Author: alison b

The Giants and the Commanders played for seventy minutes on Sunday and nobody won. It finished 27-27, a tie (a drawn game), after a full overtime period that settled nothing (Giants.com). New York had clawed back from fourteen points down just to get there (SI), and they missed three field goals along the way, any one of which would have won it.

Three of Week 5’s fifteen games went to overtime, and that one is the one to slow down on, because it ends somewhere plenty of newcomers do not realise the NFL allows. The full slate is below.

On a bye: Chiefs, Panthers. Full scores via ESPN.

An NFL game really can end in a draw

A regular-season game that is level after 60 minutes gets one shot at a winner, and only one. The rulebook is blunt about it. Rule 16 says that after regulation, “an extra period of 10 minutes shall commence,” and then sets the limit that decided the Giants game:

“There shall be a maximum of one 10-minute period, even if the second team has not had an opportunity to possess the ball or if its initial possession has not ended. If the score is tied at the end of the period, the game shall result in a tie.” (NFL rulebook, Rule 16)

So overtime is not played until someone wins. It is one ten-minute period, both teams are guaranteed a possession, and if the score is still level when the clock hits zero, that is the result. The Giants and Commanders each had the ball, neither pulled clear, and the game ended 27-27. Nobody did anything wrong. The rule simply ran out of road.

"I’d describe it as disgusting… I was disgusted by the Skattebo fumble. I threw up in my mouth a little bit at the end of the game." – Mike Tomlin weighs in on the Giants-Commanders finish https://t.co/C0cS3T3Y7N

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 12, 2026

The playoffs work the other way. A postseason tie is not allowed, so the game keeps adding fifteen-minute periods until someone scores enough to win, which is how you get the marathon January games people still talk about. If you want the fuller version, I go through it on the overtime rules page, and the postseason format sits with how the playoffs work.

Why Atlanta even had the ball when Tua threw the pick

The same possession rule is what put Tua Tagovailoa in position to lose the Falcons game, so stay with it for a second.

Atlanta’s starter, Michael Penix Jr., hurt his ribs late in the fourth quarter and did not come out for overtime, which handed the ball to Tagovailoa (ESPN). Baltimore took the opening overtime drive the length of the field for a touchdown and a 30-23 lead. Under the old sudden-death rule that would have been the game. Under the current rule, both teams must get a possession, so Atlanta got the ball back.

Tua enters the game and connects with Drake London! @BALvsATL on NBC/Peacock Stream on @NFLPlus https://t.co/BhEeACCa5E

— NFL (@NFL) October 12, 2026

Tagovailoa hit Drake London on the first snap, then threw the next pass to Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton, who had read his eyes and jumped the route to end it (Baltimore Ravens). “That was a bad throw,” Shannon Sharpe said afterwards. “You can’t make that kind of mistake” (Yahoo).

Tua Tagovailoa is picked off by Kyle Hamilton and the #Ravens are going to escape Atlanta with a win. https://t.co/j8nkihsmh5

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) October 12, 2026

That drops Atlanta to 2-3, second in a weak NFC South, with Penix day-to-day on the rib injury. One interception is one interception, not a verdict on a career, and the number that will actually tell the story over the next month is how Atlanta’s quarterbacks protect the ball. That is the kind of thing the 2026 QB stats table is built to track week by week.

The ‘who are you?’ that became the week’s meme

The week’s most-shared moment needed no overtime at all. It came in the 49ers’ 32-29 win at Seattle, and it has nothing to do with the rules.

Mike Evans, in his first season with San Francisco after twelve years in Tampa Bay, leaned in to check the name on the back of Seahawks cornerback Trevon Diggs’ jersey and asked him “who are you?” Diggs shoved him in the face (Yahoo).

The joke only works because of what a cornerback is there to do, which is erase the receiver across from him so completely that he is the one making a name for himself.

Evans spent the afternoon doing the opposite to Diggs, catching a touchdown and a two-point conversion from Brock Purdy (San Francisco Chronicle). If the matchup is new to you, the cornerback’s job is in the defence guide.

Mike Evans Checking to see the name on the back of the Jersey is an all-time Gif and trash talk moment that I wish I would have thought of.

— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) October 11, 2026

Even Richard Sherman, who built a career playing exactly that position, tipped his hat to it.

New Mike Evans ‘Who are you?’ angle just dropped (Via TikTok/sara.like.serotonin) https://t.co/aBPvXNfi5z

— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 12, 2026

Everyone else, and next NFL week 6

The Raiders had the ugliest afternoon of anyone, beaten 45-17 at New England, and I go through that one from a fan’s seat in the Raiders Week 5 review. At the other end, the Vikings and the 49ers are the last two unbeaten teams in the league at 5-0, while the Chargers, Dolphins and Titans are all still waiting for a first win (ESPN).

A tie, a backup quarterback’s rough debut and a viral shove make a strange haul for one Sunday, and none of it means as much in October as it feels like today. What stays is the smaller thing: you now know a drawn NFL game is not a glitch, it is the clock winning, exactly as the rulebook allows.

If you want to know what happened, then check out the NFL Week 6 Review.

94.1 is a perfectly respectable passer rating, a shade above the 2025 league average. Jacoby Brissett posted it in his first year in Arizona (Pro Football Reference). By ESPN’s Total QBR, which weighs how much a quarterback’s play actually helped his team win, the same season comes out at 41.2, where 50 is average (ESPN).

Same quarterback, same year. One number calls it a decent season, the other calls it a poor one. That gap is the entire reason advanced stats exist.

This is a tour of the ones you’ll meet most, written for someone who has never charted a down. I am not going to make you do any maths. Each one is just a plain question the basic box score can’t answer.

What they’re really for

The basic box score can tell you a comfortable lie. Passing yards reward whoever threw the most, and the quarterback throwing the most is often the one losing, because you cannot run down the clock when you are behind.

Advanced stats are the attempt to stop the box score flattering a bad afternoon. They don’t replace the numbers you already know. They add the context those numbers leave out.

So you don’t need to work a single one of them out yourself. You need to know which question each answers, and it is usually a question you have already asked out loud while watching. Start with the plainest ones on the NFL Stats hub and the rest follow.

EPA: the one underneath all the others

Nearly everything here is built on one idea, expected points. Every spot on the field, given the down and the distance, is worth an average number of points to the team with the ball. Expected points added, or EPA, measures how much a single play moved that number.

That is why it beats raw yardage. Four yards on third-and-three is a first down and the drive lives. Four yards on third-and-eight is a punt. Same gain, opposite value, and EPA is the stat that tells them apart (NFL QB Stats Decoded).

If you came to this from football, the game most of the world means by the word, EPA is the NFL’s version of expected goals (xG): a running tally of what each moment was really worth, rather than what the scoreboard happened to show. It is the number I reached for in the Week 2 review to show how completely one defence switched off the league’s hottest offence. Learn EPA and you are most of the way there.

Efficiency: did this actually help?

Success rate is EPA asked a simpler way. It is the share of a team’s plays that left it better off than before, which in the modern version means the share with positive EPA (Sam Hoppen’s weekly breakdowns). A team that grinds out four yards a snap posts a high success rate; a boom-or-bust team can have good EPA from a few big plays and a thin success rate underneath it.

