The hidden gems from NFL Week 7 you might have missed

NFL Sundays have been nothing short of chaotic this season. Right now, 19 teams are sitting at .500 or above, and almost all of those teams are erratic from week to week. In the past few weeks alone, we’ve lost a superstar at about every position due to injury: J.J. Watt, Aaron Rodgers, Odell Beckham Jr. and now, sigh, Ironman Joe Thomas.

(Off the field is a whole other story.)

So it can be easily to overlook all the little gems that happen every week, whether it’s a fun play or a weird stat. But sometimes that’s the best part of Sunday. And we’re here to celebrate our favorites.

You know those days when every single thing that could go wrong does go wrong? Matt Danely from SB Nation’s Colts blog, Stampede Blue, had one of those days on Sunday. Danely took his oldest son to watch the Colts face the Jaguars, and he didn’t just have to watch his team get shut out. He also got caught on camera accidentally flinging his phone onto the field.

But the best part of this story is that this was not even remotely Danely’s first phone-related mishap of the day. In his words:

Yep, that’s my stinking phone. Yes, the same possessed piece of electronics that forced me to scour my house for the extra charger, jumped onto my vehicle then jumped off as we left our lunch destination, and now the same phone that found its way onto the freaking field.

It was quite a day for Danely. At least he seems to have a great sense of humor, which may be necessary to get through this Colts season.

Dez Bryant had seven catches for 63 yards and a touchdown on Sunday against the 49ers. That touchdown was Bryant’s 71st, and it stood out because it tied a franchise record.

The score brought Bryant even with Cowboys legend Bob “Bullet” Hayes. Hayes was an Olympic sprinter-turned-NFL player who spent nine seasons with the Cowboys, and it’s not the first time Bryant has tied one of his records. Hayes, Bryant, Franklin Clarke, and Terrell Owens are all tied with a streak of seven consecutive games with at least one touchdown catch.

This record-tying catch from Bryant is a beauty. He’s double covered, but Dak Prescott puts the ball right where it should be, and Bryant brings it down and taps his toes in the back of the end zone for the score.

What a difference a year — and some coaching changes — can make. The Los Angeles Rams and Jacksonville Jaguars went from laughingstocks in 2016 to competitive this season. Both teams have already surpassed their win totals for last season.

The Jaguars won just three games last season. This year, with some help from a relentless pass rush, they’ve already notched four wins. The most recent came against the hapless Colts, and the Jags sacked Jacoby Brissett 10 times. It was the team’s second 10-sack game this season. If they keep going after passers like that, they may triple their win total from last year.

The Rams look like a completely different team under Sean McVay. They’re on top of the NFC West with a 5-2 record after winning just four games last season. Jared Goff, last year’s first overall pick, looks like a viable signal caller, and McVay apparently knows how to maximize Todd Gurley’s talent for the good of the team.

The Rams and Jaguars didn’t just exceed their win totals from last season with victories on Sunday. They also shut out their respective opponents, the Cardinals and the Colts.

Logan Thomas caught his first NFL touchdown pass on Sunday in the Bills’ 30-27 win over the Bucs. Tyrod Taylor threw it to him, just he did back in 2010 when the two were teammates at Virginia Tech.

That was Taylor’s only receiving touchdown in college. He was a quarterback, Taylor’s backup as a redshirt freshman that season.

Taylor went to the NFL in 2011. Thomas took over as the Hokies starting QB until he left for the NFL in 2014. Taylor stayed at QB, eventually finding his way to the Bills. Thomas switched to tight end during a stint with the Lions in 2016.

Now they’re teammates again.

For the first time since 1992, the Broncos were shut out, limping to a 21-0 loss to the Chargers on Sunday. Earlier that day, the Colts’ own scoring streak, which had been going since 1993, also ended. They were blanked 27-0, turning up the heat on Chuck Pagano’s seat.

One other team put up a goose egg on Sunday: The Rams took it to the Cardinals, 33-nil, in London. So on the same day that two scoring streaks ended, both L.A. teams pitched a shutout:

The Bengals were trailing by 15 points and had just three minutes on the clock. It was fourth-and-3 in Bengals territory. Andy Dalton takes the snap, and he ... wait, Andy. No.

The pocket collapses, and Dalton’s under pressure. He sails it out of bounds, which does his team literally not one bit of good. The Steelers went on to win 29-14, and Cincinnati fell to 2-4.

The worst part is that it’s not the first time Dalton has thrown it away on fourth down. He did in on a fourth-and-5 in Week 1 against the Ravens.

