7 ways NFL Week 5 was a huge bummer

Major injuries, political stunts, white substance snorting, the Browns Brownsing ... phew, Sunday in the NFL was something else.

The NFL gave us a fair share of fun moments on Sunday, but most of it was overshadowed by what turned out to be a huge bummer of the day. The worst part? All those injuries. Two of the game’s biggest stars — J.J. Watt and Odell Beckham Jr. — were both lost for the season within hours of each other. And, to be perfectly blunt, that stinks like a big ol’ unflushed turd.

For Watt especially, it raises concerns about his playing future. This is the second straight season his season has ended early. Last year, it was a back injury. This year, it’s a “tibial plateau fracture,” or a broken shin bone to those who don’t speak Dr. James Andrews.

Last year in an article for the Players’ Tribune, Watt rattled off all injuries he’s endured since 2015. The list reads like a busy night for an ER staff: one broken hand, staph infection, two torn abs, three torn adductor muscles, one herniated disc (twice). Even though at the time Watt promised that he was “just getting started,” it’s fair to wonder if the 28-year-old will ever reach his three-time Defensive Player of the Year heights again.

Watt hasn’t just been a “once in a generation” player in his career, either. He has made a huge difference off the field, too. It can be easy to make fun of someone who so sincerely lives and breathes football, but Watt even earned his haters’ respect when he raised more than $37 million for Hurricane Harvey relief.

Watt is crushed, as you’d expect:

To make matters worse for Houston, the defense also lost outside linebacker Whitney Mercilus for the season with a torn pectoral.

The Texans still have a shot of contending this season, even while Watt and Mercilus have to watch from the sidelines. But the winless Giants aren’t going anywhere. That doesn’t mean Beckham’s injury isn’t a big deal, though.

Beckham is the NFL’s best showman. He makes catches no one else can, he celebrates touchdowns like no one else can, he earns the stupidest possible criticism like no one else can.

And now he needs surgery on his fractured ankle. Not only does it take away one of the most fun players to watch in the NFL, it could end up costing Beckham millions.

The Giants’ bad luck didn’t end there, though. They lost three other receivers in the game to injuries: Brandon Marshall, Sterling Shepard, and Dwayne Harris. Harris is out for the season with a broken foot, Shepard is day to day with a sprained ankle, and Marshall will likely miss some time:

Other teams were dealt injury blows, too. The Bills, already dangerously low on healthy receivers, lost their leading pass catcher, tight end Charles Clay, for a month. The Chiefs’ do-it-all tight end Travis Kelce is in concussion protocol, while wide receiver Chris Conley is out for the season with a ruptured Achilles.

To sum it up:

Yes, Watt the Younger. Injuries DO suck.

Cowboys lost in a gut-punching way to the Packers again

Aaron Rodgers has had the Cowboys’ number over the past few years. In 2015, Dez Bryant’s infamous no-catch allowed the Packers to advance to the NFC Championship. In 2017, the Packers held off the Cowboys’ comeback attempt in the NFC Divisional Round to advance to another NFC Championship.

In Week 5, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys gave Rodgers 1:13 to work with, and Rodgers made the most of it in a way that only he could execute.

The Green Bay drive appeared to be in danger, when Rodgers narrowly escaped David Irving for a first down.

The next play, Rodgers missed Davante Adams in the corner of the end zone. The play after that was the exact same one, and Rodgers went back to Adams for the game-winning touchdown.

That loss stings if you’re a Cowboys fan. It’s never good to lose a close game to a good team at home. But the Packers have their number, and for Rodgers and the Pack to go back to the same exact play says a lot about how good they actually are. It didn’t matter what Dallas was going to do — Green Bay was going to get that touchdown.

Instead of being 3-2 and a game behind Philadelphia for first place in the NFC East, they’re now 2-3, and have to answer questions all week about Jerry Jones’ national anthem comments.

Chris Foerster gets exposed on video snorting a white substance

The Dolphins already had a bad Sunday afternoon thanks to a game so poor by Jay Cutler that fans were chanting “we want [Matt] Moore!” They didn’t know things were going to get even worse.

Sunday night, a video was released on Facebook that showed offensive line coach Chris Foerster snorting a white substance prior to a meeting.

Both the team and Foerster released statements. Foerster owned up to the video, and said:

“I am resigning from my position with the Miami Dolphins and accept full responsibility for my actions. I want to apologize to the organization and my sole focus is on getting the help that I need with the support of my family and medical professionals.”

Oh, and if those two items weren’t enough, Adam Gase not only had to answer questions about his offensive line coach snorting a white substance, but he also had to answer questions about the team’s national anthem policy.

“We’re out there for the national anthem, we’re standing, if you don’t want to stand, stay in the locker room,” Gase said.

