13 of the 14 Week 10 games are done and dusted, and it’s time to break down the weekend. The morning slate had some good games, but I will admit the afternoon window and Sunday Night Football were very disappointing. Either way, we still learned a lot this weekend.

With that said, here were my 10 biggest takeaways from Week 10 of the NFL season.

Denver really needs to figure things out offensively

The Denver Broncos are a great football team. You don’t accidentally stumble into an 8-2 record. However, they really need to figure things out offensively. Bo Nix has been clutch in the fourth quarter, but if you step back and look at his entire body of work, he really hasn’t been great. He’s hardly completing 60 percent of his passes, he’s turned it over eight times, and he’s not using his legs as much as last year.

If Denver really wants to compete in the playoffs, they need to iron out some of their offensive wrinkles. Their defense is great, but they can’t carry you to a Super Bowl if your offense struggles to score 17 points. They just need to be more consistent offensively because their 10-point performance against Las Vegas was just unacceptable.

Jonathan Taylor is the MVP favorite

After he was bottled up a week ago, Jonathan Taylor reminded the league that he should be the favorite for the MVP award. Taylor rushed for 244 yards (the 19th-most in a single game in NFL history and the most this year) and three scores while adding 42 yards as a receiver. He is now on pace for 1,936 rushing yards, 442 receiving yards and 30 total touchdowns this season.

I know Taylor won’t win the award because it’s a quarterback award now, but I don’t think there is a single player in the league more valuable to his team than Taylor. We saw what happened when Pittsburgh shut him down a couple of weeks ago. This team goes as he goes, and if you took him off the Indianapolis Colts, they would not be 8-2.

QB controversy in Houston?

C.J. Stroud missed Sunday’s game with a concussion, meaning Davis Mills took over as the starting quarterback in Houston. And what did he do? Throw for 292 yards and two touchdowns, rushed for the game-tying touchdowns, and led the Texans to 39 points – their second-highest total of the season. The only game they scored more in was their 44-10 rout of Baltimore, whose defense was arguably the worst in the league at the time.

If you take that Ravens game out of the picture, Stroud has thrown for 1,702 yards, 11 touchdowns, and five interceptions. He hasn’t been completely awful, but there’s a reason his team was 3-5 with the No. 1 scoring defense in the league coming into the week.

The Jacksonville Jaguars don’t have the greatest defense in the world, but they sit 17th in the league in scoring (23 points per game allowed), so they’re not horrible either. Would Houston have had as much success with Stroud under center? I don’t think so. I also don’t think he would’ve had that game-tying drive in him.

Houston obviously won’t stick with Mills. Stroud is their “franchise quarterback,” but he sure isn’t playing like one. I just don’t think Stroud is all that great, and I don’t see their offense taking the step it needs to make in order to make the playoffs with Stroud under center. I don’t necessarily think Mills would give them that bump either, but he looked good today.

A new favorite in the AFC?

The New England Patriots have really come alive in Drake Maye’s second season, but it felt like everyone was waiting for them to fall off. But they just aren’t. They keep on winning, and on Sunday, they took down one of the best teams in the NFL in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Drake Maye looks great, TreVeyon Henderson had a breakout game, and their defense has been stout. With the Colts struggling to beat the Falcons, the Broncos scoring just 10 points against the Raiders, and the Bills losing to the Dolphins, the Patriots should be the new favorites in the AFC. They have a two-game lead in the East and have looked like the best team in the conference for the past few weeks, so it’s time to dub them as so.

Saints might have something in Tyler Shough

The New Orleans Saints might have something in their second-round rookie, Tyler Shough. The former Louisville Cardinal had a great game in his second start, throwing for 282 yards and two touchdowns in a 17-7 victory over Carolina. He also tore it up on third down, completing 70 percent of his passes for 282 yards and two touchdowns.

After last week, many were quick to claim him as a bust. His stat sheet looked bad, but if you watched the game, you knew there was some juice there. He has a live arm and is pretty mobile. The Saints just had no momentum because of some bad play-calling and the fact that they were facing a tough defense.

Is he a franchise quarterback? Maybe. Maybe not. But he’ll at least make them think twice about drafting one in April.