CPOE, completion percentage over expected, does the same job for a quarterback’s accuracy. It sets what he completed against how hard his throws actually were, so he is not rewarded for dinking it short all day (NFL QB Stats Decoded).

Efficiency stats ask whether the offense stayed on schedule, not how many yards it piled up.

Explosive rate: how often they broke it open

Explosive plays are the big gains, and a handful of them swing a game more than a long run of short ones. Explosive rate just counts them: the share of passes gaining 20 or more yards, or runs gaining 10 or more (Sam Hoppen on where that line should sit).

It is the natural partner to success rate. Consistency keeps a drive alive; explosiveness is what finishes it in two snaps instead of twelve. The best offenses manage both, and most teams are clearly better at one.

A game can turn on three plays, so it is worth counting them on their own.

Pressure: the sack total’s bigger brother

A sack is the visible moment the quarterback gets dragged down. Pressure counts everything leading up to it: the share of his dropbacks where a rusher got home, hit him or shoved him off his spot, sack or not (NFL Defense Stats Decoded).

It matters because sacks are lumpy and a little lucky, while pressure happens far more often and tells you more. A pass rusher can wreck a game and finish with no sacks at all, and pressure is where that work shows up.

Think of it as the honest version of the pass rush, the way passes defensed is the honest version of interceptions.

Tendencies: what a team likes, not how good it is

The last cluster describes style rather than quality. These are the answers to “why did they line up like that”.

PROE, pass rate over expected, is whether a team passed more or less than the situation called for, which is a tidy read on how aggressive a play-caller is (The Offense, decoded). Personnel tells you who is on the field, three-receiver sets against heavier looks with extra tight ends. Motion is a player moving before the snap. On defense you will see man or zone coverage, light or heavy boxes, which is how many defenders crowd the line, and blitz rate, how often they send extra rushers (The Defense, decoded).

None of these says a team is good. They say what it tends to do, which is exactly what you want when you are guessing the next play.

Why two sites give different numbers

One catch to know before you start comparing. Most of these are not official league stats. The NFL logs yards and touchdowns; EPA, pressure, coverage and the rest are built by analysts from the play-by-play, so the exact figure depends on who built it (NFL Data Sources).

That is why a pressure rate on one site won’t match another’s, and why it pays to pick one source and learn its conventions. I lean on people like Sam Hoppen, whose weekly breakdowns put these to work, and I credit every source I use on the data page.

A small gap between two sites is usually the charting, not a mistake.

Where to start

You don’t have to learn these in a week, or at all. Pick the one that answers a question you already have. If you keep wondering why a team that moved the ball still lost, start with EPA and success rate. If you want to know why a defender gets praised without the sack numbers to show for it, go to pressure.

The NFL Stats hub is the front door to all of them, in the same plain English. Read one, watch for it on Sunday, and come back for the next when you want it.

If you watched the NFL this weekend and felt like the referees were everywhere, you were not imagining it. Week 4 drew more penalties per game than any week since 2015, 17 touchdowns have already been wiped off the board by penalty this season, and on Monday the league suspended two of its own officials. Week 4 belonged to the men in stripes, for better and for worse.

Let me take it a piece at a time, starting with the full slate.

The NFL Week 4 results

Scores: NFL Week 4 scoreboard.

Following the Raiders? Their 3-0 start ran into the Kansas City Chiefs, who edged them 30-27 for a first loss (NFL.com). I break the game down in the Raiders Week 4 review, with the long story behind it in the Chiefs and Raiders rivalry.

The refs are the story, and the numbers back it up

Analyst Warren Sharp pulled the season’s numbers through four weeks, and they are startling. Week 4 averaged 17 penalties a game, the most in any single week since 2015, and offences are being flagged in the red zone at a record rate, 0.61 per team per game (Sharp Football Analysis).

The one that stops you is the touchdowns. If the flag falls on the scoring play, the penalty wipes the score clean off the board, called back as though it never happened. That has happened 17 times already this season. Through the same four weeks last year it happened five times, and the year before that, four (Sharp Football Analysis). Something that used to be a rarity is now landing more than three times as often, and it lands on the single biggest play of a drive. If you want to know what each flag means and what it costs, penalties, explained runs through them.

if you watched the NFL and thought something didn’t feel right, you’re not alone: #1 most flags in over a decade thru 4 weeks, refs are impacting the most CRITICAL moments of games most: #1 most red zone penalties per game by offenses in history #1 most penalties on 3rd/4th downs in the second half of games in history and 17 touchdowns nullified by penalty! (vs only 5 in 2025 & 4 in 2024) Refs are impacting the most important moments of games unlike we’ve ever seen before in the NFL, and even some of the coaches are speaking up full analysis and historical data: https://t.co/Q2JhqaNtwi

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) October 5, 2026

Every flag is a specific written rule being enforced, not a referee’s verdict on how well a team played. When the whistle starts deciding which touchdowns count, though, officiating stops being background and becomes the game itself.

Why the league had to bench its own

Which brings us to Monday, when the NFL suspended two officials, both for what it called “an instance of unprofessional conduct toward a player” (NFL.com).

The first one loops straight back to last week. Line judge Jeff Seeman was given two games after Arizona tight end Trey McBride, who felt a Giants cornerback had interfered with him on an incomplete pass, complained about it and was met with what looked like a yelled profanity (BBC Sport). A player arguing about an uncalled interference is the most ordinary scene in football, and the reason those calls are so contested is something I went through only last week.

🚨 NFL has suspended line judge Jeff Seeman and referee Adrian Hill after unprofessional conduct towards players in the Cardinals-Giants and Dolphins-Vikings games, per @adamschefter, @RapSheet , @TomPelissero , @MikeGarafolo More details: https://t.co/xH1qnl3Lmq https://t.co/sGcq9x4b0z

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 5, 2026

His own head coach’s reaction is the bit worth reading twice. “You hate to see it for obvious reasons,” Mike LaFleur said, “but I do want to give the man a little bit of grace too. I know Jeff. He’s a good man. It’s unfortunate it happened. It can’t happen obviously” (BBC Sport).

The second case is gentler still. Referee Adrian Hill got one game after Minnesota linebacker Eric Wilson, who had been shoved into him by Miami running back Ollie Gordon II, went to help him back up and was pointed at and shouted at for his trouble. Wilson was entirely unbothered: “That was funny, honestly. I ended up apologising to him and explained the situation. He was cool about it” (BBC Sport).

NFL has suspended a line judge and ref Jeff Seeman and Adrian Hill for unprofessional conduct towards players. https://t.co/5FdHSQPosA

— VideoMixtape.com (@VideoMixtape_) October 5, 2026

So neither man is a villain, and that is rather the point. Suspending an official is rare, and what made it matter is the double standard it quietly closed. As the players’ union put it, “players are consistently held accountable when the roles are reversed. We expect the NFL to hold officials to the same standard” (NFL.com).

