$.01--Sometimes the shock value of seeing something truly unbelievable is the best lede.

Carolina Panthers 21, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 3

No, you’re not seeing things and I’m not drinking. The Panthers, the NFL’s worst team entering Week 7, the holders of the No. 1 overall pick after six weeks, the team that fired its head coach already, blew out the mighty Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Okay, the Bucs aren’t exactly who we thought they were. Tom Brady played indifferently behind an overmatched line. It’s not that Brady played poorly, but his play was far from legendary or inspiring. Tampa has zero run game threat and the Panthers knew it. Missed opportunities abounded all day long, and it started early with Mike Evans dropping Brady’s best throw of the day on the very first drive.

P.J. Walker outplayed Brady, in part because Panthers interim coach Steve Wilks let him try. The Panthers had positive energy and some offensive creativity despite dealing away their best player in RB Christian McCaffrey (more on that later). Tampa Bay’s staid, uninspired offense was way too easy to defend, and Brady was not nearly special enough to overcome an offense as predictable as winding up at Waffle House at 3 a.m. when you’re a drunk college student.

Amazingly, the Buccaneers are 3-4, but remain in first place in the NFC South. The Panthers were the only team in the division to win this weekend and find themselves just one game out of first place. This despite playing with a third-string QB and trading away McCaffrey and sometime-starting WR Robbie Anderson in the last week. Carolina might not be good, but they’re at least showing life after the coaching change. Showing life is not something anyone will accuse the Bucs or Brady of doing in the last two weeks, losses to two of the NFL’s five worst teams.

$.02--Denver was preheated and ready for Russell Wilson to cook in 2022. The quarterback was brought in at a hefty premium to mater chef all the disparate ingredients into a playoff stew.

Instead of cooking up something beautiful, Wilson’s arrival has resulted in Broncos fans turning into a collective Gordon Ramsay. The angry fans didn’t even get to vent their hot heads on Sunday with the Jets in town; Wilson missed the Week 7 game with a hamstring injury, the severity of which had knives drawn all over Denver.

Instead of perennial MVP candidate Wilson at the helm, the fans got to watch Brett Rypien face the upstart Jets. Some fans weren’t even upset to see the anonymous backup in place of Wilson, who has been a mess of an acquisition. Rypien didn’t do much cooking either in Denver’s 16-9 loss to the “other” Wilson in the AFC, Jets QB Zach. New York did almost nothing offensively outside of flashy rookie RB Breece Hall breaking off an early 62-yard run. Alas, Hall suffered a knee injury later and is feared to be lost for the season, a huge blow to the 5-2 Jets. That’s a record Denver probably thought it would have cooked up at this point.

Back to Wilson. This was The Year. He was brought in to win in 2022. They emptied the pantry for Wilson. Two first-round picks, two second-round picks, two effective starters and a backup QB who might be better than Rypien (Drew Lock). Just for good measure, the Broncos gave Wilson $245 million, a figure that chews up a big chunk of any cap room needed to add the much-needed new ingredients. This is likely the best team Denver will field around Wilson over the duration of his contract, barring an insane amount of luck with the scant draft assets the Broncos have left. Sometimes the top-shelf ingredients bought with the best of intentions for the new master chef go rotten. And right now it’s rotten in Denver.

$.03--While the Carolina Panthers are not expected to sell off all their fine young assets, they did part ways with the franchise’s most identifiable player this week. Carolina dealt RB Christian McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers in a deal designed to dump a very bad contract and acquire some much-needed draft capital.

Aside from the disheartening reality for Panthers fans that McCaffrey is now gone, it’s a grand slam of a trade for Carolina and GM Scott Fitterer. McCaffrey’s contract is among the worst in professional sports, a four-year, $64 million deal that has already been restructured twice since he signed it in 2020. In that timeframe, McCaffrey has been on the field for 19 of the 39 possible games for the Panthers. They’ve won five of those games in spite of McCaffrey’s best efforts as one of the most dynamic dual threats out of the backfield in the league.

While there were many alleged suitors for McCaffrey’s services, the winning bid is a peculiar one. The 49ers under Kyle Shanahan are a team noted for being able to manufacture considerable production from the RB position with largely anonymous, eminently replaceable backs. Jeff Wilson, the current feature back before McCaffrey’s arrival, was averaging 4.9 YPC and was 12th in the league in rushing yardage. McCaffrey is 13th. Not bad for a guy like Wilson who makes less than 10 percent of what McCaffrey gets paid, eh?

