Biggest Plays of Week 4

One play can change a game; one game can change a season. That's just as true in Week 4 as it is in Week 18, so there's no reason to only start caring about close wins and losses at the end of the year. It's October now, and the haves are beginning to separate from the have-nots – and sometimes, the difference between one and the other is just a play or two.

Week 4 might be remembered as the week the defending AFC Champions woke up. The Patriots upsetting the Bills was just what they needed to get away from the "Drake Maye regression?!" talk, and we'll be looking back at this game if New England recovers to make the playoffs. Elsewhere, San Francisco and Kansas City survived challenges to remain undefeated, and Jacksonville beat both the Bengals and the referees before their annual two-week vacation in London. Good, important stuff, even if it took place in October, not January.

So which Week 4 play might come back to haunt/help people when all is said and done? Let's look back.

Kansas City Chiefs 30, Las Vegas Raiders 27

Lob City comes to Las Vegas?

A battle of two 3-0 teams is big enough to even get some big first quarter plays onto the list. Like this one – a 41-yard lob from Patrick Mahomes to Xavier Worthy to covert a big third down late in the first quarter. A tad bit underthrown, if anything, but Worthy makes the rare-for-him contested catch to set up the tieing touchdown a few plays later. The Chiefs are going to need Worthy to step up after both Tyquan Thornton and Rashee Rice went down in this one.

Kenneth Walker is Pretty Fast, I Guess

Kenneth Walker is your current Offensive Player of the Year favorite – 177 yards and two touchdowns in a battle of undefeated teams in your division will tend to do that for you. 76 of those yards came right here, late in the third quarter. Amazingly, Walker's 537 yards would be the eighth-highest season total for a Mahomes running back. The Chiefs gaining a running dimension is a terrifying idea.

Kirk Moves the Chainz

Don't think this was a Chiefs-only game, though! The Raiders may not have come out on top, but being able to keep pace with the Chiefs throughout was a key piece of evidence that their 3-0 start wasn't a fluke. They're good! Or good-ish. In the general vicinity of good. They could use some wide receivers, mind you, as everything seems to run through the tight ends. But Brock Bowers is a nice target to hit after stepping up in the pocket to convert a key third down. This kept the drive alive, added 14% to Las Vegas' win probability and...led to the dreaded field goal, down four. On 4th-and-11, it makes sense, the opportunity this catch led to ultimately was sort of missed.

A Pyrrhic Win for Tyquan Thornton

Don't worry, this video cuts out just before the injury.

Football sucks, sometimes.

Tyquon Thornton was having the best day of his career – and for a Kansas City Chiefs team that really needed him, with Rashee Rice getting hurt earlier in this game. Thornton had five catches for 111 yards, none bigger than this one, in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter. With undefeated Kansas City trailing to undefeated Las Vegas, facing a third-and-gotta-have-it, Thornton burned rookie Treydan Stukes on a deep crossing route, stumbling down inside the ten yard line – in easy range for the go-ahead field goal, with potential for more.

Thornton, as you might expect, got up ready to celebrate. And then he went right back down, because his foot was facing the wrong way. Once the adrenaline had worn off, Thornton was pointing to his foot in obvious pain. He had to be assisted off the field, and while he was able to return to Kansas City, it looks a lot like his season is over with a dislocated ankle. Horrible.

In the short term, this flipped the game to keep the Chiefs undefeated. Their win probability jumped from about 43% to 79% after this catch, and that was before Kenneth Walker scored the next play, the ensuing two-point conversion, OR the Raiders fumbling the ensuing kickoff. There was only going to be one undefeated AFC team; one team sitting in the #1 seed – and this made sure it was the Chiefs, who make sense, as opposed to the Raiders, who would be -crazy-.

In the long term, well, now the Chiefs need to find a replacement for Tyquan Thornton. It may be time to break the glass on Tyreek Hill's phone number.

New England Patriots 29, Buffalo Bills 26

"Some Practice Squad Guy"

Efton Chism, thank you for your entry into the Catch of the Year sweepstakes.

Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson on the catch: "“A (practice squad) guy made a helluva catch. Probably won’t happen to him again, respectfully. I say that with a lot of confidence because it’s like he didn’t put his confidence in his best player."

Chism, for the record, has never been on a practice squad. But C.J. Gardner-Johnson has! The more you know.

Craig Woodson Calls Game

Josh Allen, your MVP favorite at the moment, has elevated his game to such a point where you expect him to make come-from behind plays on a regular basis. And when the Bills got the ball with 100 seconds left and all three time-outs, I'm sure the bulk of Patriots fans thought that they were still in serious trouble.

But Allen is still a gunslinger, and will take risks on deep shots. They work more often now than they did when he was still a young guy, but you CAN get him at times. And when Craig Woodson found him in position against an underthrown ball to Joshua Palmer? Game over.

The Patriots are currently in playoff position in the AFC, atop the 2-2 bunch. Flip this result, and they'd be at the bottom of the 1-3 teams, with Denver taking their playoff spot – and the Bills would rise up to the #2 seed, rather that holding steady at #3.

San Francisco 49ers 24, Denver Broncos 14

Technically, a Fumble.

Is this Marvin Mims fumble actually a fumble? It depends on whether the wrist is part of your hand or a forearm.

The wrist, to me, is part of the hand, and the wrist hitting is what jostles the ball loose, so I think this is the right call. A huge one, though – on a swelteringly hot day when both offenses were having trouble getting going, this fumble is what really flipped the switch. From here, the 49ers scored a touchdown, and everything the rest of the day seemed to be going their way. If you believe in momentum, it's hard to get much swingier than this.

A Perfect Tight End Screen

And George Kittle is off to the races.

Kittle hit 19.84 MPH on this game-winning screen. Coming off of a bad Achilles! That hardly seems possible. If Patrick Mahomes didn't have the Comeback Player of the Year award on layaway, Kittle would be an excellent choice. As it is, we'll have to settle for a brilliantly blocked screen and Kittle hitting the turbo button.

A Broncos win here would have had them in the seventh seed at the moment. Instead, at 2-2, they're looking up at the Patriots, and down at an offense that can't seem to throw the ball more than 10 yards. The 49ers, meanwhile, hold on to the narrowest of leads over the Vikings for the #1 seed in the NFC.

Jacksonville Jaguars 22, Cincinnati Bengals 17

Burr-No!

Every five minutes, it seemed like a huge Jacksonville play was getting called back by penalty. Very frustrating to watch. That meant that the Jaguars still had some work to do in the fourth quarter to ice the game, and Foye Oluokun delivered, snagging a pretty bad Joe Burrow throw in the red zone to keep the Jags up one score. Oluokun is one of seven linebackers since he was drafted in 2018 to reach 10 interceptions – and he has two this season.

4th and Not Quite Enough

The Bengals still had one more shot at the end of the game, facing a 4th-and-10 from the Jacksonville 21. Does Burrow have a game-winner in him?

...No. With both top wideouts out, Burrow checks down to Chase Brown in traffic, and he's stopped short. I hate throwing short of the sticks on fourth, and the Bengals were rightly punished for it. Jags win!

Flip the results, and the 2-2 Jaguars are out of the playoff picture while the 3-1 Bengals are in, despite Jacksonville pretty clearly out-playing the Bengals this week. Jacksonville coming up with two big defensive stops on a day their offense couldn't get out of the ref's way bodes well for them going forward – always good to prove you can win ugly.