Winners and Losers of NFL Week 5

Every week of the 2022 NFL season, we will celebrate the electric plays, investigate the colossal blunders, and explain the inexplicable moments of the most recent slate. Welcome to Winners and Losers. Which one are you?

Winner: The London Giants

We have not given the people of England a particularly convincing argument for supporting American football. Our sport is massively complicated and our biggest games are played in the middle of the night over there. While the NFL has sent a handful of games over per year, they were always the dregs: For the first 14 years of London games, there was not a single matchup between two teams with winning records.

Sunday broke that streak. It was the highest-profile game in London history: The 3-1 Giants facing the 3-1 Packers, who were playing their first game overseas. (Green Bay hasn’t wanted to give up home games, and other teams haven’t wanted to give up the sweet money generated by hosting 30,000 cheeseheads.) According to international data research site YouGov, the Giants and Packers are two of the four most popular teams in England. Packers fans always show up wherever the Packers play, and that includes London, prompting locals to ask why all these weirdos were walking around town wearing blocks of Gruyere-like hats. And apparently London has also accumulated a sizable portion of Giants fans. (Maybe because the Giants played the first game of the NFL’s annual international series there and went on to win the Super Bowl the same season?) Before Sunday’s game, British Giants fans were spotted singing soccer-style chants, advising the Packers on what to do with their cheddar.

Surprisingly, the game itself lived up to the billing. Even though both teams had the same record, the Packers were 9-point favorites: They’ve been to the NFC championship game in two of the past three seasons, and had the two-time reigning MVP Aaron Rodgers at QB. Meanwhile, New York’s QB is Daniel Jones, whose mobility was expected to be limited due to an ankle injury—and mobility has been more or less Jones’s only positive trait in his first few years in the NFL. And the Giants were missing their top four receivers—Kadarius Toney, Wan’Dale Robinson, Kenny Golladay, and Sterling Shepard, who is out for the year. New York’s top receiver was Richie James, who had three touchdowns in three years with the 49ers, followed by David Sills V, most famous for being recruited by Lane Kiffin as a 13-year-old quarterback. They also lost two starting defenders—defensive end Azeez Ojulari and cornerback Aaron Robinson—this week.

During the game, New York’s injury woes got worse. Saquon Barkley, their best player by far, suffered a shoulder injury, and missed roughly half of the game. Jones started bleeding out of his hand for unexplained reasons. (Some of his blood got on his center’s butt.) New York’s top two healthy cornerbacks, Adoree’ Jackson and Fabian Moreau, both left the game with injuries, as did starting defensive tackle Leonard Williams. The Packers took a 17-3 lead in the first half.

AND THE GIANTS WON, 27-22. Without their top three cornerbacks and half of their defensive line,…