Week 8 in the NFL Sees Historic Blowouts and a Shocking Jets Comeback

The typical Sunday in the NFL features slates filled with tight games in the second half, back-and-forth lead changes and several comeback attempts.

That's all part of the parity built into a league with a salary cap, a draft that rewards losing teams and a scheduling formula designed to give the best teams the toughest matchups.

Despite all of that, the drama was missing in a Week 8 that was one of the most lopsided the NFL has seen since the merger with the AFL in 1970.

The 13 games featured only one decided by single digits — a 39-38 win for the New York Jets against Cincinnati. That's the first time since the final week of the 1970 season that only one game was decided by fewer than 10 points and down dramatically from the average of 8.7 games per week decided by single digits in the first seven weeks and 8.3 per week over the last 10 seasons.

Nine of the games were decided by at least 18 points, marking just the sixth time that has happened in a single week in NFL history and the first since Week 12 of the 2008 season.

There were some blowouts that were somewhat expected based on the pregame betting lines like Indianapolis beating one-win Tennessee 38-14 and Tampa Bay beating one-win New Orleans 23-3.

But even several matchups that figured to be tighter turned into blowouts with Minnesota losing 37-10 to the Chargers, Miami upsetting Atlanta 34-10 and Denver beating Dallas 44-24.

That contributed to the average scoring margin for the week being 18.5 points per game, the highest since Week 15 of the 2012 season (18.7) and the seventh highest of any week since the merger.

Only three games all week had the winning team taking the lead in the second half with the Jets rallying from 15 points down to beat the Bengals, Green Bay coming back from nine points down at the half to beat Pittsburgh 35-25 and Kansas City turning a 7-7 game at the half against Washington into a 28-7 blowout.

A shocking Jets comeback

The one true comeback was a complete surprise as the winless Jets trailed the Bengals 31-16 at the start of the fourth quarter and seemed headed to their eighth straight loss to open the season.

But two TD runs by Breece Hall and another TD pass by Hall helped New York pull out a 39-38 win and end a streak of 112 straight losses in games the Jets trailed by at least 15 points. The last win came in 2003 against Miami.

Headed into the 2025 season, teams had lost 135 consecutive games in the regular season and playoffs when trailing by at least 15 points at the start of the fourth quarter since Green Bay rallied from 17 down for an 18-17 win over New Orleans on Sept. 24, 2023.

But four teams have engineered such comebacks already this season with Buffalo doing it in Week 1 against Baltimore, Tennessee in Week 5 against Arizona and Denver in Week 7 against the New York Giants. This is the first time that has happened at least four times in any regular season.

This also marked the first time quarterback Justin Fields won a game when his team allowed at least 21 points. Fields had lost his first 26 starts in that scenario. Now Colt McCoy holds the record for most losses without a win when his team allows at least 21 points at 0-19.

Touchdowns for Taylor

Indianapolis' Jonathan Taylor is off to a touchdown scoring stretch that hadn't been done for more than 75 years.

Taylor ran for two scores and caught a TD pass on Sunday for the Colts, for his fourth game this season with at least three touchdowns. The last time any player did that in an entire season came in 2006 when LaDainian Tomlinson did it six times in his MVP season. The only other time a player did it in the first eight games of a season came in 1949 when Gene Roberts pulled it off for the New York Giants.

Taylor's 14 touchdowns this season are tied for the fifth most through eight games with Jim Brown holding the record with 17 in 1958 for Cleveland.

It was a big week for running in the NFL with three teams rushing for at least 245 yards — the three highest outputs this season. Philadelphia had 276 yards rushing against the Giants, the Jets had 254 against the Bengals and Buffalo had 245 against Carolina.

This was the first time three teams ran for at least 240 yards in the same week since the final week of the 2020 season.

James Cook had 216 of the yards on the ground for the Bills, joining his brother, Dalvin, as the only siblings each to record a 200-yard rushing game with Dalvin doing it twice for Minnesota.

James Cook's 153 yards rushing in the first half were the most by any player since Dalvin had 153 against Pittsburgh on Dec. 9, 2021.

MVP for Maye?

New England second-year QB Drake Maye has moved into the top three in MVP odds from BetMGM and with good reason.

Since putting up a clunker in a loss to Las Vegas in the opener, Maye has thrown for at least 200 yards and had a passer rating of 100 or better in seven straight games.

Only some of the best QBs ever have put together streaks like that with it happening five other times in a single season. All of those seasons ended with MVPs.

Aaron Rodgers has the longest streak by doing it in the first 12 games of the 2011 season when he won his first AP NFL MVP. Rodgers did it again in eight straight games in 2020 when he won his third of four career MVPs.

Tom Brady did it in the first eight games of his record-setting 2007 season when he also won his first MVP. Peyton Manning also did it eight straight games in 2004 when he won the second of his five MVPs and Patrick Mahomes did it in 2018 when he won his first MVP.