As always, the NFL manages to remain wildly compelling on many fronts even when the games themselves aren’t. From the trade deadline to the potential sale of a franchise, Week 9 gave us a little bit of this and a little of that…

$.01--For just $5.5 billion dollars, you can now purchase the Washington Commanders! Disgraced majority owner Daniel Snyder has hired Bank of America to help him sell the team in the wake of several related but different scandals.

While it’s not official that Snyder is selling the Commanders outright, the move to bring in an outside company to find buyers is a definite sign that Washington could finally be liberated from the rancorous toxicity that Snyder brings to the team and the NFL overall. After the recent owners' meeting, where Snyder faced direct confrontation from the likes of Colts owner Jim Irsay, there might finally be some progress in the widespread movement to get Snyder out. After Congressional investigations into the finances and numerous documented instances of a toxic, sexist workplace, it’s about damn time.

What, you don’t have $5.5 billion in cash or liquidity to make it happen? Yeah, me neither. Even if I won the Powerball (I didn’t), I’m still barely 20 percent of the way. And therein lies one of the issues for the NFL as it actively efforts to rid itself of Snyder. There simply aren’t many people in the world who can afford to buy in at such an inflated price in this worldwide inflationary economy. That $5.5B is probably a low-end estimate, too. Finding individuals who aren’t as odious as Snyder and who can afford it without leveraging away their lives shrinks the pool of candidates to a handful. The same sort of people who launder money by being able to buy 500,000 Powerball tickets in hopes they don’t win because of the tax burden.

As this potential sale spins forward, pay attention to two things: everything included in the sale and the presence and contribution of any minority (not ethnicity but rather secondary money) partners to help the primary owner. The Commanders desperately need a new stadium, and public funding for a new stadium anywhere close to that market is about as likely as Mauritania winning the World Cup. Stadiums aren’t cheap. Real estate isn’t either. One thing I heard speculated is that the NFL might need to help foot the bill for a new owner to get that done. That would be a sure sign the NFL wants to get rid of Snyder, putting their money where their mouths increasingly are.

$.02--Tuesday marked the NFL’s trade deadline. What used to be an uneventful landmark continues to evolve into an intriguing new world where teams are increasingly willing to become sellers and buyers. And the league is better for it, even if the fans of the selling teams are raising a hasty white flag not even halfway through the season.

As with most everything in life, trades come from different motivations for different situations.

Take my Detroit Lions. The 1-6 (at the time) Lions traded away Pro Bowl TE T.J. Hockenson at the deadline, sending Hockenson to division rival Minnesota for a couple of Day 2 picks. This wasn’t necessarily a white flag hoist by Detroit on 2022. This was a white flag on Hockenson himself due to his upcoming contract ($9.4M in 2023) and demands ($15M a year minimum), and taking advantage of a dire positional need by the Vikings. Minnesota lost starting TE Irv Smith to injury and needed a receiving-oriented tight end to replace him and remain as legit NFC contenders.

Hockenson caught nine passes for 70 yards in his Vikings debut, a competitive Minnesota road win over the Commanders. That’s a great initial return on investment for rookie GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. But just because the Vikings benefitted doesn’t mean it was a bad deal for Detroit, either.

The Lions stunned the Packers, 15-9, in their first game without Hockenson. Two young TEs, Shane Zylstra and rookie James Mitchell, scored Detroit’s two TDs in the victory. For a team making a concerted movement to get younger and free up future cap space, that’s a huge win for roughly 90 percent less contractual obligation than Hockenson in 2023. It’s but one week, but both teams should be very happy with the trade.

Hopefully that’s a message for NFL teams to keep up the trade activity. Different team goals and situations can make for happy matches that help both sides, and that’s the entire point of trades in a parity-based league like the NFL.

$.03--Tampa Bay hosted the Los Angeles Rams in a battle of fading NFC superpowers. Neither team did anything to discourage folks from shoveling dirt on the teams or their rapidly aging quarterbacks.

Tom Brady got the last laugh, authoring a fantastic last-minute drive to pull off an unlikely 16-13 comeback win over Matthew Stafford and the defending champs. Brady dialed back the clock in crunch time after very much looking like a 45-year-old playing with a lesser supporting cast than he’s had for a long time for 59 minutes.