Here is that standard, from Rule 12, Section 3 of the rulebook:

“There shall be no unsportsmanlike conduct. […] Using abusive, threatening, or insulting language or gestures to opponents, teammates, officials, or representatives of the League.”

A player who does that loses 15 yards. The rule is harsher still on contact: a player may under no circumstance “shove, push, or strike an official”, and if he does he is disqualified on the spot. Every line of it points one way, protecting the official from the player. What the rulebook does not contain is the reverse, because the officials are the ones who throw the flags; there is no penalty to call on themselves. So when an official crosses that line, it cannot be handled on the field. It has to be handled as an employment matter, which is exactly what a suspension is. The rulebook governs the players toward the officials; the league office governs the officials toward the players. This week we saw the second half of that bargain, the half you almost never get to see.

Twenty years since the night the Dome roared

For all that, the game can still stop you cold, and Monday night in New Orleans did. The Saints hosted the Falcons two decades on from the night those same two teams reopened the Superdome, the Saints’ first game back there after Hurricane Katrina (Fox 8).

Steve Gleason’s block of Michael Koenen’s punt helped change the energy around the #Saints forever ⚜️ 20 years later, Gleason and Koenen reunited at the statue commemorating the iconic play 📺: #ATLvsNO on ESPN https://t.co/hicPiXe2g4

— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) October 5, 2026

On 25 September 2006, barely 90 seconds into that game, Saints special-teamer Steve Gleason burst through the line and blocked Michael Koenen’s punt, and Curtis DeLoatch fell on the ball in the end zone for a touchdown. The Saints won 23-3 (Fox 8), but the score was never the point. A blocked punt, where the special teams crash through to smother the kick before it leaves the punter’s foot, became the moment a flattened city decided it was still standing. A statue of the play, called Rebirth, went up outside the Superdome in 2012 (ESPN).

20 years ago, the @Saints player their first game back in The Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. The Steve Gleason blocked punt will live on forever. 💛 ATLvsNO – 8:15pm ET on ESPN Stream on @NFLPlus https://t.co/BUyftIq5D3

— NFL (@NFL) October 5, 2026

Gleason revealed in 2011 that he had been diagnosed with ALS, and in 2019 he became the first NFL player awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, for the advocacy he has done since (Wikipedia). The football on Monday did not go the Saints’ way, a 45-24 Atlanta win, but the night was never about this year’s score. For why games like this one carry so much more than a result, NFL rivalries never die gets at it.

Four weeks into the NFL seaon

The referees have taken over the conversation, by the numbers and by their conduct, and on this evidence that is a fair thing to be talking about. But a week that ended in New Orleans is a reminder that the flags are not why any of us fell for this game. Both things are true at once, which is about right for a sport this big.

Wonder which way it swings next. Roll on Week 5.

Raiders Week 4 Review: what the previews got right and wrong

Every preview I read last week said the same thing: third down was where the Raiders would be beaten. They held Kansas City to five conversions from thirteen, which is 38.5%, and lost 30-27 anyway (NFL.com game book).

Final. https://t.co/pdH8Pmtkze

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) October 4, 2026

So for this weeks review I decided to set myself some homework. I wrote all of it down before kick-off, every claim, with a source against each one.

That turned out to be the most useful thing I did all weekend. Some of it was right. Some of it was badly wrong. One of it decided the game. This was a great way to cut through the noise of post game analysis

How the Chiefs @ Raiders game went

The Raiders led 13-10 going into the fourth quarter. Then thirty-four points happened in fifteen minutes.

Quarter	Chiefs	Raiders
Q1	7	7
Q2	3	6
Q3	0	0
Q4	20	14
Final	30	27

It turned on a play that did not even belong to the fourth quarter. With thirty seconds left in the third, Kenneth Walker broke right and ran 76 yards before Taron Johnson hauled him down on the Las Vegas 8. Six seconds into the fourth, Patrick Mahomes threw eight yards to Tyquan Thornton for the touchdown, and Kansas City led 17-13.

Las Vegas answered with two Matt Gay field goals, a 44-yarder and then a 48-yarder, the first of them set up by Dylan Laube’s 53-yard kickoff return. That put the Raiders back in front 19-17 with 4:53 left.

Then the game went in nineteen seconds. Mahomes found Thornton again, deep left for 55 yards to the Las Vegas 5, and Thornton was hurt on the play, finishing with five catches for 111 yards and two touchdowns. Walker ran it in from two yards to make it 23-19, Kansas City failing the two-point try. Dareke Young then fumbled the kickoff return on his own 22, Kansas City recovered, and Walker ran it in from there on the very next play. 30-19.

Brock Bowers caught a 20-yard touchdown with 1:46 left and Kirk Cousins found Cody White for the two-point conversion, which is the play worth two points instead of the routine kick worth one (how scoring works has the rest).

That made it 30-27 and set up a last drive from the Raiders’ own one-yard line. Eleven plays, including a completion to White that was reversed to incomplete on review (replay and challenges explains how that works), up to the Kansas City 49, and then Cousins was intercepted with ten seconds left.

What the previews said, and what actually happened

Here is the list I logged on Saturday, marked.

What was said before kick-off	Who said it	What happened
Third-down defence is the weakness; the Saints converted nine of fifteen	Bill Williamson, SB Nation	Chiefs converted 5 of 13, 38.5%
Travis Kelce is historically dominant against Las Vegas	Bill Williamson, SB Nation	2 catches, 15 yards, no touchdown
The Raiders must stop Kenneth Walker III	Williamson; a Yahoo preview; Brooke Cersosimo, NFL.com; the Just Win Raiders Podcast	22 carries, 177 yards, 8.0 a carry, 2 touchdowns
The Raiders lead the league in takeaways, plus-five differential	Williamson; Cersosimo	Forced none. Gave up two
Bowers is the key; Kansas City are weak against tight ends	A Yahoo preview	6 catches, 86 yards, 1 touchdown from 11 targets
Rookie left tackle Kahlil Benson faces his biggest test against Maxx Crosby	A Yahoo preview	Kansas City allowed two sacks. The Raiders allowed none
Kansas City average over 416 yards a game	A Yahoo preview	399 yards
Six of seven analysts picked the Chiefs, by an average of 4.83 points	NFL.com, Pro Football Talk, Stadium Rant	Chiefs by 3

Two of those deserve a proper look.

The weakness got fixed. Holding this Kansas City offence to 38.5% on third down is the single best thing the Raiders did all night, and almost nobody will write about it, because it is the sort of success that leaves no highlight. Third down is the one that decides whether a drive continues or the punter comes on, so a defence that gets off the field on third down is a defence doing its job. If you want to know which defensive numbers are worth watching, defence stats, decoded lays them out.

The warning everyone gave got ignored. Four separate sources named Kenneth Walker as the thing to stop. He ran for 177 yards at eight yards a carry, with a long of 76, and scored both of the touchdowns that decided it. Cersosimo was the only analyst of the seven to pick the Raiders, and she said in writing that they “must limit” Walker. They didn’t, and her pick lost on exactly the condition she set. When four people who do not work together name the same player, it is worth listening.

The takeaway streak died too. Nine takeaways in three games going in, multiple every week. On Sunday the Raiders forced nothing and handed over two.

