t be surprised if his production rises accordingly.
The most realistic criticism: They’ve beaten up on bad teams.
With the Panthers losing to the Saints on Sunday, the Patriots have two victories over competition with winning records this season, having beaten the Bills and Bucs on the road. I mentioned how the Buccaneers game came with some unsustainable explosiveness on offense, and a Patriots team that has forced eight turnovers across their other nine games managed to coax three away from the Bills, who have been historically good at avoiding giveaways. It’s tough to see that happening again in a rematch.
It’s not just that the Patriots have avoided winning teams, I suppose, as much as they’ve really gotten to play the true bottom of the NFL. They have wins over three of ESPN Football Power Index‘s four-lowest ranked teams in the Browns, Titans and Saints. They still have two games to come against the Jets, who rank 30th, and the Pats have three more wins over the Dolphins, Falcons and Panthers, who rank 23rd, 24th and 27th, respectively. Oh, and one of their two losses is to the Raiders, who are the league’s fifth-worst team.
The only problem in evaluating the Pats is that the schedule doesn’t get much tougher. They get three more games against subpar competition before the bye, and while the Bills and Ravens show up after that, New England finishes up with the Jets and Dolphins. This will end up being one of the easiest schedules in recent memory, and while the Pats can only beat the teams on the slate, it’s tough to gauge whether they can be a winner against tougher competition on a regular basis.
The meaningful résumé: 23-20 win over Bills, 28-23 win over Buccaneers.
If you want to throw in a 42-13 win over the Panthers or a 21-14 loss to the Steelers, be my guest, but the Pats haven’t been tested very often this season. I’m confident they’re good, but are they as great as their record suggests?
Week 10: Beat the Steelers 25-10
Yes, the Sunday night game was the bowl to decide who appeared as the fourth team in this column. The Steelers didn’t make it much of a competition; after a distressingly large portion of the game when the score was either 3-2 or 5-3, the Chargers managed to pull away. They scored 25 consecutive points before allowing a late touchdown pass from Aaron Rodgers to Roman Wilson with 2:57 to go. By then, even the Steelers fans who had unsurprisingly taken over the stadium in Los Angeles had left to beat the traffic.
This looked like a bad matchup for the Chargers on the offensive side of the ball. The Steelers have been what I would charitably describe as inconsistent on defense this season, but the strength of their team is on the edge. T.J. Watt is a future Hall of Famer, Alex Highsmith is one week removed from utterly annihilating the Colts, and backup Nick Herbig still leads all edge defenders in pass rush win rate by a considerable margin. With the Chargers down Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater for the season and starting the duo of Austin Deculus and Trey Pipkins III at tackle, this looked to be a legitimately dangerous evening in the making for Justin Herbert.
Instead, we saw offensive coordinator Greg Roman and the Chargers’ staff piece together a logical, successful game plan for Herbert: Get the ball out immediately. Herbert can occasionally lean into holding the ball too long with painful results, so this isn’t his nature. But with the Steelers holding such an advantage on the edge, the Chargers had no choice but to get it out fast.
With a shorthanded offensive line, Justin Herbert averaged a 2.21-second time to throw in Week 10 – the quickest of his career – and faced just a 30.0% pressure rate.
Herbert completed 15 of 21 quick pass attempts for 145 yards and his only touchdown.
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— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 10, 2025
Deculus and Pipkins combined to allow three sacks but only one quick quarterback pressure, which is what sank Daniel Jones against this defense last week. Those sacks came as a result of initial interior pressure or after Herbert had some time to get rid of the football. No Steelers player had more than one quick pressure all game. And when Pittsburgh didn’t get pressure, Herbert went 17-of-26 for 203 yards with a touchdown pass.
It wasn’t his best performance of the season, but the Chargers were able to mitigate the strength of the Steelers (their pass rush) and attack their weakest link (the secondary). It didn’t help when Pittsburgh lost Darius Slay to a concussion, which created more confusion. The Steelers’ starting safeties were Jalen Ramsey, who moved to the position on a full-time basis last month, and Kyle Dugger, who was acquired via trade from the Patriots two weeks ago.
The Steelers can give teams trouble by leaning into their larger personnel groupings, getting two (and as many as four) tight ends on the field at one time, and using those checks to limit what the defense can do with their personnel or schematic choices. I was a little worried from the Los Angeles perspective that Pittsburgh might be able to overpower the Chargers’ front seven.
Instead, the Chargers simply did what they could to take away Rodgers’ initial read and trusted that their pass rush would get home to either bother or sack the future Hall of Famer before he found somewhere else to go with the football. Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter sent only one blitz all night, preferring to drop seven into coverage and blanket DK Metcalf, who turned seven targets into just 35 yards.
Rodgers never really seemed comfortable. He was 0-for-5 under pressure, and when he held the ball for more than 2.5 seconds, he was 4-of-14 for 55 yards. Rodgers had just one completion which traveled more than 10 yards in the air all game on eight tries. He finished just 16-of-31 for 161 yards with a touchdown pass and two picks, though one of the interceptions was admittedly an almost-comical drop by a wide-open Calvin Austin III.