Obviously, McCaffrey adds significant value as a receiver and a matchup-dictating chess piece. For a coach like Shanahan saddled with an uncreative but effective paint-by-numbers QB in Jimmy Garoppolo, that’s a boon. I do think it’s something of an overreaction to getting smoked by the Falcons last week, but the 49ers are hoping to strike while the Rams struggle and the Seahawks come back to earth from their improbably great start. Sticking the Panthers with almost all of the cash tab on McCaffrey for 2022 makes it a much more palatable deal. Expect a restructure this offseason, if not sooner, to guarantee some of McCaffrey’s $12 million salary but also considerably lower that figure.

McCaffrey actually played for his new team on Sunday. He netted 38 yards on eight carries and also caught two passes for 24 yards in the 49ers’ 44-23 loss to the Chiefs. Turns out that shuffling the running backs in a system doesn’t do much to help an overhyped defensive front, thin receiving corps and inconsistent secondary after all.

$.04--The Seattle Seahawks are in first place in the NFC West. Pete Carroll’s surprising Seahawks improved to 4-3 with an easier-than-expected 37-23 romp over the host Chargers in Los Angeles.

LIke many people, I forecasted the Seahawks to be bottom feeders in a strong division. The Wilson trade, the departure of LB Bobby Wagner, so many seemingly mismatched pieces and parts, it was easy to rank the Seahawks near the bottom of the league. Yet here they are at 4-3 and in first place.

How?

Geno Smith deserves considerable credit. The journeyman quarterback has bounced around with nondescript, slightly disappointing play for a decade. Entering the season, Geno (he’s always just Geno, like Cher) had thrown more INTs than TDs in his career. Choosing him as the starter was one big reason why so many of us doubted Seattle and Carroll. But Smith is having a great season at 32. He leads the league in completion percentage at over 72 percent an dhi syards per attempt are an impressive 8.0. Geno has 11 TDs to just 3 INTs, reversing his career narrative.

It helps that Geno is playing behind the best line Seattle has fielded since Steve Hutchinson and Walter Jones were rocking the world. That offensive line is sparked by two rookie tackles, Charles Cross and Abraham Lucas, who are part of an epic early-impact draft class. And that’s the real catalyst for the promising start in Seattle.

Cross has been very good at left tackle. Lucas has been outstanding on the right side since a rough Week 1, living up to the preseason hype I put on him. Hitting on two top-100 draft picks is great. But the Seahawks aren’t done there. Second-round RB Kenneth Walker keyed Sunday’s win 168 yards and two rushing TDs, looking very much like a long-term standout for Seattle. On defense, fifth-round CB Tariq Woolen is a viable rookie of the year candidate. Bryant, the fourth-rounder from Cincinnati, has played well above his draft status, too.

It’s been a few years since the Seahawks were a feel-good team. Not many organizations would have given Carroll and GM John Schneider as much leash as they’ve been given to rebuild. Good for the first-place Seahawks.

$.05--In an announcement that largely went under the national radar, the Tennessee Titans and the city of Nashville revealed plans for a new stadium for the team. It will be a mix of public and private funds to replace Nissan Stadium as the home of the Titans.

If you’re thinking Nissan Stadium, not to mention the Titans, are not that old, you’re not wrong. That facility opened in 1999 (as Adelphia Stadium) and seats over 62,000. It’s a perfectly fine football stadium, albeit one in need of some modernization. And that’s where the rub comes in.

The Titans claim Nissan Stadium needs $1.84 billion in renovations and upgrades to remain a viable facility. That figure is the subject of considerable consternation, but the long and the short of it is that it’s a direct message from ownership that they demand a new stadium. They left the “or else” part unsaid. Remember, this is a team that moved from Houston under eerily slimiar circumstances less than 30 years ago. Nissan Stadium, as in need of renovations as it might be, is nothing close to the antiquated, unusable money pit that the Astrodome had become that forced that move.

So now the plan is to build a $2.2 billion domed facility that can host events year-round. Granted, I’m not that familiar with Nashville but there doesn’t seem to be a lack of venues for concerts or shows in Music City. The only time I’ve been in the actual stadium was for the Music City Bowl in late December a few years back, and the weather wasn’t awful for the three-quarters filled stadium. Then again I’m from the Great Lakes so not having feet of snow or polar vortex winds during the holiday season makes pretty much anything seem tolerable.

