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A ton of the rating changes are for injuries or QB stuff this week, so where I’m at for now:

• I will assume it’s Mariota for the Commanders until I hear something different. 4 point downgrade.

• I upgraded the Dolphins, but not all the way to the week 1 price for Tua coming back. 4.5 point upgrade

• I’m upgrading the Browns by one full point for Winston over Watson. It might have been more if Cooper was still on the team.

• I don’t know that it matters who’s at QB for Carolina, but it sounds like we’re sticking with Dalton anyway. (have not gotten an update on if his car crash will affect his status yet)

• The Bucs are getting a 2.5-point downgrade for the cluster injury at WR. It goes from a massive strength to a huge deficiency, considering the depth pieces have all missed time as well. They should trade for Kupp; Godwin is on a contract year anyway.

• Detroit is getting its flowers after a signature win

Denver 📈

The defensive numbers are looking better and better, and hell, they get another easy opponent to feast on this week. All three phases of the defense have been better than I expected to start the season, especially the pass rush and run stop. They’ll likely get Surtain back in the fold this weekend as well.

More importantly, Nix is playing well enough for me to look at this as a team that could have some long-term success. He’s been great with sack avoidance and his legs, but he still needs to improve in CPOE and other accuracy metrics. His EPA/play has been ticking up, though, and the run game has been above average in helping him out.

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Other upgrades: JAX, KC

• Trevor has strung together a few good games, maybe in part because his receivers aren’t dropping everything. The loss in London to Chicago wasn’t great, but as a whole, he’s playing like a top-10 quarterback right now, and that moves the needle plenty. This team teetered on the edge of “calling it a year” and might be able to pull themselves back into a weak AFC playoff race.

• Kansas City getting any WR help is worth something, although most of this is me continuing to upgrade the defense of the Chiefs. I’m going to assume that the Mahomes interceptions start to become less frequent going forward. Small upgrade on paper for a big win.

Carolina 📉

Had them 32/32 last week and I don’t think my rating is low enough. The defense is quitting and the offense with Dalton is pretty predictable. Injuries on both sides of the ball have me wondering just how low I can go with their rating. With edge cases like this, I’m likely manually downgrading further than my numbers say I should.

Other downgrades: SF, NE, HOU

• San Francisco’s cluster injuries on offense are starting to pile up to a point where even they are going to have issues backfilling. Willing to bump this up a bit if Deebo is good to go, but I’m assuming he’s missing/limited this week

• New England was likely me just having them too high, considering the game plan, play calling, and general lack of aggressiveness they are rolling out under this coaching staff.

• The Texans are a bit of a puzzle, but we did see how different they looked against the Bills after Nico exited the game. Taking much away from the Patriots game two weeks back may be a mistake, given the game state early and the turnovers set them up in the 2H—downgraded offense and QB here.

• I made some adjustments again on defense and did some reshuffling: Minnesota, Green Bay, New Orleans, and Atlanta were a bit too high and slid down overall. I had far more downgrades than upgrades this week, just kind of sliding the entire league down a bit more toward the historical mean (which happens since injuries happen).

🚨Podcast Tonight🚨

FULL SLATE THIS WEEK! No byes means a long show, but as always, we’ll throw in some time stamps afterward to help you navigate. Join us live and ask some questions, or take it in through your headphones in podcast form tomorrow morning.

Injuries

Keeping a run tab on all the injuries affecting this week: