NFL Week 4 Recap

What's goin on, nerds?

Week 5 is upon us, but before we get there, we gotta relive week 4. And for a lot of teams, it was a week they'll wanna forget.

The Dolphins had their perfect 3-0 record tarnished and lost their QB in the process. The Ravens choked a 20-3 lead against the Bills. The Panthers got pooped on by Kliff Screensbury. And the Steelers got handed an L by the Mom Pounder 3000. Let's discuss.

The Eagles remain the only undefeated team left in the league after Miami lost last Thursday night. You'll recall week 3 when Tua Tagovailoa got knocked on his head and had to be analyzed for concussion systems. Miraculously, he was cleared to return by Dolphins medical staff and Miami held on to beat the Bills.

Tua took another nasty hit against the Bengals, and it looked scary enough that they skipped concussion protocol entirely and sent Tua right to the hospital, which of course prompted an NFL investigation into Miami's handling of concussion protocol.

The Dolphins' unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant was fired after it was discovered that their concussion protocol during the Bills game consisted of the doctor asking Tua, "How's your head?" and Tua responding, "Haven't had any complaints."

I'm joking. And apparently so is the NFL concussion protocol if it can send a player back out on the field after sustaining enough head trauma that they can't stand up straight.

If the Miami Oline struggled Thursday night, it's probably because they had me in there for pass protection. Al Michaels was kind enough to give me a shoutout, though, which was cool.

Even wilder, after that there was a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame... *voice trails off into a distant echo*

The Bills looked for a minute like they were headed for a slump, having lost to Miami and then finding themselves down 20-3 to Baltimore. Thankfully for them, Ravens coach John Harbaugh can't do math.

The Ravens hadn't scored any points in the second half, but they still had a chance to go up 23-20 late in the 4th quarter when points were hard to come by. But on 4th down, coach Harbaugh elected to go for it instead of taking the lead with a field goal (23 is more than 20, people!).

The Bills denied the Ravens on 4th down. They then got themselves in field goal position and won the game 23-20 (partially thanks to an extremely generous Roughing the Passer call they got from Josh Allen asking the ref so nicely).

The argument against the field goal is, of course, that you need more than that to beat a Bills-caliber offense that can go down the field and score quickly. In that particular situation, though, the Ravens were in desperate need of any points they could get, and their defense had held Josh Allen to a passer rating of 68.4 (30th in the league this week).

Speaking of low passer ratings, Baker Mayfield.

I was actually really rooting for Baker (and still am) because of how the Browns tossed him out the window after taking them to the playoffs. I wanted the spicy "Baker Mayfield revenge" arc. But that's...not exactly what's happening in Carolina.

The Panthers took on the Cardinals on Sunday, and Baker's struggles continued. He was throwing to ghosts all day long and ended the day with a 60% pass completion rate and an overall passer rating of 61.9 (his adjusted QBR was... 7.4). His QBR hasn't been above 15 in the past 3 weeks. The game was still competitive at the half with Arizona's stellar "air raid" offense amassing a whopping 3 points. But Kyler Murray caught fire in the 2nd half and put the game out of reach.

The Cards, in large part thanks to the skill and improvisation of Kyler Murray, are 2-2.

The Jets are also 2-2, nabbing their second W against the Steelers on Sunday in the return of established mom enjoyer Zach Wilson. On one play, the Jets used some trickery that ended in Wilson catching a TD pass from WR Braxton Berrios. Wilson took the opportunity to stunt on the Steelers, as he should've. Wilson now has more receiving TDs (1) than Kenny Golladay (0), and may even be on pace to surpass him in receptions.

If your fantasy team still needs a QB, Mom Pounder 3000 stock is going up.

Let's see, I think that's everything noteworthy that happened this week...

Oh, yeah! And Gisele Bündchen is divorcing her husband.