The Week 5 Plays That Stood Out, From Jayden Daniels’ Blunder To Mike Evans’ Dominance

2026 has seen a lot of sloppy football, and Week 5 may have been the sloppiest. The Eagles and Jaguars gave us a chaotic start in London. Jacksonville made enough mistakes for a woefully short-handed Philadelphia team to stick around in a game it had no business winning before a roller-coaster ending. The Commanders found a new way to blow a win in overtime against the Giants. Even the game of the day, the 49ers-Seahawks thriller, came down to which team made the fewest mistakes (spoiler: it wasn’t the team quarterbacked by Sam Darnold). Those games weren’t exactly well played, but they still delivered plenty of drama. Let’s take a closer look at the plays that shaped Week 5 in the NFL and see what they may mean for the future. Last week, I called Kansas City’s acquisition of Kenneth Walker the move of the offseason, but I’m ready to reopen the discussion after watching Mike Evans torch the Seahawks for 113 receiving yards and a touchdown on seven receptions in a thrilling 49ers road win. I don’t know where the 49ers would be without Evans, but I can say this confidently: they would not be 5-0. Seattle had no answer for him on Sunday. Whenever they needed a play, Brock Purdy looked his way. Their most significant connection – and the one that best illustrates how Evans has transformed this offense – came early in the fourth quarter, with the Niners trailing by five and facing third-and-10 around midfield. Evans lined up to Purdy’s right with Seahawks cornerback Josh Jobe across from him. The Seahawks elected to play man coverage, with one safety back deep and the other lurking in the middle. That gave Seattle more bodies in the middle of the field, where the 49ers were looking to attack, but it left Jobe in single coverage on Evans. Even with Jobe playing inside of Evans and cheating on in-breakers, the veteran receiver found a way to get open. A subtle shoulder feint outside and a sharp break in the other direction let Evans box out Jobe at the catch point, and Purdy trusted his new WR1 to take care of the rest. The throw was high and a bit behind Evans, but that catch radius could erase any inaccuracy. We’ve seen it all season with these two. If Purdy can put the ball in Evans’ general vicinity, the big receiver will come down with the ball. Per Pro Football Focus, the 33-year-old has caught 96% of his catchable targets and has come down with 10 of his 13 contested targets. Both would be career highs for Evans. Evans gives Purdy an answer for man coverage that he hasn’t had since Brandon Aiyuk was at his peak in 2023. Since Purdy’s breakout campaign, the 49ers haven’t fared well against defenses that can play sticky coverage. With Evans in the fold, they’ve punished opponents for trying. The takeaway: Evans has been everything the 49ers could have hoped for, but the depth chart is thin, and injuries are ravaging the receiving corps once again. San Francisco lost rookie second-round pick De’Zhaun Stribling for an extended time in training camp, Ricky Persall went down for the season with a torn PCL in August, and now Deebo Samuel is expected to miss a few weeks with a hamstring injury. The offense is rolling now, but an injury to Evans, who hasn’t been fully healthy all season, could wreck the passing game. Head coach Kyle Shanahan is acting accordingly. He’s been overly protective of his veteran receiver, limiting him to no more than 28 routes in a game this season. On Sunday, he didn’t run another snap after the 49ers took the lead in the fourth quarter. With Shanahan calling the plays for Purdy, perhaps the offense could stay afloat without Evans, but the Niners coach clearly has no interest in finding out. This sequence of blunders by the Commanders has been reviewed more times than the Zapruder film, but how about one more viewing? It’s been over 24 hours since the Commanders gave away a win with some of the worst clock management you’ll ever see, and I’m still not sure where we should be pinning the blame. But we have to blame someone, right? Jayden Daniels ultimately made the decision to go to the ground without enough time to line up and spike the ball, but I agree with Dan Quinn, who said after the game, “It’s an outside throw or a clock. Those are the two [options]: an out-of-bounds throw or a clock. That has to come from me. I don’t have to put [Daniels] into that spot.” The prospect of a 10-second runoff made it a trickier situation for Daniels to manage. Just chucking the ball out of bounds or into the first may have drawn an intentional grounding flag, which would have ended the game. Several erroneous intentional grounding calls were made around the league on Sunday, so leaving the game up to a referee’s judgment call isn’t great process – even if Daniels could have sailed the ball over Ben Sinnott’s head with a throwaway. Simply put, Quinn overcomplicated the situation for his young quarterback. In an ideal world, the Commanders would have a timeout and could manipulate the clock to make any Washington field-goal attempt the final play of the game – as they did in 2024 at the end of an early-season game against these same Giants. Without that timeout, though, the margins get smaller. As we saw, any screw-up puts the Commanders on the clock and forces them to scramble to spike it or rush the field-goal unit on. When a field goal ends the game, there’s no need to go to the lengths Washington did to milk the clock. Patrick Mahomes wasn’t standing on the other sideline. It was Jameis Winston. Quinn complicated things to avoid giving the ball back to Jameis freaking Winston with just a few ticks left on the clock and 40 yards between him and range for a game-winning field goal. But if Quinn wanted to run the clock down, there was a far simpler way. Washington could have lined up on the ball immediately after the first-down run that got the clock moving with around 50 seconds to go. If Daniels had taken the snap after the clock passed the 40-second mark, the play clock would have been turned off, and the Commanders could have calmly lined up and