Buffalo…

Buffalo…How do you beat the Kansas City Chiefs one week and lose to the Miami Dolphins the next?

This team is impossible to figure out. They started off hot, winning their first four games before going on a two-game losing streak, before their bye. A lot of people were out on Buffalo, but they came back with a 40-9 win over the Panthers and a 28-21 win over the Chiefs. It felt like they had some momentum behind them, but they fell into the trap game.

The Dolphins were 2-7 and didn’t pose much of a threat, and with the Buccaneers coming up next week, the Bills completely overlooked their opponent. The weather did play a factor, but it didn’t stop the Dolphins from having a big day.

I just don’t know what to make of Buffalo. Sometimes they look like one of the best teams in the league. Other times, they look completely lost. All I know is that they’ll need to be more consistent if they want to capture the Lombardi this year.

The Bears are much worse than their 6-3 record

The Chicago Bears are so much worse than their 6-3 record. Just take today, for example. They were down 17-10, and the New York Giants had the ball before Jaxson Dart went down with an injury. From that point on, the Giants scored three points the rest of the game, and the Bears climbed back into it and won, 24-20. If Dart wasn’t injured, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Giants win this game.

Let’s look at last week. All it took was an all-time defensive collapse from one of the worst defenses in the league for the Bears to pull off a miracle victory over a bad Bengals team. The week before that, the Bears were dominated by the Lamar Jackson-less Ravens. And the two weeks before that, they narrowly beat the Commanders and Raiders.

There’s something to be said about taking advantage of opportunities, but they have been handed so many breaks this year. They are a few plays away from being 3-6, but instead, they’re 6-3.

The Bears are a good team, but they are not great. I don’t see a world where they end up making the playoffs, much less winning a game or two.

The NFC West has the two best teams in football

The NFC West has the two best teams in the NFL, and it’s not particularly close.

The Seattle Seahawks have been amazing this season. Their offense has been incredibly explosive with Sam Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and defensively, they have been pretty dominant, holding their last four opponents to 22 or fewer points. They just ran the Cardinals out of the building on Sunday afternoon, and if it weren’t for their division rival, I’d say they’re easily the best team in football.

However, the Los Angeles Rams are very dangerous and might be even better than Seattle. Matthew Stafford is playing impressively right now, having thrown for 13 touchdowns in his last three games alone. The Rams are blowing the doors off everyone they play, and they just took down the 49ers, 42-26.

The two best teams in the NFL reside in the NFC West, and it’s a shame one of them will be the No. 5 seed in the playoffs and won’t be able to host a game.

Dan Campbell needs to keep calling plays

After the Lions’ beatdown of the Commanders, Dan Campbell revealed that he took over play-calling duties this week. Offensive Coordinator John Morton was still involved in the game plan, but it was Campbell who called the plays.

The change comes a week after the Vikings took down the Lions, who scored 24 points. Their offense hadn’t topped the 24-point mark in three weeks coming into this game, but in their first game with Campbell calling plays, they scored 44. Granted, it was against a very bad defense, but still.

Detroit’s offense looked completely revitalized this week. They got the run game going early, which opened things up for Jared Goff and the passing attack. They were balanced and efficient, and it led to one of their best games of the season.

It’s tough to change play callers midseason, but it appears Campbell made the right call.

The Chargers have a Super Bowl-caliber defense

I’ve been pretty bullish on the Los Angeles Chargers’ defense this season. I’m not saying that as a bold take or anything, because they’ve been great all year, but I think this game really showed how good they can be at their peak.

They dominated the Steelers for 60 minutes, holding them to 10 points (three if you take away the garbage time touchdown) and 221 total yards while picking Aaron Rodgers off twice (one was a bit lucky, I will say) and sacking him three times. The Steelers were also just 2-for-12 on third and fourth down on Sunday (0-for-10 before their final drive). The Chargers’ defense did absolutely everything right, and it really showed the potential of Jesse Minter’s unit.

If the Chargers’ defense keeps playing like this, they have a legitimate shot of making a lot of noise in the playoffs. Their offense can be very explosive, but even when they don’t play well, they’ll have a shot to win every game. I would not want to play LA in January if I’m New England, Denver, Buffalo, Kansas City, or any other AFC playoff team.