How the ‘Mature’ 49ers Won a Slugfest in Seattle

Houston Texans

The Texans may be one win away from turning the corner. It won’t be easy—that game is in London next Sunday against the 4–1 Jaguars, and the Jaguars are already there, while Houston has to fly back from Nashville, then go all the way overseas.

But if Houston can find a way, the schedule softens and there’s a path back to .500.

And while Sunday’s 26–3 drubbing of the winless Titans won’t exactly be tallied as the most impressive win we saw in Week 5, it’s pretty clear the Texans see a way out. Not because of how they beat Tennessee, or how three of their four losses were by five points or fewer. More so, what’s been most encouraging for the proudest members of the Texans’ roster has been how the group has handled a bumpy start.

“I think everybody’s keeping their composure,” captain Will Anderson Jr. told me. “Not even just today. I think you look at the last four or five weeks, you see a bunch of guys having joy every day, bringing joy to the building. Nobody felt like the season was over. Everybody’s still staying up. Everybody’s still coming to work with positive energy and just having joy. And that’s what you’ve seen today. No matter the outcome, this team has persevered and been able to bring joy every day. And that’s why we’ve been able to be a really great team.”

Maybe it’ll be why they can be once again, since they took that joy and put it to work in how they started to spackle the holes poked through the first month of their season.

The interesting thing about where they were coming into this week is that, really, the offense wasn’t the sole root of the problem. It was also a defense full of All-Pros with a ton of skins on the wall letting the team down—having given up 30-plus points in losses to the high-powered Cowboys’ and Bills’ offenses. The group’s underachievement was implicitly acknowledged with DeMeco Ryans taking play-calling back from highly regarded defensive coordinator Matt Burke this week.

Anderson said having Ryans back on the headset was “electrifying” for the group, but didn’t stop the leaders of the pack from looking hard in the mirror.

“The biggest key phrase that was said this week was ‘Own your box,’” Anderson said. “And I think every man did a good job of owning their box today—whatever you have on the field, own that part of the field. Wnd I think that’s why we were so successful today.”

So Sunday was a start. After allowing the Titans to drive for a field goal on the game’s first possession, the Texans shut Tennessee out, holding its offense to 129 yards from that point on, without letting Cam Ward’s group get past the Houston 43 again. Meanwhile, C.J. Stroud and the offense kept making strides, and the special teams helped control field position.

“I thought today we played complementary football,” Anderson said. “C.J. has been balling all year. He’s been leading those guys. He’s been doing a hell of a job. And with us as defense, we had to pick it up.”

They did, and maybe we started to see the Texans team so many of us expected. Anderson certainly feels that way: “Oh, most definitely. I think we have a really great team.” And in six days, we should have a little better idea of how great they can be.

Marvin Harrison Jr.

While we’re there, the Texans’ offense is getting another weapon, with Marvin Harrison Jr. coming in via trade. The Cardinals asked around for a second-round pick plus a sweetener. Houston, over the 24 hours leading into kickoff Sunday, wound up coming around on that, ending an interesting process that ended Harrison’s two-plus years in Arizona.

It actually began weeks ago, with the No. 4 pick from the 2024 draft deciding to hire an agent to handle his situation, bringing in veterans Todd France and Tory Dandy of Athletes First.

Quietly, the groundwork was laid for Harrison’s exit, starting then. The writing had been on the wall with the team’s decision to extend another young receiver, Michael Wilson, to pair long-term with big-money tight end Trey McBride. It had to stay that way for Arizona to get the type of return that would motivate the team to move Harrison. And things heated up over the course of the weekend, with the Texans’ effort to reunite Harrison with Stroud, his teammate at Ohio State.

So what will get Harrison turned around? He had 62 catches for 885 yards and eight scores as a rookie, then 41 catches for 608 yards and four touchdowns in 12 games last year. He’d gradually lost confidence though, as questions rose internally over his toughness—bigger-bodied receivers need to be rugged to make it in the NFL, and Harrison’s game hasn’t been that way. Work ethic was never a question. In fact, if anything, how hard Harrison worked could work against him at times, as some saw it, because he’d tend to get in his own head.

And the thought among some was that if Harrison could get in the right environment, maybe the right coach could pull it out of him—since the toughness question was a relatively new one.

Along those lines, I don’t think it was a mistake that Stroud, who played with Harrison for two years in college and was a Heisman Trophy finalist with Harrison as his No. 1 receiver in 2022, said after the trade was completed Sunday, “I think it’s perfect for him. Fresh starts are good.”

