{"id":266217,"date":"2025-11-06T09:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266217\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T09:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:30:08","slug":"nfl-season-2025-what-we-learned-from-first-half-of-the-season-best-teams-mvp-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266217\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL season 2025: What we learned from first half of the season, best teams &#038; MVP candidates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The New England Patriots are well ahead of schedule at 7-2 after two successive 4-12 seasons, with new head coach Mike Vrabel&#8217;s side on the joint-longest winning streak in the league with six in a row &#8211; including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/american-football\/articles\/cwy9ry74vezo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a statement primetime win over the Bills in Buffalo.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Pats have the sixth best defence in points allowed and the seventh best scoring offence so are really well balanced, and second-year quarterback Drake Maye has been the most accurate passer in the league so far.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nobody expected too much from Daniel Jones in Indianapolis but the much-maligned former Giants quarterback was superb in leading the league&#8217;s top scorers for eight weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It all came crashing down against Pittsburgh in week eight, with Jones doubling the team&#8217;s season totals for interceptions and fumbles, so they need to show who the real Colts are as their schedule starts to hot up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And could the tide finally be turning in Carolina? The Panthers are 5-4 and chasing a first winning season since 2017. Only one of those victories came against a side with a winning record, but it was the Packers on Sunday in what could be a statement success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Panthers will need to improve on their average 18.9 points a game on offence to make that more than a one-off, but the signs are positive at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New England Patriots are well ahead of schedule at 7-2 after two successive 4-12 seasons, with new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-266217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266217","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=266217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}