Rodgers’ 4.6 Total QBR was the worst mark posted by any quarterback in Week 10 and the second-worst mark of his illustrious career, trailing only his Week 17 performance against the Bills last season (while he was with the Jets). The Steelers went three-and-out seven times and had two more drives produce one sole first down each before scoring on their final possession of the game while down 22 points.
The best argument: The Chargers have successful coaches and a legitimately great defense.
After their win, the Chargers climbed up to sixth in the NFL in EPA per play on defense, exactly where they finished at the end of the 2024 season. While the offensive injuries remain a serious concern, and the defense has been down multiple starters as recently as last week against the Titans, L.A. is beginning to get healthy. The only starter missing Sunday on that side of the ball was wildly underrated cornerback Tarheeb Still, and that’s the deepest position on this roster.
0:30
Chargers pick off Aaron Rodgers for a 2nd time
Donte Jackson hauls in the Chargers’ second interception by Aaron Rodgers.
Given Mike Macdonald’s success in Seattle and Minter’s similar background, it would be a surprise if the Chargers’ defensive coordinator makes it through the 2026 hiring cycle without leaving for a head coaching job somewhere else. As it stands, while the Chargers don’t have quite as much talent at all three levels as the Seahawks, they have young standouts (Tuli Tuipulotu, Daiyan Henley, Still, Cam Hart) who have exceeded their draft slots and veterans (Teair Tart, Donte Jackson, Elijah Molden and potentially new addition Odafe Oweh) who have played better under Minter than they had in prior stops.
And then, atop all that, they have a true superstar at safety in Derwin James Jr., who didn’t miss time after suffering an ankle injury two weeks ago. The Chargers are 17th in EPA per play against designed runs, so teams can move the ball on the ground at times against them. But staying out of negative game scripts helps keep that relative weakness from being exploited. That might be tougher against teams that can run the ball well in the postseason.
The game plan against the Steelers was a reminder of what this staff is capable of doing. Jim Harbaugh has been a serial winner and made it to the Super Bowl in his second season with the 49ers. Roman was there as his offensive coordinator, and he has done an excellent job of expanding the passing game as needed for Herbert this season, including leaning heavily into the pass earlier this year. And Minter’s one of the most promising young coaches in football. How many competitive teams around the league can say that they feel great about their coordinators as they hit the second half of 2025?
The most realistic criticism: The offensive injuries are a real problem.
Alt and Slater are out for the season. So is running back Najee Harris. And Omarion Hampton, the team’s first-round pick, is still recovering from an ankle injury and just made it back to practice. And on Sunday, rookie tight end Oronde Gadsden II hobbled off in the third quarter with a knee injury and didn’t return, costing Herbert a playmaker who had racked up 377 receiving yards over his previous four games.
Losing one tackle can be damaging for a quarterback. Two, especially of the caliber the Chargers have with a healthy Alt and Slater on the field, might be insurmountable. Herbert hasn’t had Slater at all this season, but he has had dramatic on/off splits with and without Alt. With the second-year tackle on the field, Herbert has posted a 77.0 QBR, which would be the second-best mark in the NFL over the full year. That has fallen to 52.4 without Alt in the lineup, which would be good for 20th. Herbert has averaged 8.6 yards per attempt with Alt versus 6.4 without him.
0:26
Herbert fires a strike to McConkey for a Chargers TD
Justin Herbert finds Ladd McConkey wide open to pad the Chargers’ lead going into halftime.
There’s time for the Chargers to evolve as they face the reality of not having Alt in the lineup the rest of the way, as they did on Sunday, but there’s no denying that missing arguably their two best players on the roster outside of Herbert places a real cap on the efficiency and effectiveness of the passing attack. This team was wildly explosive over the first two weeks of the season while running the highest pass rate over expectation of any offense in the league (NGS). That version of this offense is probably on the shelf until 2026, which leaves the Chargers needing to run the ball more consistently.
With a healthy Alt, I would have suggested that the Chargers were good enough to be considered on a level with the Bills, Chiefs and Ravens. Without him or Slater, it’s much tougher to see that happening. The offense has excelled by converting just under 48% of its third downs this season, the second-best rate in the NFL. That’s going to be a lot tougher to do with two backup tackles, and the Chargers were 6-for-17 on third down against Pittsburgh.
The meaningful résumé: 27-21 win over Chiefs, 23-20 win over Broncos, 38-24 loss to Colts.
Beating the Chiefs has weirdly become a less meaningful win for the Chargers than it seemed at the time. When the Chargers pulled out that victory in Brazil in Week 1, they were beating a team coming off a 15-1 regular-season record when Mahomes was under center and their third consecutive trip to the Super Bowl. Now, with the Chiefs having lost to the Bills, Eagles and Jaguars, that win doesn’t feel quite as significant — although that has nothing to do with how the Chargers played that evening.
The Chargers are at the Jaguars before their Week 12 bye and host the Raiders after, but things get tougher from that point forward. They’ll host the Eagles (and presumably a very large number of Philadelphia fans) for “Monday Night Football” in Week 14, then face the Chiefs in Kansas City the following Sunday. If they do fend off the Chiefs, the Chargers could travel to Denver in Week 18 with a chance of either winning the division or keeping the Broncos from claiming it for their own.