It’s a big swing for a Texans team that’s invested a ton in receivers. They’ve paid Nico Collins twice now. They spent second- and third-round picks on Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel last year—and were expecting big things from Higgins this year before he tore his ACL. Tank Dell, a 2023 third-rounder, is coming back from a catastrophic injury. They traded safety Jaylen Reed and a 2028 seventh to the Patriots for Kayshon Boutte. And now, they’re sending 2027 second- and sixth-rounders to Arizona for Harrison and a 2027 seventh.

I may be biased (yeah, he was one of the best players I’ve ever seen play at Ohio State), but I think this can work. It can work for this year. It also could work unbelievably well next year, when Collins, Higgins and Harrison could look like a basketball team out there together.

So it’s a risk, but a worthwhile one, in a really good kid who’ll badly want to turn it around.

Green Bay Packers

I can confirm that, yes, the Packers’ blowout win meant a little more for the guys in the building. But beyond just the idea of settling a score from January, or winning a rivalry game, there was real meat on the bone for Green Bay within its 31–7 beatdown of the Bears at Lambeau.

The main thing, really, is that the Packers’ best young players are breaking through, and just as their best player, Micah Parsons, is gearing up to return to the lineup from a torn ACL.

Receivers Christian Watson and Matthew Golden combined for 266 yards and two scores (both Watson’s) on 12 catches. Tucker Kraft, back from an ACL tear of his own, had five catches for 64 yards. Devonte Wyatt had two sacks, rookie Dani Dennis-Sutton had another, and Lukas Van Ness, off to a hot start, had two quarterback hits. Budding star safety Evan Williams had 12 tackles and Xavier McKinney had a pivotal pick early.

And Jordan Love was excellent—25-of-31 for 367 yards, two scores and a 137.5 rating.

“To start the season, we’ve had our fair share of injuries,” Love told me afterward. “There were a lot of moving parts for the first couple of weeks, and there still have been some moving parts. But nobody lost confidence. We knew we just weren’t playing good. We weren’t playing up to our standard, and there was a lot of stuff that we needed to clean up. I think a win like this and what we did today, it gives everybody confidence and just reignites the belief in what we were capable of as an offense.

“We obviously had to go prove that to everybody, and that’s what we did. Now it’s just, how can we do that week after week? How can we keep stacking this stuff?”

The easy answer: to keep playing off each other like they have, and did on Sunday, when a 10-play, 91-yard touchdown drive in the first quarter led into a McKinney pick, which the offense cashed in with another score to go up 14–0 on the first play of the second quarter.

Everyone felt it, too. Matt LaFleur was in his bag, adjusting on the fly. “That’s Matt,” Love said. “That’s who he is.” First-year DC Jonathan Gannon has settled in, too.

As it is, the Packers’ win pulled them even with the Bears and Lions at 3–2, two games behind the 5–0 Vikings. And now, getting Parsons back, and maybe eventually Josh Jacobs, there’s a lot more to like here going forward than people thought a couple of weeks ago.

Minnesota Vikings

That Vikings are playing at some sort of level on defense. What level? Since halftime of the season opener against the Packers, the Vikings’ defense has allowed three touchdowns. Opponents have a 60.7 passer rating—the NFL’s lowest number through five games in five years—and Minnesota’s the only team with a takeaway in all of its games this year. And 40.6% of plays against the Vikings have gone for no gain or a loss.

All of that is why the Vikings are 5–0, and how they’ve been able to manage an offense that’s adjusting with Kyler Murray (and Carson Wentz when Murray was hurt) at quarterback.

And they’ve pulled it off with Brian Flores playing mad scientist, and a bunch of grizzled vets leading the way. Six of the Vikings’ 11 starters on defense in Sunday’s 23–13 win in New Orleans are veterans of at least seven NFL seasons. Only four have fewer than five. And that’s not counting Harrison Smith, the 15-year vet and Mufasa of this group of lions.

“We got a whole bunch of guys with a lot of IQ. Guys in this defense playing multiple positions, just having those players calling stuff out,” eighth-year corner Byron Murphy Jr. told me. “Like [10th-year linebacker] Eric [Wilson], calling stuff out before the offense even runs it, giving the young guys a chance to read their keys before the play even started.”

There’s another piece, though, that Murphy said is even more integral to the job Flores has done.

It’s put into place away from the game field, with Flores working to foster an environment where the conversation among all these football Mensas never stops, nor does the busting chops. The belief, for Flores, came from his year in Pittsburgh, where Mike Tomlin used to say, “You can’t have unique results without unique relationships.”

