The week-to-week roller coaster is the ride that NFL die-hards pay for every year. Any Given Sunday is more than a great sports movie starring Al Pacino; it’s a reality the shield defends with all of its constant rule changes in the name of league parity. Fans can go from a pit of misery to cloud nine after one game, play, penalty, or random bounce of the ball. Chicago Bears fans are on top of the world after watching their team demolish the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks in Seattle in front of the rest of the football-watching world on Monday Night Football. Seahawks fans, conversely, are at whatever stage of grief you're in when you try to get your offensive coordinator arrested for voter fraud. Baltimore Ravens fans have been cast to one of the circles of hell, and both the Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns fan bases are stuck bouncing back and forth between hell and purgatory. Denver Broncos faithful might be convinced they’re in heaven with all of Bo Nix’s wins, but it’s more likely that the Broncos are in The Matrix and Sean Payton is a meaner, more curmudgeonly version of Keanu Reeves. Worse than any grief stage, hell circle, or made-up heaven, though, is the Glenn Zone, which we’ll introduce later in the eighth (!) Take-O-Meter of the 2026 NFL season. Thanks to every Meter Reader who has been here every step of the way, and welcome, all of you newbies. Take a peek below at the pleasantries, etc. copied and pasted from a previous TOM to remember what to email me at takeometer@spotify.com, and then get to the show.
The Ravens are cursed.
The easiest path forward for Baltimore Ravens fans is to throw the 2026 season into a tidy little box with a tag that reads “THE CROSBY CURSE.” Two-time MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson hurt his thumb on his throwing hand while making a routine pass on Baltimore’s first play from scrimmage last week. Jackson is out for the season now after undergoing surgery. Backup Tyler “Snoop” Huntley, whom Baltimore fans know well because he’s played in Jackson’s stead already this season and in previous years, left Sunday’s game with a turf toe injury shortly after coming in for Jackson. Huntley is also out for the season. Rookie third-stringer Joe Fagnano will make his first career start on Thursday against the Jacksonville Jaguars, but the Ravens have already finalized a trade for Cardinals QB Jacoby Brissett to start him after this short week. Baltimore will be on its fourth quarterback in two games if Brissett, who was benched for scrappy nomad backup Gardner Minshew just last week, gets the nod for Chargers-Ravens on Monday Night Football to cherry the Week 10 sundae.
Losing Jackson and Huntley in one game and having to turn the season over to 33-year-old Brissett (on his seventh team in 11 years) could easily be viewed as symptoms of a curse. And one might argue that the Ravens invited a curse when they became the first team in NFL history to nix a trade involving two first-round picks because they had second thoughts after agreeing to send 2026's no. 14 and a 2027 first to the Las Vegas Raiders for Maxx Crosby in March. People have cried curse for less intentional faux pas for centuries, but the symptoms are terrifying enough to start getting a little ’stitious, if not super.
Want more evidence of a curse? Consider the dark magic enveloping all of Baltimore’s centers this year. The Raiders signed Tyler Linderbaum, a three-time Pro Bowl center and former first-round pick with the Ravens, in free agency during the four days the Crosby trade was still technically on. Since then, the Ravens have had a revolving door at center trying to replace Linderbaum. Baltimore initially wanted to replace him with veteran Ethan Pocic, but Pocic got hurt in camp and played only 10 snaps before getting placed on the injured reserve. Jovaughn Gwyn, a 2023 seventh-round pick with the Falcons, had zero career snaps at center before starting in that spot for the Ravens in Weeks 1-3. Gwyn fractured his fibula and could be out for two to three months. Then rookie Vega Ioane, whom they drafted with the pick they got back in the snip-snap Raiders trade, stepped in and was incredible, logging elite snaps at guard and center. Ioane filled in at center in Weeks 4-6 and played out of his gourd for a rookie guard. But in his first game back at guard after the Ravens traded a second-round pick to the Eagles for Cam Jurgens, Ioane sprained his MCL and missed Week 8.
Baltimore’s center carousel spinning out of control seems more supernatural than coincidental. Ioane was drafted with the same pick Baltimore called take-backsies on in March, and Linderbaum first became a Raider when Crosby was still a Raven. But I can’t cut any more hypothetical blame pie for a made-up curse beyond that. Let’s get serious.
