Sorting the Sunday Pile, NFL Week 7: Saquon Barkley gets his revenge, Lions could be NFL’s best team

Things were already … not great … for the Giants. At 2-4, with the Eagles coming to town, they were battling injuries to key players like lineman Andrew Thomas and even with decent play from Daniel Jones over the last month, they were very much on the outside looking in of the early-season playoff hunt. The worst-case scenario unfolded for New York on Sunday with old pal Saquon Barkley coming to town and running roughshod in a quintessential revenge game spot.

Barkley was ridiculous, running for 176 yards on just 17 carries and also finding the end zone early in the game. If the Giants had been remotely competitive in the 28-3 bloodbath, Barkley blasts past 200 total yards and probably finds paydirt again. But the Giants weren’t competitive and as a result the scrutiny on the coaching staff and front office is only going to increase.

Anyone who saw the first-ever edition of offseason “Hard Knocks” knows how much owner John Mara loves Barkley. When Barkley was in the middle of free agency, Mara made it clear with his body language and passive-aggressive verbiage how badly he preferred the former No. 2 overall pick to remain in New York. He seemed CRUSHED when Barkley landed a massive deal with the division rival Eagles. 

“I’ll have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia, I’ll tell you that,” Mara said on camera this offseason when he found out Philly might be out with the Bears chasing Barkley. 

How do you think he felt when Barkley, who spent the lead up to the game attempting to deny he was interested in any sort of revenge against his old team, stomped all over the helpless Giants defense? 

Barkley finished with 176 rushing yards, the second most ever by a player against his old team (only Cedric Benson against the Bears had more). His 187 total yards — he also caught two passes for 11 yards — were 68 more than the 119 the Giants had as a team. 

And Barkley, per Next Gen Stats, even recorded the fastest run of his career on a 55-yard run down the left side of the field to set up an Eagles touchdown. 

There was speed and there was power too, with Barkley bulldozing defenders, clearly intent on reminding New York what a mistake they made tagging him and letting him walk while trying to replace him with Devin Singletary. 

Late in the third quarter, Barkley ripped off another long run, this time 41 yards. The Eagles punched in a Jalen Hurts touchdown to go up 28-3 but Barkley wasn’t even in the game despite chasing down a career high in rushing yards. According to Eagles coach Nick Sirianni, Barkley essentially pulled himself from the game despite the chance at putting an all-time game on his old team.  

“I got word from the box that [Saquon] was close to his career high, and I sat there with him I said ‘Listen, here’s where you are, and here’s where it is,'” Sirianni recalled. “He looked at me and said … ‘Let the other guys eat.’ … He’s a special player, he’s a special person.”

Here’s the thing about Barkley in 2024: this wasn’t some one-off performance like many of the revenge games we see sometimes. Barkley has been awesome for the Eagles. Even if investing in running backs in free agency is generally a bad idea, he’s legitimately been a difference maker for them on offense. 

Philly’s 4-2 now. They’ve got some issues to figure out. But they’re also in an excellent spot in a weird division. The Cowboys are floundering while coming out of their bye. The Giants are a hot mess, clearly. And the Commanders are playing great football but Jayden Daniels got banged up on Sunday against Carolina and if I was re-picking things right now, I’d roll with Philly to win the division. At the very least, as currently constructed, they absolutely profile as a playoff team with A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith back in the fold, even though the two star wideouts didn’t need to do much more than run block on Sunday. 

As for the Giants, don’t be surprised if we look back on this game as a crossroads for everyone involved. Mara is going to stew on this game by Saquon for a while, I can guarantee you that. There are some winnable games ahead of the Week 11 bye, including a Week 10 game in Germany against the lowly Panthers. But Pittsburgh’s defense is going to eat Daniel Jones alive next week. Thomas missing was clearly a problem on Sunday. The Commanders should be able to put up some points in Week 9. 3-7 coming back to the States is very much on the table and if Jones plays like he did on Sunday moving forward we could see Drew Lock a lot more and/or other changes. 

There’s still one more game against the Eagles remaining in Week 17. We might not get a revenge game from Saquon if the Eagles are locked into a playoff spot. But we also might get a chance for Saquon to REALLY get the ultimate revenge by punctuating the end of New York’s season. 

Please play Bryce Young

The Panthers ran out Andy Dalton again on Sunday against the Commanders. I didn’t mind it. Give yourself a chance on offense with the guy who has been playing better football while simultaneously letting Young continue to sit and learn. But the Panthers aren’t going anywhere. Do they really need the “better” quarterback out there? 

Playing Young would give the Panthers the best possible way to find out one of two things. Either Young is the guy and he can help them win games (I think it’s unlikely considering how bad the defense is and how limited the offense is) or he’s going to send them careening towards the No. 1 overall pick. 

Carolina essentially traded away the opportunity to get the No. 1 pick in a draft featuring Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels a year after picking Bryce over C.J. Stroud. Hindsight is easy but the trade didn’t need that to tell you it was a mistake. It’s going to go down as an unquestionably terrible decision. 