spiked the ball with just enough time for the game-winning kick. The takeaway: That NFC title game run in 2024 feels like ages ago now. Quinn may not last the season after Sunday’s debacle, and confidence in Daniels is waning with the third-year quarterback entering a pivotal offseason. If this coach-quarterback duo wants another shot at righting the ship, they’ll have to avoid these embarrassing episodes that have become all too familiar to a once-proud fanbase. Ultimately, the coach and quarterbacks are caretakers, whose main job is not to screw things up. We have never seen a team screw up in the manner Washington did on Sunday. I’ll let Philadelphia media and WIP callers handle the criticism of Nick Sirianni for mismanaging the clock and allowing the Jaguars to steal a win. Eagles rookie Makai Lemon should have stayed in bounds on second down to keep the clock running. In hindsight, Jake Elliott probably should have booted the ensuing kickoff out of the end zone for a touchback. Sirianni could have done more to raise Philly’s win probability by a few percentage points, but saying he threw away the game ignores that Jacksonville still had to make a remarkable play to get in position for Cam Little’s game-winner. Let’s give some love to the Jaguars players who made it all possible, starting with Ameer Abullah, who is somehow still kicking around the league more than a decade after you wasted that fourth-round pick on him in your fantasy draft. The journeyman back had just enough speed to break through the Eagles’ kick coverage, and I’m not sure if he would’ve done it without a running start. But as Elliott’s kick flies toward Abdullah, you can see him take a few steps back, gather momentum, and catch the ball. Abdullah needed every bit of that little head start. He reached 17.7 mph on the return. That’s fast for me or you, but it’s relatively slow by NFL standards. Aaron Rodgers hit 17.1 mph in Week 3. Abdullah still managed to run 57 yards in seven seconds, a minor miracle. But Abdullah received plenty of help from his blockers. If even one of them fails to execute, he’s tackled short of the 50-yard line, and Jacksonville loses the game. The play’s success hinges on the double-team block by running back Chris Martinez Jr. and tight end Tanner Koziol. Those two stonewall E.J. Jenkins, sealing off Abdullah’s left side. Tight end Quintin Morris and wide receiver Josh Cameron make the key blocks that seal off the right side for Abdullah. Cameron’s effort is remarkable. The rookie receiver, who’s earned offensive snaps thanks to his perimeter run blocking, is back deep with Abdullah when the ball is kicked. When the kick arrives, Cameron is over 29 yards from his block assignment, Kelee Ringo, and must close that gap in seconds. He not only does that, but he also lands a solid block on Ringo once he arrives, giving Abdullah enough space to break into the open field. Morris gets just enough Arnold Ebiketie to block him off from Abdullah, as well. Linebacker Branson Combs also makes a key block. Every time I rewatch the play, I find another Jaguar doing their job and making the return possible. And even with the top-shelf block, Abdullah still had to hurdle Elliott’s diving attempt at a tackle to get past midfield into Little’s range. The takeaway: Look, I get the rush to dunk on Sirianni after a highly avoidable loss, but he didn’t just hand Jacksonville the game. The Jags had no margin for error. Everything had to go right for Abdullah’s return to produce that result. Sirianni’s teams are typically on the right side of these inexplicable losses, which is why Sunday’s result was such a shock. You can criticize Sirianni for a lot of things, but game management usually isn’t the issue. But if this becomes a pattern, and the Eagles start giving away close games, it will be harder to ignore the myriad issues that have marred the offense for a few years running. Even if Sirianni isn’t fully to blame for the loss, he can’t afford to take it with the way things are going in Philadelphia. 1. Kyler Murray has stacked two solid performances in a row, and both have been highlighted by unreal throws, but it’s this 14-yard scramble that has me excited for what this Vikings offense can eventually become. Murray hit 20.8 mph on that run. It’s the top speed a quarterback has reached all season, narrowly beating out Caleb Williams, and the first time Murray has gotten over 20 mph since 2024. It felt like hearing Odysseus pluck his bow. The version of Murray who looked like a fringe top-10 quarterback just two seasons ago may have returned. 2. If there was any lingering doubt about Drake Maye, Sunday’s three-touchdown masterclass against the Raiders should have proved he is all the way back. This two-play sequence convinced me. The Patriots run the same “dagger” concept on two consecutive dropbacks. On the first play, the weak-side safety, Jeremy Chinn, runs with the clear-out route, leaving Romeo Doubs open on the deep in-breaker. After a run on first down, the Patriots ran the same pass concept. This time, Chinn jumps the in-breaker run by Kyle Williams, leaving Pop Douglas’s clear-out route open. That clear-out route is an “alert” and rarely gets thrown. That Maye felt it would be open and made the throws tells me he’s seeing the field much better than he did earlier in the season. 3. Since we’ve spent a lot of time criticizing coaches for strategic mistakes in crunch time, I wanted to give a shout-out to Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph for sending a blitz on the Chargers’ Hail Mary attempt. Justin Herbert was sacked before his receivers could get downfield, eliminating any chance L.A. had of forcing overtime. Some may see that as a risky play call, but the numbers suggest it’s the safest approach in Hail Mary situations. There have been 178 Hail Mary plays since 2020, per Pro Football Focus. Defenses have blitzed 35 of those. Defenses sacked the quarterback on 32% of those plays and gave up no completions. The other 143 plays resulted in nine touchdowns. The best way to defend a Hail Mary is to keep the offense from even getting a pass off.