Biggest Takeaways and Questions After Week 10 in the NFL

The NFL season is a beautiful thing. You hear all the time that it’s a week-to-week league and anything can happen on any given Sunday (they did make a movie about it, after all). With the nature of the seven-day turnaround, which can vary due to primetime games, every week offers us lessons to learn about individual players, each team and sometimes, the state of the league as a whole.

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With any luck, these lessons offer us true insight while other times they can leave us scratching our heads. All we can do as fans and bettors of the game is absorb all the information and use it to shape our decisions in our own week-to-week entertainment when putting together our best NFL bets.

Lete's dive into five takeaways, lessons and questions from Week 10.

Honorable Mentions:

These things were on my brain but felt less impactful than my main five. Maybe next week?

• Are the Cowboys Good?
• The Jaguars' Split Personalities

1. Bill Belichick is Going Mad - And it's His Own Fault

The post-Tom Brady era in New England has been truly mind-boggling, though it really began well before Brady left for Tampa Bay and one last Super Bowl. Bill has drafted a lone Pro-Bowl player since 2013. While the lack of a Pro Bowl selection doesn't make or break any particular draft pick, it shows a lack of potential. The Patriots have passed over and over players that went on to be great or at the very least, not cuttable before their rookie deal came to a close. It was the biggest issue in the final Brady years: no offensive weapons. And it's not just players. Belichick loves giving jobs to his buddies, bringing back defensive-minded and failed head coach Matt Patricia to call his plays on offense before that also failed.

Now he's saddled with Mac Jones who has not even shown glimpses of franchise-QB potential or in the rare instance he decided it's Zappe Time, like randomly on the final drive of Week 10's 10-6 loss to Indianapolis. It's head-scratching to think Belichick was confident in what he'd seen from Jones all game only to then turn to backup (and not really any better) Bailey Zappe. Now, the Patriots have the worst record in the AFC, tied for the second-worst in the league and show no signs of hope. This might be Belichick's Joker origin story.

That is the look of a man who knows he chose to coach Mac Jones for the past three years.

2. Is It Time for the Bills to Blow it Up?

Speaking of Bills under pressure, we were subjected to yet another Josh Allen turnover masterclass (which I'm personally invested in) on primetime football as a loss to the Broncos dropped the Bills to just 5-5 in the AFC East. Bailed out by Zach Wilson being unable to close out games, they're fortunate to not be in third place, though they've got just a half-game lead on the Jets who have undoubtedly overperformed compared to what we expected with Wilson as the helm.

Two picks and a lost fumble by Josh Allen directly led to the Bills failing to score at least 26 points for the sixth straight game and low outputs on offense have been a theme for Buffalo all year long, with their games hitting the over at just a 3-7 rate. There's no question Stefon Diggs' patience is growing thin and despite the production he's been able to reach with Allen under center, it's hard to stay calm when you're not winning games because your QB isn't getting you the ball in key moments due to turnovers. Head coach Sean McDermott should be safe barring a total collapse, but missing the playoffs outright would put the Bills franchise on a backward trajectory. After working so long to open up a championship window, it very well may be closing.

Man 14 Gotta get up outta there 😫😭

— SEVEN (@TrevonDiggs) November 14, 2023

Safe to say Trevon Diggs thinks it's time. 

3. Absolutely No One Wants to Win the AFC North

No one truly expected this would be more than a two-team race for most of the season between the Bengals and Ravens, but here we are with all four teams over .500 and just 1.5 games separating the Ravens from the "last-place" Bengals. It's happening in truly bizarre fashion as well. The Ravens look like one of the best, if not the best, in the AFC yet have confounding losses. An OT loss to the Colts, a loss to Pittsburgh in which they scored 10 points, and now coming off a blown loss to the Browns in which they led 31-14 with less than 12 minutes to play. 

The Bengals started 0-3 and looked flat-out bad with Joe Burrow clearly still on the mend from his preseason calf injury, before ripping off five-straight with some dominant wins over contenders like the 49ers and Bills. Then, they fumbled the bag with a chance to slide just a half-game back of first but failed to beat the Texans in Week 10.

You have the Browns who lost one of their best players in Nick Chubb early on, have trotted out PJ Walker at QB for a handful of starts (beating the 49ers), and have started a mediocre or hobbled Deshaun Watson in the others. Yet, with the league's best defense spearheaded by the DPOY favorite Myles Garrett, they've powered themselves to a 6-3 record. Meanwhile, the Steelers won't go away, winning games in a way it seems like no one quite understands. Maybe it's their bend-but-don't-break defense (28th in yards per game, 6th in TDs allowed per game) or the "must go .500" energy that Mike Tomlin brings, but it's making for some popcorn-worthy matchups down the stretch.

4. Primetime Unders Continue to Pay Dividends

If you've been betting the under in night games this season, you are stacking profits. Last night's 46-point total was just enough to go under the 47.5 (or 47 depending on when you got it) line, bringing this year's total record to 25-7 to the under. That's a 78% hit rate. Assuming the odds are -115 for every game, a $100 bettor would be up $1,474 in profit just betting the under blindly in every single primetime game.

It's difficult to pin down exactly why this is happening, though there are a number of clear factors like Thursday Night games being quick turnarounds, the aforementioned Bills playing five times and being terrible at hitting the Over, the mix of just plain and teams we've seen, particularly on Thursdays...the list isn't short. Either way, it's been a profitable trend if you've been paying attention. It's difficult to recommend ever blind-betting something because of a trend, but it's certainly one that's hard to ignore so if your gut is leaning the under in primetime in the future, you should probably listen to it.

Check out our Best NFL Bets Today for Week 11.

5. We Really Needed Good Teams on This Weekend

A few weeks back, I said we couldn't wait for Week 10 because there were no Kelces on due to the Chiefs and Eagles both on bye. No Kelces = no Taylor Swift, who had consumed out NFL airtime in the early days of the "Traylor" madness. And you could feel it as there was not a single mention of the Swiftie craze on any broadcast I watched, at least. However, I may have eaten my words a bit as this was one of the worst slates in recent memory, and although it delivered a few exciting moments (numerous walk-off FGs, Josh Dobbs being him), we were also forced to watch the Panthers, Bears, Colts, Patriots, Jets and Raiders in Primetime or standalone games, before watching another lifeless Bills performance in primetime on Monday Night Football.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the Cowboys' drubbing of the Giants, blowouts aren't entertaining, especially when the other team is trotting out a first-time QB who throws for under 100 yards. The 49ers got back on track with a blowout of the Jaguars in a game that we as NFL fans really wanted to be good, but it wasn't a game for even one second. 

But now we get the Chiefs, Dolphins and Eagles back while we ship the Falcons, Patriots, Colts and Saints off to a bye. That's a damn good trade-off.

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