The fourth down, and the rule that allowed it

Third quarter, Raiders leading 13-10, fourth-and-seven on the Kansas City 23. Gay kicked a 41-yard field goal and it went over. Then Kansas City were flagged for an illegal formation on the play, which handed Klint Kubiak a choice.

The rule is Rule 14, Section 2, Article 3 of the NFL rulebook:

“In all scoring situations, the offended team also has the option of accepting the penalty with customary enforcement and beginning a new series, or replaying the down, instead of counting the points.”

In plain terms: when your opponent breaks a rule on a play you have just scored on, you can keep the points and wave the penalty away, or you can take the penalty, wipe the score off and have another go from better field position. The points are not automatically yours. You get to choose.

Kubiak chose the penalty. That wiped the three points and turned fourth-and-seven into fourth-and-two on the Kansas City 18. Cousins threw for Ashton Jeanty, it fell incomplete, and Las Vegas came away with nothing from a drive that had already banked three. The game finished 30-27.

He was asked about it afterwards and did not hide: “We were going to be aggressive going into the game. I don’t regret it. I regret not getting it” (Pro Football Network).

Kubiak told Yahoo’s Matt Holder he “blew it”, and later in the game, having come up short once, he took the points instead. His full press conference is here.

Here is where I come down, and you are welcome to disagree. I am glad he went for it. A team that had just been handed better field position by the opposition, playing well, at home, in the biggest game of its season, backed itself. That is the version of this team I have enjoyed for a month. The arithmetic is cruel, three points declined and a three-point defeat, but you do not get the 3-0 start without the same instinct that produced this. I would rather watch a coach who goes for it and misses than one who never asks the question.

The numbers they won, and the ones that counted

This is the part worth understanding, because the Raiders won nearly everything that accumulates and lost anyway.

Stat	Chiefs	Raiders
First downs	18	28
Total yards	399	437
Offensive plays	58	78
Yards per play	6.9	5.6
Time of possession	24:18	35:42
Red zone touchdowns	3 of 4	0 of 2
Turnovers lost	0	2

Twenty-eight first downs. Thirty-five minutes and forty-two seconds with the ball, which is nearly three-fifths of the game. And two touchdowns, both of them in the fourth quarter.

The red zone is the area inside the opponent’s 20-yard line, where the field gets short and the defence has less ground to protect. Kansas City went in four times and scored three touchdowns. Las Vegas went in twice and scored none. Four Gay field goals is a tidy night for a kicker and a bad one for an offence, because three points instead of seven, twice over, is the margin and more.

The other half of it is explosive plays. Kansas City scored four touchdowns on 58 snaps because they had a 76-yard run and a 55-yard catch in them, and both led directly to points. The Raiders needed 78 snaps to score two. Possession and yardage tell you who controlled the game; points per play tells you who won it. If you want the fuller picture of which team numbers actually predict results, team stats, decoded covers it.

One continuity note for anyone following Cousins. He went 31 of 52 for 365 yards with two touchdowns and one interception, and his longest completion of the night went 28 yards. Last week it was 22. He is still winning games, and losing them, almost entirely underneath.

The takes

The outside verdict was kinder than the scoreboard. On NFL on CBS, JJ Watt said of the Raiders: “Yes, [the Raiders] are a REAL DEAL team.” Mike Dixon of Vegas Sports Today framed the quarter-season at 3-1 and reckoned the ceiling is high.

"Yes, [the Raiders] are a REAL DEAL team." @JJWatt was impressed with the Raiders’ performance despite losing to the Chiefs. #NFLPostgame https://t.co/njGy5ijLps

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) October 5, 2026

Alex Monfreda, who some of you will remember as the analyst whose fumble-stat correction I unpicked two weeks ago, was taken with one Cousins escape in particular: “Never in a million years did I think Kirk (at this stage of his career) was capable of this play. Every part. The feel. The escape. The throw on the run.”

Never in a million years did I think Kirk (at this stage of his career) was capable of this play. Every part. The feel. The escape. The throw on the run. And the arm. The effortless flick downfield on the move dotting his man in stride. This is not normal 38-year-old stuff.

— Alex Monfreda (@AlexMonfreda) October 5, 2026

Where do the Raiders sit now

The Raiders are 3-1. Kansas City are 4-0 and top of the AFC West, where this division has sat for most of a decade. If you have just picked this rivalry up and want to know why a one-score defeat to these particular opponents stings this much, I have written the history of Chiefs versus Raiders properly. A 3-1 start is still a good start, and the NFL play-offs and seeding explains what it is actually worth once January arrives. Pete Prisco said on CBS that the Raiders “are going to be a pain in the butt for every team out there.”

"[The Raiders] are going to be a pain in the butt for every team out there." @PriscoCBS #NFLPostgame https://t.co/J0vgmZ2NqC

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) October 5, 2026

The rest of the league

Week 4 had plenty beyond Allegiant, and I have written it all up in the full Week 4 roundup across the league.

Marking your own homework

Somebody will tell you this week what is going to decide Sunday’s game. They might be right. Last week the same list of experts correctly identified Kenneth Walker as the man who would win it and confidently wrong-footed themselves on third down, in the same afternoon, from the same piece of paper.

So read the previews, by all means. Then write down what they said, and look at it again on the Monday. It costs nothing, and it will teach you more about which numbers matter than any amount of watching will.

If you ask who was better last season, the Chiefs or the Raiders, you get two honest answers that point opposite ways. One measure says the Chiefs, comfortably. The other says the Raiders won the game that counts. Both are true, and holding both at once is how you actually learn to read a team.

They play again on Sunday, 4 October, in Las Vegas, so this is a good week to lay the two measures side by side.

“Who is better?”- The question that feels like it has one answer

“Who is better?” sounds like it should resolve to a single team. It does not, because there is more than one honest way to measure better, and the two do not have to agree.

The two most common are the win-loss record, which counts how many games you won, and point differential, which counts by how much. Most of the time they roughly agree. When they split, the gap is the lesson.

Who is the better: what the record says

By record last season, this was not close, and it was the wrong way round from what you might expect.

The Chiefs went 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the first time in years. The Raiders finished 3-14. On record alone the Chiefs were poor and the Raiders were dreadful, but neither looked like a good team, and the Chiefs’ collapse from champions to also-rans was the headline.

The trouble with a record is that it treats a one-point loss and a thirty-point loss as the same thing: a loss. It tells you the result of each game and nothing about how close it was.

Decoded takeaway: A record counts your wins. It says nothing about how heavily you won or lost them.

Who is the better: point differential

Point differential is the other lens, and it tells a completely different story about the same two teams.

It is simply points scored minus points allowed across the season. The Chiefs finished at plus 34, meaning they outscored their opponents over the year. The Raiders finished at minus 191, one of the worst marks in the league, meaning they were beaten heavily and often.

By this measure the two were 225 points apart. That is not a close gap, it is a chasm, and it says the Chiefs were a good team having a wretched run of luck while the Raiders were genuinely one of the worst teams in the sport. Point differential is also the measure that travels best into a new season, because a team’s scoring gap predicts next year better than its win-loss record does. I explain why on the NFL Team Stats page.

