THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020 N B9
Pittsburgh came back from an early
deficit against Dallas to improve to 8-0,
Kansas City had to sweat a little against
Carolina, Buffalo throttled Seattle, and
Baltimore’s defense carried the team
against Indianapolis. Sunday didn’t
have any huge upsets, but there was
plenty of excitement.
Here’s what we learned:
Buffaloes can hibernate.
Remember how great the Buffalo of-
fense looked during the team’s thrilling
4-0 start to the season? Josh Allen and
Company threw away much of that
momentum by going entirely dormant
over a forgettable four-game stretch in
which the team went 2-2. But with the
sun shining brightly in Orchard Park,
N.Y., and with plenty of help from Se-
attle’s inept defense, the Bills roared
back to life in a 44-34 win that didn’t
feel anywhere near that close. It was
Buffalo’s first game with 40 or more
points since 2018 and gave Josh Allen
the second 400-yard passing game of
his career. The Bills improved to 7-2,
which matches the team’s best nine-
game start since 1993.
While the offensive output was nice,
Buffalo was probably just as excited by
a defensive performance in which the
Bills, who have disappointed on that
side of the ball all season, had five
sacks and 11 quarterback hits and
forced four turnovers against the top-
scoring offense in the N.F.L.
Dalvin Cook would be in the M.V.P.
discussion if his team were better.
Cook had 226 yards from scrimmage
and four touchdowns in Minnesota’s
upset win over Green Bay last week,
and he was right back at it on Sunday
with 252 yards from scrimmage and
two touchdowns in an easy 34-20 vic-
tory over Detroit. Cook’s 206 yards
rushing were a career high, he’s now
leading the N.F.L. in yards rushing, and
he increased his N.F.L. lead to 13 total
touchdowns, which is three more than
Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill in second
place. The Most Valuable Player Award
will most likely come down to Seattle’s
Russell Wilson and Kansas City’s Pat-
rick Mahomes, with Mahomes probably
pulling into the lead after Sunday’s win.
But if the Vikings weren’t 3-5, you’d
have to at least consider Cook and his
incredible season.
Alex Smith might be back
for real this time.
It was an emotional and amazing mo-
ment when Smith returned to the field
in Week 5 after missing nearly two
years following a horrifying leg break.
But Smith’s Hollywood-like story took a
hit when he played poorly and went
right back to the bench. Smith got
another chance on Sunday after an
injury to Kyle Allen, and at times he
looked a lot like the player who had so
much success in San Francisco and
Kansas City. He threw for 325 yards —
his first 300-yard game since Nov. 4,
2018 — and while he threw three inter-
ceptions in Washington’s 23-20 loss to
the Giants, the Footballers outscored
their division rival by 17-13 after the
quarterback switch. With Allen’s injury
looking fairly serious, Smith will start
next week against Detroit.An interception can look
a lot like an incomplete pass.
Indianapolis was leading by 10-7 early
in the third quarter when the team
forced a fumble and took over at its
own 23-yard line with a chance to in-
crease its lead. On the first play of the
drive, Philip Rivers attempted a pass to
Marcus Johnson that was briefly in thehands of Baltimore cornerback Marcus
Peters before falling harmlessly to the
turf. Ravens Coach John Harbaugh
challenged the ruling of an incomplete
pass, contending that Peters took multi-
ple steps with the ball before losing
control of it, and the officials — some-
what shockingly — agreed with him, a
decision that league officials confirmed
was correct. Ten plays after the inter-
ception, Baltimore, which struggled
offensively for most of the game,
punched the ball into the end zone with
a 1-yard run from Gus Edwards, giving
the Ravens a lead they would not relin-
quish and a crucial win on the road.
The interception call did not sit well
with Rivers. “It’s gotten so jacked up
how the catch rule is,” Rivers said dur-
ing his postgame news conference. “No
one who has been around football or
watched thought that was a catch,including the guy who dropped it. But
some guy who has probably never
thrown a football in his life gets to
decide.”Jake Luton just might stick around.
Luton, a sixth-round pick in 2020 out of
Oregon State, had big jorts to fill in
Jacksonville when subbing for the
injured Gardner Minshew, and while he
ultimately couldn’t pull off an upset of
Houston, he did enough to earn another
start next week. The second pass of
Luton’s pro career went for a 73-yard
touchdown to D.J. Chark, and with the
game on the line in the final two min-
utes, Luton spun and bullied his way to
a 13-yard touchdown that got his team
within a 2-point conversion of tying the
game (the conversion failed). He threw
for 304 yards, making him just the 10th
quarterback in N.F.L. history to throw
for 300 or more yards in his first N.F.L.
appearance.
No word yet on whether Luton can
match Minshew as a fashion icon.The 8-0 Steelers are
in uncharted territory.
