Dan GrazianoOct 5, 2025, 11:38 PM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on X
play2:24Why Shanahan, Saleh deserve credit for 49ers’ win over RamsTom Pelissero joins “The Rich Eisen Show” to recap the 49ers’ gritty win over the Rams on Thursday night.
Denver Broncos vs. Philadelphia Eagles Game Highlights (1:01)Denver Broncos vs. Philadelphia Eagles Game Highlights (1:01)
Why Shanahan, Saleh deserve credit for 49ers’ win over RamsTom Pelissero joins “The Rich Eisen Show” to recap the 49ers’ gritty win over the Rams on Thursday night.
Tom Pelissero joins “The Rich Eisen Show” to recap the 49ers’ gritty win over the Rams on Thursday night.
Nik Bonitto is going to win Defensive Player of the Year
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — I stopped by MetLife Stadium on Sunday to cover Cowboys-Jets, and I don’t think it’s an overreaction to say the 2025 Jets probably aren’t going to contend for a playoff spot. “Work in progress” is probably the most charitable way to describe coach Aaron Glenn’s bunch. But the Cowboys will take the win, and it’s not an overreaction to say that Dallas’ defense played its best game of the season so far. Or that quarterback Dak Prescott is playing at an extremely high level.
With that in mind, let’s start the Week 5 overreactions column — where we sort through the weekly overreactions to try to figure out which ones might hold up and which ones are mirages — with the first game of the week, a thrilling overtime NFC West matchup from Thursday night.
Jump to: Are 49ers true NFC contenders? Is Nik Bonitto the DPOY favorite? A.J. Brown will force a midseason trade? Baker Mayfield in the MVP mix? Patriots a playoff team? Fantasy overreactions!
If you spent Thursday afternoon and early evening wondering whether the 49ers would be able to come up with 11 players to suit up against the Rams that night, you probably weren’t alone. San Francisco rolled into Week 5 as beaten up as any team in the league, missing its starting quarterback, top three receivers, Pro Bowl tight end and star edge rusher, to name a few.
Backup quarterback Mac Jones was starting to look like the Black Knight from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as the game went along, but he kept putting himself back together and going back into the game. The Niners won in overtime to improve to 4-1, dropping the Rams to 3-2, and now are in first place in their division with victories over each of the other three division contenders.
Why Shanahan, Saleh deserve credit for 49ers’ win over Rams
The biggest win of Sunday’s early window was the Broncos’ comeback from 14 down in the fourth quarter to hand the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles their first loss of the season. The Denver defense was a huge part of it, and Bonitto led the way with 2.5 sacks. He now has six sacks in his past three games and seven for the season as the Denver defense is rounding into the form that was expected of it before the campaign started.
Bonitto finished ninth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting last season, when his teammate, cornerback Pat Surtain II, won the award. And right now Bonitto is on pace to easily surpass his 2024 total of 13.5 sacks — not to mention the single-season NFL record of 22.5 sacks.
Denver’s defense looks like an elite unit, and the next couple of weeks present it with potential stat-padding games against the Jets and Giants. The Broncos have stumbled a little bit in the early going and are just 3-2. But they were a playoff team last season and have reasons to believe they can get on a roll and contend again this season, even in the tough AFC West.
If they push the Chiefs for the division title or even win it, voters will be looking for awards candidates from the Broncos’ roster. Bonitto is off to the type of start that awards front-runners have.
Sunday saw teammate DeVonta Smith catch eight passes for 114 yards, but Brown had only five catches for 43 yards on eight targets. Brown is being paid like one of the top receivers in the league but isn’t being used like one, and he has made it clear he’d like to be more involved — not to pad his stats, but because he thinks he can help make the offense better and more consistent. He’s not wrong, but right now Philly still isn’t on track on that side of the ball.
The Eagles didn’t win Sunday, and last year’s superstar, running back Saquon Barkley, had only 30 rushing yards on six carries (though he had three catches for 58 yards and a touchdown). So obviously things need to be tweaked if this Eagles offense is going to do what it needs to do. Maybe not being undefeated anymore will help convince Eagles coaches that something needs to change before this season starts looking more like their 2023 collapse than their 2024 triumph.
The 4-1 Buccaneers are the most exciting team in the NFL. In each of their four wins, they scored the winning points in the final minute of the game, and in their only loss they were driving in a two-minute drill that came up short.
