NFL Week 7: Winners, Losers and Overreactions

Last Updated on October 27, 2026 3:32 pm by Erwin Noguera

Kansas City arrived in Seattle 5-0, averaging 28 points a game, and had not scored fewer than 22 in any NFL week. They scored three.

Seattle, who had lost their previous two, held them to 165 passing yards, outgained them 410 to 213, and converted eleven of sixteen third downs.

That is the headline, and the week underneath it was almost as strange. Baltimore went a second consecutive game without a second-half point. Tampa Bay scored 43 with 64 passing yards. Tennessee’s running back went for 129 yards and three touchdowns and lost. Dallas put 38 on Philadelphia, who have now lost five in a row.

Minnesota are the only unbeaten team left, and they are twenty-third in scoring.

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Winners

Seattle Seahawks.20-3 over the last unbeaten team in AFC football, and the margin undersells it. Seattle outgained Kansas City 410 to 213 and held Patrick Mahomes to 165 yards on 33 attempts: 5.0 yards per throw. Kenneth Walker III carried fourteen times for 36 yards, 2.57 yards per carry. Per ESPN, Seattle has now gone 36 straight games without allowing a 100-yard rusher, the longest active streak in the league.

The offensive number is the one that explains the game.Eleven of sixteen on third down, which NFL Research records as the third-down conversions Seattle has managed in a game since play-by-play tracking began in 1991. Sam Darnold went 20 of 28 for 257 yards, Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught nine for 150 and the touchdown, and with Zach Charbonnet out, Emanuel Wilson ran 24 times for 100 yards and closed it with a 21-yard score in the fourth. Seattle had lost two in a row before this.

Cincinnati Bengals.Scoreless in the first half at Baltimore. Thirty-five points in the second. The Bengals trailed 13-0 at the interval and won 35-13, and Tee Higgins caught six passes for 148 yards and a touchdown. At 4-2 and plus forty-one, Cincinnati has the second-best point differential in the AFC. We had them at +124 on the road in this game and said that if Tyler Huntley made a third straight start, the Bengals were the better side of the number. He did, and they won by 22.

Dallas Cowboys.38 points at Lincoln Financial Field, and 15 of 27 was enough. Dak Prescott threw three touchdowns on 212 yards and did not need more, because Javonte Williams carried 25 times for 155 yards (6.2 yards per carry) and CeeDee Lamb took two of the three scores on five catches. Dallas is 3-4 with a plus-nine differential, one of three teams below .500 that are outscoring their opponents.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers.43-13 at Carolina, with 64 passing yards. Baker Mayfield threw eleven times, completed seven, and Tampa Bay scored 26 points in the second quarter alone. Bucky Irving ran 24 times for 106 and two touchdowns, and Kenny Gainwell added 14 for 88. It is the most points anybody scored in Week 7 and the fewest passing yards any winning team needed.

Losers

Kansas City Chiefs.Three points. One Harrison Butker field goal from 50 yards, and nothing else. They scored 31, 33, 24, 30 and 22 in their first five games. The defense is not the problem (Kansas City still concedes 17.17 a game, second fewest in the league), and Nohl Williams returned a Darnold interception 64 yards out of the end zone. The problem is that an unbeaten team managed 213 yards of offence against a side that had lost two straights. They are 5-1, and the loss costs them nothing in the standings. It costs them the assumption.

Philadelphia Eagles.2-5, five consecutive defeats, and a minus-48 differential. They started 2-0. In the five losses, they have scored 7, 20, 17, 14 and 21. Jalen Hurts was placed on injured reserve on 17 October after being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis and blood clots in both lungs; the club said it expects a full recovery and has not ruled him out for the season. Tanner McKee made his second straight start and went 23 of 35 for 211 yards. The detail that is harder to explain is Saquon Barkley’s seven carries for 62 yards (8.9 yards per carry) in a game Philadelphia lost by seventeen.

Baltimore Ravens.Two games, zero second-half points. Against Cleveland, they scored all their points in the first quarter. Against Cincinnati, they scored 13 before half-time and none after it. Tyler Huntley’s numbers improved (23 of 34 for 298 yards, a touchdown and an interception), and the margin got eleven points worse. Derrick Henry ran seventeen times for 45 yards, 2.65 yards per carry. At 4-3 and plus two, Baltimore is the most ordinary team in football with the most talented roster in their division.

