Surprise, surprise.
This is the NFL six weeks into the season: Baker Mayfield is playing like the league’s MVP, the Indianapolis Colts are sitting atop the AFC and the Baltimore Ravens — a team that has made the playoffs six times in the last seven years — is tied for the second-worst record in football at 1-5. Don’t forget the Pittsburgh Steelers and their nearly 42-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who are now 4-1 and running away with the AFC North, a division the franchise hasn’t won since 2020.
So far, chaos reigns. So do comebacks. Six weeks in, there have been 27 game-winning scores in the final three minutes of regulation or overtime, the most ever at this point in a season.
The Los Angeles Chargers used one of those comebacks to beat the Miami Dolphins and send Mike McDaniel’s team to 1-5, leading quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to offer some stunning revelations about the state of his team after the loss.
The New York Jets, meanwhile, are desperate for a change that doesn’t seem to be coming. Aaron Glenn is now 0-6 to begin his head coaching tenure after his team slogged through one of the worst passing days the NFL has seen in a quarter-century.
Mayfield’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers are one of two 5-1 teams through Sunday (the 4-1 Buffalo Bills visit the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night). The other is the Colts, who scraped their way past the Arizona Cardinals, 31-27, on a truly bizarre day for the home team. Colts backup quarterback Anthony Richardson suffered an eye injury after an accident with a stretching band in the pregame dressing room, and then starting cornerback Charvarius Ward collided with tight end Drew Ogletree during warmups, sidelining Ward for the game with a concussion. Indianapolis overcame a strong showing from Cardinals QB Jacoby Brissett — who was filling in for an injured Kyler Murray — to move atop the AFC South. Arizona, once 2-0, is now 2-4 after suffering four losses by a combined nine points.
In Baltimore, the quarterback was pulled, boos rained down and a nightmare season continued. The visiting Los Angeles Rams left with a 17-3 victory, leaving the Ravens an unthinkable 1-5. Cooper Rush, filling in for the injured Lamar Jackson, was benched in the fourth quarter, but by that point this one was over. Baltimore’s season might be, too. The good news is coach John Harbaugh expects Jackson and linebacker Roquan Smith, among others, to be back following the team’s Week 7 bye.
In Carolina, one of the NFL’s worst defenses was exposed again. The Dallas Cowboys have a problem, and if it doesn’t get fixed, one of Dak Prescott’s best seasons will go to waste. Dallas dropped a 30-27 decision to the Panthers on Sunday, the fifth straight game the Cowboys have allowed 375 yards or more. Prescott’s MVP campaign — he had 261 passing yards and three touchdowns Sunday — will hinge on his team’s ability to rally from a 2-3-1 record.
“It’s a long season,” Prescott said. “I’ve been 3-5 before, and we made the playoffs. We’ve just gotta find a way to win these close games. And I have all the confidence that we will.”
The return of CeeDee Lamb should help. But at this point, it’s the Dallas defense that’s the bigger concern.
In Jacksonville, one of the league’s true breakout stars of 2025, Seattle Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, had one of the best games of his young career in a 20-12 victory over the Jaguars. Smith-Njigba’s eight-catch, 162-yard, one-touchdown game Sunday comes after an eight-catch, 132-yard, one-touchdown game in last week’s loss to the Buccaneers. The third-year wideout leads the league in receiving yards (696). Credit the Seattle pass rush for Sunday’s win, too: The Seahawks sacked Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence seven times.
Sum up the Browns’ season in the words of star pass rusher Myles Garrett: “To lose the same way every time, it’s frustrating as hell.” The Browns’ offense has failed to score 20 points in a game this season, and now the team is 1-5. In his second career start, QB Dillon Gabriel threw 52 times for just 221 yards and no touchdowns in a 23-9 loss to Rodgers and the Steelers.
Joe Flacco’s new team had no more luck than his old one, as the Cincinnati Bengals dropped a 27-18 game to the Green Bay Packers. Flacco was solid in his Bengals’ debut, throwing for 219 yards and two touchdowns, especially considering he learned the offense via a phone call with head coach Zac Taylor as he drove from Cleveland to Cincinnati earlier in the week. The Bengals held on to defeat Jacksonville in the game they lost Joe Burrow to a toe injury, but have lost four straight since.
Behind Drake Maye’s 261 yards and three touchdowns, the New England Patriots beat the New Orleans Saints 25-19 to move to 4-2 and match their win total of each of past two seasons. That’s now three straight victories for Mike Vrabel’s team, which is off to its best start since 2019. The Saints are 1-5.
In Las Vegas, the Raiders won for the first time since Week 1, beating the Tennessee Titans 20-10. The Titans, who rank right next to the Browns for the worst offense in football, didn’t manage any points until the third quarter and turned it over three times.
Here’s what we learned across Week 6 in the NFL:
Don’t count out the Chiefs
The skinny on the Kansas City Chiefs five games into the season: The offense wasn’t as scary, the defense wasn’t as sharp, and all those close wins from last year were finally starting to go the other way.