The Ravens roster is reliant on older players at multiple key positions: 31-year-old edge defender Trey Hendrickson, whom they signed in free agency shortly after canceling the Crosby trade; 30-year-old cornerback Marlon Humphrey; 29-year-old LB Roquan Smith; 40-year-old DT Calais Campbell; 31-year-old TE Mark Andrews; 32-year-old RB Derrick Henry; and 32-year-old LT Ronnie Stanley. We’ll never see Lamar Jackson play in his 20s again. Let that sink in. He’ll be 30 years old the next chance he gets to play in late January.
The Baltimore Ravens, one of the most respected organizations in sports, haven’t made a conference title game with a two-time MVP QB, a future Hall of Fame RB, and a star-studded defense. Some of that is Jackson’s fault, obviously. Some of it is on John Harbaugh, the 18-year Ravens head coach who's now on to bigger and better things with J.J. McCarthy and the New York Giants (?!). Eric DeCosta, of course, has been there for all of it. He’s been in Baltimore since day one (1996), as his profile proudly leads with on the team website. DeCosta has been the “chief decision-maker” since 2019, Jackson’s sophomore season and first MVP win. What has he done with it? Fuck all. But they do say you reap what you sow. DeCosta can’t hide behind karma or a curse at all, just those pesky ol’ consequences for his actions. For example, when you hire a young, defensive-minded head coach, his defense needs to be good. If the defense sucks, that coach becomes worse than the “what do you do here” types because they go back and forth on meddling with the defense while their offense either crushes because of a hotshot OC or crumbles because of a bad one.
New Ravens head coach Jesse Minter, whom Ravens leadership was eager to hire after dumping Harbaugh, is in what I’m calling the Glenn Zone in honor of New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn, a defensive-minded head coach who will almost definitely be fired before next year. The Glenn Zone is reserved for defensive-minded head coaches who aren’t calling elite defenses and fully depend on their OC hires to win important games, which is arguably the worst kind of coach you can have in the NFL. Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles was in the Glenn Zone this season before winning two games with his defense and run game alone. The Tennessee Titans’ Robert Saleh (whom we’ll get to later) is firmly in the Glenn Zone, as is the Miami Dolphins’ first-year head coach, Jeff Hafley (whom we’ll also hit lower down). The Houston Texans’ DeMeco Ryans, sadly, is stuck in the Glenn Zone.
Minter, because he’s calling a middle-of-the-road defense with a hotshot OC (30-year-old Declan Doyle, the first sprig off the Ben Johnson coaching tree), is entering the Glenn Zone, and I don’t see a way out for him anytime soon. Not because he or DeCosta or Jackson or the franchise is in the clutches of some mythical curse that I’m puppeting from my office in a road white Crosby jersey using pig blood as eye black while sitting in a circle of candles next to Scott Hanson, who is roped to a chair and forced against his will to say “THE WITCHING HOUR” on Sunday mornings at 12:01 a.m. ET. Not because that’s happening. But because DeCosta and others in charge in Baltimore botched Jackson’s peak with bad roster management, a reality much scarier than AGHQ After Dark.
We all need to calm down about the Chicago Bears.
Bill Simmons said that the Chicago Bears would be his pick to win the Super Bowl before Da Bears stomped the Seattle Seahawks in Seattle on Monday Night Football this week. Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and head coach Ben Johnson are getting deserved flowers from every pigskin pundit who's contributing to the internet, though. First Take asked its panel whether “Jeffery Simmons put the NFL on notice” after he chewed through the Seahawks offensive line while wearing bright orange sleeves in his Bears debut. I don’t really understand what that last take means, but First Take and pretty much every other show peddling takes on the sport Tuesday morning couldn’t stop talking about Simmons, Williams, Johnson, and the Bears. Sorry for quickly lifting one of the best Billisms, but should we all not grab a stool at the bar and ask the ’keep for four fingers of settle-down juice, neat? I’ll pound three shots of the Chicago Kool-Aid quickly, but let’s commit to taking our medicine after that.
