Five Takeaways from Week 7 in the NFL

The NFL season is a beautiful thing. You hear all the time that’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.

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.

Here are five takeaways, lessons and questions from Week 7:

Arthur Smith is a Supervillain

If the fantasy and betting gods truly had any mercy for us, they would have at minimum made sure the Falcons lost this game. To the dismay of Bijan Robinson fantasy managers and prop bettors (both my hands raised, here), the Falcons’ eighth-overall draft pick was on a milk carton, missing in action. It was immediately a concern early in the game when the Falcons had run double-digit run plays and Robinson had zero touches. He had no injury designation and wasn’t even questionable at any point throughout the week.

We later learned that allegedly Robinson wasn’t feeling well the night before and that continued into warmups. Look, we’d never chastise a player for being sick and missing a game; we’ve all called out sick from work before, right? But Arthur Smith and his smug mustache knew he wouldn’t be using him in the game and led us astray. That fantasy "0" will haunt me. He trolled us by giving Bijan a lone touch on their final drive, a 3-yard run, likely to bail his own ass out so he could say he used him in a “critical situation.” It's even harder to give him the benefit of the doubt as Smith is notorious for not using his best players to their full potential (as we see) like Kyle Pitts and Robinson himself.

With all that said, Smith must be doing something right, as he has maneuvered the Falcons to a 4-3 record, good enough for the division lead after seven weeks. Our model says they have a 43.6% chance to lock it up this season, with the Saints a hair behind at 43.0%. You can get plus-money odds on both right now.

Could Justin Fields Get Trey Lance-d?

This was supposed to be “the year” for Justin Fields. One of the most hyped players in the offseason, we saw an unreasonable amount of bets coming in on Justin Fields to win the MVP, as if we live in a world where Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson don’t exist. What Tua is doing is what people thought Fields would do and it’s not been the case. He’s cleared 220 passing yards just twice this year, once with the help of 280 receiving yards from DJ Moore.

Fields left Week 6 against the Vikings with a dislocated thumb and currently has no timetable for his return. In stepped rookie Tyson Bagent, who looked solid in relief of Fields before game-managing Chicago to a Week 7 blowout win over the Raiders. It’d be an overreaction to say Fields is on the hot seat, but we’ve seen injured QBs lose their jobs to backups before. If he misses extended time and Bagent looks startable, the media will have a frenzy.

At 2-5, this is already a lost season for the Bears, who were the betting favorite to be the NFL’s most-improved team. A mere 2.9% to win the NFC North shows how down bad they are, so things could get ugly and interesting in Chicago by season’s end.

Quarterback Play is Still the 49ers’ Achilles Heel

Crashing faster than air conditioner stock in Antarctica, the 49ers jumped out to a 5-0 lead and held the consensus opinion of the best team in the NFL, only to fall flat in back-to-back losses on national television. They were ugly losses too, losing to the Browns and (capable) backup P.J. Walker on a rainy afternoon in Cleveland before falling to *checks notes* Primetime Kirk Cousins on Monday Night Football.

Their weakness has been opposing defenses stifling Brock Purdy. It’s fair to say that shutting down any team’s starting QB can lead to success, but the 49ers' rise has been placed on Purdy’s shoulders, emerging as the best QB they’ve had in some time. I’ve been of the mind that Jimmy Garoppolo was the worst QB you’d actually be comfortable starting and Purdy has largely looked better than him. But these temas forcing Purdy to throw his first interceptions of the year in back-to-back games has certainly brought the offense to a screeching halt (17 total second-half points over the last two weeks). Week 6 injuries to Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey show they can't lean 100% on their playmakers to do everything.

They should still win the division comfortably based on our 80.4% probability, but they look mortal compared to the world-beaters who embarrassed the Dallas Cowboys three weeks ago and are no longer our model’s favorite to win the Super Bowl after several weeks at the top.

Check out our latest Super Bowl odds here.

The Dolphins are the Gen Z Cowboys

Speaking of the Cowboys, let’s talk about their cooler, younger version in Miami, the Dolphins. Which team am I talking about here: high expectations, talented roster, extensive media coverage, coached by a Mike, coming up short in big games? While describing the Cowboys to a “T,” you could say the same about Miami this year. While a game up on the Bills, our model gives Miami a 46.2% chance to win the AFC East, compared to 48.0% for Buffalo, who get way better odds of +195.

So, why are they like today’s younger generation, you ask? They want instant gratification and their elite speed on offense allows them to do so. They’re trendy with Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill basically tailor-made personalities for social media and Mike McDaniel is simply too damn cool. However, if they want to live up to their lofty expectations and increased media presence, they’ll need to figure out how to win the big games. They haven’t beaten anyone better than the Chargers (two-point victory in Week 1) and got pretty well dominated by the Eagles and Bills. Their Week 9 matchup against the Chiefs will tell us if they’re real contenders or just the Florida Cowboys.

Week 10 Can’t Come Soon Enough

Look, Week 10 is an ugly, ugly slate. Every “primetime” game is absolutely gross. Panthers-Bears on Thursday. Colts-Patriots Sunday morning in Frankfurt, Germany. Jets-Raiders on SNF and finally, Broncos-Bills on Monday Night Football. As of now, there are just two games featuring two teams that are over .500. So why do we await this wonderful week of football? The Chiefs and Eagles are on a bye.

Do you know what that means? Zero Kelces will be playing in NFL games. There will be no Kelces and therefore no mentions of Taylor Swift. We can sit down to watch football and get football in return. I have no beef with Taylor or any Swifties out there, but it’s too much. At least if she were doing the Super Bowl halftime show, they could craft a narrative around her presence all season long, but it feels forced. Travis Kelce fantasy managers, aren’t complaining though, as he’s on pace for his usual overall TE1 antics. But if Hurricane Taylor has turned you off from the NFL in recent weeks, Week 10 will provide a safe reprieve, though you'll have to watch one of those above-mentioned games, which might actually be worse...

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