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NFL Week 6 Takeaways: Jets’ and Browns’ Defenses Take Down Last Undefeated Teams

Plus, inside the Jaguars’ two-week London trip, Joe Burrow is alive and well, why the 49ers could hold players out next week and much more.

The Jets celebrate in the end zone as a team during a win over the Eagles
Two excellent defenses shut down the last two undefeated teams in the NFL on Sunday, including a Jets win over the Eagles.

Just because we’re in the age of supercharged offenses, and hold-on-to-your-butts defenses, doesn’t mean we won’t get Sundays like this one. And in Week 6, the NFL’s two unbeatens, a pair of incredibly complete teams, each fell for the first time and fell for the first time at the hands of teams driven by fast, aggressive, playmaking defenses.

Maybe you didn’t know when the season started. But you should know now—both the Jets and Browns are really good on that side of the ball.

We can start here with the Jets, and their captain, C.J. Mosley, who arrived in New Jersey four years ago looking to build something new, after being tasked at his past two football stops, at Alabama and with the Ravens, with maintaining a proud defensive tradition. And, no, no one is saying the Jets’ defense is at that level of prestige. What it is, though, is drawing closer to establishing its own standard under third-year coach Robert Saleh, and Sunday’s spine-tingling win over the 5–0 Eagles was a very big step in cementing that.

“Today was our big test,” Mosley told me on his drive home Sunday. “When we played against Kansas City, we had a great three quarters. We didn’t start too well, but we told ourselves coming in, Let’s make sure that we set an example. And we say we want to be a championship team, want to be a championship defense, want to be the best defense. But you gotta go out there and beat the best and play against the best, and we did and we stood toe-to-toe with them.

“Nobody flinched. We handled the new plays that they ran. The plays that they did get, we didn’t get too high or too low. And every time we went out on the field, we’re going out there with the expectation to dominate.”

Before the season, the Jets’ defense playing this well would’ve been seen as a bonus.

Six weeks in, for post–Aaron Rodgers New York, it’s become essential. And, increasingly, these Jets look like they’re up for the task—they nearly were against Kansas City, as Mosley said, and they have been against the Broncos and now the Eagles, too. In the last of those games, on Sunday at home against the defending NFC champions, and through a 20–14 win, that meant making three massive stops in the fourth quarter, and putting the only touchdown of the second half on a silver platter for the offense.

In others, at the wire, they’d have to do it themselves. Which is exactly how Mosley figures, as the leader of the pack, they should approach it, anyway.

“Yeah, anytime the defense is out there, especially to close out the game, we want to get it done,” he says. “Or we want to get the ball to the offense, so they can go down to win the game for us.”

Effectively, the Jets’ defense did both when it mattered most.

Entering the fourth quarter down 14–12, and with Philly driving, the first big play came. On a first-and-10 from the Jets’ 42, Jermaine Johnson came screaming off the edge, got to Jalen Hurts and hit his arm, sending the ball skyward and easy for Bryce Hall, one of the heroes of the Denver win, to collect. The New York offense then went three-and-out, and the Eagles drove again, going all the way from their own 18 to third-and-6 from the Jets’ 15. There, it was Bryce Huff coming through with a sack that pushed the Eagles back four yards and helped force a Jake Elliott miss on a 37-yard field goal try (it bent right at the end).

All of which, after another Jet punt, set up the biggest play of all—a clean Tony Adams pick of Hurts at midfield, which was returned 45 yards to the Eagles’ 8. On the next play, with 1:50 left, the Eagles let Breece Hall score untouched because it was the only way they’d get the ball back. The two-pointer made it 20–14.

“That was another example of everybody doing their job,” Mosley says. “It was a great disguise from the back end, great disguise up front, show one thing and pop into the zone, and he made a great play, almost took it to the house. And man, it was just a fun game, just to be in that situation and being in that environment against one of the best teams in the league with a great quarterback. And the guys, like I said, nobody flinched.”

