Did the Rams, Cowboys and Pats just save their seasons? Barnwell on their fourth-quarter comebacks

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  Bill BarnwellOct 5, 2026, 08:15 AM ET

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  Bill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X's and O's, offseason transactions and so much more.

  He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.

It's never too early to turn around a season. Ask the 2024 Eagles, who hit their bye at 2-2 after allowing 33 points to the Bucs in Week 4. Vic Fangio inserted Cooper DeJean into the lineup at slot cornerback, the Eagles leaned on Saquon Barkley, and Philly went 16-1 the rest of the way en route to a Super Bowl victory. The 2025 Seahawks lost a 38-35 shootout with that same Bucs team in Week 5, but one week later, they played their best defensive game of the season to that point against the Jaguars. Like the Eagles, they lost just one game over the rest of the season before winning the Super Bowl.

Sunday of Week 4 might have seen that turning point take place for three would-be contenders in real time. It's possible we just saw the Cowboys, Rams and Patriots save their seasons. At the very least, they put disappointing starts in their respective rearviews with fourth-quarter comebacks. Their flaws might still be real problems, but this could be a jumping-off point for the three teams as they try to launch their way back to the top of the playoff picture in their conferences.

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Let's take a closer look at all three. And I'll start in Houston, where the Texans were attempting to salvage their own season after an 0-3 start, only for a massive day from CeeDee Lamb to sink DeMeco Ryans' team. (Playoff probabilities are via ESPN's Football Power Index.)

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Cowboys | Patriots | Rams

Cowboys 34, Texans 30

Lowest win probability for the Cowboys: 21.5% (2:00 to go in the game)
Chance to make the playoffs after win, per FPI: 82.3%

The Cowboys might look back at their past two games and feel like they probably deserved, on average, to win one of the two. A narrow loss to the Ravens in Brazil was followed on Sunday with a come-from-behind victory over the Texans, with Dak Prescott picking up five first downs in a two-minute drill before hitting Lamb from 12 yards out for the game-winning touchdown with 43 seconds remaining.

For the second week in a row, the vaunted Texans defense couldn't come up with a stop with the game -- and potentially their playoff hopes -- on the line. In Week 3, the Colts needed only a field goal against them, and the 29 yards Indy gained on its final drive were enough to get Spencer Shrader in position for a game-winning kick. This time, after a Woody Marks touchdown gave the Texans a 30-27 lead with 2:26 to go, the Cowboys needed a touchdown to win the game in regulation.

And outside of a fourth-down conversion to Jake Ferguson that extended the contest, the Cowboys marched down the field without much difficulty. Prescott went 8-of-11 for 74 yards, with George Pickens torching Kamari Lassiter on a double move for the biggest play, a 22-yard completion. Two plays later, Lamb's 17th catch of the game gave the Cowboys a 34-30 lead. One Houston Hail Mary later, Brian Schottenheimer's Dallas team was 2-2.

Lamb's outing will linger in the memories of Cowboys fans for quite a while. His 17 catches were the most by any Cowboys wide receiver in a single game in franchise history, an impressive feat for a team with six Hall of Fame wideouts. Lamb turned 21 targets into 189 receiving yards and 11 first downs, including three on the drive that won the game for the Cowboys.

Watching it back, what was remarkable was just how easy it seemed for the Cowboys receiver. There were a couple of tight-window catches or plays where Lamb had to hang on to the ball as he was about to be hit, but those were the exceptions. Great players make the game look easy, and Lamb's route running gave the Texans serious pause, but that's not what I mean, either.

I'm talking about Houston's approach. The Texans appeared to have come into this game with a plan of not letting Lamb and Pickens -- both of whom have been getting open on deeper passing concepts all season -- to beat them over the top. This was a remarkably conservative game plan from Ryans. Eight of Lamb's 17 catches on the day were against soft zone coverage, with the Texans usually in quarters shells and playing off-coverage to keep the Cowboys from attacking downfield. Lamb likely had more uncontested catches on curls and hitches in this game than he has had in any other game as a pro.

