Daily Newsletter: NFL Week 7 Recap & Notes (Oct. 23 2024)

Tampa Bay Injury Fallout

It was a brutal game for the Buccaneers on Monday – not only did they lose to the Ravens, but they lost Chris Godwin for the remainder of the season and Mike Evans until after their Week 11 bye. Atlanta had the inside track to winning the NFC South, but that becomes much more clear now and it’s poor timing for Tampa with the second match-up between them coming this weekend. Baker Mayfield was near the top of the league in nearly every passing stat, but will surely see a steep drop-off in production without his two star wideouts. Rookie Jalen McMillan will see a big role increase, along with veteran Sterling Shepard. We could also see the Bucs skew a bit more run-heavy with three available running backs in Rachaad White, Bucky Irving and Sean Tucker. 

DeAndre Hopkins to Kansas City 

I wrote in Monday’s blog about how boring the Kansas City Chiefs have been, and they must have been reading! They went out and traded for DeAndre Hopkins on Wednesday to assist Patrick Mahomes and attempt to replace the production vacated by Rashee Rice. It was rumored that the Chiefs wanted to acquire Cooper Kupp, but it was also apparent they could never make that work monetarily with the salary cap. I’m unsure of how much this really moves the needle for me – Hopkins is aging and doesn’t have the YAC ability of Rice but we should see him be a target vacuum nonetheless. It remains to be seen if this team will continue to bore us with their success. 

Buying Low in Miami

It’s widely reported that Tua Tagovailoa will be returning from his concussion this week, and that’s a massive boost both for the Miami pass catchers and the team in general. This team could barely move the ball in his absence despite trying multiple signal callers, and team morale has to be high with their star returning. Miami sits at 2-4, but are in range of a potential wildcard spot that I think looking at their odds of +260 to make the play-offs is interesting. They have a number of winnable games on the schedule, starting this week at home against the Arizona Cardinals. They are favored in that game, and those odds will quickly shorten even with one win this weekend to get them to 3-4. 

Week 8 is set to be a wild ride. As we head towards November, play-off scenarios will start to take shape.

Written by Ben Hossler