It never hurts to field a winning team when news like this breaks, and the Titans seized control of the AFC South with a 19-10 win over the Indianapolis Colts. Come for the Derrick Henry (128 rushing yards) hype, stay for the Andrew Adams pick-6 off Matt Ryan in the second quarter that was the game’s tipping point.

Fans in other cities with similarly aged stadiums (Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, New England) will need to keep a wary eye on what happens with the stadium issue in Tennessee.

$.06--I’ll quote my 17-year-old son as he inhaled his 7th string cheese of the evening:

“Green Bay, what the hell?”

Good question, kid!

The Packers are 3-4 after getting humbled by Taylor Heinicke and the Commanders, 23-21. Aaron Rodgers and his Green Bay mates now have a losing record after losing three in a row. What’s legitimately scary for Green Bay is that the Giants, Jets and now Commanders have clearly been the better team in those three games over the Packers.

There are many fingers to point. Aaron Rodgers has not played to his usual standards, though it’s hard to blame him with their porous, injury-riddled OL and greenhorn receiving corps. There is no trust from Rodgers with anyone around him and it shows. His eccentric, vapid persona doesn’t make it so easy for the newcomers like Romeo Doubs and Sammy Watkins to trust him back, either.

In many situations, a team teetering on the brink of a collapse out of contention would move on from the aging quarterback after the season. The Packers have shown a freakish amount of tolerance and patience with Rodgers, whose MVP-worthy play allowed the team to put up with him being weirdly recalcitrant. Now that he’s not at that level anymore, will that be enough to persuade the Packers to move on? Or will Rodgers himself force the issue as he’s threatened to do in the last couple of offseasons?

Either way, it’s not a good time to be a Packers fan. About the only saving grace is that division rivals Chicago and Detroit are even bigger messes right now.

$.07--One of the fixtures of covering the NFL is the weekly power polls ranking the teams. Nearly everyone updates those each Tuesday. It’s a surprisingly difficult chore this season for those who actually try to put some thought into their rankings.

The top tier is easy: Philadelphia, Buffalo, Kansas City. The next tier includes the Giants, Jets, Cowboys, Vikings, and maybe the Titans. After that? Good luck. There are 14 teams with either 3 or 4 wins. Eight more have two wins. The difference between the No. 10 team and the No. 25 team is paper-thin. One week Cincinnati can be 23rd, the next the Bengals are 11th (look for that this week after their impressive win). In looking at one specific poll, I’ve seen the Miami Dolphins go from 5th to 24th in a three-week span. And both positions are largely justifiable.

I used to hop into the weekly power poll hamster wheel. No more. Last year’s Cardinals were the final nail in that coffin. Arizona went from being No. 1 and the last team to lose a game to being one of the worst teams in the final eight weeks with the snap of two fingers.

Who will be this year’s second-half surprises like last year’s Cardinals? The obvious guess is the 6-1 Giants, though games against the lowly Bears, Lions and Commanders in a 4-week period provide a nice cushion for some regression to the mean. I’ll aim a little lower with the team that I expect to fall off badly: the Chargers. Injuries are a massive issue, but every week OC Joe Lombardi is calling the shots for great young QB Justin Herbert is a week too long. The man who once neutered a Lions offense that featured Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, Golden Tate and Reggie Bush is working his black magic in Los Angeles now. Make it stop, Tom Telesco…

$.08--NFL quickies

--I wasn’t able to see any of the Bengals win over the Falcons. Feels like this graphic from Next Gen Stats probably sums it up nicely:

--The New York Giants are 6-1. Daniel Jones has been a lot better than advertised. Consider this factoid:

Just as Kevin Stefanski did in Cleveland in 2020, Brain Daboll winning NFL coach of the year as a rookie is a very real possibility.

--I caught most of the national broadcast of the Chiefs-49ers game and once again came away thoroughly impressed with Greg Olsen as the color commentator on FOX. After dealing with Tony Romo verbally fellating Dak Prescott for three hours in the early window, Olsen’s objectivity and spontaneous analysis was a welcome addition to my ears.

