The NFL is always full of surprises -- season to season, week to week and, on Sundays, hour to hour. The Week 8 schedule was absolutely loaded, but the two best games of the Sunday slate ended up being Bengals-Titans and Cowboys-Cardinals. If you had Gardner Minshew coming off the bench and throwing three touchdowns to lead a double-digit comeback and Joe Burrow accounting for six touchdowns -- and throwing three interceptions -- go buy a lottery ticket.
And that was only the early window. Later in the day, Bo Nix went from zero to hero again, leading a stunning double-digit comeback against the Chiefs. Overall, there were five double-digit comeback wins, the most of any week this season.
So yes, it may be November, but we're still learning, still being surprised, still finding out what's real and what's not. And the Bears capped a wild weekend by showing they are very much for real. If you had high expectations for Jeffery Simmons in Chicago -- and I very much did -- they somehow still weren't high enough, at least for one game.
The Bears' 34-17 dismantling of the reigning-champion Seahawks was a fever dream for any Chicago fan. Simmons delivered six tackles, a sack, two tackles for loss and a pass broken up in his team debut, but that outstanding stat line still doesn't come close to telling the full story. This is what superstars do.
They wreck plays, and when they don't, they allow others to. Sam Darnold was running for his life all night en route to just 188 passing yards on 5.0 net yards per attempt. I found it fitting that the Seahawks acquired Quenton Nelson this week, and yet Simmons stole the show.
And that's no shade to Nelson. Caleb Williams, meanwhile, was superb. The stats didn't pop, but what makes him so good is that he can have absurd statistical games and he can have just really efficient, high-floor games.
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