What’s Hot and What’s Knott in Football – Week 5

By Rhys Knott

Some alarming trends appeared this week, the fifth week of the football season. The headline acts of the Week 5 s***fest were October becoming a summer month, blocking field goals and interceptions.  

16 different quarterbacks threw the football to a defender (three more than last week). And four threw multiple interceptions.

Aaron Rodgers led the way with three, although his third interception looked like a perfect throw to Mike Williams. But instead of coming back to catch the football Williams appeared to run a corner route. 

What’s Hot in Football – Week 5

The Giants, Steelers, Buccaneers, and the 49ers all blocked field goals. Both the Dolphins and Bengals missed field goals after bad snaps. And, as if that wasn’t remarkable enough, Younghoe Koo, who had been 9/9 heading into Week 5, missed consecutive attempts. 

An offsides penalty negated the 30-year-old’s 46-yard miss, only for him to drag the subsequent 41-yard attempt wide left in a similar fashion. Must have been a full moon or something?

The Commanders are third in the National Football League standings, so there must be something supernatural going on.

It is spooky SZN after all, Jayden Daniels only completed 56% of his passes this week too (my money’s on a witch’s curse). But the Browns are a disaster (more on that later).

Heat was definitely hot this week, especially in San Francisco where the mercury touched 37° C! That can’t have been much fun in a football stadium already known as a sun trap. The Cardinals didn’t seem to mind though

But the extraordinarily high temperatures affect do the football. High pressure associated with high temperature causes the ball to expand! Anyone who’s played golf in winter and summer knows the ball travels further in hot weather.

That explains why there were three interceptions thrown in Levis Stadium then. Or that’s what Kyler Murray and Brock Purdy will tell you.

Temperatures in Houston reached 34° C by the end of the Bills visit to NRG Stadium too. And it was hot in Colorado, but 26° is positively chilly by comparison. October 2024 is giving August vibes. 

Houston joined in with another Week 5 trend too, winning games with ugly football. Dropping massive clangers became de rigueur in Week 5 and the Texans really leaned into it.

They were flagged for seven penalties. They turned the football over twice, and averaged just 3.4 yards per run.

But Josh Allen went 9/30 against DeMeco Ryans’ defense. Texans kicker John Christian Ka’iminoeauloameka’ikeo’s (to give him his full name) won the game for the home team. But that was largely because the Bills went three and out in the final minute of the game. Allen threw three incomplete passes shortly after his head bounced off the turf.

The Vikings fell squarely into the “clunky football” category too. Their offense seemed a bit lost once Aaron Jones’ “hip injury”. Even Brian Flores’ defense looked all at sea when they weren’t blitzing. Aaron Rodgers found open receivers when Flores chose to drop defenders back into zone coverages. 

The Cowboys had their own issues. Dallas fumbled the football twice, had a field goal blocked and Dak Prescott threw two interceptions, but they still scraped past the Steelers in a game that finished at 1 am Eastern! 

Kirk Cousins wasn’t just hot in Week 5, he reached the sort of temperature that makes meteorologists have to use new colours on maps. The 36-year-old quarterback threw the football 58 times (!!!) in the divisional matchup against the Buccaneers. That’s far from ideal, he took four sacks after dropping back so many times, and it he is now on pace to throw 602 passes in 2024!  

Cousins has only thrown more than 600 passes three times in his 13-year career. He threw 643 times in 2022 when the Vikings went 13-4 but crashed out of the playoffs in the Wildcard round. 

It wasn’t just the number of times that Cousins threw the football that makes him hot in Week 5, his 509 yards through the air put him in a rather exclusive club. Quarterbacks have only thrown for 500 yards 25 times in the history of the NFL. Even more impressively than that, just 22 quarterbacks have achieved the feat. 

Cousins 509 yards is a new Falcons record and the first 500-yard game since Joe Burrow put 525 yards on the Ravens back in 2021!

Just in case you’re wondering what the most passing yards in a game are, that record belongs to Norm Van Brocklin.  

Nicknamed “The Dutchman”, even though he was born in South Dakota, Van Brocklin racked up 554 yards for the Rams against the New York Yanks. And if you have no idea who the New York Yanks (no sniggering at the back) were it’s important to know Van Brocklin set this record in 1951! 

The Yanks (what did I say about sniggering) were an All America Football Conference team that played, unsurprisingly, at Yankee Stadium. When the AAFC became “absorbed” into the NFL the Yanks team emerged as an amalgamation between the New York Bulldogs and the Brooklyn-New York Yankees teams.  

By far the most noteworthy thing about the Yanks is that they drafted Tom Landry in the 19th round (the Giants drafted Landry in the 20th round of the 1946 draft too) of the 1948 AAFC draft.

Landry would only play one season for the Yanks, but he played as quarterback, running back, punter, and cornerback.

Landry’s playing career would end in 1955, good job he could coach.

Not to be outdone, Baker Mayfield is also hot. The former Oklahoma Sooner ended the game with a higher passer rating than Cousins.

Mayfield only threw the football 24 times, but he only threw five incompletions. The 29-year-old now has a 7.2% touchdown percentage in 2024, second in the league to only Sam Darnold. 

Joe Burrow was positively scorching too, he threw the football for 392 yards and five touchdowns, Joey Franchise ended the game against the Ravens with the best passer rating of the week, 137.5. Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase did their best to make Zac Taylor’s team look competent.

Chase’s 193 receiving yards also led the league, but the Bengals defense allowed the Ravens to rack up 520 yards and conceded 41 points. Not many teams win with that sort of defense. 

Tyrone Tracy Jr. is Week 5’s unlikeliest hot property, so unlikely that you may never hear his name again. Tracy ran the football for 129 yards at an average of 7.2 yards per carry!

The Seahawks defense had 13 players on their injury report though! Four of those players were defensive tackles and they included Pro Bowler Leonard Williams. 

What’s not in football - Week 5

On the other side of the Thursday Night Football coin, obviously, Younghoe Koo’s consecutive shanks were Knott. But the OT rules are even more Knott! The game at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium only highlighted how nonsensical the first-touchdown-wins rule is.

If both teams struggle to get any offense going for the entire game the field goal-fest continues ad inifinitum. But when both offenses are marching up and down the field with consummate ease the game is decided by the toss of coin.

Who can honestly say they didn’t want to see what how Baker Mayfield faired in overtime? And Mike Evans catching his 100th touchdown pass in professional football against a divisional rival, in overtime? Yes, please. 

The Colts were very much Knott (except Alec Pierce and his 44.7 yards per reception), they continued their 10-year losing streak in Jacksonville.

It appeared that Doug Pederson had taken over play-calling duties from Press Taylor. But nobody should be losing to a Jaguars football team with no Evan Engram.

No self-respecting defense should let Jacksonville, who hadn’t scored more than 20 points in a game in the first month of the season, score 37 points. 

From Joe Flacco’s current football team to his previous team (and boy do they miss him) the Browns could only average 4.9 yards per completion against the Commanders and committed nine penalties.

Kevin Stefanski has the look of a coach who has been told Deshaun Watson has to play however terrible his play is. It doesn’t get any more Knott than that. 

RHYS KNOTT

NFL/FANTASY FOOTBALL ANALYST

Rhys has been watching the NFL for 30 something years and still hasn’t managed to pick a team to support. When he’s not fixatED on pass rushers you can find him blithering on about most sports on Twitter @wrhys_writes

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