NFL Sunday awards: Will Ferrell, Saquon Barkley, Aaron Rodgers and a New York football nightmare

A dark day for New York football, more Patrick Mahomes magic, another Los Angeles Rams Draft hit and the dismal Dolphins. It’s Week Seven awards time in the NFL!

Story of the day

Two things can be true. The New York Giants are a significantly worse football team without Saquon Barkley, but the New York Giants were also not wrong to move on from Saquon Barkley.

Sure, they hamstrung themselves with a failing quarterback contract that contributed to Barkley’s departure and the dead money they will be forced to stomach in the coming months, but gaping holes across the roster always ruled out paying the money their, albeit offensive heartbeat, running back warranted and wanted.

Barkley left New York this offseason as he signed with the Giants’ NFC East division rival Philadelphia Eagles on a three-year $37.75m deal. On Sunday he ran riot upon his return to MetLife Stadium with 17 carries for 176 yards and a touchdown in a 28-3 victory over his former team.

He had arrived to the sight of fans burning his jersey outside the stadium, before being exposed to boos from people seemingly unaware it wasn’t exactly his decision to leave. Perhaps he could have settled for less money, but why do that just to be battered and bruised behind a poor offensive line while representing 99 per cent of the offense in a team at least a decade away from ever being close to contention again? You wouldn’t.

John Mara and Steve Tisch will not have been numb to the prospect of Barkley lighting up the Giants; his talents are no secret by now. But it would become ownership’s worst premature Halloween nightmare when Daniel Jones was benched for Drew Lock earlier in the fourth quarter.

“I’m going to have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia, I’ll tell you that,” Mara famously said during HBO’s Hark Knocks.

Jones completed just 14 of 21 passes for 99 yards while being sacked seven times behind an offensive line that recently lost star left tackle Andrew Thomas for the season. A Dexter Lawrence-inspired defense can meanwhile only do so much to compensate for its non-existent attack, which does not scare a single soul right now.

Injury might have delayed the process last season, but it feels as though Brian Daboll is edging towards a decision over Daniel Jones. Even if he doesn’t admit it.

The other New York nightmare of the day…

I watched The Other Guys starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as New York detectives for maybe the 500th time on Friday night, the unsung star of which is Michael Keaton and his TLC references, by the way. There is a scene early in the film when Wahlberg’s character Terry Hoitz, disapproving of Ferrell’s desk jockey Allen Gamble, launches a rant comparing the two of them to a lion and a tuna, insisting he would hunt his partner down in the ocean and eat him.

It prompts Hollywood’s (unofficial) greatest comeback as Ferrell torches the logistics of a lion swimming. I’m going somewhere with this, promise…

Gamble turns the tables, threatening to construct a “series of breathing apparatus” before leading a school of tuna as they instead hunt down the lion, to the sight of a bemused, speechless Hoitz as he processes how on earth that just backfired on him.

“Did that go the way you thought it was gonna go? Nope,” he says.

If Aaron Rodgers is Hoitz, Russell Wilson is a perfectly cast Gamble. The Pittsburgh Steelers torpedoed the lion on Sunday night as they stormed to a 37-15 win over the Jets just days after New York reunited Rodgers with former Green Bay Packers best friend Davante Adams in a trade from the Las Vegas Raiders.

It became the latest Hail Mary with which to bolster the Jets’ cause as playoff aggressors as they seek to end the league’s longest playoff drought and thrust their way into contention behind four-time MVP Rodgers. That it would be Wilson to wreck the party was even sweeter such had been the head-scratching over Mike Tomlin’s decision to start him over Justin Fields after missing the opening six games of the campaign. Wilson, too, is the ever-smiling and existence-celebrating character befitting of Gamble’s buoyant outlook.

Pittsburgh’s quarterback completed 16 of 29 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for a score as the Steelers logged a season-high in points, while elsewhere the recently-fired Robert Saleh was resting easy after being relieved of his duties within chaos. Oh, and in case it needed reminding, his defense was still one of the best in the NFL.

Between them, Rodgers, Adams, Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall is as aesthetically frightening as any offensive quartet in the NFL, and while the former Packers duo may yet link up for some special moments it never felt like enough to move the needle. Defeat to the Steelers leaves them 2-5; this isn’t going the way they thought it would go.

The ‘when is round two?’ of the day

The Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings lived up to the billing emphatically in what could yet serve as a preview of this year’s NFC Championship Game. Jake Bates split the posts with a 44-yard field goal with 15 seconds remaining to guide the Lions to a 31-29 victory, with both sides now sitting 5-1 and due to meet again in Week 18.

Jared Goff was near-spotless again as he went 22 of 25 for 280 yards and two touchdowns in the face of Brian Flores’ unrelenting maximum-pressure four-sack defense, Brian Branch strengthened his Defensive Player of the Year case with another stunning interception and Jahmyr Gibbs justified his ‘Sonic’ nickname with 15 carries for 116 yards and two touchdowns.

It marked the end of Minnesota’s unbeaten start to the season while underlining Detroit’s credentials as legitimate Super Bowl contenders. Not enough can be said of the Ben Johnson-Goff tandem, the resurgence of the former Los Angeles Rams quarterback seeing his offensive coordinator hurtle towards a head coaching job.

