Game of the Week

New Orleans at Tam­pa Bay

Hey, Buc­ca­neers coach­es, it’s OK to trust Tom Brady with more shots down­field. Their win Mon­day at the Giants was under­whelm­ing offen­sive­ly. Tam­pa Bay is a 4 1/2‑point favorite and look for it to be more daring.

Buc­ca­neers 30, Saints 24

Lock of the week

Mia­mi at Arizona

The Car­di­nals are a 4 1/2‑point favorite out of their bye week and will lean on their league-lead­ing offense (419.1 yards per game) to beat Mia­mi and tie Seat­tle (which will lose at Buf­fa­lo) atop the NFC West.

Car­di­nals 34, Dol­phins 21

Upset of the week

New Eng­land at N.Y. Jets

The Jets have nev­er start­ed 0–9 … and they won’t this year. Gang Green is a four-point home under­dog, but they’ll add to the Patri­ots’ mis­ery. The worst will be win­ners and the one-win Giants and Jaguars will rejoice.

Jets 10, Patri­ots 6

Around the AFC: Pittsburgh has answered road challenges last two weeks to remain undefeated

Steel­ers rolling. Two weeks ago, we thought Pitts­burgh was a good team ben­e­fit­ing from a soft sched­ule that had only one team (Cleve­land) with a win­ning record. But then the Steel­ers won at Ten­nessee (27–24) and Bal­ti­more (28–24) and are favored to improve to 8–0 Sun­day at low­ly Dal­las. If the Steel­ers win, coach Mike Tom­lin will tie the NFL record held by Mar­ty Schot­ten­heimer for begin­ning his coach­ing career with 14 con­sec­u­tive non-los­ing sea­sons. Tom­lin and quar­ter­back Ben Roeth­lis­berg­er have been the con­stants as the Steel­ers have retooled on the fly.

Account­able GM. It’s not often a gen­er­al man­ag­er admits error in let­ting one of his free agents depart. But the Jets’ Joe Dou­glas, his team 0–8, did just that when asked about receiv­er Rob­by Ander­son, who signed with Car­oli­na ($10 mil­lion guar­an­teed) and has 51 catch­es. “That’s on me, ulti­mate­ly,” Dou­glas said. “There are thou­sands of deci­sions that come across your desk dur­ing the year and I go back and look at what I could have done bet­ter in that spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion.” Basi­cal­ly, Dou­glas didn’t think Ander­son would be avail­able for the afford­able salary he is earn­ing with Carolina.

Allen’s bounce back. It’s a big game for Buf­fa­lo quar­ter­back Josh Allen Sun­day against Seat­tle. The Bills are 6–2 and lead the AFC East, but Allen has no touch­downs in the last two games (16 in the first six). Allen will need to take advan­tage of the Sea­hawks’ league-worst pass defense. “If they want to play some soft zones, (I can) take some of the under­neath stuff and when the big play presents itself, we have to make sure that we exe­cute and go after it when we can,” Allen said.

Around the NFC Drew Brees, Tom Brady could trade all-time touchdown passing record Sunday night

Back-and-forth record. Sun­day night’s New Orleans-Tam­pa Bay show­down could include the in-game trad­ing off of the NFL’s all-time touch­down pass­ing record. The Buc­ca­neers’ Tom Brady and the Saints’ Drew Brees have 561 and 560, respec­tive­ly. The pre­vi­ous record hold­ers were able to enjoy their time at the top, led by Sam­my Baugh (18-plus years with 187), Fran Tarken­ton (19-plus years with 342) and Dan Mari­no (11-plus years with 420). Pey­ton Man­ning held the record for five years, 58 days (539) until he was passed by Brees.

Rivera’s cause. Wash­ing­ton coach Ron Rivera com­plet­ed his can­cer treat­ments dur­ing his team’s bye week and talked about his desire for “some form of (the) Afford­able Care Act.” In a con­fer­ence call with New York reporters on Wednes­day, Rivera added: “I don’t know who the Pres­i­dent is going to be. I don’t care if it’s a Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, there’s a group of Amer­i­cans that need to be cov­ered, that need to have the ben­e­fit of that and we need to fig­ure it out quick­ly because I’m seri­ous. I saw what (the treat­ment) costs. … I can only imag­ine what it is for Amer­i­cans who don’t have (cov­er­age) and for us to be one of the rich­est coun­tries in the world and not have a good med­ical plan for our cit­i­zens is disappointing.”

Robin­son shin­ing. Receiv­er-needy teams should cov­et Chicago’s Allen Robin­son, who is wrap­ping up a three-year, $42 mil­lion con­tract and is poised to hit the mar­ket ahead of his age-28 sea­son. Robin­son is car­ry­ing the Bears’ offense — he’s sixth in the league in catch­es (50) and yards (631). He had six catch­es for 87 yards in last week’s over­time loss to New Orleans after not prac­tic­ing due to a concussion.