Here are the two teams side by side, last season, on both measures at once.

Chiefs v Raiders, 2025 regular season

Measure	Kansas City Chiefs	Las Vegas Raiders
Record	6-11	3-14
Points scored	362	241
Points allowed	328	432
Point differential	+34	-191

Source: Pro Football Reference, 2025 regular season. Point differential is points scored minus points allowed.

Why the two disagree

So one measure says the teams were roughly matched at the bottom, and the other says a chasm separated them. Both are reading the same season. The gap between them is luck in close games.

The Chiefs lost nine of their ten one-score games. A team that good normally wins about half of those. Lose almost all of them and your record craters while your point differential, which does not care whether a game was close, barely moves. That is the whole disagreement in one line: the record caught every unlucky bounce, and the differential ignored them.

When record and differential split, the reason is almost always the close games.

And yet the Raiders won the one that mattered

Here is the part neither measure captures. In the game between them, the Raiders won, 14-12.

Point differential tells you who is probably better over a full seventeen-game season. It does not tell you who wins one afternoon, and in this rivalry the one afternoon has its own history of ignoring the form book. The full record of the flip, from the Raiders leading by eleven to the Chiefs leading by twenty, is on the Chiefs v Raiders rivalry page.

Which one to use, and when

So which measure is right? Both, for different jobs, and that is the honest answer rather than a dodge.

Use the record when you want to know what happened: who made the playoffs, who won the division, who beat whom. Use point differential when you want to know who is likely better going forward, because it sees through a lucky or unlucky run of close games. And use neither to call a single rivalry game, because one afternoon between two teams who have played 134 times is its own thing, decided on the day.

The real skill is not picking the right number. It is knowing that a team can be much better and still lose, and being able to say exactly how both of those things are true at once.

The Raiders beat the Chiefs 14-12 last January without either team scoring a touchdown, and won it on a 60-yard field goal on the final play. It is one of the oddest results in a rivalry that goes back to 1960, and every strange part of it has a plain explanation.

They meet again this Sunday, 4 October, in Las Vegas. Before they do, it is worth taking that last game apart, because it is a neat lesson in how a football game can be decided by the parts nobody usually watches.

Decoded Takeaway: Twelve points, no touchdowns

Start with the Chiefs’ 12. You can reach 12 points without a touchdown in more than one way, and this game did it the hard way: four field goals.

A field goal is worth three, a touchdown six, so four kicks equals two touchdowns’ worth of points and not one of them needed the end zone. Every way to put points on the board is on the scoring guide, but the point here is simple: a team can stay in a game all afternoon on field goals alone. Kansas City did, and still lost.

Decoded Takeaway: You can score 12 and never once reach the end zone.

Why the Chiefs could not finish

So why only field goals? Because of who was throwing the passes.

Kansas City’s starting quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, had been lost for the season with a knee injury. His backup had gone down too. By January the Chiefs were on their fourth-choice quarterback, a player who would normally never see the field.

The quarterback is the most important attacking player, the one who touches the ball on nearly every play. Drop to your fourth one and the offence can still move between the 20-yard lines and get close enough to kick, but it stops finishing drives with touchdowns. Four field goals and no touchdowns is exactly what a stripped-down offence looks like. If you want why the position matters this much, the positions guide explains what each player does.

Decoded Takeaway: A team’s whole season can hinge on one player, and this was the proof.

The safety, and the other odd two points

The Raiders’ 14 included a safety, the rarest score in the game, worth two points to the defence for trapping the other team behind their own goal line.

In a game this starved of points, that safety mattered. Two points is a field goal’s worth of margin, handed over without the offence even having the ball. I have unpacked how a safety works in its own piece, because it is the one score most newcomers have never had explained.

Decoded Takeaway: In a low-scoring game, the rarest two points can be the difference.

The 60-yard kick to win it

Then the ending. A 60-yard field goal on the final play.

Sixty yards is near the outer limit of what an NFL kicker can do. Most attempts happen from inside 50, and the success rate falls off a cliff as the distance grows, because the kicker has to generate both height and range on a ball that has to clear a defensive rush and drop between the posts. A made 60-yarder is one of the hardest routine-looking plays in the sport. To land one to win a game, on the last play, is about as much pressure as the job carries.

That kick won the game on the final play. How a rivalry the Raiders once led turned the Chiefs’ way is the story on the Chiefs v Raiders rivalry page.

What it tells you before Sunday

Put the pieces together and the game was not a fluke, it was a stack of them: a fourth-string quarterback who could not find the end zone, a defence that stole two points, and a kicker who did the near-impossible when it counted.

The Chiefs were the better team on paper that season and lost anyway. That is the honest lesson of a rivalry game, and it is why the record between these two has swung so far, so often, across 66 years: the standings tell you who is probably better over a season, never who wins one afternoon in this fixture.

Three days after the flag flew, the NFL told the Los Angeles Rams it should never have been thrown.

I woke up to my X feed already arguing about it. One clip of the play, thousands of replies, and the usual split: half calling it the worst call of the season, half insisting there was nothing to see. The loudest ones had gone straight to “the fix was in”, one widely shared post framed the call as proof the league is steering games for the betting market (reaction via NFL on ESPN, X). I am a Raiders fan with no dog in a Rams game, so my first instinct was the boring one: what does the rule actually say?

That turned out to be the right question, because by Wednesday the league had answered it. Rams coach Sean McVay said the NFL had told him defensive pass interference should not have been called on cornerback Josh Wallace in Sunday night’s loss to the Denver Broncos (Sean McVay, via ESPN). That is roughly as close to an apology as the league gets. The flag had wiped out an interception, handed Denver a fresh set of downs, and the Broncos scored the winning touchdown a few plays later.

So here is the thing almost nobody in those replies had done: open the actual rulebook and read what pass interference is. Because the whole argument, the TV analysts, the angry feed, the league’s own admission, turns on two words.

What happened, in one line

The Rams were leading 26-23 and the Broncos were driving. On third-and-6, with the game inside the final minute and change, Broncos quarterback Bo Nix threw toward receiver Pat Bryant down the sideline, Rams cornerback Josh Wallace came down with the ball, and the officials flagged Wallace for pass interference instead of signalling an interception (ESPN; drive detail at NFL.com game center).

The penalty gave Denver a first-and-goal at the 7. Nix ran it in from the 1 to make it 30-26 with 47 seconds on the clock, and a last Rams pass from Matthew Stafford was intercepted in the opposite end zone as time expired (Front Office Sports). The Rams fell to 1-2.

A flag turned a game-sealing interception into a Denver first down, and the league later said the flag was wrong.

"The NFL has informed him [Sean McVay] that Josh Wallace should not have been called for the defensive pass interference that helped decide Sunday night's game endeavor."@AdamSchefter with the latest on the Rams 🚨 pic.twitter.com/25rQba7MPn

— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) September 30, 2026

The part that stings: the Rams had already won

This is the bit worth slowing down on if you are new to the sport, because it is the whole reason the call matters so much. An interception means the defence catches a pass meant for the other team, which hands them the ball. Wallace catching that pass does not just stop Denver’s drive, it ends Denver’s chance to score, because possession flips to the Rams.