Mayfield was unbelievable Sunday, completing 29-of-33 passes for 379 yards and a pair of touchdowns in a back-and-forth, thrilling victory over Seattle. He has 10 touchdown passes and one interception in five games. It’s also worth noting that Mayfield, in his third season in Tampa Bay, is already on his third offense coordinator because the previous two are now head coaches elsewhere.
The Bucs have no business being 4-1. But their infrastructure and culture are as solid as any team’s, and Mayfield is a huge part of that. He has gone from journeyman to stabilizing force in three years in Tampa, where the team is pushing for a fifth straight division title and (it hopes) even more this time.
There are paths to the playoffs for this Patriots team, and again, winning in Buffalo tells them they can win pretty much anywhere. Don’t be surprised to see New England still playing in January.
Derrick Henry is not an RB1 if Lamar Jackson is out: NOT AN OVERREACTION. If you have Henry, you’re still playing him, and you can’t trade him at his current value. But obviously the threat of Jackson as a runner makes things easier on Henry, and not having Jackson means teams can key on the veteran running back. But other than Week 1, Henry hasn’t been an RB1 this season even with Jackson in the lineup. Adjust expectations. This season is slipping away from the Ravens in a hurry.
Fantasy managers should cash in on Emeka Egbuka’s max trade value: OVERREACTION. If you’re selling, I want in. This kid is not a flash in the pan, and I don’t think his role is going to shrink very much once Evans is back from injury. Egbuka is a first-round pick who scores a touchdown every week. The team loves him. The quarterback loves him. He can play any of the WR positions in Tampa Bay’s offense, and he’s a building block for their future. Hold or try to obtain.
Nick Bosa being out for the season might be what keeps the Niners from being the type of elite Super Bowl contender they were a couple of years ago, when they held a lead in overtime of Super Bowl LVIII before losing to Kansas City. But other than that, they’re pretty much guaranteed to get healthier, and their schedule does not appear to get harder. They have a tough road game at Tampa Bay next weekend, but after that they play only two more games against teams that made last year’s playoffs, and the last of those games is Nov. 9.
The Bucs have a brutal list of injuries for a 4-1 team. They have two starting offensive linemen out with injuries, another (left tackle Tristan Wirfs) who missed the first three games of the season and another (Mike Jordan) who was filling in admirably before he got hurt. Top receiver Mike Evans has missed the past two games with a hamstring injury. Fellow wideout Chris Godwin missed the first three weeks coming back from last year’s season-ending ankle injury. Wide receiver Jalen McMillan, so promising as a rookie in 2024, is out until at least late in the season. Starting running back Bucky Irving missed Sunday’s game with an injury. The defense is down three starters.
Mike Vrabel’s bunch went into Buffalo for a Sunday night “white out” game and was not intimidated in the slightest. The Patriots took it to the first-place Bills from the opening kickoff to grab a 23-20 victory. New England took the ball away from Buffalo three times, which is very rare. The Patriots are 3-2, just one game behind a five-time defending division champion that had beaten them eight times in their previous 11 chances. This was the kind of victory that must build the confidence of a young team learning how to win around second-year QB Drake Maye.
Don’t look now, but the AFC has some open postseason spots we didn’t necessarily expect it to have. Baltimore is 1-4 and in massive trouble. Cincinnati is 2-3 and spiraling without injured QB Joe Burrow. The Chiefs are probably going to be fine, but they’re still just 2-2 heading into Monday night’s game and don’t feel like the sure thing they usually are. The Chargers started out great but have lost both starting tackles to injury and dropped their past two games after a 3-0 start. The Texans are 2-3.
You must pick up Rico Dowdle: NOT AN OVERREACTION. With Carolina starting running back Chuba Hubbard missing the game because of injury, Dowdle rushed for 206 yards and a touchdown on 23 carries in the Panthers’ victory over Miami. Hubbard will be back, and the team gave him a big contract extension last year, but it also signed Dowdle in free agency this year, and Hubbard’s contract has no guaranteed money past 2025. If you have Hubbard on your roster, Dowdle is a must-stash even when Hubbard returns. If you don’t, pick up Dowdle anyway because you never know. Maybe the Hubbard manager in your league will overpay for Dowdle in a trade.