Another week that confirmed some priors, destroyed some others, and delivered a few pretty good games out of nowhere. Plenty of tough tests for the top teams as we approach the 2nd half of the year, but one thing is probably for sure: C.J. Stroud is the Rookie of the Year.

Quick Situational Stuff for Week 10

• The Colts are playing their 2nd straight week on the road (this time in Germany)

• Tennessee is coming off the extra rest from playing TNF but is also playing on the road for the 2nd straight week

• Detroit is not only coming off the bye but will face a team with one less day to prep in the Chargers off a Monday Night game

• The Giants (Dallas) and Commanders (Seattle) are on the 2nd leg of back-to-back road games

• The 49ers and Jags will face each other off of their bye weeks. It is an early start time for the West Coast team though

• Denver gets a Monday Night game off the bye week, giving them an even longer layoff than normal.

• The Steelers have ten days to prep their defense for Jordan Love

• The Falcons, Colts, Pats, and Saints are heading into their bye week after these week 10 games.

Watched the Germany game on a flight and missed a little bit of the early window getting home, so I have some catching up to do on a few of these, but my quick takeaways from each game yesterday:

Miami 14 - Kansas City 21

With all the hullabaloo around these offenses, it was a bit weird that the game was essentially won on a defensive play. Chiefs 2nd half unders continue to be a thing (I’m not sure one has gone over yet?).

Honestly was a decent showing by the Miami defense and that’s really what kept them in the game, but the massive turnover by Hill and the bad snap on 4th down were too much to overcome by a team that couldn’t keep drives rolling. Just 3-12 on 3rd down but, credit to KC, who forced them into quite a few longer 3rd downs with early down success on defense.

Minnesota 31 - Atlanta 28

No idea what to say that hasn’t been said about Dobbs yet. Feels like an incredibly lucky win for the Vikings, but good things happen when you have the better coach.

Both teams kept handing each other gifts and often the other team refused to capitalize, this one was in the balance for the entire game. The Vikings turned the ball over twice deep on their side of the field and took a safety, but the Falcons answered back in the 2nd half with turnovers on the 1st play of two consecutive drives leading to 10 points for Minnesota. No idea what to take away from this mess. The Vikings lost KJ Osbourne and Cam Akers to injury.

Chicago 17 - New Orleans 24

Chicago came out and played well to start, getting a bunch out of the Bagent-Kmet connection, but this score is probably a bit closer than it should have been. The Saints had two late drives end at the Bears 17 and 29 for ZERO combined points. When you’re defense plays as well as it did in the 2nd half and you win the turnover battle 5-0, you should probably cover the big number here.

Seattle 3 - Baltimore 37

Covered by everyone: Baltimore shifted more to man and really put Geno in a box. 29 1st downs to Seattle’s six. 515 yards to 151. Just full domination on both sides of the ball in a game that wasn’t competitive. Seattle couldn’t even capitalize on the limited mistakes, getting no points off the two Baltimore turnovers. Ravens just 3/6 in the red zone and played Tyler Huntley for a spell to close it, they likely could have won by more.

Arizona 0 - Cleveland 27

I still can’t sort out what Arizona is doing if they’re “not tanking”, because this was a punt of a game. Starting Clayton Tune on the road vs a top 5 defense wasn’t going to go well, and it didn’t. The Cardinals had 58 total yards of offense.

Watson’s shoulder looked a bit better, which matters quite a bit. Going from playing the worst team in the league to playing one of the best next week will show us just how much better he’s feeling.

LA Rams 3 - Green Bay 20

Green Bay’s offense still kind of stinks. They were gifted a win here by getting Brett Rypien on their home turf, but I didn’t leave this one feeling like the Packers took any strides forward.

They are the most penalized team through nine weeks, and that theme continued. Additionally, a couple of fumbles and some indecisiveness from Jordan Love has me wondering if I can even consider upgrading the Packers after breaking their losing streak. Aaron Jones looked good and the fill-ins on defense stepped up in a few spots, but other than that, it wasn’t an impressive game for the Cheeseheads.

Washington 20 - New England 17

Howell only sacked three times! The defense played a decent game after trading away Young and Sweat! Would have liked to see a little more out of the offense late in the game (over bettors would have as well), but the defense managed to hold on to the lead here in a 4th quarter that saw the seven combined drives end in six punts and the Mac Jones interception that iced this Washington road win.

Pats were down a couple of WRs, but got some big plays from the Stevenson on the ground and took advantage of a short field off a turnover to stay in this one. I still hate the roughing the passer call in this one so much.

Tampa Bay 37 - Houston 39

Stroud was electric and the quotes after the game about him asking to throw more and be more aggressive through the air were awesome. The defense left a lot to be desired after we’ve seen Baker Mayfield struggle a few times already this year, but on the back of an ultra-confident rookie passer and fill-in place kicker, they got it done somehow. Injuries again to the Houston secondary played a part in Tampa’s offensive success.

