The NFL debuted in its eighth city outside of the U.S. yesterday when Berlin, the third within Germany alone, lucked out with what turned out to be an outstanding overtime affair that featured the most surprising team to date. And as YAHOO Sports’ Daniel Mader shared, the entire world got to see up close what I’ve been paying closer attention to:
A trip overseas didn’t seem to faze Jonathan Taylor in what’s been a dominant 2025 season. The Indianapolis Colts running back had a career outing in Sunday’s 31-25 win over the Atlanta Falcons in Berlin, Germany.
Taylor, already over 1,000 yards rushing in 2025, scored two massive touchdowns in the win. First came a long fourth-quarter score that gave the Colts a lead, then came an overtime touchdown that won it for the Colts, who improved to an AFC-best 8-2 this season. For the third time in his career, Taylor posted over 200 yards on the ground — including the longest touchdown run of the 2025 NFL season so far and the score that gave Indianapolis the win.
In total, Taylor now has 1,139 rushing yards and 17 total touchdowns through 10 games played. Emerging as the potential favorite for the Offensive Player of the Year award, Taylor may also be putting himself in MVP conversations as the NFL season moves into its second half.
For me, this is old news, as Taylor just happened to fall to me with a late first round pick in my Yahoo fantasy league. That team is also 8-2 and on top of the standings. Funny how sometimes fantasy can become reality. And that’s despite the fact that my early second round pick Pat Mahomes has been, well, decent on an underacheiving 5-4 Chiefs squad.
This week just happened to be his bye week, which meant I was paying disproportionate attention to the other eight-win team in the NFL. And my Mahomes backup just happened to be the guy that BLEACHER REPORT’s Joe Tansey leaned on the internet to make his own case for that coveted award:
The Drake Maye MVP hype train got a little louder on Sunday. Maye led the New England Patriots to a 28-23 win over Baker Mayfield and the injury-riddled Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Maye threw for 270 yards and a pair of touchdowns in New England’s eighth win of the regular season.
@LaptopCoreI8: Drake Maye is officially in the lead in the MVP conversation and the Patriots are a playoff caliber team
@DudesexMachina: drake maye is your mvp and the pats are your afc superbowl favorites deal with it
@br_betting: DRAKE MAYE IS THE NEW MVP FAVORITE (via @DKSportsbook)
And as it turned out, I left points on the table, as my other backup option had a pretty, pretty good afternoon on his own road trip. PER SB Nation’s Danny Stone:
The Los Angeles Rams (7-2) beat the San Francisco 49ers (6-4) by a final score of 42-26 in Week 10 of the NFL season. MVP candidate Matthew Stafford and the Rams started out hot opening up the game with a 21-0 lead, but SF hung around and fought to keep themselves in the game eventually responding with touchdowns of their own to tighten up the contest.
The Rams started out in control with…Stafford throwing two passing scores (four total) and Kyren Williams rushing for one as well. L.A. led 21-0 before SF put up 14 unanswered points of their own to make the score 21-14 and put some heat on the Rams.The Rams were able to respond with a third passing score as Stafford found Davante Adams to make the score 28-14 after the successful extra point.
Oh, by the way, I happen to own Adams as well. I do have a soft spot for Jets’ ex-pats.
This sets up a delicious showdown next week in SoFi Stadium with the team the Rams currently share the NFC West lead with, who got production from both sides of the ball to keep pace, as the ANONYMOUS (er, ASSOCIATED) PRESS reported:
Before Sunday, DeMarcus Lawrence had scored two touchdowns in 148 NFL games over 12 seasons. With a couple of huge assists from Tyrice Knight, Lawrence doubled his career total by the end of a dominant first half for the Seattle Seahawks, who beat the Arizona Cardinals 44-22. Lawrence returned two fumbles for touchdowns, and became the sixth player since at least 1991 with two defensive touchdowns in the first half of a game.
NFC West-leading Seattle (7-2) beat its division rival for the ninth straight time dating to 2021, and this one was hardly competitive. The Seahawks finished with five sacks while playing without injured starters Julian Love, Josh Jobe, Ernest Jones IV and Jarran Reed.
The Seahawks got going quickly. Sam Darnold rolled out to his left and found Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a 43-yard touchdown on the first drive of the game…Smith-Njigba has 1,041 yards through nine games, becoming the first NFL receiver to eclipse 1,000 this season. The third-year wideout became the eighth player in franchise history to record back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons.
BTW…JSN is Taylor’s teammate on that 8-2 first place fantasy team of mine.
Yes, I’m acutely aware a lot of football remains to be played. No doubt the Colts, Patriots, Rams and Seahawks are, too. But for now, can you please let us enjoy our surprising successes in peace?
Courage…