It’s those tantalizing teases that keep hope afloat in Tampa Bay. Hope isn’t hurt by the Bucs being tied for first in the NFC South despite being 4-5 on the season. And Brady was legitimately fantastic on the final drive, surgically dissecting the Rams' prevent defense (say it with me: the only thing a prevent defense prevents is winning!). Brady hit TE Cade Otten twice on the drive, once uncovered over the middle and another for the game-winner, like he was playing against the scout team.

Hope doesn’t float so easily in the thick Los Angeles air. The Rams have no run game; Darrell Henderson gained 23 yards on one carry, and the other 23 rushing attempts gained 45 yards. The Rams receiving corps is Cooper Kupp and the practice squad refugees. Their offensive line is a mess, unable to open holes or protect Stafford. As he often did in his Detroit days when the situations were similar, Stafford struggled. He avoided the crippling INTs but completed less than half his passes and rushed a few throws in anticipation of pressure. Most of the time the pressure did in fact come, so it’s hard to blame him.

The Rams are now 3-5. That’s far from being out of it in an NFC where the current final Wild Card seed is 4-4 San Francisco (on a bye week), but these Rams are simply not a very good football team right now. They’ve scored 14 points or less in four of their last five. If the Rams can’t get this offense working in upcoming dates with the Cardinals and Saints, hope won’t mean anything.

$.04--The Philadelphia Eagles opened Week 9 by remaining the NFL’s sole unbeaten team. It wasn’t a huge struggle, but the Eagles had to survive the best effort from Houston rookie RB Dameon Pierce and the debut of the incredibly awesome Battle Red helmets to beat the Texans, 29-17.

The Thursday night game demonstrated how hard it’s going to be for the Eagles to maintain the unblemished record. They took the best shot the 1-win Texans can shoot and uncomfortably survived. The Eagles led just 21-17 in the fourth quarter as 13.5-point favorites over a team that has maybe 3 players who would start for the Eagles in 2022. It took a near-perfect game from QB Jalen Hurts, a monster effort from TE Dallas Goedert, a huge INT from DB Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and three sacks by DT Javon Hargrave to pull out the win.

And that helps explain why the Eagles are capable of extending the unbeaten run a while longer. They have multiple paths to victory on any given Sunday (or Thursday). The defense can have a rough night against a great RB, kicker Jake Elliott can yack on a FG attempt and the Eagles can survive. Hurts is having an MVP-caliber season, but on the occasion he doesn’t have his best day, the defense has proven it can take over a game with a playmaking secondary and a diversely talented, deep front. I don’t think the Eagles will go unbeaten, but it’s going to take a near-perfect game from a team with more high-end potential than the Texans to knock them off.

Back to Houston and Pierce for a second. Pierce is one of two clear front-runners (with Seahawks RB Kenneth Walker) for offensive rookie of the year but is relatively anonymous around the league. Get to know Dameon Pierce, folks. If you liked the way healthy Todd Gurley ran, you’ll like Pierce too.

$.05--We all want instant gratification from our draft picks. It can be very difficult to overwrite a slow start or unsavory first impression when a prominent pick doesn’t thrive right away. We’re getting a great lesson on why it’s important to let players breathe and grow a little before writing them off this year.

Bears quarterback Justin Fields didn’t get off to a good start to his career as the No. 11 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft. Independently of his poor receiving corps, poor coaching from a now-fired regime, porous offensive line and generally negative environment in Chicago, Fields also struggled on his own as a rookie.

Things were not looking better for Fields early in 2022 under new head coach Matt Eberflus in Chicago. Then a funny thing happened. His coaches figured out that Fields isn’t a straight dropback passer. He can run, really well. He can throw on the move. He can attack down the field when given a little time and passable competence at receiver.

Now the Bears have themselves the dynamic offensive force they were hoping for in the 2021 draft. In the last five games, including Sunday’s 35-32 loss to the high-flying Dolphins, Fields has taken a big step forward. Fields set the NFL record for single-game rushing yards by a quarterback in Week 9, scorching Miami for 178 yards on the ground. That includes a 61-yarder where it was easy to mistake Fields for Hall of Fame RB Eric Dickerson. He also threw for three TDs, pushing his touchdown-to-interception ratio to 8/2 in those five games. It was 9/14 before that.

