NFL 2015 schedule and results: Panthers beat Eagles to remain undefeated

There are now five 6-0 teams in the NFL -- Carolina, Cincinnati, Denver, Green Bay and New England -- which sets an NFL record for the most 6-0 teams after seven weeks of the season. It’s a reminder that professional sports leagues keep a ridiculous number of conditional statistics and an indictment of the current state of parity in the NFL.

Out of all five of those teams, the only one that has any real competition within their own division is the Carolina Panthers. They’re trailed by the 6-1 Atlanta Falcons, who narrowly escaped the Music City with a 10-7 win over the Titans. Coming into Sunday’s games, the Panthers had a 54.9 percent chance of winning the AFC South, according to Football Outsiders. Atlanta’s chances were 42.8 percent.

The resurgence of Chris Johnson continues. He’s not CJ2K anymore; instead, he’s been retrofitted as a power back, pushing his way through piles and around defenders. Johnson finished Arizona’s 26-18 win over the Ravens on Monday night with 122 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries, his third effort this season with 100 yards or more. The highlight of Johnson’s night was a 5-yard run that turned into 62 yards when the Ravens failed to properly tackle him.

Johnson wasn’t the only veteran slinging it for the Cardinals. Carson Palmer had another solid outing, completing 20 of 29 passes for 275 yards and a pair of touchdowns and no picks.

Kelly also said on Monday that Staley was careful not to give too many touches to Mathews after the running back suffered a groin injury in the first half.

After the game, Mathews insisted that he wasn’t frustrated with the lack of touches and said the coaches are doing a good job of keeping him fresh.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- One by one, they walked toward Dwayne Harris on Sunday evening in the MetLife Stadium tunnels. One Dallas Cowboy to a former Dallas Cowboy with a salutation, with respect. Among them were safety Barry Church and receivers Terrance Williams and Devin Street. There was a tight embrace and whispers in the ear from receiver Dez Bryant.

And later, a handshake, a hug and this offering from Dallas coach Jason Garrett:

Yesterday’s NFL action featured a relatively short list of key injuries, but a particularly tough one for fans of the struggling Houston Texans, as Arian Foster suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon rupture. SB Nation Medical Expert Dr. Ali Mohamadi has the latest on Foster and the rest of the Week 7 injury report.

Foster’s left Achilles tear, which took place late in the fourth quarter of Houston’s blowout loss to the Dolphins, was a classic non-contact injury. It occurred almost instantly after taking off from the line of scrimmage. Foster, who was split out left as a receiver, immediately fell to the ground clutching his left lower leg, making the diagnosis fairly clear from the start.

After Sunday’s game, Brady sits at 55,312 career yards. Brees (57,904), Marino (61,361), Manning (71,215) and Favre (71,838) are all fairly separated on the leaderboard but with three of the players still active, that top five could look a lot different by the end of this season. Manning surpassing Favre is certainly possible this year, and Brees could move up.

Brady is having a phenomenal season even outside the record books. He’s completed 68.9 percent of his passes for 2,054 yards and 16 touchdowns against a single interception. His lowest mark for interceptions was 2010, when he played in all 16 games but tossed just four interceptions against his 36 touchdown passes. The Patriots are 6-0 on the season, well ahead in the AFC East.

A third of the views came from outside the United States and a total of 460 million minutes of game action were streamed globally, but the number of actual viewers is expected to go up when television numbers from Buffalo, Jacksonville and London are added.

The number of viewers is inflated some by the fact that the game was streaming live on the homepage at Yahoo! and anyone who kept the stream open for more than three seconds was considered a view; however, the NFL is feeling good about the numbers.

Greg Hardy became upset on the Dallas Cowboys’ sideline in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the New York Giants. He shoved teammates and got in a shouting match with Dez Bryant after the Cowboys gave up a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to Dwayne Harris after briefly pulling even on the scoreboard.

After the game, head coach Jason Garrett and owner/general manager Jerry Jones applauded Hardy’s passion. It’s unclear whether they saw another angle of the incident that showed Hardy getting into a heated confrontation with special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia and slapping the clipboard out his hands, however:

The Eagles were down eight to the Panthers with under 30 seconds left, and the Panthers were lining up for a chip shot field goal. The Eagles needed a block if they wanted any hopes of tying the game. And they had something drawn up for just that. It didn’t work, but... close:

That’s Eagles linebacker Bryan Braman leaping over the Panther’s long snapper and trying to knock the field goal. But he came up juuuust a bit late.

Carolina rushed for 204 yards against a Philadelphia defense that came in ranked third in the NFL against the rush, helping them overcome three Newton interceptions.

The Eagles forced Carolina to punt with 3:18 to play, still trailing by just eight points, but turned the ball over on downs at their own 16. Graham Gano clinched the game with a short field goal with 18 seconds left.

Ohio State folks know Ohio State is not merely *an* Ohio State University. It is THE Ohio State University, and that’s how their fans, players, and alumni refer to the school whenever asked.

Now players get to announce their alma mater on Sunday Night Football, so whenever an OSU player comes along, they get their “THE” on. Plenty of Buckeyes were in the Panthers’ starting lineup Sunday night -- WR’s Ted Ginn and Corey Brown, safety Kurt Coleman, guard Andrew Norwell -- so their non-OSU teammates decided to have a little fun with them by stealing their THE.

