NFL Week 8: Tampa Bay barely threw the ball, and won anyway

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alison b

Now that the Monday results are in, the game that stood out for me as a rookie fan was Falcons at Buccaneers. Tampa Bay beat Atlanta 16-0 having thrown three passes and completed none of them, running the ball instead on 56 of their 60 plays. They are only the second team in the Super Bowl era to win a game without a single completion.

The NFL week 8 results

Week 8 results
2026 season · 14 games · kickoff times US Eastern
Thursday 29 October
GBPanthers at Packers 27-19
Sunday 1 November
JAXColts at Jaguars 42-7
CINTitans at Bengals 43-36OT
PITBrowns at Steelers 27-6
DETVikings at Lions 19-15
TBFalcons at Buccaneers 16-0
ARICardinals at Cowboys 33-30OT
LVRaiders at Jets 38-33
BUFRavens at Bills 36-10
LARChargers at Rams 24-9
NEPatriots at Dolphins 24-19
DENChiefs at Broncos 28-24
Sunday night
WASEagles at Commanders 27-10
Monday night
CHIBears at Seahawks 34-17
On a bye: Texans, Giants, 49ers, Saints

On a bye: Texans, Giants, 49ers, Saints. Kickoffs run from 1:00pm US Eastern, which is 6:00pm in the UK, through to the Monday night game at 1:15am our time. Every score here is checked against the full Week 8 scoreboard.

Following the Raiders? They won 38-33 at the Jets, their first win in five, and are back to 4-4. The game is broken down in the Raiders Week 8 review.

What a team gets from “running it” 56 times

Tampa Bay’s quarterback, Baker Mayfield, threw three passes all afternoon. One was dropped, one was broken up, and he was sacked once, which left him 0 for 3 with no yards and minus two net passing yards. His team still won by sixteen.

They did it by handing the ball off 56 times for 324 yards, a franchise record for a single game and comfortably past the 283 that stood before it. Bucky Irving carried 27 times for a career-high 170 yards and the game’s only touchdown.

Kenny Gainwell carried 25 times for 140, making them only the second pair of Buccaneers to each pass 100 rushing yards in the same game. Mayfield ran four times for 14, which is fourteen more than he threw for.

A carry, if you are not sure of the term just means one running play, and usually gains less yards than a pass.

What it does instead is use up the clock, because the game clock keeps running after a tackle in the field of play and stops after an incomplete pass.

Tampa Bay held the ball for 35 minutes and 16 seconds. Atlanta had it for 24 minutes and 44 seconds, and a team sitting on the bench cannot score. That trade, fewer yards for more time, is one of the oldest choices in how an offence is built.

Nobody builds a highlight reel out of running plays, but somehow Tampa Bay built a win out of 56 of them.

What counts as a block in the back

This weekend a clip of Arizona guard Hjalte Frohodlt has being doing the rounds. You see Arizona’s Tyler Allgeier run 63 yards for a touchdown at Dallas, and guard Hjalte Froholdt flattening Cowboys rookie safety Caleb Downs.

As you can imagine the comments were quite something, with a fair number of people arguing it should have been a flag for an illegal block in the back. No penalty was called and the run stood.

Here is what the rule asks for, from Rule 12, Section 1, Article 3 of the 2026 NFL rulebook. It is a foul if an offensive blocker:

“(b) blocks an opponent (from behind) in the back above the opponent’s waist, or uses his hands or arms to push an opponent from behind in a manner that affects his movement, except in close-line play.”

So far, so obvious: do not shove someone in the back from behind. The part that decides most of these arguments is the three exceptions printed directly underneath it. The use of hands on the back is not a foul when:

“(1) a player is making a personal attempt to recover a loose ball; (2) the opponent turns away from the blocker when contact is imminent; or (3) both of the blocker’s hands are on the opponent’s side.”

Number two is the one that matters here. If the defender turns his own back into a block that was already coming, it is not a foul, because the blocker did not choose the angle.

An official watching live has a fraction of a second to judge who turned and when, from one position on a crowded field, and the penalty if he gets it wrong is ten yards.

This is why two people can watch the same replay and both end up disagreeing.

Eleven points down, and 105 yards of penalties

Next up the team everyone apart from Kansas City fans and Swifties hate, Kansas City. The Chiefs led Denver 24-13 going into the fourth quarter and lost 28-24.

Bo Nix threw a two-yard touchdown to Nate Adkins, then found Jaylen Waddle for the two-point conversion, then Jonah Coleman ran it in from five yards with two minutes left. It was Nix’s 15th career game-winning drive, which ties Dak Prescott for the most by any player in his first three seasons since at least 1950.

Kansas City actually outgained Denver 399 yards to 294, and Patrick Mahomes threw for 321 with three touchdowns and no interceptions. What they also did was commit 11 penalties for 105 yards, a figure Sam Hoppen picked out as the game’s biggest blemish in his weekly round-up.

Harrison Butker also missed from 54 yards in the fourth quarter, and Wil Lutz did not miss anything for Denver.

Penalty yards are the quietest way to lose a game. A holding call wipes out a gain and puts you in a worse spot than before the play; a pre-snap flag turns a manageable second down into a long one.

None of it shows up in the yardage column that gets read out afterwards, which is why a team can outgain its opponent by a hundred yards and still be beaten.

Nix found Mahomes on the field afterwards. “I’ve always admired you,” he told him. “I was scared to death when you got the ball back.”

A Quartet of QB stories for week 8

Michael Penix Jr. threw the ball 24 times for Atlanta, completed eight, and gave it away four. Baker Mayfield threw it three times, completed none, and won by sixteen.

Denver was stranger still, because by every passing measure Patrick Mahomes had the better afternoon: 30 of 41 for 321 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a rating of 120.1, against Bo Nix’s 20 of 32 for 222 and a 103.9. He lost. Nix threw for a hundred fewer yards and got the fourth quarter, which is the only column that pays. The pair of them had quite the love in at the end, which does not always happen.

Spare a thought meanwhile for Justin Herbert, whose Chargers lost 24-9 at the Rams and are now (the only winless team left in the league at 0-7).

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