And the Rams, leading by three, would not have needed to do anything with it. Denver had no timeouts left, so Los Angeles could have run the “kneel down”, where the quarterback takes the snap and immediately drops to one knee to end the play and burn clock. Two of those and the clock hits zero. Game over, Rams win.

That is not my spin on it. Sports Illustrated’s Rams site put it flatly: “Had Wallace not been called for pass interference, the game would have been over”, noting the Rams could have taken two knees to drain the clock with Denver out of timeouts. Athlon Sports was a touch more cautious, saying the pick would have “likely sealed Los Angeles’ second win of the season”. Either way, the flag did not just extend a drive. It took a win off the board.

The claim everyone was making

Scroll the replies under any clip of the play and you get the same two camps, stated as certainty. “That was clearly PI.” “There was no interference.” Both sides are sure. Almost nobody is quoting the rule.

Pass interference is not a vibe, though. It is a defined act with a written test, and the test is more specific than the shouting suggests.

What the rulebook actually says

Here is the definition, straight from the 2026 NFL rulebook, Rule 8, Section 5, Article 1:

“It is pass interference by either team when any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball.”

Read that again and notice what it does not say. It does not say “any contact”. It does not say “whoever touches first”. The load-bearing word is significantly, and the thing that has to be hindered is the opportunity to catch the ball. Incidental contact, hand-fighting, two players bumping as they track a pass, none of that clears the bar on its own. The contact has to meaningfully take away the other player’s shot at the catch.

The rule is also even-handed by design. The same article notes that once the ball is in the air, “eligible offensive and defensive receivers have the same right to the path of the ball and are subject to the same restrictions” (2026 NFL rulebook, Rule 8-5). A defender is allowed to play the ball. A receiver does not get special protection just for being the receiver.

So interference is not “contact”. It is contact that significantly hinders the catch, and both players have an equal right to the ball.

The part of the rule that decides this play

The rulebook then does something genuinely useful: it lists what is allowed, not just what is banned. Rule 8, Section 5, Article 3, “Permissible Acts by Both Teams While the Ball Is in the Air”, includes these:

“Incidental contact by an opponent’s hands, arms, or body when both players are competing for the ball… If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference.”

“Laying a hand on an opponent that does not restrict him in an attempt to make a play on the ball.”

That is the exact language the Wallace play lives or dies on. Did he restrict Bryant, or did he lay hands on him while making a play on the ball? The rule says if it is a genuine question, the call is supposed to be no interference.

And there is a separate clause that points the other way entirely. Article 2 lists interference by the offence too, including when a receiver is “initiating contact with an opponent by shoving or pushing off” or grabbing an opponent’s arm to restrict him. Which is what makes the next part so awkward for the officials.

The rule has a tie-breaker built in: if the contact is a genuine question, it is no interference.

Where the gap is

The people whose job is to read this rule on television did not think it was close.

On the NBC broadcast, rules analyst Terry McAulay, a former NFL referee, watched the replay and said: “As we get toward the end, we actually see the receiver grab the defender and pulling [at] him” (via Front Office Sports). On Wallace he was blunt: “I don’t see the defender do anything that significantly hinders the receiver on this play.” He added that Wallace had his “hands on him” but “doesn’t do anything with them”.

Put the quote next to the rule and they line up word for word. McAulay is not freelancing an opinion. He is applying the written test, “significantly hinders”, and the permissible-acts list, “laying a hand on an opponent that does not restrict him”, and concluding it was a no-call. If anything, with Bryant reaching back to grab Wallace, the flag that fits the footage is offensive pass interference, the opposite team.

Three days later the league reached the same place. McVay said the Rams submitted the play to the NFL for clarity, and the league “agreed” the penalty should not have been called (ESPN). The NFL itself declined to comment publicly (Front Office Sports).

So the gap is not between two readings of the rule. It is between the rule and the flag.

Why nothing changes, and why that is the actual rule

Here is the part that frustrates people most, and it is also just the rule working as written. The result stands. The Broncos keep the win, the Rams keep the loss, and nobody replays the down.

That is because defensive pass interference is a judgement call, and judgement calls are not reviewable by instant replay. The NFL tried the other way. After an infamous no-call on Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman in the January 2019 NFC Championship game (the 2018 season), which sent the Rams past the Saints to the Super Bowl, the league made pass interference calls and non-calls reviewable for the 2019 season (ESPN). It went badly. Coaches, players and fans found it confusing and uneven, and when 21 of the 29 teams that answered the competition committee’s survey said they did not want it kept, the rule was dropped for 2020 and has not come back (Front Office Sports).

If you want the full picture of what referees can and cannot review, that is its own topic, and we cover it in the guide to NFL replay and challenges. The short of it: a call like this one lives outside the replay system entirely, so an admission three days later changes nothing on the field.

The twist nobody could script

The referee on Sunday night was Bill Vinovich. He was also the referee for that January 2019 NFC Championship game, the Robey-Coleman no-call that triggered the whole replay experiment (Front Office Sports). And the Broncos coach who benefited on Sunday, Sean Payton, was the Saints coach who was robbed in 2019. McVay, the coach robbed on Sunday, was the one who benefited in 2019.

Same referee. Same two coaches. The pass interference call that went one way then went the other way now. You could not plan the symmetry if you tried.

Betting note: a settled market, an unsettled result

Refs just casually causing millions and millions of dollars to move in the betting market then just walking away without repercussions. If the NFL is going to push sports betting so heavily, the refs should face severe consequences for things like this.

— Thechek182 (@thechek182) September 30, 2026

Because this is where a lot of the online anger pointed, it is worth being clear about how a late call like this moves money, and about what the evidence does and does not show.

A game-swinging penalty in the final minute lands on a betting market that has already moved. When Wallace’s interception came down, a live bet on the Rams would have been priced as a near-certain win; the flag flipped that in one play, and the Broncos’ cover and the game total shifted with it. Sportsbooks pay out on the official result, so a call the league later admits was wrong does not reopen a single settled bet Bookies.com. The money moved on the flag and it stays moved.

That reality feeds a louder claim, that games are being steered for gambling reasons. Here it is worth stating plainly what is actually established. There is no evidence that this call, or the NFL’s games generally, are fixed; the league attributes blown calls to human error, and officials are monitored for exactly this risk, with their finances and associations checked and betting lines watched for patterns (Boyd’s Bets). A single bad judgement call, admitted as a mistake, is what the record supports. The leap from “wrong” to “rigged” is not.

What it means for the Rams now

A loss is a loss in the standings, however it arrived. The Rams dropped to 1-2 and sit third in the NFC West, two games behind the 3-0 San Francisco 49ers, with the Seattle Seahawks (2-1) in between and the Arizona Cardinals (1-2) just below them (Yahoo Sports). The NFL does not replay the game or wipe the result, so the admission that the call was wrong changes the mood, not the table.