The vertical shots the Cowboys have hit on "989" concepts in weeks past were mostly missing as a result. Prescott hit one deep throw to Pickens, who outmuscled Lassiter at the catch point and brought in a 50-50 ball. It was a rough drive for Lassiter, who then committed two more penalties on incompletions on third-and-7 and fourth-and-goal to extend the possession twice. But mostly, Prescott just picked the Texans and their zone coverages apart. He was 27-of-37 for 296 yards against zone on Sunday, with the Texans limiting him to 39 yards on eight pass attempts when they went with man defense. Every single one of Lamb's catches came against zone, with two incompletions against man-to-man looks.

Schottenheimer and Prescott clearly wanted Lamb to get the ball. Lamb was targeted three times on screens, including a pair of tagged snaps where the Cowboys called and blocked a run play at the line before Prescott elected to pull the ball and toss it up to Lamb because he liked the look. Schottenheimer also dialed up a screen at the perfect time for Lamb in the fourth quarter, with the Cowboys throwing directly into the slot after it had been vacated by a blitz to pick up 17 yards.

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Dak Prescott's late TD pass to CeeDee Lamb pushes Cowboys past Texans

The Texans helped with uncharacteristic issues in the secondary, especially on Lamb's biggest plays of the day. Facing a second-and-18, two defenders latched on to Ferguson's clear-out rate, leaving Lamb alone underneath for an easy 21-yard pickup. Lamb's 30-yard catch, his longest of the day, came on a slow-developing crossing route where Derek Stingley Jr. passed off the route to the other side of the field, only for Lassiter and single-high safety Calen Bullock to focus their attention on Pickens. Lamb was completely uncovered.

The touchdown pass that won the game also seemed like it wasn't what the Texans wanted from their secondary. With Lamb aligned in the slot, he ran a skinny post against Jalen Pitre, who was playing with outside leverage and was seemingly expecting help from a defender on the inside. That help wasn't there, as the Texans had two defenders on Ferguson, who is admittedly a red zone threat but one with 13 fewer catches than Lamb in this game by the time we got to this point of the fourth quarter.

There are still issues in Dallas. The run game continues to struggle, although Javonte Williams had his biggest day of the season on the ground by scoring three touchdowns from a combined 10 yards out. The Cowboys are 22nd in EPA per play on designed runs, down from ninth a year ago. Williams has just one run of 20-plus yards all season, a 22-yarder against the Ravens last week. The return of star guard Tyler Smith, who is eligible to come off injured reserve as early as this Thursday's game against the Buccaneers after undergoing thumb surgery, should help create holes for the Cowboys on the interior.

The defense isn't fixed, either, although the run D looked better for the second consecutive week. The Cowboys were able to slow Derrick Henry and come up with big stops in short yardage last week, with rookie linebacker Jaishawn Barham making several notable plays to end drives. Dallas held a moribund Houston rushing attack to 50 yards on 17 designed rushes Sunday, yielding a 23.5% success rate, the second-worst mark posted by any rushing attack so far in Week 4. Of course, everybody shuts down the Texans' run game, but the Cowboys doing so while playing light boxes at a higher rate than league average might be a bit of a confidence boost at the minimum.

Stopping Nico Collins was more difficult, as the star Texans wideout returned after missing two weeks with a hamstring injury and caught seven passes for 118 yards and two touchdowns. The Cowboys struggled as a unit against Houston's top wide receiver, with DaRon Bland allowing a touchdown in man coverage. Caleb Downs was caught looking into the backfield and didn't latch on to Collins on a scramble drill for the wideout's second TD of the day.