“I would definitely say that’s the best coach I’ve ever been around,” Murphy continued. “Not even just scheme, all those things—football-wise, we know he’s the best—but this chance that he gives us to connect with our guys, our brothers that’s in the room. Those are the things we look forward to, having those meetings and just connecting as brothers.”

The way they play, Murphy believes, reflects the bond that they’ve all worked to build.

Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. And if the offense comes along? “That’s the scary part,” Murphy says. “We still haven’t all played our best yet.”

New York Jets

The Jets keep giving their fans glimmers of hope. New York is 2–3 now. That’s not exactly breakout-season material. And yet, in Sunday’s win over the suddenly hot Browns, there were three sacks from David Bailey and a game-ending strip-sack from Will McDonald IV. There were 104 yards and a touchdown from Garrett Wilson and another 116 yards and a score from Braelon Allen on 24 carries. There was youth on both lines of scrimmage.

There was, in short, a lot of hope on the soggy MetLife Stadium turf.

Jets fans have been here before, to be sure, and recently. That said, I thought it was pretty interesting talking to Geno Smith about these guys afterward, given the perspective he has. Smith was there as GM John Schneider rebuilt the Seahawks with the picks from the Russell Wilson trade, a deal that opened the door for Smith to start there for three years.

“It really feels like that, which is why I was so happy to be here,” Smith told me. “Once I got here, it felt like how it felt in Seattle, where we were building towards something. And I wasn’t on the team last year and they eventually got to the Super Bowl, but I felt like a part of what we did, the guys in that locker room that built that momentum and that belief to where every game we play, we can go out there and dominate. And I think that’s something we’re building here.

“We had some games early on that we didn’t finish. And I feel like it was self-inflicted wounds, the reason why we didn’t finish. So if we can eliminate those and continue to build on the positives, we have the coaches and we have the roster to do some special things.”

So far it’s been enough to beat the Titans and Browns, and go to the mat with the Lions and Packers. The idea, of course, is that there are bigger things to come. And by the way, the Jets have no fewer than three first-round picks in 2027 to continue to invest into that idea.

We’ll have more on these guys later this week in my Tuesday notes.

Denver Broncos

By the numbers, Denver’s change in offensive play-caller didn’t really work. The Broncos, with Sean Payton back in the saddle, had 224 yards from scrimmage and 18 first downs—their second- and third-lowest totals in those categories this year. Bo Nix had a quarterback rating of 82.8, and threw for just 123 yards. J.K Dobbins rushed for 68 yards on 18 carries.

None of that would wow anyone.

But pulling the plug on Davis Webb after four games did accomplish one thing. It amped up the urgency around a team that probably needed a little juice. So when Denver had to have it, in the fourth quarter, trailing the Chargers 17–10, the defense delivered a turnover on downs, a fumble and an interception. The offense scratched together short drives for a touchdown and two field goals, while draining the clock to lock up a 20–17 win.

“They gave us a short field, three times. And we ended up getting points to take the lead back. And then they finished the game,” veteran tight end Evan Engram told me. “So that’s team football. That’s complementary football. We’ll look at the middle of the game and see where we can be better —the second and third quarters, when we could have really separated ourselves. But we all answered the bell when it came down to the fourth.”

Engram then added, “We all are urgent every day, honestly. I think we just got to be better when the time comes.”

We’ll see if they can be that three days from now, when the Seahawks come to town Thursday night.

New England Patriots

It looks like Drake Maye is going to be just fine. The first three weeks were one story, and one that seemed to extend back to his four-game playoff run. The past two weeks have been another story altogether. The numbers:

• Weeks 1–3: 585 yards, 63.8% completion, 1 TD, 6 INTs.
• Weeks 4–5: 643 yards, 67.6% completion, 7 TDs, 1 INT.

So what’s been the difference for the Patriots’ star? In a word, everything. Whereas in the first three weeks, he had flashes of his old brilliance drowned out by a cacophony of killer mistakes and debilitating uncertainty, since then we’ve seen the cocksure gunslinger from (most of) 2025. He’s got command and control at the line, better footwork and ball placement, and overall accuracy, and you can see him moving defenders and manipulating the pass rush.

Nowhere was all of that on display more than on his 49-yard connection with second-year receiver Kyle Williams, on a post that looked simpler than it was. Before the snap, Maye distributed the protection to deal with a Raider blitz. Because he was responsible for setting it, he knew how he could manipulate the pocket, and that the blitz would be picked up. That gave Maye the confidence to stand tall and stay patient in the pocket, and identify that there was no safety deep to help on Williams.

