The 2025 NFL Season — Week 8 Review

Week 8 of the 2025 NFL season saw some good divisional rivalry games, and the last winless team in the league finally change that.

Game of the Week

That winless team — the New York Jets — entered Week 8 with a 0–7 record. Good for them then that they managed to hold out for the 39–38 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in an eventful game which culminated in Jets running back Breece Hall, who had already rushed for 133 yards and two touchdowns, throwing the winning touchdown pass to Mason Taylor.

While they were on the losing end, Joe Flacco –who was 21/34 for 223 yards and two touchdowns, as well as scoring a rushing TD, on Sunday — has also looked far better playing for the Bengals than he did in his second stint as a Cleveland Brown at the start of this season. Credit should also be given to the Bengals’ offensive line, who ensured Flacco was only sacked once by what is a good Jets defence and that wasn’t until the fourth quarter. Clearly, the Bengals’ defence needs to improve though given it conceded 39 points to what many would consider to be the NFL’s worst team this season. At the very least, it’s a tie with the Tennessee Titans, who are also 1–7 having lost 38–14 to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.

Other Action

The Los Angeles Chargers defeated the Minnesota Vikings convincingly during Thursday Night Football to open Week 8. In recent seasons, a revolving door of quarterbacks — Kirk Cousins, Josh Dobbs, Sam Darnold, and now, Carson Wentz — have come and gone from Minnesota, usually revitalising their reputation by operating well in head coach Kevin O’Connell’s offensive system before moving on elsewhere.

In my 2025 NFL Season Preview, I predicted that Carson Wentz would have a ‘Wentz-naissance’ if he had to come into the team for an injured JJ McCarthy. He’s looked ok, but it hasn’t quite happened for Wentz this season, and he has now been ruled out for the rest of the season with a shoulder injury.

It wasn’t for a lack of talent though, and his ability had been on show — this was still the same Carson Wentz who was playing exceptionally well for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018 before he got injured and Nick Foles came in and won the Super Bowl with the Eagles. This was still the same Wentz who played well for the Colts in 2021, and this was still the same Carson Wentz who spoke glowingly about how much his game developed by being Patrick Mahomes’ backup in Kansas City last season. We’d seen glimpses of that Carson Wentz since he came in for the injured McCarthy in Week 3, but we’d also seen glimpses of the inconsistent Wentz who had failed to make the starting QB position his own since leaving Philadelphia, meaning he became the first quarterback in NFL history this season to start for six different teams in six consecutive seasons.

In fairness to Wentz, it hasn’t helped that the Vikings’ starting offensive line has been dealing with injuries throughout the season, with starting offensive tackles Christian Darrisaw and Brian O’Neill having been in and out of the lineup because of injuries, starting center Ryan Kelly is now out indefinitely having suffered multiple concussions this season, and their backups have then also gotten injured. He was also very clearly dealing with that season-ending shoulder injury to his non-throwing (left) arm during the Chargers game, which won’t have been helped by getting sacked five times. JJ McCarthy will likely be back from a high ankle strain soon, so it will be interesting to see how O’Connell and the Vikings decide to proceed given the team are currently 3–4 in an NFC North division that also contains the Detroit Lions (5–2), Green Bay Packers (5–1–1)and Chicago Bears (4–3).

Elsewhere, we as football fans finally got to see some of the Saquon Barkley that was such a joy to watch last season, as he rushed for 150 yards and a touchdown, as well as scoring a receiving touchdown in the Eagles’ 38–20 win over the New York Giants before exiting the game with a groin injury. Sadly, the Giants’ rookie running back Cam Skattebo suffered a dislocated ankle in the same game. Much like Saquon both last season and when he was a Giants player prior, Skattebo has been fun to watch this season, helping to give the Giants’ offence some much-needed spark. As I’m sure is true of all football fans, I hope he has a full and speedy recovery.

Speaking of players facing off against their old team, Aaron Rodgers faced the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, with his new team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, losing the game 35–25. Rodgers has fit seamlessly into the well-run machine that is the Steelers under head coach Mike Tomlin, and has looked more like the four-time MVP winner that played in Green Bay for the first 18 seasons of his career. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and so, having seen how much his replacement in Green Bay — Jordan Love, who went 29/37 for 360 yards and three touchdowns on Sunday — has developed since Rodgers left Wisconsin, the Packers drafting Love to be Rodgers’ replacement was clearly the right thing to do to ensure the continued success of the team in the long-term, no matter how disgruntled Rodgers may have been at the time. On this, Rodgers hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory with some of his pronouncements in recent years, so it was good to see him striking a concilatory note with his comments about his time at Green Bay in the run-up to the game, including saying that he wants to retire as a Packer.

Finally, Drake Maye got his proverbial flowers this weekend from the analysts on CBS Sports, ESPN and FOX following the New England Patriots’ 32–13 win over the Browns, as well as from the league itself. As much as I love to see it as a Patriots fan, I’m going to urge restraint — while I agree with a lot of what has been said, for Maye to be the player that everyone is saying he is, he needs to perform consistently at the level he has been for the rest of the season and beyond. If everyone outside of the organisation is still using such superlatives to describe him this time next year once he’s been a starter in the NFL for two solid years, then we’ll know that the Patriots are truly onto something with Drake Maye under center.

Final Thoughts

This past Sunday was the annual celebration of National Tight Ends Day in the NFL. At the same time, several teams, including the Broncos, Eagles and Steelers, wore throwback uniforms and featured retro insignia on their home fields this weekend — something that also has become a regular occurrence in the NFL in recent years.

Given it’s part of my day job, I am usually impressed by the NFL’s marketing efforts and the various methods it employs to generate extra attention for its product. The league and the broadcasters ‘celebrating’ National Tight Ends Day at the same time that several teams were also celebrating their history — including the ‘look back’ segments about that team’s history that the broadcasters aired during the game breaks — felt muddled to me though. If the league and the broadcasters want to highlight how important tight ends are in today’s NFL one weekend; great. If they then want to spend another weekend highlighting the history of the different teams in the league; even better. Doing both at the same time resulted in game breaks that were wildly different in tone though and game broadcasts that felt somewhat all over the place despite the sterling efforts of those in the booths and on the sidelines. To me at least.

Week 9 starts this Thursday with the Miami Dolphins playing the Baltimore Ravens, who may have Lamar Jackson back under center, before the Lions take on the Vikings and there’s a rematch of The Greatest Super Bowl Comeback of All Time™ as the Patriots take on the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. My early prediction for next week’s Game of the Week has to be the game between the Buffalo Bills and the Chiefs though.

Come back next week to see if I’m right!

Brett Walker is a sports writer who hosts The BCS Podcast, and can be found on Twitter @BrettChatsSport. He is also on Bluesky.