NFL Week 6 Sunday aftermath: Texans surging after huge AFC South win; panic time for Rams?

Week 6 was a consequential one in the NFL.

A home loss to a previously winless Titans squad led to the Colts firing their longtime general manager. The Chargers could shake up their offensive staff following another defeat to fall to 0-6. The Giants have a looming QB decision.

With the season one-third of the way through, it's gut-check time for a number of clubs. Let’s run through key storylines in the aftermath, including:

• Rams left reeling after latest loss drops L.A. to 2-4
• Williams' historically efficient return sparks Bears' O
• Saints respond to owner's challenge with needed W
• NFC East faces dubious mark after another poor day
• Walker a TD machine once again for thriving Chiefs

But first, we dig into the Texans, who suddenly look like the contenders everyone expected them to be.

Texans suddenly threat in AFC South

Don’t look now, but the Houston Texans are on the march following an 0-4 start.

C.J. Stroud continued to shine on Sunday, splashing big play after big play to puncture a good Jaguars defense in a 34-31 win. Entering Week 6, the Jags were the only team in the NFL to hold every opponent to 20 or fewer points this season. The Texans blew past that mark. Stroud completed 24 of 34 passes for 312 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. The end zone INT in the fourth quarter was bad, but otherwise, the QB was nearly flawless.

The 0-4 start in Houston had more to do with surprisingly poor play from DeMeco Ryans' defense. Stroud has played well all season. He’s mostly avoided turnovers -- Sunday's pick was his first of the season -- and negative plays, while routinely providing explosives, particularly when Nico Collins has been on the field. Stroud’s poise has been evident through six weeks. In London, the QB was sublime under pressure, completing 10 of 11 passes for 118 yards and two touchdowns. That 90.9% completion rate under duress is a career best for Stroud in a single game (min. 10 attempts), per Next Gen Stats.

Stroud is back to his rookie-year wunderkind ways from 2023 after stumbling in the past couple of seasons. Frankly, if it weren’t for the team's early record, Stroud would be in the MVP conversation. He’s been that good.

The trade for Marvin Harrison Jr. seemed to help open up options for Stroud, who was confident targeting his former OSU teammate in tight quarters. It doesn’t feel coincidental that second-year pro Jaylin Noel logged his first career 100-yard game on Sunday. The upgraded weaponry around Stroud should be a game-changer, assuming the O-line holds up as well as it did in Week 6.

The most surprising aspect of the London victory was the Texans' running game showing life. It’s particularly stunning given how stingy the Jags had been against ground attacks. Woody Marks (56 yards) and Jawhar Jordan (43 yards) each had over 40 rushing yards, snapping the Jaguars' streak of five straight games to begin this season without allowing a 40-yard rusher.

Houston's defense still has strides to make after giving up 30-plus points in two of its last three games. However, if Stroud keeps making plays, look out.

“You look at some of the games we lost that are close games, you’re one or two plays away from winning the game,” Stroud said on Sunday, per the Houston Chronicle. “I always believe you can’t just start creating a bunch of new things and just lose your mind. You keep the same process. You focus on your process more, and then that coin started to flip a little more on your side when it hasn’t in the past.

“I’m excited for the rest of the year.”

The Texans face the Giants in Week 7, then come out of a Week 8 bye against the Chargers, Browns and Colts. Avoid a faceplant, and Ryans’ club should fully climb out of that 0-4 hole before Thanksgiving.

Disastrous home loss has Rams reeling

The vibes in Houston are sunny despite a 2-4 start. A 2-4 record in L.A., however, comes with doom and gloom.

“There’s nothing positive that I can say,” Rams coach Sean McVay lamented following Sunday’s 18-16 home loss to the Cardinals.

McVay’s club continues to spiral. It’s one thing to lose to a rival in another country, come up shy in Denver or drop a close tilt to Josh Allen. It’s a completely different sort of abomination to get shut down by a Cardinals club that entered Sunday on an epic streak of futility, having allowed 36 or more points in three straight contests. Surely, a team with Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, Davante Adams and Kyren Williams would pile up points against such a sieve.