The only way to fix it is finding yourself at the top of the draft and being able to acquire another quarterback. You could even draft one and keep letting Bryce play amid what profiles as a multi-year rebuild at the very least. 

After giving up 40 to the Commanders on Sunday and being unable to produce any points with Dalton under center it’s probably time to pivot back to Young. 

Dave Canales said otherwise on Sunday, but he also said the same thing before benching Bryce a few weeks ago. Apathy set in a while ago for Panthers fans and it’s going to keep showing up in a big way when we see some of these Charlotte crowds over the next few weeks and months. 

The Deshaun injury

I’ve watched a lot of football in my life and I’ve never seen a player suffer an in-game injury that was clearly going to cost him the season right before hearing the HOME CROWD celebrate the injury. I’m not condoning the Browns fans reaction at all to Deshaun Watson suffering a torn Achilles, but it really speaks to where things got with Cleveland and their quarterback situation. 

That this injury happened on the same day fan favorite Nick Chubb returned from his gruesome 2023 injury and scored a touchdown is wildly ironic. 

Jameis Winston got too popular as the backup, with Browns fans chanting his name, so Cleveland made him the emergency third quarterback on Sunday, probably in an attempt to prevent Browns fans from loudly asking the team to play him. He ended up playing anyway after Dorian Thompson-Robinson suffered an injury as well.

None of it mattered, with the Browns dropping to 1-6 on the season after a 21-14 loss to the Bengals at home. 

Things are as bleak as possible in Cleveland, but it’s possible the Watson injury ends up helping matters a little bit. Unless Winston and DTR can rip off some wins under Kevin Stefanski — and it’s unlikely given the schedule, with the Ravens and Chargers looming ahead of the bye — the Browns are headed for a sure-fire top-five pick in the upcoming draft. Such a pick could potentially allow them to snare a franchise quarterback. 

We’ve seen Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers return from an Achilles injury in time to start the season, so Watson could be ready for next year. But if the rumors are true that Cleveland insured some of Watson’s guaranteed money for injury concerns, it’s possible there’s enough of cash coming back to Browns ownership to the point they could feel it offsets the need to play Watson. 

In other words, if the insurance money minimizes their financial commitment to Watson, we might see the Haslams willing to just cut bait and bail on Watson entirely while trying to reboot the franchise with a new, young quarterback. 

WR trades paying dividends early

The Bills and Jets both made splashy trades for star wideouts in the past week and while the two teams went 1-1 on Sunday, you could see immediate dividends on their returns.

Buffalo acquired Amari Cooper from the aforementioned Browns and even though he needed to be told what plays he was running — not insane considering he arrived to the facility midweek and doesn’t have a prior relationship with anyone on offense — he still managed to find the end zone in the Bills cruise control 34-10 win over the Titans. Tennessee got up 10-0 early but this game ended up not being remotely close as Josh Allen, who has now set the record for the longest streak of games (seven) without an interception by a Bills quarterback, piled up 34 unanswered points in an easy win. 

Cooper gives them a true No. 1 wideout and it should only open things up over the middle for Khalil Shakir and Dalton Kincaid. Being able to shift Keon Coleman into a No. 2 role is a massive win, as the rookie clearly wasn’t ready to be THE GUY out of the box for Buffalo. 

On the Adams front, you can look at the final score in Pittsburgh — a stunning 37-15 loss to the Steelers after the Jets held a 15-6 lead — and be extremely bearish about New York’s prospects this year. But the Jets offense looked, for the most part, much better with Adams in there. Breece Hall ran wild against the Steelers and things clearly opened up as a result of Adams being in the fold. Garrett Wilson made some mistakes but he could have easily produced a monster statline if he’d reeled in two catches he usually makes that needed to be made in those spots. 

Adams wasn’t on the field for the full game either, mostly because of the midweek acquisition. The Jets need the offensive line to play better and their secondary to get healthy, but if there was a 2-5 team you think could flip it around and make a playoff run, it would have to be Rodgers and Gang Green. 

The Lions are a truck

Give credit to the Vikings for their performance on Sunday: I don’t think this was a case of a “bad loss” and they’re still 5-1 on the season after losing 31-29 to the Lions in what turned into an incredible game. But the Lions are just great. 

Losing Aiden Hutchinson is going to be a problem for the defense, but they still generated pressure on Sam Darnold. 

And the offense is just picking everyone up. Jared Goff is playing incredible football right now. The Lions offense has more touchdowns (18) than incompletions (16) in their last four games, the first team in NFL history to do so since the 1959-60 Cleveland Browns who did it over two years. The Lions are the only team to do it in the same season since at least 1940. 

Goff’s 85.3 percent completion rate is the highest over a four-game span in NFL history. His 153.1 passer rating over the last three games is the highest in NFL history since 1970. The Lions 120 points over the last three weeks are the most since 1997, when Barry Sanders went Full Barry over a three-game stretch while rushing for just shy of 500 yards. 

Dan Campbell provided another excellent postgame speech and he continues to pull all the right levers with this team. They’re getting production from everywhere. There’s no reason this isn’t a potential Super Bowl team when it’s all said and done.