Evan McPherson is in his sixth season as the kicker of the Cincinnati Bengals. His younger brother, Alex, is doing the family business proud.
Alex McPherson kicked a 34-yard field goal as time expired, vaulting unranked Auburn to a 27-24 win over No. 1 Georgia. It’s the second straight weekend in which the No. 1 team lost to an unranked foe, after Oklahoma defeated No. 1 Texas last Saturday.
Auburn was an 18.5-point underdog for the game played in Athens, Georgia.
Alex McPherson’s personal story makes his achievement far more noteworthy. In 2024, a bout with severe ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease resulted in the removal of his entire large intestine.
“That week I began to feel sick, I would run to the bathroom 15-20 times a day,” Alex McPherson said last year. “I thought I just had the flu or a stomach bug or something going on. My weight was down. I had lost 20 pounds.”
He eventually lost 55 pounds. When he was admitted to the hospital, he weighed 110 pounds.
He’s now back to full health. In high school, Alex kicked a 61-yard field goal.
“It’s been really fun, really excited just to be back to normal from where I was,” Alex McPherson said at the SEC Media Days in July 2026. “Just to have that strength back to kind of kick how I want to and how I used to. I think I’m kicking as good as I have since before I got sick and it’s just really exciting to be able to do that and play with the guys to the full extent.”
Alex McPherson is in his final year at Auburn. Come 2027, he could be joining his big brother in the NFL. It’s an outcome that would have been inconceivable two years ago.
One of the basic realities of life in the NFL is that each team is assigned to a division with three other teams, permanently. (Until there’s a reason to realign, which last happened in 2002.) And whether a team is in a good division or a bad division controls much of a team’s success, or not, in a given year.
Of the 17 games played, six of them are determined by the division to which it is assigned. If the other teams are really good, it makes it harder for an otherwise good team to be as good as it can be. If the other teams aren’t very good, it’s easier.
The fact that this is so obvious shows how fundamentally unfair it is. It can give some lesser teams a shot at hosting a playoff game. It can give the one good team in an otherwise bad division a chance to win enough games to emerge as the top seed in a conference (for example, the Patriots throughout most of the 2010s).
This year, the teams of the AFC and NFC North will each have a tougher road to whatever their best-case scenario could be, based simply on membership in a predetermined division. All of them are over .500 through five weeks.
Via NBC Sports research, a full division has been above .500 after six weeks only three times since 2002 (the 2025 NFC North, the 2024 NFC North, and the 2005 NFC East). Depending on how this weekend goes, both the AFC North and NFC North can turn that list of three into five.
The Vikings, Lions, and Bengals are off, so the six-week hay is in the barn as to each of them. To complete the feat, the 3-2 Browns need to beat the 4-1 Ravens, the 3-2 Bears need to beat the Falcons, the 3-2 Packers need to beat the Cowboys, and the 3-2 Steelers need to beat the Buccaneers.
If the Bears and Packers win, it’ll be the third straight year that every team in the NFC North is above .500 through six weeks. Which will make it harder for each of them to get to wherever they want to be.
That will likely change when the NFL expands the regular season to 18 games and seeds the playoff tree without regard to whether a team has won its division. That still won’t solve the problem, and it will bolster the argument that there should be no divisions at all. Or, alternatively, that the two games per year against each of the other teams in the division should become one game per year.
The point for now is that each of the four teams in the AFC North and NFC North could end up being objectively playoff-worthy in 2026, but playing six games against those other teams will make it harder to qualify. Meanwhile, someone from the NFC South will be winning the division and hosting a playoff game — even if (like last year) none of them ends up at or above .500.
The entire approach makes it harder for the NFL to honor sports’ most basic, longstanding message: “May the best team win.” Given the way the NFL arranges its teams, the best team could end up with roadblocks that the not-best team won’t have to navigate. Which could make it easier for the not-best team to win the Super Bowl.
Bengals safety Jordan Battle said before Sunday’s game that he had identified a tendency of Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis to pat the ball before throwing, and that he was going to use that tendency to time his breaks on Willis’s passes. At the time, it seemed like a foolish thing to say out loud, but Battle backed up his talk and intercepted Willis twice as the Bengals won.
Still, Willis doesn’t believe he has a tell.
Asked after the game about Battle’s comments, Willis indicated that he wasn’t even sure who Battle was, asking a reporter to clarify which Bengals player had said he had a tell.
“Who said that?” Willis asked.
A reporter answered, “Jordan Battle.”