Here is the reassuring part for a new fan, though. The NFL season runs 17 games, so three weeks in, one game back is a dent, not a disaster. A division (the four-team group the Rams compete in for an automatic playoff place) is usually decided over months, and the Rams do not even play a division rival again until Christmas night against Seattle (Yahoo Sports). If you want the full picture of how a team actually reaches the playoffs from here, that is explained in our guide to how the NFL playoffs and seeding work.

What to take away

Next time you see a pass interference flag and the replies split into two certain camps, you now have the one thing most of them don’t: the test. Not “was there contact”, but “did it significantly hinder the catch”, and if that is a genuine question, the rule itself says no interference.

That is the standard the officials are supposed to meet, the standard McAulay applied on air, and the standard the league quietly admitted its own referee missed. The rule was clear. The call was the problem.

If you want to go deeper on how flags are classified and enforced in the first place, start with our explainer on how NFL penalties work, and the wider NFL rules hub that it sits in.

Two. That is how many points a safety is worth, and it is the rarest way to score in the game: across the whole league one turns up only about once every 14 games, so any single game you watch is very unlikely to feature one.

So when a safety helps decide a game, it is worth understanding what you just watched. One did exactly that in the most recent Chiefs-Raiders meeting, and the two play again this Sunday, 4 October, in Las Vegas.

What a safety actually is

A safety is the one score the defence earns by pushing the other team backwards into their own end zone. Every other score moves towards the opponent’s goal line. This one goes the other way.

It happens when the team holding the ball is tackled, penalised, or loses the ball out of bounds behind their own goal line, the one they are defending. The defence gets two points, which is already unusual, because normally only the team with the ball scores.

A safety is the defence scoring by trapping the offence in its own end zone.

What the rulebook says

The 2026 NFL rulebook sets the value in one line, in Rule 11, Section 1, Article 2:

“Safety: 2 points”

And it defines how one happens, in Rule 11, Section 5, Article 1:

“It is a safety when an impetus by a team sends the ball behind its own goal line, and the ball is dead in the end zone in its possession, or the ball is out of bounds behind the goal line.”

“Impetus” is just the force that sent the ball there. In plain terms, if your own action drives the ball back into your end zone and it dies there, that is two points for the other side. A sack in your own end zone is the classic one.

There is a sting in the tail most people miss. After conceding a safety, you do not just hand over two points, you also have to kick the ball back to the other team. You lose the points and the possession.

Concede a safety and you pay twice: two points, and the ball.

The game it helped decide

In the last Chiefs-Raiders meeting, in January, the Raiders won 14-12 in a game with no touchdowns from either side. The scoring was eight field goals and a single safety, finished off by a 60-yard field goal on the final play.

In a game where nobody reached the end zone the normal way, the two points from a safety were not a footnote. They were a chunk of the winning margin. The rarest score in the sport helped settle one of its oldest rivalries.

If you want the rest of the ways a team can put points on the board, the scoring guide lays out all of them, and the full story of this fixture is on the Chiefs v Raiders rivalry page.

Eight field goals and a safety is a strange way to lose a rivalry game. It is also a reminder that the scoreboard has more than one lever, and the team that finds the rarest one can walk off with a win nobody scored a touchdown in.

Three interceptions in three games, and they belong to a fifth-round rookie almost nobody had heard of in August.

That rookie is Hezekiah Masses, a cornerback for the Las Vegas Raiders. His three picks in three games lead the Raiders and put him among the league’s interception leaders. He has also taken a starting job he was not handed in the summer. He was a receiver in high school, switched to cornerback, and came into the league as the 175th pick out of California.

🚨 Rookie of the Week (again) 🚨

Hezekiah Masses recorded 6 tackles, a PBU and another INT in Sunday’s win over New Orleans!

Masses now has 3 interceptions through his first three NFL games, tied for the league lead, while helping the Raiders start the season 3-0!… pic.twitter.com/SG31F9c8x5

— Panini Senior Bowl (@seniorbowl) September 29, 2026

What makes that remarkable is not really the rookie. It is the position. Cornerback is the hardest job on the field to do quietly, and the easiest to do badly in front of everyone.

What a cornerback actually does

A cornerback covers the wide receivers, the fastest and most dangerous attackers the other team has.

A cornerback lines up out wide, near the sideline and usually opposite one receiver, and his job is quick to say and brutal to do: stop the catch, or take the ball away.

He’s part of the defensive backfield, the last line before the end zone, which I’ve pulled apart in how the defence is built in three layers (defence is the British spelling of the US “defense”).

What makes the job so exposed is the space behind him, which is often empty. You can see where he fits among the other ten on the positions page.

Why the corner plays “on an island”

When a cornerback is left to cover his man with no help behind him, coaches call it being “on an island”.

It is the loneliest arrangement in the sport. No safety net, no second defender to clean up a mistake. If the receiver beats him, the whole stadium sees it, and it is rarely a small mistake. A beaten corner is often six points, because the man he lost is now running at an empty end zone.

That is the trade every corner lives with. Get it right and nobody notices. Get it wrong and it is on every replay by Monday morning.

The rule that made the job harder

For a long time a corner could keep hitting a receiver well beyond the line of scrimmage. Then the rulebook drew a line, five yards out.

NFL rulebook, Rule 8, Section 4, Article 1 (Legal Contact Within Five Yards). Within the area five yards beyond the line of scrimmage, a defensive player may chuck an eligible receiver in front of him.

In plain terms: inside those first five yards a corner can jam the receiver, get hands on him, knock him off his route. Past five yards, hands off. Grab or shove a receiver beyond that line while the ball is still in the quarterback’s hands and it is illegal contact, worth five yards and an automatic first down to the attacking team.

That five-yard line is not old. Before the 1978 season a defender could hound a receiver much further downfield. The change was aimed so squarely at one man, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mel Blount, that it is still informally called the Mel Blount Rule, after the cornerback whose coverage the league decided was too good for its own health. It opened up the passing game, and it made life harder for every corner since. What counts as a foul once the ball is in the air is pass interference.

A corner gets five yards to be physical. After that, the rules are written for the receiver.

Why interceptions do not tell you who the best corner is

Here is the part that confused me for ages. The best cornerback in a given year often has almost no interceptions.

It sounds backwards, because picks are the highlight, the play that goes viral. But a truly feared corner gets thrown at less. Quarterbacks look at his side, decide it is not worth the risk, and aim somewhere else all afternoon. You cannot intercept a pass that is never sent your way.

So the number that often tells you more is passes defended (also written “passes defensed”, and shown as PD): the throws a defender knocks away or breaks up. In 2025, Philadelphia’s Quinyon Mitchell was voted a first-team All-Pro with 17 passes defended and zero interceptions across the whole season. Not one. The coverage numbers live on the defensive stats page.

So read passes defended next to interceptions: the quietest corner can be the one nobody dares to test.

Hezekiah Masses’ stat line through his first three games is UNBELIEVABLE:

• 86 total coverage snaps
• 14 total targets
• 6 receptions allowed (70 total yards)
• 3 INT’s (1st in NFL)
• 19.0 passer rating allowed (2nd in NFL)

The Raiders rookie CB has arguably been the NFL’s… pic.twitter.com/gxr2K6PufP

— Rookie Watch (@RookieWatxh) September 28, 2026

The corners who took the ball away most in 2025

With that caveat sitting right next to it, here is who did grab the picks. These are the cornerbacks with the most interceptions last season, with passes defended and tackles alongside, so you get the fuller shape of each one.