Another week, another strange catch situation in the NFL that ends with fans and viewers confused by what the heck counts as a catch in the National Football League. This time, the puzzling decision came in Carolina where Panthers receiver Ted Ginn Jr. appeared to haul in a grab and get tackled before the ball popped out.

Ginn’s knee appears to hit the ground before that ball comes loose. That would seemingly be the end of the play, because that is how football works. Except the NFL ruled otherwise. Dean Blandino, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, said Ginn had to maintain control all the way to the ground.

But Cassel’s aggressiveness is, in part, the reason why Dallas switched to him at quarterback, and he helped keep the team in the game with a strong touchdown drive midway through the fourth quarter. The Cowboys defense had been doing a good job limiting the Giants so that Cassel’s turnovers didn’t sink the team (Cassel’s first interception was returned for a touchdown). He repaid their efforts by hitting passes of 13, 21 and, finally, 25 yards to tie the game, 20-20, and briefly give Dallas hope.

If the question is whether Cassel is better than Weeden, then there is no answer yet. Cassel threw more picks against the Giants than Weeden did in four appearances this season, and Weeden also threw for two scores, completed 72.4 percent of his passes and posted a 92.2 quarterback rating.

Boldin had 592 receiving yards and two touchdowns through his first six career games, while Moss had 527 yards and six touchdowns in his. Being in the company with guys like Boldin (12,778 yards, 72 touchdowns) and Moss (15,292 yards, 156 touchdowns) is pretty stellar. Cooper now has three touchdowns on the season.

But Cooper joined even more elite company on Sunday: Mike Ditka. Cooper is the first rookie with three 100-plus yard receiving games in the team’s first six games since Ditka did it in 1961, according to ESPN Stats and Information on Twitter.

Trailing 27-20 with 1:36 to play in the fourth quarter, the Dallas Cowboys were about to get the ball back for a potential game-tying drive. All they had to do was catch the punt from the New York Giants. About that ...

There are muffed punts and then there is that. Cole Beasley has returned 18 punts during his NFL career with another 13 fair catches. He’s certainly familiar with catching a punt and there didn’t seem to be anything too tricky about this one. Yet still, this was the result.

Dez Bryant has been known to get emotional on the sideline firing his teammates up. Greg Hardy has been known to get into it with teammates. They’re now on the same team. Their Emotional Yelling waves crashed into each other and made an Emotional Yelling tsunami:

Of course, it’s not clear if they’re furious at each other or just really into the game or just trying to get juices flowing on the sideline. This happened after the Cowboys staged a mini-comeback ... only to allow a kickoff return TD in the fourth quarter. Bryant, of course, isn’t playing, and Hardy wasn’t in on the kick return, so this wasn’t about that. Whatever it was, it was clearly intense.

Foster had 18 carries for 59 yards and a touchdown in Sunday’s game before going down with the injury.

Foster is the team’s starting running back, but was playing in just his fourth game this season as he missed the first three weeks due to injury. He has 45 carries for 104 yards on the season, a per-carry average of just 2.3 yards. The running back hasn’t looked like himself all season, though he’s caught 17 passes for 161 yards and a touchdown.

Amari Cooper is putting together a potential Rookie of the Year campaign. At the very least, he won’t stop making our jaws drop.

That cut man. That cut.

Kirk Cousins played a great game Sunday, tying a Washington record for most completions in a game while leading the largest comeback in team history. Hey, Kirk, how are you feeling about that?

Either he’s really pumped up about the win or he just posted a particularly fire meme on Facebook and wants to make sure he gets the social media boost he craves.

There are subtle shady things that happen during nearly every NFL play. Stepping on another player on “accident,” getting a little extra shot in near the end of the play or whatever happens at the bottom of a pile. Then, there is double-leg kicking an opponent right in the chest in front of everyone.

San Diego’s Corey Liuget didn’t care about being subtle, he just straight drilled Oakland’s Donald Penn. Not only did he obviously kick him right in the chest, but he wasn’t flagged for doing it. Penn, however, did draw a flag for responding.

“It was just a terrible call,” Robey said, via the Buffalo News. “I’m still here waiting for an answer: What did I do?”

Robey was asked about multiple things following the game, but he kept going back to the call, which he says wasn’t explained to him by the referee.

NFL players have missed games for a number of reasons, but this might be a new one.

Adrian Peterson, professional football player, is exactly as smooth as some high school sophomores you know. For what it’s worth, FOX’s Jay Glazer reported that Peterson told his teammates it was shellfish.

But, Luck did what he’s done many times over his career and got his team back into the game.

Despite the furious second-half comeback attempt, it was another slow start from Andrew Luck, whose first completion of the game didn’t come until 9:09 in the second quarter. This was the first game of his career that Luck has started 0-of-5, and his two interceptions really put the Colts in a hole early on. Luck has now thrown multiple interceptions in six of his last seven games, and his performances of late have had fans and analysts scratching their heads.

Washington’s quarterback controversy will likely flare up again at some point, but there’s no question this weekend: Cousins is king.

Speed. Power. Explosiveness. Agility. Vision.

He finished the game with 97 yards after contact, the most of any player in any game so far this season. His 128 rushing yards this week left him 12 yards short of becoming the second Rams running back to rush for at least 140 yards or more in three straight games as a rookie, a mark reached by Eric Dickerson.