The guy the Cowboys brought in to try to erase receivers such as Collins didn't see much of the opposing team's wideout. With his back injury miraculously healed somewhere on the flight between Pittsburgh and Dallas, trade acquisition Joey Porter Jr. split time with Ameer Speed and played 24 of 52 defensive snaps in his Cowboys debut. NFL Next Gen Stats didn't see a single pass completed in Porter's direction during the game, which will be exciting news for Cowboys fans who hope that Porter can improve what has been a serious problem for several years.

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Javonte Williams finds the end zone for the 3rd time

If Porter can be the boundary corner that coordinator Christian Parker hoped to add this offseason and either hold up in zone or play man coverage on the backside of zone concepts, the Cowboys should be better about taking away big plays. They also might simplify things in the weeks to come. Downs saw a big shift in his usage this week, as he went from playing as a deep safety 34% of the time against the Ravens in Week 3 to lining up there 71% of the time against the Texans. Yes, the Cowboys didn't have a pair of secondary starters in veterans Cobie Durant or Jalen Thompson, but regardless, Downs might end up as something closer to a full-time safety.

And while the Texans still managed to score 30 points in this game, the Cowboys have a favorable slate of opposing offenses coming over the next few weeks. They'll face Jalon Daniels in the rookie's second career start this Thursday. After some extra rest, they'll get Jordan Love and a banged-up Packers offense in Week 6, followed by an Eagles offense that has gone missing for long stretches of games in Week 7. Let's check in on what happened with that Eagles team on Sunday.

Rams 24, Eagles 20

Lowest win probability for the Rams: 3.4% (8:57 to go in the game)
Chance to make the playoffs after win, per FPI: 72.8%

And let's start at the lowest moment for the Rams. Down by 10 points amid yet another miserable trip to Philadelphia, the Rams were facing a knockout blow. The Eagles had just picked up 4 yards and even called a timeout to try to set up the third-down score that would win them the game. A touchdown would have made this a three-score game with about eight minutes to go, and Los Angeles was struggling to move the ball for most of the game. The preseason favorites to win the Super Bowl were about to drop to 1-3.

The playcall was fine, as the Eagles dialed up a counter concept and cleared out a meaningful hole for Tank Bigsby, who shouldn't have had much trouble scoring from 2 yards out. What wasn't fine was the ballhandling. Jalen Hurts didn't take the snap cleanly from under center, and by the time he had regained control of the football, Bigsby was no longer in position to take the handoff. Hurts tried to improvise a run to the sideline, but Quentin Lake stopped him for no gain. A fourth-down throw to Darius Cooper was incomplete, and while the Eagles were right to go for it, a drive that should have ended the game with a touchdown instead produced zero points.

The Rams came to life. After struggling for most of the day, Matthew Stafford was excellent down the stretch, going 12-of-15 for 140 yards and seven first downs on back-to-back scoring drives. Even with Puka Nacua returning to the lineup from his groin injury and playing a relatively full snap share, the Rams leaned on Kyren Williams, who had 16 carries for 80 yards and led the team with 13 targets. Nacua had just one catch before halftime, but aided by an injury that knocked Quinyon Mitchell out of the game, the star wideout ramped up in the second half in catching eight passes for 97 yards.

With Stafford averaging fewer than 5 yards per attempt and throwing two interceptions over the first 10 drives of the game, though, the Rams were probably lucky to still be in this by the time we got to the midway point of the fourth quarter. The reigning MVP is off to a tough start, as his six interceptions are already more than the four he threw over a full season in 2025.

Some of this is just variance. Stafford has always been willing to throw the ball into tight windows, which comes with the risk of interceptions, but his accuracy also hasn't been up to its usual standard. He has thrown off-target passes on nearly 21% of his attempts this year, the sixth-worst rate in the NFL. Stafford's off-target rate was below 16% a year ago.