--Don’t sleep on the Chiefs D:

$.09--College/Draft quickies

I produced a mock draft late last week. The quickies here deal primarily with reactions to the mock…

--C.J. Stroud is easily the top QB prospect for me. Don’t scout the Buckeye helmet and think of disappointments like Justin Fields (blame the Bears equally please) or Art Schlichter. Stroud has pinpoint accuracy, great command of the entire field and loads of intangibles to go with his impressive physical tools. NFL teams might differ, but I’m very sold on Stroud as the No. 1 pick.

--Lions fans are generally aghast that I eschewed QB with both their first-round picks. After Sunday’s turnover festival in Dallas from Jared Goff, I might like a do-over. Goff’s play the last two weeks has been bad enough to make me reconsider, but not at No. 3 if Stroud is gone. Someone like Cameron Ward or Anthony Richardson with the Rams pick is looking a lot more appealing to me now.

--I did not include trades because it’s way too messy and completely premature to include hypothetical trades into hypothetical projections. However, it would be odd if the Seahawks kept all four of their picks in the first two rounds. They’re in prime position to make a deal for an impact vet next offseason.

Back to college…

--Playing in what might be the greatest helmets ever, TCU rallied from an 11-point halftime deficit to beat Kansas State. The Frogs got a little lucky with KSU missing two field goals, but the TCU defense rose up and bought time for QB Max Duggan to figure things out. The Frogs remain unbeaten and have beaten three top-20 teams in the last four weeks.

--Hats off to Bo Nix. The Auburn transfer had the game of his life in Oregon’s huge win over UCLA. Don’t go overboard with potential draft hype for Nix, but give the young man credit--that might be the best quarterbacked game we see all season.

$.10--It’s youth sports tryout season for most places around the country. Basketball, volleyball, hockey and swimming (among other winter/indoor sports) are ramping up for the seasons.

My oldest is now 17 and a junior, so he’s a little beyond the range. High school basketball players don’t roll into club/travel/AAU season and tryouts until March. But for my 14-year-old, 8th-grade daughter, it’s prime time to try out and decide where and what she’s going to play.

For parents just entering the wonderful, wild world of travel youth sports, it can be an ominous and dangerous place. Expensive too. Between team fees, equipment, hotels, driving to/from practices and tournaments up to four times a week and all the random meals eaten in the car, it adds up quickly.

Here are a few things I’ve learned from being in that world for the last few years of basketball, volleyball, and even tennis seasons. Note that this applies more to travel teams and competitive play above the standard youth rec league.

  1. It’s about your kid, not you. You cannot force them to like it or be good at it, even as badly as you want them to thrive. Your own frustration at not getting a basketball scholarship doesn’t mean anything to your 12-year-old son who might rather be diving or wrestling. Let them lead the way as you hold their hand from behind, not dragging them along.

  2. Respect the officials and teach your kids to do the same. This isn’t easy; it’s something I’ve battled with myself. It took time and for my son to tell me to shut up once for me to learn. He hasn’t had to ask again. The sports do not run without the officials, many of whom do it as a side gig to make ends meet. They’re human. They’re going to screw up. They’re also not hellbent on making sure your precious Charlotte is unduly victimized by their decisions, no matter how much you want to believe it.

  3. Never say one negative word about another kid while you’re in the stands. Someone who loves that kid you can’t stand might be sitting next to you. If your kid is talented, there’s a fair chance they’ll wind up being teammates at some point. Also, never poison your own kid’s opinion of another player. Sports are a great way to learn how to interact in stressful situations and observe people they might not otherwise encounter in their bubbles. Learning how to make those judgments on their own is a great skill, particularly above 7th grade.

  4. Let them fail! Two years ago my daughter was probably the weakest player on her travel volleyball team. She didn’t know rotations; she was a newcomer to an established team and the pressure to try and prove herself led to some poor play. She could have decided it was too hard or frustrating and dropped down a level, if not just leave for a different club.

But she was motivated by not having success. Even at 12 years old, she knew she could do better and strove to make that happen. Now I’m proud to say she’s one of the top players at the same club with most of the same teammates. I’ve seen that with other kids too. Learning how to respond to personal failure is a critical life skill. Sports teach that better than anything else I know of. Your kid will fail, probably quite spectacularly. That’s a good thing. Let it happen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run one kid to some practice, somewhere in the general area. Get used to that too…