The Mahomes moment of the day

Patrick Mahomes and Peyton Manning are now the only quarterbacks in the last 30 years to have more interceptions than touchdowns across a 6-0 start to the season, Manning having tossed seven scores and 10 picks to begin a 2015 campaign that would end in victory at Super Bowl 50. Gulp.

The Kansas City Chiefs have rebranded into a hard-nosed, fury-inciting winning machine defiant of personnel shortages while built around trench control and Steve Spagnuolo’s yo-yo-ing coverages that continue to stymie the league’s most potent attacks.

The numbers will tell you Mahomes is having his worst start to a season; the turnovers are a major issue and he is missing throws he would usually otherwise nail, among the latest being his overthrown downfield heave to Xavier Worthy during Sunday’s win over the San Francisco 49ers. But he also continues to conjure moments of absurdity, his latest being a 33-yard sideline scramble by way of pump-fakes, neat feat and, granted, questionable tackling to move the chains at the end of the third quarter. He also trucked safety Malik Mustapha at the goalline for a touchdown in the ultimate reminder of why this defense will never have any qualms over their extended workload over the last couple of years.

Creed Humphrey has become one of the NFL’s best lane-ploughers at the heart of Kansas City’s interior run game, linebacker Leo Chenal one of Spagnuolo’s chief multi-faceted defensive chess pieces and George Karlaftis one of the league’s most underrated edge disruptors. The Chiefs are a perfect 6-0; for all the scrutiny, you might not have thought so.

The ‘Rams like the NFL Draft again’ of the day

Remember when the Los Angeles Rams boycotted the NFL Draft? Well, they didn’t, but there was that ‘F*** them draft picks’ t-shirts Les Snead wore and the small matter of a Super Bowl-winning team built with marquee free agency splashes.

The tide has turned somewhat in Hollywood since their Lombardi lift, with Snead and Sean McVay reconstructing their youthful roster with savvy draft picks to pad out the existing veteran core.

They hit on guard Steve Avila, linebacker Byron Young, defensive end Kobie Turner and wide receiver Puka Nacua in 2023, and now appear to have found another potential cornerstone in linebacker Jared Verse.

Verse produced a career-high nine pressures in Sunday’s 20-15 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, tied most by a rookie in a game so far this season. The first-round pick had entered Week Seven with a rookie-high 29 pressures on the year, with fellow Rams rookie Braden Fiske his closest competition.

The ‘didn’t expect to see you here’ of the day

Those travelling back from Wembley Stadium last night might have turned on their televisions upon returning home to the sight of Marcus Mariota running around. The former No 2 overall pick saw rare field action as he replaced the injured Jayden Daniels before completing 18 of 23 passes for 205 yards and a touchdown to lead the Washington Commanders to a 40-7 victory over the Carolina Panthers.

It was the first time Mariota had thrown multiple touchdown passes in a game since 2022, offering the Commanders some reassurance should Daniels’ shoulder injury keep him on the sideline for multiple weeks.

Meanwhile, Kareem Hunt rushed for 78 yards and two touchdowns to continue his unlikely revival with the Chiefs after re-signing to fill in for the injured Isiah Pacheco. It is testament to Andy Reid’s scheme as much as anything that Kansas City’s ground attack has survived.

If rivals of the Super Bowl champions could not despise their greatness any more, they picked up Hunt off the street and he is running with as much juice at 29 years old as any back in the league.

Monday morning coffee thought of the day

For all we know it can be and the explosives it can be capable of, the Miami Dolphins offense makes me sad. Mike McDaniel’s attack are now ranked 22nd in total yards, 32nd in scoring, 26th in passing and 32nd in EPA/play following Sunday’s 16-10 defeat to the Indianapolis Colts, continuing their outright collapse since losing quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who has no reason to rush back from his concussion given the state of this team and with the season rapidly fading.

Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle have become complete non-factors while the Dolphins continue to be punished for failing to find a solution at backup quarterback in the way others around the league have. That Mariota entered the fold and offered a clean two-touchdown game for the Commanders was the latest indictment of Miami’s poor planning.

Midnight thought of the day

There is something joyous about elite tight end play in the modern era; oversized wide receivers dwarfing defensive backs as they go airborne, defying their bulky frames as they explode out of route breaks and swatting tackles for yards after the catch. They might be the definition of peak male performance.

There are few players I enjoy watching in the open field right now more than Tucker Kraft and Brock Bowers of the Packers and Raiders, respectively.

Bowers, the 13th overall pick at the Draft, had 10 catches for 93 yards in the Raiders’ 20-15 loss to the Rams on Sunday and now leads all tight ends with 47 catches for 477 yards so far this season. His 47 receptions are more than any other tight end in his first seven games in NFL history, while he also has an NFL rookie tight end record three games of at least nine catches. Kraft meanwhile continued his ascent as a starring component to Matt LaFleur’s offense with three catches for 33 yards and a spectacular diving touchdown catch at the back of the end zone in Green Bay’s win over the Houston Texans.

Week Seven continues with a Monday Night Football double-header as the Baltimore Ravens face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while the Los Angeles Chargers visit the Arizona Cardinals, both live on Sky Sports NFL in the early hours of Tuesday; Also stream with NOW.