Nope.

McVay’s offense bumbled about like a peg-legged pirate on a bender. When the Rams weren’t going three-and-out or stalling in scoring range, they made life difficult with bad blitz pickups, penalties and missed throws from the QB. Can we blame Alaric Jackson’s absence for it all? Stafford continues his inefficient play to start the 2026 campaign. Sunday, he posted a season-low 4.8 air yards per attempt -- his second consecutive week recording a season worst in that metric, per NFL Research.

Self-inflicted wounds have plagued the Rams this season. Chris Shula’s defense has been a porous piece of plywood. The special teams unit might be the worst group in the entire league. The offense hasn’t only failed to overcome the other two phases; it’s contributed to the ugliness.

“I’ve continued to talk about it,” McVay said. “We try to be able to harp on it, and we’ve got to be able to figure it out. And I don’t have those answers right now.”

Clearly.

The preseason Super Bowl favorites are proving how flimsy offseason rankings are. Outsiders can only project certain factors. No one knows how a team will react when it’s punched in the mouth. The Rams have recoiled at every turn thus far. Even against a featherweight Cardinals squad, McVay’s team shrank.

“We are what our record is,” Stafford said, per the Los Angeles Times.

The record stinks. 

Worsening matters, McVay announced Monday that Adams is expected to miss six to 10 weeks with a hamstring injury. In addition, kicker Blake Grupe lasted less than a full game, as he's now out for the season after tearing his ACL on Sunday. Run-stopping defensive tackle Poona Ford (triceps) is also out for the remainder of the year. DT Kobie Turner (groin) is headed for injured reserve, too. After Sunday's disaster, Monday didn't get any better.

The Rams still have a chance to flip the script, but they'll need to forge a hot streak before their Week 11 bye, with upcoming games against the Raiders, Chargers and Commanders preceding a rematch with the Cards. After that stretch, the schedule ramps up. Another stumble, and it might be too late for L.A.

Williams' efficient return sparks Bears' offense

On Caleb Williams' first snap in his return from a Week 2 hamstring injury, Bears head coach Ben Johnson called a play-action rollout for his QB. The call felt deliberate. It sent a message to everyone -- including, likely, the QB himself -- that there would be zero restrictions.

Williams was superb out of the gate in Sunday's 31-23 win over the Falcons, hitting his first 12 passes before an incompletion.

“If you could write a script, that’s what we would want to do against a team like this,” Johnson said of Williams’ start, via the Chicago Tribune. “We’ve got to come out of the gate hot, and it’s a dangerous team. Their defense is darn good. Their offense can put up points in a hurry, as we saw at the end of the game. And the way that our guys came out and responded was huge. Having Caleb back was a huge part of it.”

Williams' return came after Chicago got lambasted by the Packers, when the offense couldn’t get out of its own way in a 31-7 loss. The starter steadied the unit in his return. More importantly, he played his best game of the season from the pocket. Entering the campaign, the question was whether Williams could cut down on missed throws and become a station-to-station player while still splashing the big plays. Sunday showed significant strides in that pursuit.

Williams completed a career-high 83.3 percent of his passes (30-for-36), the highest single-game completion percentage by any Bears quarterback who has attempted at least 30 passes in franchise history, according to NFL Research. He finished with 305 yards and a TD. Williams took four sacks, an area he'll want to clean up, and he didn’t stretch the field (zero deep targets). Still, his proficiency on short and intermediate passes was an excellent sign as the Bears hit back-to-back prime-time tilts against the Patriots and Seahawks.

Saints respond to owner's challenge

New Orleans owner Gayle Benson called out her club last week for poor play in a 1-4 start. Benson wanted more urgency from her Saints. She got it on Sunday in a 34-27 road win over the Giants.

After falling behind 10-0, Kellen Moore’s team scored 34 straight points to take a massive lead in the fourth quarter. Tyler Shough made plays, tossing three TD passes; Alvin Kamara flashed a brief version of his former self with a 31-yard TD catch; and the running game came to life with 175 yards. Meanwhile, the defense forced four turnovers.