The end result, really, is the Jets’ defense buying time for Zach Wilson to get comfortable, the offensive line time to work out its issues, and—maybe, just maybe—Rodgers time to make a miracle comeback. In case you missed it, the future Hall of Famer was at MetLife to take all this in (“I missed that mustache,” Mosley jokes), and he was there without crutches, which only led to more speculation of what might happen three months or so from now.

“Anything is possible with this guy, apparently,” Mosley says. “So we got to keep doing our job. It’s another thing where we got to control what we can control. Try to play for him to come back. We have to keep our same mentality. I think the big message today when people would ask about Aaron and how do you feel about the record and everything, it was, If he was still playing, what would our goals be compared to him not playing right now? We have to have the same mindset as if he was our starting quarterback, especially on the defensive side.

“We just have to keep the same mentality. Aaron’s, he’s not on the field but he’s still on our team. He’s still in our heart.”

Of course, to get him back on their field, the Jets’ defensive guys will have to do more than hold up their end of the original bargain. Thus far, that’s just what they’ve done.

Browns players celebrate after beating the 49ers
The Browns were celebrating Sunday after knocking off the 49ers.

Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports

Jim Schwartz may well prove to be the best assistant coach hire of the offseason. To really give you a snapshot of what Schwartz’s Cleveland defense is doing, I figured it’d be instructive to look at what the 49ers did last week against a more-hyped Cowboys unit, and compare it to how the Browns played San Francisco on Sunday. So here you go …

• The Niners scored 42 points on Dallas and 17 on Cleveland.

• The Niners rolled up 421 yards on the Cowboys and 215 against the Browns.

• The Niners turned it over once against Dallas and three times in Cleveland.

• The Niners had 25 first downs against the Cowboys and 15 against the Browns.

• Brock Purdy’s passer rating was 144.4 against Dallas and 55.3 against Cleveland.

Now, there were some mitigating factors. The 49ers were at home against the Cowboys. The conditions were pretty crappy in Cleveland. And Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel got hurt in-game, which is not a small detail.

That said, this is a Cleveland defense no one was talking about before the year, and one that had to lift up an offense that turned to PJ Walker on the fly with Deshaun Watson still hurt, and one that ultimately responded with two crucial three-and-outs, and another stop that made kicker Jake Moody’s game-winning attempt just long enough to sail wide right in the Browns’ stunning 19–17 win.

“Defense played phenomenally,” Walker told me from the locker room postgame, after performing pretty admirably himself. “They played lights out, man. It’s week after week. And for us as a team, we gotta rally around those guys and play for them as well, the same way they played for us. … They’re doing a great job.”

And they have been all year.

Consider this: Through five weeks, the Browns have allowed just 1,002 yards. That’s the third fewest by any team (behind only the 1971 Colts and ’70 Vikings) through five games since the merger. They’ve held two of their five opponents to a single field goal. In another game, a 26–22 loss to the Steelers in Week 2, Pittsburgh scored twice on defense, and, outside of a 71-yard touchdown pass from Kenny Pickett to George Pickens, the Steelers had just 184 yards and nine first downs. That leaves a 28–3 loss to the Ravens as the lone hiccup. And even in that one, two of the four touchdowns Cleveland allowed were scored on short fields because of the offense’s turnovers, and the Browns still held Baltimore under 300 yards.

Sunday, San Francisco got to the end zone twice. One touchdown was set up by an interception that put the Niners on the Browns’ 8. The other was a five-play, 84-yard drive to open the game.

So yeah, the story of Walker’s a good one, and we’ll bring you more on him on the site Monday. But the reason the Browns are 3–2 is the same one that explains the Jets’ staying alive without Rodgers.

It’s the defense—and it’s the guy running a simplified scheme predicated on bringing the talent out in stars by getting monsters like Myles Garrett and Denzel Ward to play fast—who deserves a lot of the credit for it.

Christian McCaffrey celebrates after a touchdown against the Cleveland Browns.
McCaffrey is one of several players who got dinged up Sunday, and who may be careful approaching the game next week.

Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports

While we’re here, the Niners did get bit by the injury bug in their upset loss, and that leads into an interesting story line that Tim Kawakami of The Athletic brought to my at