Tennessee Titans.Tony Pollard carried 25 times for 129 yards and three touchdowns. Tennessee lost 27-24 at home to Cleveland. They led 14-7 after one quarter and then scored nothing in the second or third. At 1-6 and minus forty-eight, they average 15.4 points a game, and Sunday was the best their running game has looked all season.

Carolina Panthers. Conceded 43 at home, 26 of them in the second quarter. Bryce Young went 14 of 27 for 163 with two interceptions before Kenny Pickett finished the game. Carolina is 3-3 and outscored.

Overreactions

“Minnesota are the best team in football.”They are 6-0, and that is the only argument.Minnesota score 20.83 points a game, which ranks twenty-third, and their six wins have come by 17, 6, 7, 5, 10 and 6: five of six by ten points or fewer, four by seven or fewer. One of those wins was 9-3.

What is not an overreaction is defense.74 points conceded in six games, 12.33 a game, comfortably the best in the league. Kansas City is next on 17.17. Minnesota are the best defensive team in football and a bottom-ten offence, and whether that is the best team depends entirely on January weather.

“Kansas City is finished.”One game. They are 5-1. The offence was dreadful, and the schedule says they get Denver at home this week with a chance to look like themselves. Three points is a data point, not a diagnosis, though a second one would be.

“Cleveland are a playoff team at 5-2.”Cleveland has the best record of any team in the NFL that is being outscored, at minus thirteen. The only others at or above .500 with a negative differential are Green Bay at minus one and Carolina at minus seven. We have called the Browns the most overrated team in the league three weeks running and they have gone from 2-2 to 5-2 while we did it. Both things can be true: the process says they are a .500 team at best, and the results column has stopped caring.

“Tampa Bay is a bad team that beat up a worse one.”Tampa Bay is 2-5 with a plus-eleven differential, and all five of their defeats have come by seven points or fewer: six, four, seven, three, and seven. That is the most misleading record in the league. Carolina at 3-3 and minus seven is the mirror image sitting above them in the same division.

Where We Were Wrong

Two of four, and the miss was ugly.

We predicted Chiefs 24-20 over Seattle. Seattle won 20-3. We had Seattle’s total exactly right and Kansas City twenty-one points too high. Our reasoning was that Seattle had lost two straight and Kansas City hadn’t lost at all, the kind of logic that reads a record instead of a matchup. Seattle was fourth in the league in points allowed going in. We mentioned it and then bet against it, which is the same error we identified in Week 4 and have now committed twice.

We predicted 49ers 30-20 over Atlanta. Atlanta won 29-20. 20 was right, and the winner was not. Brock Purdy threw two interceptions on 40 attempts and Atlanta won while Bijan Robinson averaged 3.2 a carry on twenty touches.

We had Minnesota over Indianapolis and Chicago over New England, both correct, with New England’s 24 exactly right in a 30-24 Bears win.

And the Week 7 odds block was right where it mattered. We wrote that Cincinnati at +124 were the better side if Huntley started a third time. They won 35-13.

One correction to carry forward. In yesterday’s Week 8 blocks we described Tennessee’s minus-48 differential as the second worst in the AFC behind the Chargers. It is the third worst; Miami is at minus fifty-nine, between them. League-wide, it is joint fourth worst with Philadelphia, behind Arizona, the Chargers, and Miami.

The One Number That Actually Matters

12.33.

That is what Minnesota concedes per game, and it is the single most predictive figure on the board. The second-best mark belongs to Kansas City at 17.17, nearly five points of daylight between first and second.

The reason it matters more than Minnesota’s 6-0 record is that the record is built on margins of six, five, and seven, and margins that thin regress. Defenses that concede twelve a game across six games mostly do not. The Vikings are not winning because they are lucky in close games; they are in close games because they cannot score, and they are winning them because the other side cannot either.

The counterexample is sitting at 5-2 in Cleveland with a minus-thirteen differential, and the mirror is sitting at 2-5 in Tampa Bay with a plus-eleven differential. Seven weeks in, the table and the arithmetic have stopped agreeing with each other across most of the league. Minnesota is the one team where both say the same thing, and they say it because of 12.33.

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