Between Ryan Tannehill getting injured, signing Jay Cutler, Hurricane Irma, Lawrence Timmons going AWOL, and the Foerster video, it’s been a hectic start to the season.

The Browns were the Browns

Five weeks of the 2017 season have come and gone without a single Browns win. Sunday provided their best chance yet, with the Browns welcoming the Jets to Cleveland. Instead, the Browns lost a 17-14 heartbreaker.

DeShone Kizer was benched after completing 8 of 17 passes for 87 yards, a pick, and a costly red zone fumble. Kevin Hogan came into the game and actually got the Browns their first lead of the season. He completed 16 of 19 for 197 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception. But it wasn’t enough to get past the Jets, led by former Browns QB Josh McCown, who finally got a win in Cleveland:

To add insult to injury, it’s not even like the Browns kept a hold on the top draft spot. The 49ers are also sitting at 0-5, but their schedule is weaker. That tiebreaker let San Francisco slide into the top draft position after the 49ers’ loss to the Colts.

Kizer was considered a raw prospect coming out of college, and he’s lived up to that billing. Hue Jackson has a respectable track record of developing quarterbacks, but Kizer looks like needs more time. Jackson isn’t giving him much latitude for his performance, despite a lack of talent around Kizer and his inexperience.

"Kizer is developing, but his job is still to win,” Jackson said after the loss. "That is first and foremost. I didn't think it was going in the right direction. That is why I made the decision to take him out. If that was the case and it was just about development, I would have just left him in.

“It is not about that. It is about winning.”

Myles Garrett is a bright spot the team can build around. Cleveland had three sacks on McCown, and Garrett had two of them.

But the offense looks like the same old Browns that won just one game last season. And there may not be much that they can do to fix it this year.

Big Ben threw FIVE interceptions and the Steelers failed to score a TD

The Steelers have an offense custom-made for NFL Blitz ‘99, but slow starts from Ben Roethlisberger and Le’Veon Bell have them stuck at 3-2 and facing serious questions after a 21-point loss to the Jaguars. Roethlisberger threw a pair of touchdown passes — just to Jacksonville defenders. Three more picks left him mired in one of the worst performances of his long career.

Bell told reporters he thinks the key to fixing the team’s middling offense is a steady diet of runs, but the fifth-year back, fresh off a contract hold-out that kept him from most of training camp, is averaging just 3.6 yards per carry in 2017. In other terms, he’s been roughly as good on the ground as Mike Tolbert this fall.

Three of Roethlisberger’s interceptions were the result of tipped balls or his targets falling down mid-route, so it seems like Sunday’s Ryan Fitzpatrick impression was a one-time performance. However, 42 minutes of trailing the Jaguars was the only thing that snapped a 10-game streak where he failed to break the 300 passing yards plateau. When Antonio Brown is your top wideout, that shouldn’t be a thing.

Eli Manning’s Chargers curse lives on

One of the league’s best low-key curses comes from southern California, where not even a move to Los Angeles could erase the Chargers’ karma debt from Eli Manning’s draft-day desire to ditch them. The franchise drafted the youngest Manning with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2004 NFL Draft, then shipped him to New York in exchange for Philip Rivers, a first- and a third-round pick when he made it clear he didn’t want to play for the Chargers.

Manning has had the chance to face the team that drafted him four times. He’s lost all four, with the latest coming in a Week 5 barnburner that put an end to Los Angeles’s season-opening losing streak. Rivers led his Chargers back from a five-point fourth-quarter deficit, but the biggest factor in New York’s home loss was Manning’s mistakes.

Clinging to a 22-20 lead, the Giants’ quarterback took a sack deep in his own territory and coughed up the ball, leading to a three-play, 11-yard touchdown drive that gave L.A. the lead. That gave Manning just under three minutes to lead a game-winning two-minute drill; instead, his interception with 48 seconds to go doomed New York to an 0-5 start — and kept him winless against the team for whom he refused to play.

Mike Pence’s PR stunt during Peyton Manning’s ceremony

For the folks who swear sports and politics don’t mix, Sunday wasn’t your day. Vice President Mike Pence carried out a political stunt to walk out on the game, where he knew members of the 49ers would be kneeling during the national anthem.

The timing of the entire ordeal made things even more obvious, when he released a statement less than 20 minutes after tweeting that he would be leaving the stadium.

Reporters at the stadium were even told to stay in the van traveling with the Vice President, because he’d be leaving early:

It also is a good indicator that it was planned, when President Trump later tweeted that he told Pence to leave if any players kneeled during the anthem.

The entire thing is a mess that we all could have gone without on our NFL Sunday, but the war Trump and his administration has picked with NFL players is one that doesn’t appear to have any kind of ending in sight.