- Caleb Williams is a top-four healthy quarterback in the league right now. Williams is the only non–Josh Allen, non–Patrick Mahomes QB who can do the things Allen and Mahomes do physically, yet Williams’s turnover avoidance is much closer to Aaron Rodgers’s than that of Allen or Mahomes. Williams is a Mahomes-Rodgers hybrid, with Mahomes’s dynamism and playmaking and Rodgers’s mentality on interceptions. Williams broke Rodgers’s record for consecutive games played with 20-plus passes and no more than one interception with his performance on Monday. Comparing Williams to Allen, Mahomes, and Rodgers is probably terrible and ridiculous, but here’s my counter: Caleb is one of one.
- Ben Johnson is in the Sean McVay–Kyle Shanahan tier of offensive play callers. Johnson is top-four, with Chiefs coach Andy Reid still in the legacy spot, but it isn’t out of the question for B.J. to eventually compete for the top spot with more time on task with Williams. Johnson is a star now with a ceiling as high as any coach in the league today.
- Simmons makes the defense better. Obviously. Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen has maximized his talent all year, but Simmons will make his job a whole lot easier. Though I’d argue he’s always had the league on notice as a three-time All-Pro and four-time Pro Bowler.
The settle-down juice should be an easy chaser after all of that. The Bears have an elite quarterback, coach, and play caller along with an improving defense thanks to new star power. Every other fan base is praying for days like the ones Chicago faithful are living now. We need to hit the SDJ only because, as we mentioned before, every fan is one moment away from crashing back down to earth or, worse, the pit of misery that Bears fans are very familiar with from the pre-Johnson, post–Lovie Smith years.
The Bears have one of the hardest remaining schedules in the NFL. The NFC North is uber-competitive. Injuries like Williams’s hamstring tear or the calf injury that was keeping CB Kyler Gordon out of the lineup to start the year always happen. Watch two weeks of the NFL and you’ll learn that things change fast, which is why so many coaches preach going 1-0 every week. Chicago is 0-0 this week and will host the Buccaneers on Sunday Night Football as touchdown favorites. The Bears will probably be big favorites coming out of their Week 10 bye at home against the Saints, too. The path to the crown everyone wants to bestow on the Bears’ heads in early November starts with going 2-0 at home over the next three weeks. Chicago would also be my pick to win the Super Bowl right now, and I think Williams and Johnson, with all respect to Joe Burrow and Andy Reid, are both third-best at their respective jobs. But that kind of hype can topple the best of the best if they get too high on their own supply, so let’s drink this down and revisit Chicago’s hopes and dreams in a month or so.
The Titans should let Robert Saleh scapegoat Brian Daboll and/or Cam Ward to buy himself another year in Tennessee.
Did you see that Giants head coach John Harbaugh called Tennessee Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk to express his interest in trading for Jeffery Simmons after Titans GM Mike Borgonzi told him no? Harbaugh’s move didn’t land the G-Men Simmons and instead just pissed some people off in Tennessee, but he’s not apologizing for anything. He also wasn’t wrong to go over Borgonzi’s head to try to get something done because it’s clear that Borgonzi, like Giants GM Joe Schoen, is a GM in name only and not actually in control of the roster. Adams Strunk is the one who knocks in Tennessee, not Borgonzi or new head coach Robert Saleh. And I can’t imagine she’s satisfied with Borgonzi’s or Saleh’s efforts to lead this roster out of the muck seeing as the Titans are 1-7 and franchise favorite Simmons is now off the roster, but maybe there are enough potential scapegoats for at least Saleh to sneak his way into a second year with the Titans.
First, an easy one ripe for sacrifice is offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. He hasn’t had a great offense after his 2020 and 2021 campaigns with Josh Allen, and he’s already a onetime failed head coach in New York. (Saleh is also a former failed head coach in New York, but maybe he can get away with blaming Zach Wilson and Aaron Rodgers for that shit show.) The second scapegoat, and I’m sure Saleh will need to lead at least two goats to slaughter to satisfy Adams Strunk, could be quarterback Cam Ward. The 2025 first overall pick has played as badly as any first-round quarterback has ever played in his first 1.5 seasons split between two bad coaching staffs.
Moving on from a highly drafted QB who is playing like shit can be easy; the Minnesota Vikings dumped the 2024 10th pick (J.J. McCarthy) for a fifth-rounder just a few internet years (weeks) ago. Maybe it’ll be easy for the Titans to do something similar with Ward, especially if they keep losing games and secure one of the top picks in the 2027 NFL draft. Giving Saleh second bites at the QB and OC apples he needs in order to escape the Glenn Zone feels comparable to Adam letting Eve pick the food for date night in the Garden of Eden. Passable, maybe even enjoyable for a time, but probably not worth it in the grand scheme of things. Ward could be a lot better in a new situation, like Josh Allen and Daniel Jones are away from Daboll, McCarthy is away from Kevin O’Connell and the Vikings, and Sam Darnold is away from Klint Kubiak.