Most interceptions by a cornerback, 2025 NFL regular season

Rank	Cornerback	Team	INT	PD	Tackles
1	Nahshon Wright	Chicago Bears	5	11	80
2	Jaycee Horn	Carolina Panthers	5	8	37
3	Michael Jackson	Carolina Panthers	4	19	68
4	Kamari Lassiter	Houston Texans	4	17	91
5	Derek Stingley Jr.	Houston Texans	4	15	36
6	Marlon Humphrey	Baltimore Ravens	4	13	68
7	Mike Sainristil	Washington Commanders	4	12	85
8	Donte Jackson	Los Angeles Chargers	4	12	24
9	Emmanuel Forbes	Los Angeles Rams	3	18	45
10	Kool-Aid McKinstry	New Orleans Saints	3	17	76

Cornerbacks only (players listed at cornerback); safeties and other defensive backs are excluded. Ranked by interceptions, then passes defended. Source: Pro Football Reference, 2025 NFL defense.

Look at Michael Jackson in third: four picks and nineteen passes defended, the most balls broken up of anyone on the list. That is the profile Masses is chasing. In his final college season at California he led the nation in passes defended, which is the same ball-hunting habit now showing up on Sundays. You can see more about Masses’ Week 3 interception on Tyler Shough, from the Raiders’ official video channel.

The 2025 leaders were ball-hawks. Read the list for what it is: who took the ball away, not who covered best.

The corners who defined the position

Every position has a short list of names that shaped it. For cornerback, that list is really about coverage turning into an art.

Mel Blount, the man behind that 1978 rule, was the prototype of the big, physical corner. Deion Sanders turned the job into a spectacle, a shutdown corner who also ran kicks and punts back for touchdowns. Darrelle Revis gave the game its best phrase for the position: receivers vanished so completely on his side of the field that the space became known as “Revis Island”. Each of them made the same point a different way, which is that a great corner changes what the other team is even willing to attempt. The corners we remember are the ones quarterbacks simply stopped throwing at.

Back to the rookie

When a fifth-round rookie is intercepting passes at this rate, the picks are the loud part.

The quieter story is a converted receiver, standing alone on the sideline, doing the one job on defence where every mistake is public, and so far making none worth remembering. You now know why a corner with no interceptions at all can still be the best one on the field, and why the loudest number on the stat sheet is rarely the whole truth.

A late hit that lands after the whistle can no longer wipe out the yards a team earned before it. That single line is the difference between the NFL rulebook now and the one in force on 1 November 1970, and the reason it changed is a Chiefs-Raiders game that Kansas City should have won.

They play again this Sunday, 4 October, in Las Vegas. So this is a good week to go back to the afternoon that put a rule in the book, read what that rule actually says today, and check whether it really does what everyone says it does.

The claim everyone repeats

The story gets told the same way every time. A Raiders defender speared Len Dawson after the play, both sides brawled, the penalties cancelled out, and the cancellation erased a Chiefs first down that would have ended the game. The NFL, so the story goes, changed the rule because of it.

That is the claim. It is repeated in franchise histories, in obituaries, and on the Chiefs v Raiders rivalry page on this site. I wanted to know if the rulebook backs it up.

The claim: a late-hit brawl in 1970 erased a Chiefs first down, and the NFL rewrote the rule so it could not happen again.

What actually happened, with names and numbers

Kansas City led 17-14 late in the fourth quarter. On third down, Dawson ran for a first down that would have let the Chiefs kneel out the clock and win.

As Dawson lay on the ground, well after the whistle, Raiders defensive end Ben Davidson dived helmet-first into his back. Chiefs receiver Otis Taylor flew in to defend his quarterback. Both benches emptied.

When it was sorted out, Davidson and Taylor were both ejected, and here is the part that matters: the two personal fouls were ruled to offset, and under the rules of the day, offsetting fouls wiped out the down. Dawson’s first down went with it. Kansas City had to replay third down, failed, and punted.

The Raiders drove back, and George Blanda kicked a 48-yard field goal with eight seconds left to tie it 17-17. A cheap shot after the whistle had reached back and deleted a play that was already over.

Why that tie was so expensive

A tie sounds harmless. This one ended a season.

The tie handed the Raiders the AFC West on an 8-4-2 record. The Chiefs finished 7-5-2 and missed the playoffs, one year after winning the Super Bowl. One nullified first down was the difference between a division title and the sofa in January.

What the rulebook says now

Here is the rule that exists because of that afternoon. In the 2026 NFL rulebook, a hit like Davidson’s is a dead ball foul, and Rule 14, Section 4, Article 9 says exactly what happens to one:

“The penalty for a dead ball foul is enforced from the succeeding spot, and the down counts.”

Read that second half slowly, because it is the whole point: the down counts. The play that just finished still counts. Then the same rule spells out the first-down question directly:

“If there is a dead ball foul by Team A after a down in which Team A has made a first down, after enforcement of the penalty it will be first-and-10 for Team A.”

In plain terms, a dead ball foul is one that happens after the play is over (Team A is just the side with the ball). The rule says the yards you earned on the play stand, and then the foul is punished separately, on the next play. A cheap shot afterwards costs you fifteen yards. It does not reach back and delete what already happened.

And when both sides foul after the play, as Davidson and Taylor did, the rule handles that too:

“Dead ball fouls by both teams are offset at the succeeding spot, and the down counts.”

Same three words. The down counts. The two fouls cancel each other, but the first down survives them.

Run 1970 through today’s book and it is a different afternoon: Dawson keeps his first down, the Chiefs kneel out the clock, and the brawl is just two ejections and a footnote.

Where the gap was, and why it closed

So the claim checks out, and the gap is real. In 1970 the fight and the first down were treated as one event: cancel the fouls, cancel the play, replay the down. There was no wall between what happened during the play and what happened after it.

The rule that followed built that wall. Personal fouls after the whistle became their own category, judged on their own, enforced on the next play. The result of the play they follow is left alone.

The NFL went further six years later. In 1976 it wrote a rule aimed squarely at Davidson’s specialty, hitting a runner who is already on the ground and out of the play. That protection sits in Rule 12 today, and it is a big part of how the modern game treats a defenceless player. If you want the wider picture of how the league polices contact, the penalties and pass interference guide is the place to start, and the scoring guide explains how a game like this one, decided by a late field goal, adds up.

The rule did not just tidy up the paperwork. It decided that a foul after the play can punish the fouler without robbing the other team of what they earned.

What to hold on to for Sunday

When these two meet in Las Vegas on Sunday, nobody will think about a 1970 rule, which is the surest sign it works. A late hit now costs fifteen yards and, if it is bad enough, an ejection. What it can no longer do is erase a first down that a team has already made.

That is worth remembering the next time you see a scuffle break out after the whistle and the referees sort through a pile of flags. The yards from the play are safe. The fight is a separate bill. It took a Chiefs-Raiders brawl to make it so.