Fields is still far from a finished product. He missed throws and takes too many sacks. Probably always will. But Fields is rapidly improving and his new coaching staff is the right fertilizer for those seeds of progress. A better receiving corps and more reliable protection will further the growth. Both are attainable this coming offseason with smart usage of assets acquired by trading away LBs Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn. But at minimum, the widespread “bust” talk that has dominated the Fields discourse needs to stop. The first two chapters are not the end of his NFL book. Keep reading and learning…

$.06--We got ourselves an epic weekend of college football. A quick rundown…

No. 1 Tennessee got smoked by No. 3 Georgia, 27-13, in a game that proved the defending champs should not be disrespected for this year’s flavor of the month. Huge blow to Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker’s Heisman campaign and rising draft stock, too.

No. 4 Clemson played like they never even got off the plane to South Bend. Notre Dame annihilated Dabo’s Tigers 35-14 thanks to a blocked punt returned for a TD and a 96-yard pick-six that pushed the score to 28-0. Huge win for Marcus Freeman’s Irish and a massive blow for Clemson’s effort to get into the College Football Playoff. Great game for a couple of Notre Dame draft prospects, LG Jarrett Patterson and EDGE Isaiah Foskey, as well.

No. 2 Ohio State was nearly blown away by Northwestern on the windy shores of Lake Michigan. Steady winds above 35 MPH turned the concept of the forward pass into a maddening impossibility. Buckeyes QB C.J. Stroud had a brutal time navigating both the winds and unexpected pressure from one-win Northwestern’s defense. Stroud did make plays with his legs, something he hadn’t shown before, but this was a definite reality check on his potential as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft.

Ohio State’s rival, No. 5 Michigan somehow trailed at Rutgers at halftime. The Wolverines quickly clawed out of trouble and gutted the Scarlet Knights 52-17. Great response by Jim Harbaugh's team after sleepwalking through the first half.

Early-season darling Kansas had lost three games in a row since starting 5-0. All the Jayhawks needed was No. 18 Oklahoma State to come to Lawrence. The Cowboys dropped their third game in four weeks since cracking the top 10, being on the business end of a 37-16 loss. OK State has been outscored 75-16 in the last two weeks. Kansas is bowl eligible for the first time since the Jayhawks players were in first or second grade.

It was a wonderful day to sit back, relax and enjoy the chaos that is college football. Queue it up again next week, please…

$.07--The game in Baton Rouge between LSU and Alabama is worthy of its own cent. And no, I’m not just doing it because Alabama lost. This was an incredibly significant game for the college football landscape for the rest of the seasons and perhaps beyond.

Maybe that’s an overstatement, but that’s the sort of status Alabama has attained. Brian Kelly coming up victorious in his first game at LSU against the SEC West juggernaut that is Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide is a momentous win. Kelly’s ability to acclimate himself into the SEC football culture so quickly after all the consternation and condescension at the time of his hiring is a remarkable turn. So many around the country now reversing course and embracing Kelly now is quite the turn, too. That’s the magnitude of shocking Saban’s team.

Kelly earned the credit by electing to go for the win in the first overtime. Instead of being content to trade scores against Heisman winner Bryce Young, Kelly rode the hot hand of Jayden Daniels and went for two. Daniels hit freshman Mason (son of Hall of Famer Jason) Taylor on a designed sprint-out pass in the front corner of the end zone for the win. Having the chutzpah to play for the win against Saban without blinking, you’d better believe that will help sell Kelly around the recruiting hotbeds in SEC country.

It’s Alabama’s second loss of the season, something that happens before the playoff about as often as a politician doesn’t lie in a campaign ad. They’ve lost twice in three weeks, falling to No. 10 in the latest AP poll. Saban’s team is almost certainly out of the playoff race, though it’s way too premature to count out an Alabama team that absolutely would get into the CFP if there’s any possible opening.

There was a controversial officiating decision late in the game, one that very nearly gave Alabama the win. LSU was called for pass interference on a play where Young’s throw was tipped at the line by a Tigers defender. It wasn’t a clear tip in real-time and the ball’s trajectory was barely altered, but replays clearly showed the touch--which negates the penalty. Anyone who has ever played volleyball knew it was a tip; the finger clearly bent backward and the spin of the ball changed just a whisper, telltale signs. The officials decided otherwise, incorrectly.