Evan Engram lost his shoe on a 25-yard catch and run against the Seahawks on Sunday. It happened in the third quarter, and the Giants were just trailing by three points. This was the moment where the wheels came off for New York.

To his credit, Engram keeps running when his shoe flies off. And it was a nice little play. It got the Giants into Seahawks territory. But the drive fizzled without a score, and then Seattle took over.

The Seahawks scored 14 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to put the game away and win 24-7.

Dan Bailey had to leave the Cowboys’ game against the 49ers with a groin injury. Going to an emergency kicker is usually a dicey situation, but there wasn’t much dropoff for Dallas with safety Jeff Heath.

Heath played soccer and was a kicker in high school. He apparently has retained those skills, because he was able to nail two of three PAT attempts for the Cowboys. Since the league decided to move extra points back, these kicks were the longest successful ones by a non-kicker in the NFL since 1979, according to Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk.

Maybe Heath has a future in yet another role in the NFL, too. The last non-kicker to convert more than one PAT in a single game just happened to be Packers general manager Ted Thompson. Thompson, then a linebacker for the Houston Oilers, went four of four on extra points as a pinch kicker back in 1980.

So don’t be surprised if that’s GM Jeff Heath to you in 25 years.

Joe Haden went from AFC North bottom feeder to the division’s top team after the Browns released the former Pro Bowler last offseason. He traveled two hours down the road to Pittsburgh, where he added veteran depth to one of the league’s up-and-coming defenses. He’d been relatively quiet in his first six games with the Steelers, but that streak ended with a nifty interception plucked off A.J. Green’s back Sunday.

The interception was Haden’s 20th as a pro and first in black and yellow. More importantly, it helped Pittsburgh crush a division rival and stand alone atop the North.

Ezekiel Elliott used his return from appealed suspension to its fullest Sunday, rushing for 147 yards and a pair of touchdowns against the 49ers in a 40-10 rout. It wasn’t all bad for San Francisco, however. General Manager John Lynch got to see just how powerful rookie linebacker Reuben Foster can be.

Injury concerns dropped Foster to the 31st pick of the 2017 NFL Draft, and though he’s only played in a pair of games this fall, he’s showed off the kind of skill that could make him a major bargain if he can stay healthy.

The first touchdown of O.J. Howard’s career came in the Bucs’ 25-23 win over the Giants earlier this season. Every defender on the field treated him like he had leprosy:

He’s best game so far of the season was Sunday against the Bills. He hauled in six catches for 98 yards and two touchdowns. Here’s his second score of the day:

Helpful suggestion: Might want to cover that guy.

No team is more cursed at kicker than the Bucs, who have cycled through eight kickers since 2012. They’re already on their third kicker since this preseason. First Roberto Aguayo, their 2016 second-round pick, was cut after his rookie yips followed him into the summer. Then Nick Folk missed all three field goal attempts in a five-point loss to the Patriots.

So then, the Bucs signed Patrick Murray, a kicker who played for them in 2014. What could possibly go wrong this time?

As it turns out, nothing — yet. Murray wasn’t asked to do much last week. He attempted (and made) just one extra point. This week, the pressure was on in a close contest with the Bills. But Murray was perfect. He nailed both field goal tries, including a 50-yarder, and all three of his extra point attempts.

Unfortunately for the Bucs, they still lost. But hey, maybe that kicker problem is finally solved!

Le’Veon Bell had a slow start to the season, but has erupted since Week 4 with three games of 130-plus rushing yards.

It’s because he’s gotten back to his shifty style. There’s no other running back in the NFL that can make things slow down in real time like this:

If you’re looking for the right words to describe that, let the Bengals’ defenders do it for you:

His threat in the receiving game has taken some opportunities from Martavis Bryant, who seems less than happy in Pittsburgh right now.

But hey, when Bell is carving up defenses like a jack-o’-lantern, it probably doesn’t matter. When he’s on, nobody in the NFL is better.

Los Angeles has played three games in the United Kingdom in franchise history. The Rams scored a total of 17 points in the first two, leaving fans decked out in blue and gold wondering just what all the fuss is about American football. On Sunday, Jared Goff gave the good people of Twickenham something for which to cheer.

Goff’s Rams dropped 33 points on a hapless Cardinals team, relying on a bevy of young guns to get here. The second-year quarterback had a quietly solid day, throwing for 235 yards as Todd Gurley (106 yards, 1 TD), Sammy Watkins, and Cooper Kupp gave fans both domestic and overseas a reason to root for Los Angeles. At 5-2, the Rams are tied for the second-best record in the NFL — but a daunting second-half schedule awaits.