Sorry if you had Houston -2.5, not kicking the XP to avoid any chance of issues with the kicker out makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Indianapolis 27 - Carolina 13

Bryce was not electric. He looked very shook for big parts of this one. I thought maybe we’d see a boost of confidence after getting his first pro win last week, but instead, we got poorly thrown balls, bad decisions, and TWO pick-sixes. Some credit to the Colts here for getting it done despite Minshew not looking great, but the big takeaway again has to be the fact that the Panthers look undisciplined and poorly coached. I will say, the O-Line didn’t do Young many favors.

Looking ahead to Thursday: The Panthers had multiple defensive injuries in the game and might not be at full strength vs the Bears.

NY Giants 6 - Las Vegas 30

Truly a tale of the two different ways youcan feel after a game. A “nail in the coffin” game for the Giants season losing Daniel Jones to an ACL injury for the year. No idea if it’ll be Matt Barkley going forward, not even sure he’s that much of an upgrade from Tommy DeVito.

The Raiders got the emotional bounce off firing Josh McDaniels (among others) and finally saw some nice signs of life from Josh Jacobs. Aiden O’Connell played a decent game and the defense took advantage of the backup QB, Maxx Crosby finished with 3 sacks and 3 tackles for loss.

Dallas 23 - Philadelphia 28

This game was trending the way a lot of Eagles’ games go: them running the ball well with a lead and winning a close game comfortably. Dallas' defense did a great job late of getting off the field and letting an offense that had been humming at times have some shots at a win. So many tiny things that flipped this (fourth down catch “on” the goal line, 2-point conversion fail, etc.), but in the end, some of the bad things that happened to Dallas late feel like they land on McCarthy and Dak. This Dallas team has a chance to be great, but great teams execute late and find ways to win, rather than finding ways to lose.

The Eagles have a commanding lead in the NFC now, but still have a grinder of a schedule ahead and lost Dallas Goedert for what could be an extended time. Hurts coming out after what looked like a bad injury and making some big plays was massive.

Buffalo 18 - Cincinnati 24

Burrow’s 100% at this point and despite some worries I have about the defense, I think we are in for an absolute treat in two weeks when this team heads to Baltimore for Thursday Night Football.

Allen made a good run at getting this one back within range last night, but the defense is just not getting the stops at the moment, and that’s going to continue to be a problem. Essentially Josh Allen needs to play near-perfect ball and that’s just not Josh Allen’s game.

Market

Steady Chargers money this week. Opened -1 or so last Sunday night and was -3 before Monday Night Football. Some resistance when it gets to -3.5, but we continue to see enough support to send it there over the past couple of days.

The total has been bet down with the lookahead as high as 44 last week, opening at 42.5 and seeing steady under money all week, with strong midweek money taking it down to 40 on Wednesday and late-week moves even lower.

Game day over money has shown with the total up to 40 at most places and even 40.5 at FanDuel.

Injuries

Allan Lazard didn’t show up on the Jets injury report until Saturday, but the veteran WR is coming in with a questionable tag due to a knee injury here.

OL Joe Tippmann is good to go, but Duane Brown will not be active after returning to practice this week from a hip injury. On the defensive side of the ball LB Chazz Surratt is out and S Adrian Amos is listed as questionable

The Chargers will be without WR Josh Palmer again as he’s still working through a knee injury. WR Jalen Guyton was activated after an ACL injury last year has kept him out for over a year and is expected to play.

The rest of the LA injury designations are on the other side of the ball with LBs Eric Kendricks and Kenneth Murray, and defensive linemen Sebastian Joseph-Day, Morgan Fox, & Otito Ogbonnia listed as questionable.

Matchup

The Jets got a hard-fought win last week, but just like the Raiders will find out, you can’t play Tommy DeVito every week.

A banged-up offensive line versus Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa will be a tough test, but the word so far from Jets OC Nate Hackett is that they are preparing similarly to last week when they were up against another tough front. If they can be even marginally better on third down, they should have a shot to keep this one competitive. Penalties and a horrible 3rd down conversion rate kept the win against the Giants much closer than it needed to be.

The Chargers are always tough to solve, but it’s still wild that they somehow have a losing record coming into this one. Herbert looked to be progressing well and playing better after another week of wearing a finger brace on his non-throwing hand, but this is a far cry from the Bears’ defense. The Jets seem to step up big whenever there’s a top QB across the field from them, beating Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts as well as pushing Mahomes in a close loss.

I’d struggle to lay points with this Chargers team against a good defense on the road but would love to see Herbert finally start to shake the stigma of not getting it done late off. It’s wild that this is such a massive leverage game for the Jets’ playoff chances. Did not think we’d be here when Aaron Rodgers went down (the last time the Jets were in Primetime).

Betting

No interest in the side or total with the Chargers involved right now. I’ll stick to running back props until that stops working. Not only are the Chargers still bad versus the run, but have seen a few RBs gather up quite a few catches/yards against them as well.

With Lazard banged up another week where getting the ball our of Wilson’s hands fast seems necessary, I would think we’d see the continued usage of Hall as a receiving option. I played both his catches and yardage, as well as a parlay with Ekeler getting a similar treatment with Palmer out.