The Steelers are one of two teams to
have won six Super Bowls, they have
the second-most conference champi-
onships, and they’re fourth in wins in
N.F.L. history. But until now, the team
had never started a season 8-0. Sun-
day’s win was far from pretty, with the
Steelers having to overcome an early
13-0 deficit against lowly Dallas. But
Ben Roethlisberger threw two touch-
down passes in the fourth quarter, the
second of which involved tight end Eric
Ebron hurdling a defender on his way
into the end zone, and Pittsburgh
scraped by, 24-19.One* Sentence
About Sunday’s Games
*Except when it takes more.BILLS 44, SEAHAWKS 34Want an idea of
how bad Seattle’s defense has been this
season? Despite giving up 44 points —
the most the team has allowed in Coach
Pete Carroll’s 11 seasons — the Sea-
hawks actually performed better than
they typically do in multiple measures.
The 420 total yards they gave up were
40 fewer than they were allowing per
game coming into the day, and the
seven sacks they had were a season
high.
RAVENS 24, COLTS 10It was a quiet day
for Baltimore’s offense, with just 266
total yards, but Lamar Jackson’s 9-yard
touchdown run in the fourth quarter
put the Ravens over 20 points for a 31st
consecutive game. The Ravens broke
the previous record of 30 that they had
shared with Denver, which had its
streak stretch over the 2012, 2013 and
2014 seasons.
STEELERS 24, COWBOYS 19Pittsburgh
did not score until there was 1 minute
10 seconds left in the second quarter,
and was trailing until there was just2:19 left in the game, but the Steelers
eked out yet another win. Dallas, de-
spite a great deal of improvement from
last week, fell to 2-7.
CHIEFS 33, PANTHERS 31It got way too
close for Kansas City’s comfort toward
the end of the game, with Carolina’s
offense firing on all cylinders thanks to
the return of running back Christian
McCaffrey, who, along with quarter-
back Teddy Bridgewater and the do-
everything receiver Curtis Samuel,
makes Carolina a threat to score in
bunches for the rest of the season.
TITANS 24, BEARS 17After six games,
Chicago was 5-1 and it started to look
almost inevitable that the Bears would
be a playoff team. After all, 83 percent
of teams to start that well over the
previous 10 seasons qualified for post-
season play, and the Bears would bene-
fit from this season’s expanded playoff
format. After three consecutive losses,
however, Chicago is 5-4, and such a
record over the last 10 seasons has led
to a playoff appearance just 26.5 per-
cent of the time.
RAIDERS 31, CHARGERS 26Isaiah John-
son should have teammates buying him
dinner all week after the Las Vegas
cornerback broke up two passes in the
end zone in the game’s final five sec-
onds, either of which would have won
the game for Los Angeles.
DOLPHINS 34, CARDINALS 31In a
matchup of 2018 finalists for the Heis-
man Trophy, Arizona’s Kyler Murray
had a more exciting game, but Miami’s
Tua Tagovailoa walked away with the
win. Tagovailoa looked much improved
from last week’s start, throwing for 248
yards and two touchdowns that com-
bined with plenty of help from his rap-
idly ascending team to hold off Murray,
who passed for 283 yards and three
touchdowns while running for 106
yards and another score.
VIKINGS 34, LIONS 20It was a hard day
for Detroit, as Matthew Stafford was
intercepted on consecutive possessions
in the third quarter and left the game
for concussion evaluation in the fourth
while his team’s defense was humili-
ated by Minnesota’s offense.
FALCONS 34, BRONCOS 27Atlanta got a
solid win at home, and Matt Ryan had
one of the prettier 51-yard bombs for a
touchdown you’ll ever see, but it’s
worth noting that Denver quarterback
Drew Lock once against inspired some
fourth-quarter magic, leading the team
to 21 points a week after putting up 21
in the fourth in a come-from-behind win
over the Chargers. If only Lock could
play like that in the other three quar-
ters.
TEXANS 27, JAGUARS 25Houston is a
deeply flawed team, but given a chance
to exploit Jacksonville’s porous second-
ary, Deshaun Watson did not disap-
point, throwing a 57-yard catch-and-run
touchdown to Brandin Cooks on his
team’s first possession and a 77-yard
score to Will Fuller V in the third quar-
ter.
GIANTS 23, FOOTBALLERS 20Daniel
Jones did not commit a turnover in a
game for just the second time in his
22-game career and improved to 4-0
against Washington — he’s 1-16 against
all other teams in his 21 career starts.Muffled for 4 Games, Bills’ Offense Roars to Life
Vikings’ Cook Runs Wild Again •Steelers Are 8-0 for First Time •An Interception (or Was It?) Lifts the Ravens
N.F.L. Week 9
Buffalo’s Josh Allen threw for 415 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another score in a 44-34 victory over Seattle. The Bills improved to 7-2, matching their best nine-game start since 1993.
JOHN MUNSON/ASSOCIATED PRESSBy BENJAMIN HOFFMANDalvin Cook piled up 252 yards from scrimmage, including 206 on the ground,
in a Minnesota win. His two touchdowns raised his league-leading total to 13.
BRUCE KLUCKHOHN/ASSOCIATED PRESSWashington’s Alex Smith continued his comeback with 325 yards passing.
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