Sort the Week 8 table by wins and the middle of it stops sorting. Five teams sit at 6-2 — Jets, Rams, Buccaneers, Steelers, Packers — and net points is the only ruler anyone can put on them. It doesn't rule much.
| Jets | 6-2 | +99 |
| Rams | 6-2 | +97 |
| Buccaneers | 6-2 | +63 |
| Steelers | 6-2 | +42 |
| Packers | 6-2 | +40 |
- Team
- Jets
- Record
- 6-2
- Net points
- +99
- Team
- Rams
- Record
- 6-2
- Net points
- +97
- Team
- Buccaneers
- Record
- 6-2
- Net points
- +63
- Team
- Steelers
- Record
- 6-2
- Net points
- +42
- Team
- Packers
- Record
- 6-2
- Net points
- +40
Two teams have genuinely stepped out of that. Baltimore is 7-1 with a plus-151 differential, the largest in the league, under BennyGalactic in his first season running the club. Detroit is 6-0 and has not been beaten by anyone, which is a different kind of separation and a fragile one: the Lions have played two fewer games than the teams they're being grouped with, so their unbeaten record and the Jets' 6-2 sit on top of the same six wins.
The thing I flagged in Week 4, when Detroit was 4-0 and could not stop anybody, has not been solved by winning two more. The Lions are giving up 35.3 points a game while scoring 323 in six. That's a team winning shootouts, and shootouts are the one format where an unbeaten record tells you the least about the next eight weeks. New York has scored more than anyone in the league — 346 — and has two losses to show for the same style.
Green Bay is the honest problem here. KillaE94's team is 6-2 with a plus-40 differential, last in the band by that measure, behind Pittsburgh by two points and behind the Jets by nearly sixty. The path is one sentence: the Packers have to beat Detroit and hope somebody else does too, because 6-2 does not catch 6-0 by waiting for it. And any line drawn around the contenders in Week 8 leaves out a Washington team at 5-1 whose plus-128 differential is bigger than Detroit's, bigger than New York's, and three times Green Bay's. Include the Commanders or it isn't a line.
BennyGalactic, D-TownDon and KillaE94 are all in their first season. There is no March decision to point back at, no expiring contract somebody let walk, no payroll choice that built this. Whatever happens in the NFC North lands entirely on the two men making the calls right now. D-TownDon has an unbeaten team with a defense that hasn't proven it can hold a lead. KillaE94 has the same six wins and two more losses. One of them gets the division. Neither gets to blame anyone who came before.
— Daniela Morales, Bracket
