Week 4 winners, losers: Bears' final drive vs. Giants earns unlikely place originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Order has started to take shape in the NFL standings.
The Green Bay Packers followed Aaron Rodgers' R-E-L-A-X method and now are 3-1. The Philadelphia Eagles remain undefeated. The Houston Texans are tanking. The New York Giants ... wait, they're 3-1?!
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
It’s time to declare winners and losers from Week 4 of the 2022 NFL season:
Loser: Paul Pierce
The Detroit Lions successfully went for two in the fourth quarter of their 48-45 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
Sports
Seattle star receiver DK Metcalf did the same.
With under 10 minutes to play in Sunday's game, Metcalf was carted off the field with with not one, but two team employees into the locker room. And, no, it wasn't to get an injury checked out.
It was later reported that Metcalf's cruise through the stadium tunnel was to use the bathroom, a fact he hilariously admitted after the game.
The moment was reminiscent of Paul Pierce taking a wheelchair off the court of the 2008 NBA Finals only to return and help the Boston Celtics defeat the Los Angeles Lakers. Eleven years later, Pierce finally admitted that dramatic exodus was to, well, relieve himself, only to deny that story again in 2021.
At least Metcalf owned it. (And we haven’t forgotten about you, Lamar Jackson.)
Anyway, we expect Metcalf to avoid the pregame gumbo next week when the Seahawks visit the New Orleans Saints.
Winner: Dallas Cowboys
Remember those 12 hours of hot takes when the football world was convinced the Cowboys needed to trade for 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo?
Dallas hasn’t lost since Dak Prescott suffered a thumb injury in Week 1. Rush, a fifth-year quarterback with one start under his belt before this season, has thrown for 673 yards and four touchdowns while completing 61.8 percent of his pass attempts -- good for a 100.1 rating -- in the Cowboys’ three wins.
Is there a quarterback controversy brewing in Dallas? More importantly, why has no one started calling him Big Time Rush?
Loser: Betting the under in Detroit
38-35. 36-27. 28-24. 48-45.
Those are the scores of the Lions’ first four games this season.
Per ESPN’s Field Yates, Detroit and its opponents have combined for 281 points through four weeks, the most ever in NFL history.
The Lions are atop of the leaderboards in both points scored per game (35.0) and points allowed (35.3).
Lions fans have been through enough. Make it stop, please.
Winner: Backyard football
The finish to the Chicago Bears’ 20-12 loss to the New York Giants belongs in Canton.
It all started with a two-yard completion from Bears quarterback Justin Fields to running back Trestan Ebner. What followed was five wild laterals and four bouncing fumbles until Giants safety Dane Belton mercifully fell on the football.
The play lasted 43 amazing seconds.
Aside from a 56-yard connection with Darnell Mooney in the first quarter, Fields’ fadeaway throw across the gridiron to Equanimeous St. Brown (12-second mark) might have been his best pass of the day.
Absolute dime.
Loser: San Francisco 49ers
The 49ers' two losses in the opening three weeks didn’t feel good.
Now, they feel worse.
San Francisco fell to the Bears 19-10 in Week 1 at Soldier Field. Chicago looked awful on Sunday, as Justin Fields completed just 11 passes and the team was held out of the end zone in a 20-12 loss to the lowly (but somehow 3-1!) New York Football Giants.
At least the 49ers' loss to Chicago was played in a monsoon, so there’s some valid excuse. But the Denver Broncos defeating San Francisco last week on Sunday Night Football now looks unforgivable.
In Denver's 32-23 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, the Broncos’ offense was more painful to watch than Russell Wilson’s TikTok account.
Wilson’s stat line looks fine in the box score -- 237 passing yards and two touchdowns -- but Denver picked up just one first down over its first four drives of the second half. The Broncos’ desperation drive in the final two minutes of the game unfolded like this: five-yard scramble, incompletion, incompletion, incompletion.
On a positive note, at least the 49ers didn’t soil themselves in Week 2 against Seattle. Sorry, DK.
Winner: Cody Parkey
Parkey is no longer in the NFL, but he wins every time another field-goal attempt hits the upright and the crossbar to join the Double Doink Club.
Saints kicker Will Lutz, who nailed a 60-yard field-goal attempt earlier in the fourth quarter, had a chance to send the game against the Minnesota Vikings in London into overtime from 61 yards out as time expired.
Doink. Doink.
An international game that kicked off at 6:30 a.m. PT nearly was too much for Primetime Kirk Cousins to handle, but the Vikings did just enough to beat New Orleans and improve to 3-0 in franchise history in London.
May this video live on forever.
Winner: Patrick Mahomes
"You know what? Maybe Gisele was right."
Tom Brady didn't utter those words, but he might have been second-guessing his decision to come out of retirement during the Kansas City Chiefs' 41-31 dominant win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday night, a game that was far more of a blowout than the final score indicates.
Brady led the NFL in passing yards this week with 385, but Mahomes threw for three scores and added another ridiculous improvised throw to his resume.
Sheesh.