The play-action boot game that helped lead Stafford to the MVP in 2025 also hasn't been working anywhere near as well. Last season, Stafford posted a 72.0 Total QBR on play-action attempts, as he averaged 8 yards per attempt and threw 21 touchdowns against just one pick. This year, Stafford's 22.7 Total QBR with play-action is last in the NFL. He has gone 16-of-31 for just 192 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions, already topping his giveaway total from a year ago. He badly overthrew Davante Adams on a play-action attempt from under center against the Eagles, giving Andrew Mukuba an interception and the Eagles a short field.

Stafford's struggles are worth watching. It's too early to make a broader proclamation about his play and where things stand for the Rams, and he was good down the stretch in leading those touchdown drives while picking on Jihaad Campbell and Riq Woolen in coverage. But his biggest play on those possessions was an underthrown deep ball to Nacua, who adjusted and brought in the pass for a 32-yard completion.

That was Stafford's only deep completion of the game on six attempts. After completing nearly 47% of his deep passes and throwing one touchdown on 79 attempts last season, Stafford is hitting 30% of them this year and has four picks on 20 deep shots. If the deep ball isn't there on a regular basis, defenses will adjust.

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Kyren Williams muscles into the endzone for the Rams game-winning TD

The Rams' defense has had to adjust in its own right. Heading into the season, there was realistic talk about whether Sean McVay was running out one of the best defensive lines NFL teams had ever seen. Byron Young, Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske already formed a trio of fantastic young defensive linemen, but by swapping out Jared Verse for Myles Garrett and coaxing Aaron Donald out of retirement, general manager Les Snead added arguably the most dominant edge rusher and interior disruptor of their generation to the defensive front.

The Rams were going to be in position to do whatever they wanted on defense, knowing that they could rush four and reliably get after the quarterback. Well, Garrett is on injured reserve with a knee injury, and Donald was ruled out of the game against the Eagles with a back issue. Rams fans dreaming about the most devastating pass rush in football weren't counting on this much Josaiah Stewart and Wesley Bailey in the mix, but those were the cards coordinator Chris Shula was left to play.

Facing an Eagles team down its top wide receiver (DeVonta Smith, who is dealing with a hamstring injury), two of its best offensive linemen (Landon Dickerson and Lane Johnson, who was a late scratch for personal reasons) and then its top running back (after Saquon Barkley injured his hamstring in the first quarter), Shula went all the way in the opposite direction. With nobody scaring him at receiver, the Rams defensive coordinator decided to blitz on 50% of Hurts' dropbacks, the highest rate since he took over the role. And even when the Rams didn't blitz, they typically presented blitz looks before dropping out, forcing the Eagles to react to the threat of pressure.

The Eagles did not have an answer. Hurts went 5-of-16 for 46 yards and two sacks against the blitz, with the Rams generating pressures on 65% of their blitz attempts. Many of those blitzes came on third down, where the Eagles had a famously awful day. Philly went 0-for-12 on third down. Even converting that one third down near the goal line and going 1-for-12 probably would have been enough to win Nick Sirianni's team the game.

Instead, Hurts spent most of the day running for his life on those third downs. He missed an early opportunity to pick up the opening third down of the game, when Tom Brady noted on the broadcast commentary that Hurts turned down a throw over the middle of the field that would have produced a first down. He didn't have many real opportunities across the other 11 attempts, often because the pass rush got home too quickly for a play to develop.

The Rams dominated the line of scrimmage. Early in the game, the Eagles faced a third-and-1 inside Los Angeles' 10-yard line and dialed up an outside zone RPO, where Hurts has the ability to hand the ball off or throw a swing screen. The Eagles had the numbers to consider throwing the screen, but Hurts elected to give the ball to Bigsby on the zone run. Fiske and Poona Ford immediately beat guards Cam Jurgens and Tyler Steen to penetrate into the backfield, though, and Bigsby's run lost 5 yards, forcing the Eagles to kick a field goal.