Willis then asked, “What number?”
A reporter told Willis that Battle wears No. 27, and Willis said he didn’t even realize that Battle had caught both of his interceptions. Willis incorrectly thought No. 44, linebacker Demetrius Knight, had caught one of the interceptions.
“I thought 44 caught one. I thought 44 caught a pick. Either way, you said he caught both? Let’s come on,” Willis said.
Willis disputed that the interceptions had anything to do with a tell. On one of the picks, Willis’s hand was hit as he was throwing the ball, and on the other one, Willis felt pressure to his left, scrambled to his right and threw directly to Battle.
“That’s not a tell, he caught tipped balls. Good for him, that’s what defenses are supposed to do at this level,” Willis said. “They battled a ball down and the second one was a scramble drill mishap. That has nothing to do with tells. I don’t think I patted either one of those. I don’t think those are correlated.”
Willis said he had been told what Battle said but didn’t put any stock in it.
“I didn’t think much of it. Everybody pats the ball. That’s funny. Really funny,” Willis said.
It was the Bengals who had something to laugh about after the game, as Battle backed up his talk.
The Bengals have lost a member of their tight end corps for the rest of the season.
Tight end Tanner Hudson’s agent told Charlie Clifford of WLWT that Hudson is out for the year due to a torn pectoral. The injury occurred during the Bengals’ win over the Dolphins in Week 5.
Hudson caught a two-yard touchdown pass in the 31-24 win and had three catches for 14 yards overall. He had four catches for 19 yards in the first four weeks of the season.
Hudson is in his fourth season with the Bengals and is set to be a free agent in 2027.
Mike Gesicki, Erick All, Drew Sample, and Jack Endries are the team’s remaining tight ends.
Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase was fined twice for making an obscene gesture during the team’s Week 2 win over the Texans, but he won’t be forking over any money to the league.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Chase won his appeal of both fines. The two fines totaled $29,852.
Chase was fined for a celebration with wide receiver Tee Higgins that he said was a riff on The Rock’s “the people’s elbow” wrestling maneuver, but which others interpreted to be a reference to a phallus. The letter from the appeals office said Chase argued that he received no warning that this celebration ran afoul of the rules and that the interpretation about its meaning was incorrect.
“He added that this is a new celebration with his teammate and that it is not offensive,” the letter says. “Mr. Chase finally stated that the NFL is assuming the worst of him and his teammate without discussing with the NFLPA.”
Higgins was fined multiple times for the same reason, but there is no word about the result of any appeal he may have filed in response to the penalties.
The Bengals announced a couple of roster moves involving linebackers on Monday afternoon.
They have claimed Jack Kiser off of waivers from the Jaguars. He will take the roster spot of Swayze Bozeman, who has been placed on injured reserve after injuring his forearm in Sunday’s win over the Dolphins.
Kiser did not play in any games for the Jaguars before being waived on Saturday. The 2025 fourth-round pick played in 14 games as a rookie and recorded 14 tackles while seeing most of his playing time on special teams.
Bozeman had four tackles in four appearances for the Bengals this season. He has also played for the Giants and Chiefs.
On a day when the temperature on the field in Miami hit 100 degrees, Joe Burrow was hot and the Dolphins were not.
Burrow threw four touchdown passes against a hapless Dolphins defense. The Dolphins’ offense couldn’t overcome the frequent mistakes from Malik Willis, who threw two interceptions and fumbled twice. Willis made some plays in garbage time to make his stats and the score look better than they really were, but Cincinnati rolled to an easy 31-24 win.
Burrow spread the ball around, with Ja’Marr Chase, Tanner Hudson, Samaje Perine and Mike Gesicki all catching touchdown passes. The Dolphins’ defense, which never sacked Burrow, made it easy for him to find open receivers.
The 0-5 Dolphins may be the worst team in the NFL, and they may want to be the worst team in the NFL. This isn’t a team that’s built to win, it’s a team that’s built to get a high pick in the draft and hope to win some day in the future.
The 3-2 Bengals look like they could win this year. In a wide-open AFC North, the Bengals look like contenders.
The Vikings had both of their top wide receivers listed as questionable on their final injury report of Week 5 and the gameday decisions went in different directions.
Justin Jefferson will play after missing last Sunday’s win over the Dolphins with an ankle injury, but Jordan Addison will miss the game with a hamstring injury. There was some thought that Odell Beckham Jr. would make his Vikings debut on Sunday, but he is also inactive.
