NFL Week 5 winners and losers: Dak Prescott is the future in Dallas, Mike McCoy is done
We are through five weeks in the NFL season, and the real winners and losers are starting to separate themselves from the pack.
We are starting to reach the point in the season where things will being to equalize. That’s not to say things won’t remain crazy, as right now league leaders include Marvin Jones, Eziekel Elliott and Lorenzo Alexander.
Do you want to live in a world where Matty “Ice” Ryan is rising up to be the league leader in passing? Carlos Hyde and Melvin Gordon are the most consistent touchdown scorers out of the backfield this year. Something called Sammie Coates is leading the league in average yards.
So while the weeks will continue and teams will begin to settle into their place within the postseason race, things are far form figured out. The Falcons are suddenly Super Bowl contenders, the Vikings are being picked to win it all and the Patriots are getting back on track with Brady back. Both Super Bowl 50 teams lost this week, the Rams continue to be bipolar while the Titans, Jaguars, Colts and Texans force us to remember that the AFC South is a thing and will produce a default playoff team.
Let’s live outside of the box score a little, since that’s where the real battles are won and lost anyways.
Loser: Philip Rivers
Poor Philip Rivers. It’s fitting that a guy who has a last name Rivers cries way too much, but even he doesn’t deserve this. If Steve Young had stayed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers his entire career, we’d be comparing Rivers to him right now. He’s talent wasted by n organization that has no idea what the hell they’re doing.
Mike McCoy is going to get fired, the team is going to move and a new era is going to begin. Rivers’ winder is so closing and his situation is so bad that trading him to the Jets is a scenario that makes you think he’d finally win. That’s how atrocious things are right now, and if I was New York, I’d be on the phone right now.
Winner: Vikings Fans
Good for you, Vikings fans. You suffered through four Super Bowl losses, the ’98 and ’09 Championship games and years of mediocrity in between to arrive here. The ingredients are all here for this to be another heartbreaking season. Sam Bradford is your quarterback, Adrian Peterson is hurt and the team has zero established receiving threats beyond default Stefan Diggs.
Yet here we are with the team sporting one of the best defenses in football and 5-0 record. This shouldn’t be happening, but maybe the decades of suffering Vikings fans have endured has finally balanced things out. On a long enough timeline, even the Vikings end up having a season that actually works out for the.
Loser: Hue Jackson
Hue Jackson is not a bad head coach, but he’s been cursed with a bad franchise. It seems he’s always in a position to take a team to the next level before watching them fail through really no total fault of his own. In the first five weeks of the season, Jackson has lost four starting quarterbacks to injury. Four. That’s insane.
We’re looking at a legitimate 0-16 situation in Cleveland this year, which is going to fall on Jackson when it shouldn’t. He’s a coach this team needs, with grit and grind to make them a contender. But he needs healthy quarterbacks and a front office that won’t let every competent player the franchise has walk.
