NFL Week 8 was pretty chalk, as evidenced by the fact that the elimination pool I’m in so nobody get knocked out for the first time all season. There were no big battles, no landscape-changing moments. So why not just start with the basics, and that’s the consensus three best quarterbacks in the NFL. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning dug themselves holes before turning on the gas, and Aaron Rodgers shone in prime-time.
If you like mediocre NFC football, you’re going to love the major TV games for NFL Week 8. Of the eight teams in the four key national spots (Thursday, late Sunday afternoon, Sunday night and Monday), five of them are NFC teams that are .500 are lower. It’s time for Washington, St. Louis, Carolina, Minnesota and Tampa Bay to bask in the national spotlight.
We might look at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-12 win over the Washington Redskins on Sunday, their second straight victory and just dismiss it as the fruit of a soft schedule—beating the Bengals and Redskins two straight weeks can’t count for that much, given the teams are a combined 6-7 in games when they aren’t playing Pittsburgh. But it’s the way the Steelers are winning that has to give the rest of the AFC pause.
The Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants have gone in opposite directions since the NFL’s opening night when the Cowboys efficiently dismantled last year’s champs in an impressive road win. The Giants won five of the next six. The Cowboys have proven what a lot of us thought at the time—that seeing them play a good game was no surprise, but seeing them be consistent would be. Dallas dropped three of the next five.