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Kyren Williams cuts into Eagles' lead with a rushing TD

Hurts was sacked twice on third down. The first came on an overload blitz to Hurts' right side, where the Eagles had three linemen to block four rushers, meaning Hurts is hot off the edge and responsible for getting rid of the ball or getting out of the pocket before the unblocked rusher gets home.

That's not an issue in itself, but the inexperienced members of the O-line didn't handle it. Running back Will Shipley initially set outside to take the farthest rusher before realizing that a linebacker was coming through the B-gap, which led him to jump back inside to take the more dangerous option. He never blocked anyone effectively on the play. Right tackle Markel Bell, who had one career snap on offense before being forced into the lineup on short notice Sunday afternoon, stuck with his initial assignment in Young off the edge, but he never got close enough to actually lay a hand on the star pass rusher. By the time Hurts was getting to the end of his drop, he was already preparing to be sacked.

In years past, Hurts' answers for the blitz have generally been superior personnel. The Eagles were happy to respond to a blitz by throwing up a 50-50 ball to A.J. Brown or getting Smith an opportunity to run away from coverage on a crosser or a vertical route. Without those guys on the field, Hurts was throwing to the likes of Cooper, Dontayvion Wicks and 35-year-old tight end Zach Ertz, who was targeted on the crucial third down the Eagles had between those two Rams touchdown drives in the fourth quarter. Those aren't players who are going to scare the Rams, and Shula was sufficiently greedy with his pressures as a result.

This was, in many ways, a very different version of the Rams than the ones we talked about during the offseason. They blitzed at what would be an astronomical rate for any team besides the Vikings, who break the blitzing scale. With multiple tight ends sidelined by injury, McVay reverted to his old self and lined the Rams up in 11 personnel on 67 of 77 snaps. And after losing four consecutive games against the Eagles, the Rams rolled up to what has been a house of horrors in Philadelphia and pulled out a late victory.

Being 2-2 isn't what anybody expected from this team after four weeks, but in advance of a game against the Bills on "Monday Night Football" next week, it feels a lot better than 1-3.

Patriots 29, Bills 26

Lowest win probability for the Patriots: 15.3% (4:27 to go in the game)
Chance to make the playoffs after win, per FPI: 63.0%

While the Rams might have trusted their ability to turn things around as a veteran team, the Patriots felt like they were in freefall. With Drake Maye's last good game as a starting quarterback long removed from the short memories of fans and the Patriots coming off a 35-6 shellacking in Jacksonville, alarm bells were ringing in New England. There were questions during the week about Maye's shoulder, the complexity of the passing game and whether the Patriots were overmatched against playoff-caliber competition. Without two star defenders in Christian Barmore and Christian Gonzalez, a loss to the Bills would have dropped the Patriots 3.5 games behind their rivals in the AFC East after just four weeks of football.

Instead, the Patriots bounced back with what has to feel like a critical victory. For the second year in a row, Maye led a late scoring drive to beat the Bills in Buffalo. This time, trailing by five points with 4:21 to go, Maye drove the Patriots 73 yards for a touchdown to take the lead, with a spectacular catch by Efton Chism III giving the Pats a 27-26 lead. A patient two-point throw to Rhamondre Stevenson gave the Patriots a three-point cushion, and after Josh Allen threw an interception on the ensuing drive, Maye hit Hunter Henry in the flat for a 12-yard completion to ice the game.

Even asking Maye to throw the ball on third-and-10 with a minute to go might serve as evidence that the Patriots haven't lost faith in their young quarterback. His decision-making has ranged from spotty to abhorrent this season, but he was much more careful with the football against the Bills. His lone interception came on a play where a low slant to Romeo Doubs somehow bounced off Doubs' hands and the turf before landing with Dee Alford. It wasn't a great throw, but that was bad luck for the third-year pro, not a bad decision. The fumble he lost just outside the red zone in the second quarter amid a collapsing pocket was more painful and likely cost the Patriots three points.