Beckham signed to the practice squad this week and was elevated on Saturday, but Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell said he’d only play if the team was missing one of the other wideouts. They are, but Beckham is still out of the lineup. Jauan Jennings, Tai Felton, Myles Price, and practice squad elevation Jeshaun Jones are the other wideouts.
Vikings at Saints
Vikings: WR Jordan Addison, WR Odell Beckham Jr., S Jakobe Thomas, QB Max Brosmer, CB Chuck Demmings, OT Christian Darrisaw, DL Elijah Williams
Saints: QB Zach Wilson, LB Anfernee Jennings, S Mike Reid, LB Kaden Elliss, G Jeremiah Wright, DL Vernon Broughton, DL Nathan Shepherd
Bears at Packers
Bears: QB Caleb Williams, RB Kyle Monangai, OL Ozzy Trapilo, LB Keyshaun Elliott, DL Jamree Kromah, DL Jayden Loving.
Packers: OL Jacob Monk, OL Aaron Banks, OL Donovan Jennings, DL Anthony Campbell
Bengals at Dolphins
Bengals: S Kyle Dugger, OT Myles Hinton, TE Jack Endries, WR Colbie Young, OL Connor Lew, DT Landon Robinson
Dolphins: WR Caleb Douglas, RB Kaytron Allen, CB Reese Taylor, DE Rob Beal, OL DJ Campbell, TE Justin Joly, OL Chukwuebuka Godrick
Raiders at Patriots
Raiders: WR Jalen Nailor, S Tristin McCollum, S Dalton Johnson, C Trey Zuhn, DT J.J. Pegues, RB Roman Hemby, QB Aidan O’Connell
Patriots: QB Behren Morton, OT Dametrious Crownover, CB Christian Gonzalez, CB Carlton Davis, CB Karon Prunty, CB Channing Canada
Browns at Jets
Browns: QB Taylen Green, WR Tylan Wallace, TE Carsen Ryan, C Parker Brailsford, G Teven Jenkins, DT Mike Hall Jr., DT Mason Graham
Jets: RB Breece Hall, WR Adonai Mitchell, G Dylan Parham, LB Nate Lynn, LB Kiko Mauigoa, CB Nahshon Wright
Colts at Steelers
Colts: LB Jaylon Carlies, WR Ashton Dulin, QB Riley Leonard, WR Darius Slayton, G Dalton Tucker
Steelers: RB Rico Dowdle, QB Drew Allar, QB Will Howard, RB Eli Heidenreich, CB Jamel Dean, CB Terell Smith, DL Kevin Jobity
Texans at Titans
Texans: CB Collin Wright, DE Chris Braswell, DE Sabastian Harsh, LB Aiden Fisher, G Febechi Nwaiwu, OT Nate Thomas, TE Marlin Klein
Titans: RB Nick Singleton, RB Michael Carter, S Amani Hooker, CB Jaylon Jones, T Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson, TE David Martin-Robinson, DT Jackie Marshall
Giants at Commanders
Giants: RB Devin Singletary, OL J.C. Davis, DL Bobby Jamison-Travis, S Jason Pinnock, CB Nikko Reed, QB Jake Haener
Commanders: WR Stefon Diggs, QB Marcus Mariota, S Tyler Owens, S Nick Cross, S Percy Butler, G Tanoa Togiai, DE Charles Omenihu
Dolphins defensive lineman Kenneth Grant is set to make his 2026 debut.
Grant was activated from injured reserve on Saturday, which clears the way for him to play against the Bengals on Sunday. He has been sidelined by a toe injury.
The Dolphins took Grant with the 13th overall pick in the 2025 draft. He had 33 tackles and two sacks during his rookie season.
Quarterback Brady Cook was waived to make room for Grant on the 53-man roster. Kyle McCord is now the sole backup to Malik Willis in Miami.
The Dolphins also announced that they have elevated defensive end Rodney McGraw and running back Carlos Washington.
Bengals wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins both took part in practice on Friday, but the team isn’t saying if either of them will play against the Dolphins this weekend.
Head coach Zac Taylor said at a press conference on Friday that both players will be listed as questionable. Chase remains in the concussion protocol, but will likely play if he is cleared on Saturday. Higgins is dealing with an adductor injury.
Dohnte Meyers, Mitchell Tinsley, and Colbie Young are the other wideouts on the 53-man roster, although Young will also be listed as questionable with a knee injury.
Taylor put safety Bryan Cook (ankle) in the questionable category as well. Cook missed last Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars, but returned to practice on Thursday.
