Second-year QBs ascending to stardom, Colts duo on historic pace, is Chiefs offense back to its best? NFL Week 7 takeaways
By Ben Morse, CNN
(CNN) — Outside of arguably the wildest ending to a regular season game in recent NFL history, Week 7 had plenty of other talking points.
Whether it be the Philadelphia Eagles finally getting their offense back on track or the never-ending struggles of the New York Jets, the unusually parity-filled season in the NFL continues to produce storylines.
Here are the three main takeaways from Week 7 of the 2025 NFL season.
Second-year QBs ascending to stardom
Last season saw 2024 No. 2 overall pick Jayden Daniels explode as a rookie sensation with the Washington Commanders.
This year though, the two passers picked either side of Daniels in last year’s draft – No. 1 pick Caleb Williams and No. 3 pick Drake Maye – are having their time in the spotlight.
After losing the first two games of the season, Williams and the Chicago Bears have won their last four games under first-year head coach Ben Johnson.
Although Sunday’s 26-14 win over the New Orleans Saints wasn’t a vintage Williams performance – he threw 15-of-26 for 172 passing yards with no touchdowns, one interception and two fumbles – his overall confidence level appears to have improved in Johnson’s offensive system.
The 23-year-old came into the league as the consensus top pick in last year’s draft but struggled as a rookie, in a season which saw the Bears fire their head coach Matt Eberflus following a disastrous Thanksgiving Day loss.
After a game where everything wasn’t smooth sailing – Chicago had plenty of pre-snap penalties and Williams’ two fumbles came on botched snaps with the center – the young quarterback says these experiences are important if the team are going to continue improving.
“Days like today are needed, just in the sense of it gives you a little bit more to be able to look back on something and figure out what’s important,” Williams told reporters.
“You have these moments, and then you get later in the season and you may start to have one of these moments, and you get to go back to the feeling, go back to what was wrong and what you needed to figure out early in the season. So it’s like: ‘Okay, I remember what it was, I remember how I can fix it.’”
Similarly, Maye is also thriving in New England under a new head coach with the experienced Mike Vrabel now at the helm and long-time playcaller for Tom Brady, Josh McDaniels, installed as offensive coordinator.
Maye and the Patriots are also riding their own four-game winning streak following a 31-13 victory over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.
Maye was almost perfect in the win, throwing 21-of-23 for 222 yards and two touchdowns, while also running for 62 yards on eight carries.
As the Pats look for the quarterback to fill the sizable void left by the legendary Brady, Maye’s outing on Sunday hinted he might be just that man; his 91.3% completion rate broke Brady’s single-game franchise record of 88.5%, which he set against the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2009.
It’s rare you have three potential star quarterbacks in the same draft but Williams and Maye are showing that together with Daniels, they could make the 2024 class one for the ages.
Colts duo on historic pace
No one could’ve predicted how well this Indianapolis Colts season is going.
Quarterback Daniel Jones was coming off being cut by the New York Giants and spending time as a reserve QB for the Minnesota Vikings. Jones won the starting job after an offseason battle with 2024 fourth overall pick Anthony Richardson but expectations were not high.
However, the Colts have been everything and more through seven weeks of the 2025 campaign.
Their 38-24 win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday saw them hold onto their spot atop the AFC and improve their record to 6-1.
Indy’s proficient offense, led by Jones and running back Jonathan Taylor, has scored 232 points, averaging a league-best 33.1 per game. The 232-point tally is the most scored by a Colts team through seven games since 1964, per the NFL.
According to NFL researcher John Todd, Jones is the first player to complete two-thirds of his passes and have 200-or-more pass yards in each of his first seven games of a season since at least 1950.
Jones has undoubtedly been helped by Taylor’s excellence; on Sunday, he rushed for 94 yards and three touchdowns on 16 carries. It is his third game this year with at least three rushing scores.
In doing so, he became the fourth player since 1950 to have at least three games of scoring three-plus rushing touchdowns within the first seven games of the season, joining Derrick Henry, Priest Holmes and Jim Brown.
Taylor leads the NFL in rushing yards (697) and rushing touchdowns (10) and is second in the league in rushing attempts (131). He led the league in all three categories in the 2021 season and, if he was to do so again this year, he’d be the first player since Brown to achieve the feat more than once.
“He’s the best back in the league right now, there’s no doubt,” Colts head coach Shane Steichen said of Taylor. “He’s running hard, he’s running physical, he’s got great vision. Yeah, he’s just balling out man.”
The Colts are the surprise playoff contenders, but if Jones and Taylor can keep performing at the highest level, who’s to say a deep postseason run couldn’t be on the cards?
Is the Chiefs offense back to its best?
When Patrick Mahomes exploded onto the scene with the Kansas City Chiefs, he had a revolutionary effect on how offenses operate in the NFL.
But as defenses have found ways to slow him down and some of the Kansas City QB’s key contributors have moved on or gotten older, the Chiefs offense has transitioned into more of a dink-and-dunk operation.
That is until this year.
After a slow opening two weeks, the explosive plays are back for Mahomes and the Chiefs, culminating in their 31-0 domination of the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
Kansas City has now scored over 30 points in its past four games – in contrast, they had scored 30 points or more six times over the past two seasons combined – and, following the return of receiver Rashee Rice from his six-game suspension, boasts a plethora of offensive weapons.
Rice was playing at an All-Pro level last year before suffering a torn ACL, second-year receiver Xavier Worthy is always improving and even tight end Travis Kelce is appearing more sprightly than last campaign.
On Sunday, Mahomes threw three touchdown passes – two to the returning Rice and one to Marquise Brown – while Isiah Pacheco ran for another. It was the 28th game of Mahomes’ career where he’s had at least three TD passes and no interceptions, surpassing Russell Wilson for the most such games by a quarterback in their first nine seasons in NFL history.
It was also the 93rd regular season victory of his career, passing Peyton Manning for the most regular-season wins ever by a player under the age of 31.
After Sunday’s dominant victory over the Raiders, head coach Andy Reid highlighted the impact of having Rice back on the field to help the offense.
“He did a great job. I was a little cautious with him on how many plays and all that. I thought he came out and functioned at a high level for being gone for all this time,” Reid told reporters. “It’s crazy that he can come back and do what he did and do it at the level that he did it at.
“We’ll gradually build him up. We’ll get his reps up here a little bit as we go. You got to be careful with that when somebody’s been off for a while. I thought all of them together did some really good things. … There’s a lot of things happening there that are positive.”
Even though the Chiefs’ 4-3 record is some way off the top of the AFC at the moment – the Colts lead the conference with a 6-1 record with the Patriots and Denver Broncos sitting at 5-2 – this revival in offensive production has put the rest of the league on notice. The Chiefs are back.
Full Week 7 scores
Home vs. away (winners in bold)
Thursday
Cincinnati Bengals 33-31 Pittsburgh Steelers
Sunday
Jacksonville Jaguars 7-35 Los Angeles Rams (in London, UK)
Chicago Bears 26-14 New Orleans Saints
Cleveland Browns 31-6 Miami Dolphins
Kansas City Chiefs 31-0 Las Vegas Raiders
Minnesota Vikings 22-28 Philadelphia Eagles
New York Jets 6-13 Carolina Panthers
Tennessee Titans 13-31 New England Patriots
Denver Broncos 33-32 New York Giants
Los Angeles Chargers 24-38 Indianapolis Colts
Arizona Cardinals 23-27 Green Bay Packers
Dallas Cowboys 44-22 Washington Commanders
San Francisco 49ers 20-10 Atlanta Falcons
Monday
Detroit Lions 24-9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Seattle Seahawks 27-19 Houston Texans
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