Kansas City finished 11-0 in one-score games in 2024, riding that success to a 15-2 regular season and ninth straight AFC West title. Heading into Sunday night’s game with the Detroit Lions, the Chiefs were 2-3 on the year and 0-3 in one-score games, with those three losses coming by a combined 12 points.
Maybe the Chiefs aren’t what they once were. But Kansas City remains in the thick of the AFC West race after a convincing 30-17 victory over the Lions. And with wideout Rashee Rice soon returning from suspension, this team — notably its offense — has a chance to find its groove across the second half of the season.
Marquise Brown had his first multi-touchdown game in four years Sunday night, grabbing a pair of second-half touchdowns as the Chiefs pulled away. Credit Steve Spagnuolo’s defense, too. The Lions entered on a four-game win streak, averaging more than 40 a game, and were the hottest team in the league. They left Arrowhead Sunday night humbled.
The Chiefs (3-3) now sit a game behind the Chargers and Broncos — both 4-2 — in the division. The Lions are 4-2.
Baker is cooking
He’s on his fourth team. He was traded by the Browns, released by the Panthers and spent a month with the Rams. Now in his third season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Mayfield is not only playing the best football of his career — he might be playing the best football of any quarterback in the league.
Mayfield punctuated a 30-19 victory over the San Francisco 49ers with a scramble that was Mayfield at his best — on a third-and-14 late in the third quarter, he climbed out of a would-be sack deep in the pocket, darted upfield, juked a linebacker and dived for the first down, extending his arm just enough to reach across the necessary yard line. It was gutsy. It was ridiculous. It was, as CBS’s Jim Nantz described it, “pure Baker Mayfield.”
By the end of the game, Nantz’s on-air partner, Tony Romo, had some instructions for fans at Raymond James Stadium: “If I was this crowd, I’d be chanting MVP right now.”
Mayfield’s been that good, and that essential, for a 5-1 Bucs team atop the NFC South. He’s thrown for 1,539 yards, 12 touchdowns and just one interception despite a heap of injuries on Tampa Bay’s offense, notably wideouts Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and running back Bucky Irving. Tampa Bay’s 5-1 start ties the best in franchise history.
San Francisco, meanwhile, lost more than the game Sunday: Star linebacker Fred Warner fractured and dislocated his right ankle and is lost for the season. Before the injury, Warner had missed only one game in his eight-year career.
Tua: ‘It starts with leadership’
It’s never a good sign when a team is holding a players-only meeting after a Week 1 rout, which the Dolphins did in September. But it’s a much worse sign when the franchise quarterback reveals publicly that the team had trouble getting all the players on the roster to actually attend that meeting.
This was Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, asked about preventing a bad season from getting worse following his team’s 29-27 loss to the Chargers, which dropped the Dolphins to 1-5:
“I think it starts with the leadership and helping articulate that for the guys, and then what we’re expecting. We’re expecting ‘this.’ Are we getting that? Are we not getting that? We have guys showing up to player-only meetings late, guys not showing up to player-only meetings. There’s a lot that goes into that. Do we have to make this mandatory? Do we not have to make this mandatory? It’s a lot of things of that nature that we’ve gotta get cleaned up, and it starts with the little things like that.”
Players showing up late to players-only meetings? Players not even showing up to players-only meetings? That sounds like a team fracturing from within, accountability slipping. Typically, the blame starts at the top.
Tagovailoa’s comments hint at very valid leadership concerns in Miami, beginning with 10th-year general manager Chris Grier and fourth-year coach Mike McDaniel, who haven’t found any answers this season. Tagovailoa owns part of this, too, as the quarterback.
The Dolphins’ lone victory came against the winless Jets, and Miami is now 1-15 in its last 16 games against teams with a winning record.
Outside of a Week 1 loss in Indianapolis, Miami isn’t getting blown out every week. This team is still competitive, still playing for McDaniel. But the deeper the hole grows, the warmer McDaniel’s seat gets. Grier’s likely, too.
“I’m not worried about the team staying together,” McDaniel said Sunday. “I’m worried about us getting our football right.”
So far, it sounds like neither is happening in South Beach.
Jets’ start gets even worse somehow
In a 13-11 loss to the Denver Broncos in London, the offensively inept Jets managed negative-10 passing yards, the lowest in franchise history and the lowest by any team in a game since 1998. A disastrous day was punctuated by a fiery sideline interaction between first-year coach Aaron Glenn and star wideout Garrett Wilson. Glenn downplayed the incident after the loss, the sixth straight to open his Jets tenure.
“Our guys fought their asses off,” he said. “Obviously it wasn’t good enough.”
Glenn’s quarterback, Justin Fields, was sacked nine times and completed just nine passes for 45 yards. The Jets managed three field goals and a safety. Asked by a reporter if Fields would remain his starter, Glenn dismissed any brewing controversy.
“Come on, man,” Glenn said. “What kind of question is that?”
The Jets can take solace in the fact that their next three are against the Panthers, Bengals and Browns, teams with a combined 6-12 record. The Broncos, meanwhile, are just the second defense since 1990 to pile up 30 or more sacks in the first six weeks of a season.
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