Hawks in the NFL - Week 9

Week 9 has come and gone in the NFL. Pretty quiet week on the Hawk front - bye weeks are in full swing, with San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, and Jacksonville all off last weekend - but there’s still some big goings on. Let’s roll!

Geno Stone and Noah Fant

We start with Mr. Stone. The NFL leader in interceptions at 5 going into the game, he finished Baltimore’s emphatic 37-3 win over Seattle with a single tackle (a solo) and 2 passes defended.

AND ANOTHER INTERCEPTION.

Now, he probably won’t win defensive player of the year. But at six picks through nine games? Eight more to go? Uh this could get interesting.

On the other sideline - this isn’t working out for Fant. He finished this game with zero receptions and was targeted just once. He’s at 14 receptions for 226 yards and no touchdowns this year as Seattle dropped to 5-3 and are now tied atop the NFC West with San Francisco who was on the aforementioned bye (speaking of bye weeks and Detroit - nothing on the Sam LaPorta/Jack Campbell front, though there was this from Detroit PR)

Not bad for Sam Gronkowski LaPorta!

TJ Hockenson

Somehow the Vikings are alive! Down Kirk Cousins and then Jaren Hall, Joshua Dobbs came in as relief a few days after being acquired and led the Vikings to a come-from-behind 31-28 win in Atlanta.

His favorite target was Hockenson. 12 targets for TJ in Atlanta, for 69 nice yards on 7 catches. Weirdly, this might work for Minnesota. They probably won’t catch Detroit in this division but now at 5-4, they’re in the running for a playoff spot. They have New Orleans Week 10 then they have a bye week. Justin Jefferson returns soon from his injury. Dobbs isn’t great, but there are far worse quarterbacks in the league than him (as an aside, the quarterback situation in the league is not great at the moment) and what looked dire at 1-4 to start the year and a possible blow it up situation now looks recoverable. They have another game with that bad Bears team, a game with Green Bay in Minneapolis, a game at Las Vegas...they have some possible wins coming up.

AJ Epenesa and Micah Hyde

Maybe unrecoverable? Buffalo’s injury situation. The Bill are simply in a “we’re running out of guys” situation. They are getting close to a shaky playoff situation, as their 24-18 Sunday night loss to Cincinnati dropped them to 5-4. They have a stretch in late November/early December of at Philadelphia, at Kansas City, Dallas. That’s going to be tough. Kansas City looks a good bet to win the AFC West again, and Jacksonville has a two-game lead in the AFC South. Baltimore is 7-2 while Miami is a game up on Buffalo at 6-3. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are 5-3, while the Los Angeles Chargers are now 4-4. This could get hairy for Buffalo.

Hyde finished the Bengals game with 2 tackles (1 solo) and 2 passes defended, while Epenesa finished with 1 tackle.

To the comments!