Good, bad, and ugly from Week 9

Now, after avoiding an interception in his first three NFL starts, Wentz has thrown four touchdowns compared to five picks over the past five games. It's not a coincidence that the Eagles are 1-3 in those four games and find themselves in last place in the NFC East.

* Speaking of struggling teams, the Minnesota Vikings have now lost three consecutive games. Their latest meltdown came against the Detroit Lions Sunday afternoon in Minnesota. Unfortunately for Mike Zimmer, it was the defense that failed to step up when all cards were on the table.

After Minnesota took a 16-13 lead with less than 30 seconds left following a 13-play touchdown-scoring drive, it looked like the Vikings' mini slump was drawing to a conclusion. "Looks like" being the operative term here.

The very next possession saw Matthew Stafford lead the Lions down to Minnesota's 40-yard line in just 23 seconds and with no timeouts remaining. Lions kicker Matt Prater would then nail a 58-yard field goal to force overtime.

That's unacceptable. There's absolutely no reason why a defense should be torched like that in such a less-than-ideal scenario for the opposing offense.

Then, to kick off overtime, Detroit drove 87 yards on 11 plays, culminating in this game-winning touchdown strike from Stafford to Golden Tate. All said, Stafford completed 7-of-9 passes for 108 yards in those two final drives.

Following their latest meltdown, the Vikings find themselves at 5-3 on the season and just a half game up on Detroit in the NFC North. The fact that this call came with the team's defense struggling forces us to believe the Vikings could be in a world of trouble moving forward on the season.

“Do not let your anger lead to hatred, as you will hurt yourself more than you would the other.”

* Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce would be smart to follow this advice. The star pass catcher lost his cool after a call didn't go his way against the Jaguars on Sunday. When all was said and done, Kelce throw a temper tantrum and his gloves (literally) at an officially. He was promptly ejected from the game, setting into motion an embarrassing afternoon for Kelce himself.

And so starts the ugly from NFL Week 9.

* New York Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick entered Sunday's outing against the Miami Dolphins having gone a full two games without an interception. That definitely didn't continue in the Jets' loss to their division rival. Fitzpatrick threw two interceptions, including this disastrous pass in the end zone about midway through the fourth quarter.

Not only did this stall a Jets drive in a one-score game, it displayed yet another horrible decision from the veteran quarterback. And in reality, that was pretty much the difference in the game. With 13 interceptions on the season, Fitzpatrick has now proven himself to be the most mistake-prone quarterback in the NFL. He's also the primary reason New York heads into Week 10 with a 3-6 record and completely out of the AFC Playoff race.

* We're still trying to figure out what Los Angeles Rams head coach Jeff Fisher is thinking. He's not giving his team an opportunity to win by continuing to throw Case Keenum out there. It's not fair to the team. It's not fair to Keenum himself. And really, it's not fair to rookie No. 1 pick Jared Goff.

In the midst of Rams fans calling for Goff to take over for Keenum Sunday against the Carolina Panthers, Los Angeles' defense stopped up big time. It held the Panthers to just 13 points and sacked Cam Newton five times. That wasn't nearly enough as Keenum led the Rams to a total of three points before a garbage-time touchdown late on the game.

* Marcus Mariota entered Sunday's game against the San Diego Chargers having tallied 11 touchdowns compared to one interception in his past four outings. It's not a coincidence that Tennessee won three of those four games.

Unfortunately for the second-year quarterback, this failed to repeat itself on Sunday. Mariota turned the ball over three times, leading to 17 points for the Chargers. In fact two of his turnovers, a fumble and interception, resulted in defensive scores for San Diego.

That's not acceptable. That's also one of the primary reasons Tennessee lost 43-35 in San Diego. It was ugly. Really ugly.

Now to all the good that happened during what was a tremendous day of football around the NFL world.

* Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott threw six incomplete passes and three touchdowns in the team's 35-10 win over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday. That was good enough for a 141.8 quarterback rating, the best of Prescott's already exceptional rookie season.

Winners of seven consecutive, Dallas is averaging nearly 30 points per game during that span. For his part, Prescott has now tallied 16 total touchdowns and just two interceptions through eight games.

Fellow rookie Ezekiel Elliott added 92 yards and two touchdowns on 18 attempts for the Cowboys. He's now on pace for over 2,000 total yards and 14 scores.

Now tied with the New England Patriots for the best record in the NFL, it's readily apparent that Dallas is the class of the NFC East.

* Out west in in the AFC, it's also pretty clear that the Oakland Raiders are the class of their division. They dominated the defending champion Denver Broncos by the score of 30-20 on Sunday night. And in reality, the game was nowhere near as close as the final score indicated.

Oakland held on to the ball for over 41 minutes while tallying a ridiculous 30 first downs and nearly 400 yards of total offense. All this coming against a Broncos defense that headed into Week 9 as the best unit in the NFL.

Clearly, the Raiders are the class of the AFC West. The question now is whether Jack Del Rio and the Raiders should be taken seriously as the primary competition for New England in the conference. At 7-2 on the year, that could very well be the case.

* Matthew Stafford is turning in a tremendous season for his Lions. Following Sunday's late-game heroics, Stafford and the Lions currently sit at 5-4 and just a half game behind Minnesota in the NFC North.

The much-maligned quarterback has also dominated in crunch time in his team's five wins. Really, it's been downright historical.

The fact that Stafford is doing this without Calvin Johnson and with a Lions pass defense that has yielded a 115-plus rating is absolutely amazing. Good for him.

* Lost in the 49ers' defensive struggles against New Orleans on Sunday is the fact that Colin Kaepernick seemed to take a major step forward. Looking much more comfortable in Chip Kelly's scheme after a week off, Kaepernick completed 24-of-39 passes for 398 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.

It represented the second-best passing day of his career. It also came with the 49ers in desperate need of any type of lift me up at quarterback.

With eight more games on the season, we're definitely going to want to check in on Kap and see if he's able to continue what we saw Sunday. In reality, it could have a major impact on what San Francisco does near the top of the 2017 NFL Draft.