Sam Darnold can win another Super Bowl with Seattle.
Darnold without Kubiak hasn’t been biblically tragic, but tragic nonetheless. Here’s a representative screenshot from Seahawks Reddit about how life is going for Darnold and Kubs’s replacement, first-year OC Brian Fleury.
The problem is that every fan base forced into the Darnold mines before he and Kubs struck gold together in 2025 would have had internet cronies trying to get Darnold arrested, not his offensive play caller. The narrative on Darnold before last year, even after the strong regular season he had in 2024 with Minnesota, was that he melted down in big spots or “saw ghosts” in the face of any kind of pressure, whether it was from a pass rush or the media. Seahawks fans are eagerly tucking Fleury under the bus because Darnold was hurt to start the year (hip) and is hurt again now (quad), and because the coordinator is easy bait as a first-year play caller. All that said, he was never going to be on Kubiak’s level. Plus, Kubiak took Seattle’s 2025 run game coordinator (Rick Dennison) and quarterbacks coach (Andrew Janocko) with him to Las Vegas.
Replacing Kubiak was always going to be difficult. In 2025, Kubiak funneled Seattle’s offense through wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba all year and Super Bowl MVP running back Kenneth Walker III through the winter months. Walker is gone now, and the Seahawks can’t get away with targeting JSN at the highest rate in the league without serviceable pass catchers around him forever. Those are problems that Fleury can’t solve with a banged-up Darnold captaining the ship and JSN as the only reliable scoring threat. And All-Pro guard Quenton Nelson, whom they acquired from the Colts for a third and a fifth before losing Monday night, won’t be a panacea. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald is still the best defensive play caller and arguably the top coach in the league; Seattle’s Super Bowl window can’t fully close as long as that’s the case. But Darnold’s chances of winning a Lombardi with Fleury in 2026 or anyone not named Kubiak or Shanahan in 2027 are poor, especially without any reliable offensive skill players beyond JSN. At this point it seems more likely that backup QB Drew Lock, who is expected to start Sunday at home against the Cardinals, will give Darnold the Drew Bledsoe treatment and lead the Seahawks back to the Super Bowl than it does that Darnold will pull off a repeat.
The Dolphins’ Malik Willis signing made sense.
Please, Miami Dolphins fans, explain this to me (takeometer@spotify.com) like I’m Jeremy Irons playing a head honcho in Margin Call who’s asking his quant to explain how complex math is causing his company to die beneath him. And please speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever after you read my best attempt to simplify the situation below.
More than 60 percent of the money the Dolphins can spend on their roster is dead and gone because it’s tied up in contracts for players no longer on the roster; most notably, Miami is paying QB Tua Tagovailoa $55 million in 2026 while he barely holds on to a backup job in Atlanta. They used most of what was left of their cash on a bunch of young, inexperienced players. Miami has one of the youngest teams in the league, with more than a dozen rookies on the 53-man roster. Because they’re a young and inexperienced team with a first-year, defensive-minded head coach (Jeff Hafley) with Glenn Zone potential, no one expected the Dolphins to win a ton of games in 2026. The Dolphins (1-6) aren’t winning a lot of games, and their best player (RB De’Von Achane) has been out with a torn ACL since Week 3. Yet the Fins have still been competitive most weeks, definitely more competitive than their record suggests, partly because their highest-paid player under contract for 2027 and 2028 is 27-year-old QB Malik Willis, a former third-rounder on his third team in five years with six career passing touchdowns before this season.