In a lot of systems, the center is responsible for setting the protection. This, on the other hand, is why the Patriots give that responsibility to the quarterback, because if he can master it, he’ll be able to operate with more confidence in what’s happening around him.

That Maye’s already doing this stuff early in his third season is great news, of course, for New England. And a nice sign that he’s worked through whatever was getting him the first three weeks of the season.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The signs in Pittsburgh haven’t been great all year, but the Steelers keep winning. A lot was made over Aaron Rodgers’s comments on Mike McCarthy’s play-calling after a Week 2 loss to the Patriots, and the on-field discord between the two during a Week 4 loss to the Browns. Then, there were Jalen Ramsey’s remarks of last week, where he told the Pittsburgh media there was a “disconnect” between the coaches and players.

And after Sunday’s convincing win over the Colts, the Steelers are 3–2, with the Buccaneers, Saints and Browns left between now and the team’s Week 9 bye.

“With any great team, there’s going to be some type of adversity or miscommunication,” said Jaylen Warren, who had 188 scrimmage yards on 21 touches against Indianapolis. “Even if you’re not seeing eye-to-eye on some things, maybe it was just voiced or taken differently [than intended]. Coming into this game, we were all embracing what we had in the building. And we were all on the same page. [All the talk] was nothing, no bad blood or nothing.”

Maybe, but McCarthy did give the players a “day of reflection” early in the week, coming back from the team’s Thursday night loss in Cleveland. Warren said he was told to “take it how it is, and whatever you need to do to benefit from that day, that’s good.”

It was a different idea in a bit of a weird week.

But Warren did point out to me that with such a veteran team, there are going to be more credible voices, and more strong opinions—and as long as that’s all channeled properly, it can be a good thing. And right now, and so long as the Steelers keep playing like they did against the Colts, it’s tough to argue against that.

Quick-hitters

And we’ll get out of here with our weekly quick-hitters. Let’s roll …

• It’s hard not to be impressed with how Jesse Minter’s Ravens are finishing games. They easily could’ve chalked a Sunday loss up to Lamar Jackson’s absence. Instead, they drove 71 yards in six plays, and converted a two-pointer, to tie the game at 23 with less than a minute left and force overtime. Then, behind Snoop Huntley, they grinded out another 14-play, 68-yard touchdown drive to take the lead, before homecoming king Kyle Hamilton picked off Tua Tagovailoa—in for a hobbled Michael Penix Jr.—to get Baltimore to 4–1.

• It’s tough to wrap your head around the finish in Washington. Both Dan Quinn and Jayden Daniels have to take the bullet for it, simple as that. That was inexcusable for each guy, as Commanders limited partner Magic Johnson pointed out.

• Meanwhile, I’d be less upset with Eagles coach Nick Sirianni over his decision to kick the ball in the field of play. Didn’t we just get done crushing Brian Schottenheimer for Dallas kicking the ball through the end zone in Rio?

• While we’re there, I’m still impressed with Philly’s ability to hang in there with a patched-together line, after the departures of Cam Jurgens and Lane Johnson last week, with Will Shipley at tailback and a depleted pass-rush. No one develops the bottom of the roster like the Eagles do, and it probably should’ve paid off with a win over the Jaguars.

• On the other side, that was not the Jags’ best Sunday, but they found a way, and there’s something to be said for that.

• The Bengals have been a little wonky the past three weeks. They get their bye now to regroup, before a massive Week 7 game in Baltimore. They know they have work to do. But they’re still 3–2. 

• The once-promising Saints are now 1–4, and Tyler Shough has struggled the past couple of weeks. There’s still a lot of talent on that roster, so it could be, in April, a pretty nice landing spot for a QB, if Shough can’t do enough to hang onto his status as the franchise’s future.

• Baby steps: The Lions’ defense throttled the Cardinals’ offense into the third quarter, before the score got a little out of hand. I’d still say they should be shopping for a corner.

• The scrutiny on Cam Ward is only going to get more intense, if he doesn’t improve by leaps and bounds before next April. Remember, the Titans have a new stadium to open up next year, and the franchise wants to be able to sell hope.

• Finally, we’ve got Bills-Rams Monday night, which has to be one of the most appealing Monday night game since the package took a bit of a backseat to Sunday Night Football 20 years ago.

• And while you’re waiting for kickoff, be sure to check out my Mike Ditka obit on the site.

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