Bucs rally past Colts; Bengals sweep Steelers
Leonard Fournette capped a four-touchdown game with a 28-yard scoring run with 20 seconds left Sunday, giving Tampa Bay a 38-31 come-frombehind victory at Indianapolis.
Tom Brady led the Buccaneers (8-3) on the eight-play, 75-yard tiebreaking drive after getting the ball back with 3:29 to go. Fournette rushed 17 times for 100 yards and three scores. He also caught Brady’s only touchdown pass.
The defending Super Bowl champs have won two straight overall while Brady improved to 16-4 all time against the Colts in his first appearance against Indy with Tampa Bay.
Indy (6-6) had a chance to force overtime when Isaiah Rodgers returned the kickoff 71 yards to the Bucs 32-yard line with 10 seconds left. But Carson Wentz’s first pass to Jack Doyle fell incomplete and former Colts cornerback Pierre Desir picked off Wentz near the goal line as time expired.
Bengals 41, Steelers
Joe Mixon rushed for a career-high 165 yards and two touchdowns, Joe Burrow scrambled for a score and passed for another one and the host Bengals swept the season series for the first time since 2009. Mixon, coming off a rugged 123-yard, two-TD performance in a win over Las Vegas last week, pounded away for 117 yards in the first half. He helped the Bengals cruise to a third straight win over their AFC North rival after losing 11 straight in the series. The Steelers (5-5-1) are winless in their past three games. The Bengals (7-4), dominated by Pittsburgh for so many years, have stamped themselves as a playoff contender.
Broncos 28, Chargers 13: Rookie Patrick Surtain II picked off Justin Herbert twice, returning the second one 70 yards for a touchdown. The host Broncos’ big win sets up a showdown for the AFC West lead next weekend in Kansas City, where the game between Denver (6-5) and the Chiefs (7-4) already was flexed to Sunday night. Surtain’s first interception came in the end zone on a pass intended for tight end Jared Cook early in the fourth quarter. The Broncos converted that takeaway into a touchdown when Teddy Bridgewater hit tight end Eric Saubert from 9 yards to make it 21-7.
49ers 34, Vikings 26:
Deebo Samuel ran for two touchdowns before leaving with an injury and Elijah Mitchell ran for 133 yards and a score. The matchup between two .500 teams fighting for wild-card spots was a highly entertaining one with six scores in the third quarter alone, including a 99-yard kickoff return score by Minnesota’s
Kene Nwangwu. But the host 49ers (6-5) made just enough plays, including a fourth-down stop near the goal line midway through the fourth quarter, to win their third straight following a stretch of five losses in six games. Jimmy Garoppolo threw for 230 yards and a TD, but the Niners once again did more of their work on the ground, with Samuel’s two scores making him the first receiver since the merger to run for five TDs in a season.
Giants 13, Eagles 7:
The Giants’ defense rose up to intercept Jalen
Hurts three times and held visiting Philadelphia to a season-low in points in beating the error-prone Eagles (5-7). Daniel Jones hit Philadelphia native Chris Myarick with a 1-yard score and Graham Gano kicked field goals of 35 and 39 yards as the Giants (4-7) somewhat responded to the firing of offensive coordinator Jason Garrett by ending the Eagles’ two-game winning streak.
Falcons 21, Jaguars
Cordarrelle Patterson scored twice in his return from an ankle injury, and the visiting Falcons found the end zone and the win column for the first time in three weeks. The Falcons (5-6) managed just a field goal in their previous two games, lopsided losses to Dallas and New England in which they turned over the ball a combined seven times and failed to score a touchdown in consecutive games for the first time since 1987. They put an emphasis on playing “smarter football” against Jacksonville, and it paid off. It surely helped that the Jaguars (2-9) made all the early mistakes.
Jets 21, Texans 14:
Zach Wilson threw for 145 yards and ran for a touchdown in his return from a sprained right knee, helping the visiting Jets snap a three-game skid. Wilson, the No. 2 overall draft pick in April who missed the last four games, was rusty early and threw an interception, but put the Jets (3-8) on top with a 4-yard scamper in the third quarter.The Texans (2-9) hoped to build on an upset of Tennessee last week that ended an eightgame slide and looked good early. Tyrod Taylor threw two touchdown passes in the second quarter to give Houston 14-3 lead, but the Texans couldn’t do anything offensively after that.