{"id":258478,"date":"2025-11-02T22:53:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T22:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/258478\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T22:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T22:53:13","slug":"nfl-week-9-winners-losers-bengals-fold-to-ruin-wild-comeback-vikings-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/258478\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Week 9 winners, losers: Bengals fold to ruin wild comeback, Vikings back?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Sunday, another full slate of NFL<\/a> action nearly in the books. And Week 9 delivered lots of drama, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n

Joe Flacco<\/a> unleashed another high-scoring attack for the Cincinnati Bengals<\/a>, only for the AFC North squad’s porous defense to steal the thunder (for the wrong reasons) once again. J.J. McCarthy<\/a> returned under center for the Minnesota Vikings<\/a> and didn’t get swallowed up by the rival Detroit Lions<\/a> on the road; quite the opposite, in fact.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, across the NFC North, the Green Bay Packers<\/a> went cold and suffered a stunning defeat. The Indianapolis Colts<\/a>‘ magical run in the AFC came to a halt against the suddenly stout Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a>. And the Denver Broncos<\/a> survived the Houston Texans<\/a>, who lost starting quarterback C.J. Stroud<\/a> due to injury.<\/p>\n

Basically, all the fireworks went off for the bulk of Week 9’s schedule, and it resulted in some surprising names serving as both victorious heroes and culprits of defeat. So which players, coaches and teams stood out the most, for better and worse?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Bengals challenge results in a Bears touchdown leading to one of the wildest finishes of the season<\/p>\n

\n Jordan Dajani <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some of Sunday’s biggest winners and losers across the league:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Winner: J.J. McCarthy<\/p>\n

The Vikings seemed destined to get steamrolled Sunday, with Carson Wentz<\/a> all but driven into the ground (and onto injured reserve), both units sapped of full health and energy, and McCarthy returning for just his third career NFL game in Detroit. Instead, the youngster injected much-needed life into Kevin O’Connell’s club on the road, shaking off five sacks and scoring three touchdowns to upset the Lions. The best part? Just like way back in Week 1, he saved some of his most confident stuff for late.<\/p>\n

Loser: Zac Taylor<\/p>\n

Taylor isn’t directly in charge of the Bengals’ defense, but how can you not face intense scrutiny when you’re the head coach of a team that’s now given up 500+ yards in three games this year, and lost back-to-back contests in which your emergency quarterback, Joe Flacco, helped put 38+ points on the board? This is now two years running where even Joe Burrow’s<\/a> availability — or any kind of prolific points-scoring — means almost nothing, because the “D” is so consistently soft and\/or devoid of talent.<\/p>\n

Winner: Mike Tomlin<\/p>\n

A week ago, Tomlin looked out of his league trying to squeeze results from an aging secondary at the close of a decisive defeat at the hands of the Packers. His inability to find answers spoiled an otherwise valiant effort from Aaron Rodgers<\/a>. A week later, Tomlin’s unit reversed its fortunes, with T.J. Watt<\/a>, Alex Highsmith<\/a> and the Steel City pass rush totally engulfing Daniel Jones<\/a>, who endured five sacks and five turnovers in easily his roughest outing as the Colts’ signal-caller. Pittsburgh hasn’t quite lost its edge just yet.<\/p>\n

Just as Tomlin’s Steelers rediscovered their grit, the man who shredded them in Week 8 went the other direction on Sunday. Love’s calling card is uncorking one of the NFL’s prettiest deep balls, but he slung it upwards for the sake of slinging it against the Carolina Panthers<\/a>, seemingly “chasing the big play,” as Packers coach Matt LaFleur later put it. As a result, the Panthers had an easy pick against the star quarterback and could’ve easily had another, riding another big day from Rico Dowdle<\/a> to a surprise 16-13 upset.<\/p>\n

The Bengals deserve all the heat they’re already getting over their inability to, say, wrap up on a single tackle after their wild loss to Chicago. But the Bears<\/a>‘ head man also deserves some credit for scheming up the attack that broke Al Golden’s defense. Caleb Williams<\/a> caught not one but two critical passes on trick plays dialed up by Johnson, and the creative designs also sprung loose a pair of surprise young standouts in Kyle Monangai<\/a> (176 rushing yards) and Colston Loveland<\/a> (six catches, 118 yards).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another Sunday, another full slate of NFL action nearly in the books. And Week 9 delivered lots of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[626,104986,64,63,22816,5360,5377,1268,1257,55565,1248,1252,5365,1277,1256,3055,1243,1255,1246,1282,629,1270,6582,88048,1239,593,152220,152221,152219,1241,92282,85,1284,152222,152223],"class_list":["post-258478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-aaron-rodgers","tag-alex-highsmith","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-johnson","tag-bengals","tag-c-j-stroud","tag-caleb-williams","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-carson-wentz","tag-chicago-bears","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-colston-loveland","tag-daniel-jones","tag-denver-broncos","tag-detroit-lions","tag-green-bay-packers","tag-houston-texans","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-j-j-mccarthy","tag-joe-burrow","tag-joe-flacco","tag-jordan-love","tag-kyle-monangai","tag-minnesota-vikings","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-week-9-recap","tag-nfl-week-9-takeaways","tag-nfl-winners-and-losers","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-rico-dowdle","tag-sports","tag-t-j-watt","tag-vikings-j-j-mccarthy","tag-week-9-winners-and-losers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}