And because the draftnik in me never shuts off, a quick couple of words on Young in the wake of a largely poor game from the Bama QB. As was the case in big games against Georgia, Cincinnati and Auburn last year, Young struggled when put under quick pressure. His bread is buttered with superb timing and accuracy on anticipatory routes. Outside of one truly spectacular out-of-structure throw for a TD to Ja’Corey Brooks--a Heisman moment if I’ve ever seen one--Young wasn’t effective beyond that first intention. For a guy already battling very real skepticism over his size, that’s not great for Young’s stock. Hard to ignore the amazing late TD or the fact he’s surrounded by Alabama’s worst receiving corps of the Saban era, however.

$.08--NFL quickies

--Tom Brady passed 100,000 career passing yards (including playoff games) on Sunday. That’s 56.8 miles of passing production, almost the distance between Tampa and Orlando. Wow.

--The Raiders led the Jaguars 20-0 at halftime in Jacksonville and somehow managed to lose 27-20. It’s the third time this season the Raiders have blown a 17-point lead. That’s not good at all for job security in Las Vegas.

--In this week’s Football Meteorology, I called Sunday’s matchup between the Jets and Bills a hugely important one for New York QB Zach Wilson. The youngster stepped up. Wilson outplayed MVP candidate Josh Allen in the Jets’ 20-17 upset win. Allen had a terrible game against a Jets defense that is emerging as one of the NFL’s best, and Wilson played well enough to make the great defense stand. Complementary football at its finest. Good job, Wilson.

--Sunday night’s game between Kansas City and Tennessee feels like it just finished as I write this at 1:27 a.m. This might explain why…

--Cincinnati responded from a blowout loss on Monday night in Cleveland by declawing the Panthers 42-21. The Bengals scored five TDs before Carolina attained five first downs; the Panthers scored the final 14 points in garbage time behind QB Baker Mayfield. Nice win for Zac Taylor’s Bengals to bounce back from their worst game of the season.

--Ray Guy passed away this week. The first specialist inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame was 72. I’m a proud, longtime voter for the Ray Guy Award, which honors the top collegiate punter. Guy’s statistical accomplishments pale in comparison to today’s big-leg era, but when you look at the comparative statistics against his contemporary peers, Guy’s legend is easy to understand. RIP.

$.09--College/draft quickies

--Congrats to my alma mater, Ohio University. OUr Bobcats are bowl-eligible after a convincing midweek MACtion win over Buffalo. Ohio WR Sam Wiglusz   was unstoppable as the Bobcats tied Buffalo at the top of the MAC East. A matchup with Bowling Green in three weeks could decide who reps the division in Detroit in the conference championship game.

--Very interesting win by Michigan State over Illinois in the wake of the Spartans program suspending eight players for their conduct after last week’s loss at Michigan. Illinois was clearly the best team in the B1G West entering the game, but the Illini couldn’t do anything in the windy conditions against the dilapidated Spartans. MSU coach Mel Tucker desperately needed that one.

--SMU quarterback Tanner Mordecai threw for seven touchdowns in the first half against Houston on Saturday night. Seven TDs in one half is incredible. Granted the Cougars entered the game tied for 104th (out of 131) in scoring defense, but that’s absurd. Top-75 overall prospect Rashee Rice had two of the seven TD receptions. The Mustangs won 77-63 in a game that had over 1,300 yards of offense.

--Look back up at the section on Justin Fields. Now bring that mindset down a level and apply it to Florida QB Anthony Richardson. After potential top-10 overall hype in the very early season quickly faded, Richardson became something of a draftnik punching bag. Don’t look now, but Richardson is finally figuring out his game in Billy Napier’s offense. After Saturday’s blowout win over Texas A&M, Richardson is once again looking like a worthy first-rounder. You’re still drafting on athletic potential more than collegiate accomplishment, but Richardson’s decision-making, anticipation and touch are all markedly improved from two months ago.

$.10--Daylight Saving Time came over the weekend to much of America. Hopefully for the last time…

The annual setting back the clock at exactly 2 a.m. to move daylight to earlier in the day has long outlived its utility. The extra hour of sleep gained by artificially reliving the 1 a.m. hour isn’t worth the completely unnecessary, antiquated switch. We’re no longer an agrarian society. Daylight Saving Time is a relic of that bygone era, the chronometric version of a hitching post next to a charging station for electric cars.

In a rare bit of Congressional harmony and usefulness, the Senate passed a motion to permanently implement the standard time earlier this year. But the House has yet to discuss or vote on the motion, and it’s unclear if President Biden would sign it into law.

It’s time, America. Time to end the needless schedule disruption and minor inconveniences in the name of 19th-century farming norms.