Willis has been better than bad, which has been enough to beat the Jets in a shoot-out coming off a bye and no one else yet. But was signing Willis to a three-year, $67.5 million contract with the little money Miami had in the coffers better than a cheaper bat swing on a late-round rookie or different veteran free agent? Best case is Willis plays above his contract in a big way, which hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon with the current roster. Second-best case is Willis plays so poorly that Miami is almost guaranteed the top pick in 2027. Third-best case (possibly the current situation) is Willis plays just well enough for Miami to compete in a lot of losses so it can start to build the right culture for the QB of the future it adds in the draft. Worst case is Willis plays just well enough for Miami to win too many games for a chance at the top QB in 2027 and/or Miami passes on a top QB for anyone other than Jeremiah Smith to build around Willis. The Willis contract doesn’t make sense for their timeline regardless because there were cheaper, arguably better bridge quarterbacks available in the offseason.
Miami is trying to shoot the moon by betting that Willis can either deliver a winning season or help them secure the top pick by bottoming out. Instead, they’re stuck in the middle with a bunch of middling potential outcomes until they quit this Willis nonsense and get serious about building a contender. Trading Willis at the deadline would make more sense than continuing this low-ceiling experiment beyond this week, and if your argument is that Miami couldn’t get anything for Willis, you’re actually making my point.
Deshaun Watson is ruining the Browns again.
The Willis deal isn’t even a full percentage point as stupid as the fully guaranteed, five-year, $230 million contract the Cleveland Browns gave quarterback Deshaun Watson after trading three first-round picks for him in 2022. But Watson has gone from all-time bad Browns quarterback to better than bad, like Willis, and Watson is similarly keeping the Browns in purgatory in a year when they were more prepared than ever to bench him.
New head coach Todd Monken named Watson the starter in August, but there was an expectation around the league that Watson would get benched for second-year QB Shedeur Sanders after Week 2, ahead of the team’s first home game. But Watson won the Week 2 game and four of the next five; Cleveland is 5-3 and competing with the Pittsburgh Steelers (6-2) and Cincinnati Bengals (5-2) for the AFC North. The Browns still aren’t favored to make the playoffs, but they’re firmly in the hunt, with Monken helping Watson to his best season as a Brown. And the defense is still in the top half of the league in success rate after losing star pass rusher Myles Garrett and defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.
There is a small chance that Watson will be Drew Bledsoed if he misses the game this week with a concussion and Sanders usurps him with a blazing performance in New Orleans, but the Browns have been competitive with Watson, and competitive teams don’t usually bench their starting quarterbacks. But assuming Watson starts in Week 10 at home against the Texans, he will continue to hold the team back with lazy ball placement and bad sacks. Watson’s sack-to-pressure rate (30 percent), a good metric for capturing how often quarterbacks turn pressure into sacks, is the worst in the NFL among QBs with 160-plus dropbacks this year. The others at 25 percent or below are the Jets’ Geno Smith, Chargers’ Justin Herbert, Vikings’ Kyler Murray, and Giants’ Jameis Winston. Watson is benefiting from a well-run Monken offense and a bunch of good skill players (TE Harold Fannin Jr., WR KC Concepcion, WR Denzel Boston, RB Quinshon Judkins). Watson has held the Browns back since the team acquired him in 2022 and will continue to do so beyond this season regardless of how things pan out the rest of this year.
The Browns will pay Watson $86 million not to play for the team in 2027 because of void years added to his disaster deal. And because Monken is maximizing Watson and every other player on the Browns’ 53-man roster, Cleveland probably won’t have a top-12 pick in April’s draft. Unless Cleveland's deal with the devil comes with a Super Bowl in 2027, this catastrophe’s crescendo will be as loudly bad as it has been since it started.
The Cardinals matter!
I almost cut this because I was pressed for time on deadline, but I can’t do that to Arizona Cardinals fans. Multiple Cardinals Meter Writers emailed me this week with sadness in their hearts because they—and I imagine other Arizona die-hards too—think that the national media doesn’t care about the Cardinals. They’re right, but I’ll take some parting Kool-Aid shots for my guys:
- Gardner Minshew once hammered his own hand while drunk on Jack Daniels to earn a redshirt year in college. He looks like a mustached cowboy and plays like one. Minshew is Ryan Fitzpatrick reincarnated; limited physically, but brimming with heart and effort. Minshew Mania or Magic (either works) is fun.
- It’s a bummer that rookie running back Jeremiyah Love is going on IR with another ankle injury. But he looks like USC-era O.J. Simpson when healthy.
- Veteran edge defender Josh Sweat is only 29 years old and on a relatively tradable contract. Maybe the Cards can get some decent draft capital for him and longtime safety Budda Baker at the deadline.