The urgency was certainly notable for a Saints squad that, despite another bad start, found a gear that it'd been missing during a three-game losing skid. Moore took his foot off the gas late (three straight three-and-outs) and nearly let backup J.J. McCarthy engineer a miraculous comeback, but the work done in the middle of the tilt proved enough.

"Resiliency,” Shough told FOX sideline reporter Kristina Pink of what the Saints showed on Sunday. “We knew we had it in us. We still have yet to put a complete game together. We got to show that, and there was an opportunity today, and we're going to do it. Dust our backs off, keep going and good to get out of this place with a win."

Following the game, the Saints immediately flew to Paris, where they will spend the week before next Sunday’s tilt against the Steelers. Thankfully for Moore and his squad, that flight came after a much-needed W. It would have been long and uncomfortable following another loss, with an owner still miffed.

Who wants to win NFC East?

The NFC East once again came out of Sunday with an 0-fer.

The Cowboys, Eagles and Giants all lost on Sunday, pushing the division’s record to 0-5-2 over the past two weeks. If the Commanders lose to the undefeated 49ers tonight at Levi's Stadium, the NFC East will become the first division in NFL history to go winless in consecutive weeks when all teams in the division played, per ESPN.

The NFC East is literally staring down a historically bad stretch.

The Cowboys look listless under Brian Schottenheimer. How an offense with Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens, Javonte Williams and others can go for such long stretches of impotence boggles the mind. The defense is bad; that is understood at this point. The bigger problem is that the offense is sinking into its own pit of despair. On Sunday, the Cowboys' D actually got enough stops to make things interesting against the Packers, but the offense was to blame in the 23-13 loss. We know Jerry Jones doesn’t like to make mid-season coaching changes, but things are going to get burning hot for Schotty if he doesn’t get things adjusted in a hurry. The NFC East is still winnable.

The Eagles' offense could be unsalvageable with Monday's stunning news that Jalen Hurts will likely miss the rest of the season due to blood clots in his lungs. Tanner McKee looked like a preseason quarterback early on Sunday against Carolina. The NFL is played in millimeters; McKee missed by feet at times. He found a groove late by feeding DeVonta Smith, but if he regresses to who he was early in the tilt and struggles under pressure, the Eagles' offense will continue to fly listless. In addition, the line issues offer little hope that the attack will turn things around this season.

It will be interesting to see how Howie Roseman handles the next few weeks before the Nov. 10 trade deadline. Does the Eagles general manager make a move for a veteran replacement at QB? Does Philly ride with McKee even if the backup struggles? Does 2026 become a reboot season, where the franchise ultimately just hopes to get everything back on track in 2027? After parting with Cam Jurgens to compile picks, shelling out for a stopgap QB could run counter to the stockpile plan. On the other hand, Roseman has to look at the rest of the division and feel like he still has a shot at winning it if he can get competent QB play.

The Giants jumped out to a 10-point lead on Sunday and then watched the doors get blown off, as Jameis Winston did his usual jack-o’-lantern act. John Harbaugh then turned to J.J. McCarthy, who helped spark a late run that fell short. The Big Blue coach declined to say who would start Week 7 against Houston. Will he stick with Winston for at least another week, or see what McCarthy can do with an entire game? I will say, McCarthy was lucky he only threw one INT. It could have easily been three. He looked more comfortable and took command of the offense better than he did in Minnesota. But the Giants were in scramble mode after falling behind 34-10, so J.J. had little pressure to be perfect. We know what we’re getting from Winston. He can move the ball, but it will come with some ugly errors. Does Harbaugh believe McCarthy can provide more upside for a division-leading team? I sense some Giants fans would like to give J.J. a shot now, but I could see Harbaugh preferring to stick with Winston for a road game in Houston before making a potential change over the Week 8 bye.

The Commanders are the last hope to get the division off a fortnight schneid. Coming off an embarrassing tie with the Giants last week, all Dan Quinn’s team needs to do is knock off an undefeated 49ers squad that boasts the early MVP front-runner. No big deal.

Week 6 Sunday spotlight