NFL Winners and Losers: Ja’Marr Chase and a Bucs fan were winners in Week 7

The NFL made the bold decision to give approximately all of its playoff caliber teams a bye this past week. I’m not sure that made logistical sense, but it did make fantasy football more interesting. It also reduced the amount of content for this column, but regardless, here are the Winners and Losers of Week 7. 

Winner: Wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase and the Cincinnati Bengals

Everyone told the Bengals to draft well-regarded left tackle Penei Sewell with the No. 5 pick in the last NFL draft. Instead, they took wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase. NFL Analyst Brent Sobleski rated the Bengals’ decision an “F,” writing, “Cincinnati’s mistake involves prioritization.” Journalists from both Sports Illustrated and The Athletic were kinder to the Bengals but hardly praised them. Both outlets deemed the selection deserving of a “B,” reasoning that, although Chase possessed elite talent for a receiver, left tackle presented a more pressing need for a Cincinnati team that let quarterback Joe Burrow, a gleaming, shining, shimmering symbol of hope, suffer a beating throughout his rookie season and eventually an ACL tear. And I, uh — OK, fine. I also thought the Bengals needed to take Sewell.

Oops! Sewell has not played particularly well so far, forcing the Lions to rotate him between left and right tackle. Meanwhile, Chase has performed like the best rookie wide receiver in NFL history. Seriously. He’s recorded 754 receiving yards in his first seven games — which is the most yards recorded during a receiver’s first seven games ever — and is on pace to post one of the five highest single-season receiving yard totals in history. On Sunday, he put all his skills on display. He torched a very good Ravens team for 201 yards and caught his sixth touchdown of the year. He utilized exceptional quickness to create separation at the line of scrimmage from Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey, who is one of the league’s best in pass coverage but didn’t look like it when guarding Chase. He also flashed his invaluable knack for picking up yards after the catch, turning a 7-yard slant into an 82-yard touchdown by spinning through what looked like the entire Ravens defense. 

Chase’s dynamic play has invigorated the Bengals offense, which ranks 7th in points scored and pushed Cincinnati to a surprising 5-2 record. Two of those wins came over their division rivals, the Steelers and the Ravens. Last year, the Bengals lost to both of those teams in their first meetings and won just one of their first seven games. This year, though, they’ve got Chase and every reason to believe their fast start can last.

Chase’s performance is also a reminder that for all our prognosticating and criticizing, sometimes the people on the inside are on the inside for a reason. The Bengals decision-makers ignored a torrent of external instructions, and they were right.

Loser: Lions Head Coach Dan Campbell

Poor Dan Campbell. Every week, he finds a way to make the Lions, perhaps the league’s least talented team, competitive — three of their losses have been one-score games. Still, the Lions are an NFL-worst 0-7. 

Campbell leveraged every trick in his book Sunday. The Lions took a 10-0 lead against the Los Angeles Rams, but it quickly faded, and they found themselves trailing 17-16 in the third quarter. Then, they ran their second fake punt and third trick play of the game. They gained three extra possessions due to Campbell’s aggressive play calls, which somehow all worked.

The Lions still lost 28-19. Campbell coached well, but running a team with Jared Goff at quarterback is like showing up to a gunfight with a knife. Goff threw two critical interceptions against his former team to hamstring the Lions’ chances of victory, reminding viewers that the Rams traded Goff to the Lions because he wasn’t good and that the Lions traded for Goff because of the first round picks attached to him. 

It’s hard to not root for Detroit. Campbell promised to “bite [other team’s] kneecaps off” in his introductory press conference, and he’s maintained that same infectious energy. After the loss to the Rams, he told reporters that “If this does not continue to sting and burn and taste like you-know-what, then you’ve got a problem … All it does is just piss me off even more, and it just motivates me to want to get out of this mess.” Sadly, the Lions just aren’t good enough. 

Winner: A Buccaneers fan

The media won’t stop talking about the Buccaneers fan who caught the ball Tom Brady used to throw his NFL-record 600th touchdown and, after a little haggling, grudgingly returned it. The fan did alright for himself. He’ll get season tickets for this year and the next, credit at the Bucs’ team store, and a couple signed helmets and jerseys from Brady. Brady will also give him a Bitcoin, because the apocalypse is encroaching and somehow those things are worth $60,000 a piece right now. Still, people think he should have kept the ball since multiple auctioneers have estimated its value at around $500,000 dollars.

I don’t know what he should have done with the ball and I don’t care. I’m much more interested in another exchange of memorabilia: Near the end of the fourth quarter, Brady spotted a fan holding a sign. The fan was Noah Reeb, a nine-year-old boy from Utah attending his first NFL game, and the sign read “Tom Brady helped me beat brain cancer.” Brady placed his hat on the boy’s head and offered him his hand. Noah shook it. After Brady turned away, Noah placed his head in his hands and cried.

The interaction serves as a poignant reminder that while sports won’t save the world or cure cancer, they provide real meaning and entertainment. In many ways, they function as art — something created with imagination and skill that expresses important ideas or feelings. In this instance, sports, as the best art does, brought people together. Brady, a 44 year-old man, shared his love for the game with someone 35 years younger than him. The moment between them was also a reminder that there’s nothing more valuable in sports than the bonding moments they spur.

Mac Dilatush is a freshman providing commentary on NFL happenings week to week. His column, “NFL Winners and Losers,” runs every other Thursday.