With Maye posting a 2.6 Total QBR under pressure through his first three games in 2026, you can understand why Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard wanted to dial up the pressure on the opposing quarterback. The Bills blitzed Maye 15 times on Sunday. He won the game for the Patriots there, going 9-of-14 for 118 yards and three touchdown passes. Maye still posted a minus-19.4% completion percentage over expected (CPOE) when the Bills did get home with pressure, per Next Gen Stats, but the Bills dramatically upping their blitz rate from their prior average of 25% to north of 38% didn't pay dividends.

Maye certainly didn't look flummoxed by the pressure of the past few weeks and the divisional matchup. He was comfortable throwing the ball into tight windows, as usual, but got better results this time around. Over the first three weeks of the season, Maye had gone 14-of-31 for 163 yards with six picks on throws into tight or neutral windows, costing the Patriots nearly a full point of EPA with every dropback. On those same throws against the Bills, Maye was 11-of-19 for 154 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions.

If there was any impact of the anxiety or stress of how things have started this season, it didn't come through in how Maye played. He wasn't rushing through reads or prematurely exiting the pocket to scramble. It was notable to see how often Maye worked through his progressions, working one side of the field before returning to the middle or the opposite side and throwing in that direction. Maye didn't play like a quarterback whose clock had been sped up or who didn't trust what he was seeing downfield.

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Efton Chism III makes eye-popping, one-handed TD grab to put Pats ahead

At the same time, there were still moments that would have caused the heart rates of Patriots fans to flutter. Maye fumbled an early exchange before picking it up and hitting Henry for a 20-yard completion on a crosser, while another fumbled exchange at the 2-yard line spun wildly before Maye snatched it out of the air. A play that was ruled a strip sack and Bills defensive touchdown on the field was overturned to an incomplete pass on review. A slow-developing screen was tipped in the air by a Bills defender for a ball that could have landed anywhere. And some of the success was instead great work from his receivers, as both Doubs and Chism made spectacular catches in the end zone for their scores.

While Mike Vrabel was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct during the game, the Patriots coach also helped unlock the offense by staying aggressive against the Bills. Knowing the Pats were going to need points, Vrabel went for it twice on fourth down in field goal range, including a fourth-and-3 on the Buffalo 29-yard line and a fourth-and-2 on Buffalo's 17-yard line. Maye hit Doubs for conversions both times, and the Patriots finished both possessions off with touchdowns. The Chargers came to Buffalo last week as underdogs, took the points to avoid drives ending in zero and ended up not having enough at the end once the Bills finally got going on offense. The Pats played to score as many points as possible and needed them all to overcome the Bills.

Without Gonzalez, defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr had to get creative with his game plan and attempts to pressure Allen. The Patriots lean heavy into blitzing and man coverage, but without Gonzalez, the Pats were in zone on 25 of Allen's 35 dropbacks. Allen racked up 6.8 yards per attempt through the air against zone, but when the Patriots played man, that spiked to nearly 10 yards per pass.

The Patriots were able to eliminate Dalton Kincaid, who had just one catch for 7 yards, and didn't have to deal with DJ Moore, who had just one catch before leaving with a shoulder injury. Instead, this was the Keon Coleman show, with the long-embattled wideout catching six passes for 116 yards and a touchdown, mostly picking on the duo of Charles Woods and Kindle Vildor, who filled in for Gonzalez on the outside.

Kuhr tried to give Allen problems by disguising his intentions and slowing down the star quarterback. On a critical third-and-10 in the red zone with the Bills trailing by four points in the fourth quarter, Kuhr put six men on the line with a blitz look and five defenders over the eligible receivers behind, hinting that he was going to send the house and play man-to-man behind with no safety help. After the snap, Kuhr sent safety Craig Woodson, dropped two rushers off into coverage and played zone. Allen had checked to a pick play for Ty Johnson coming out of the flat, but with the Pats in zone, there was nobody to pick. And with a free rusher on the quarterback, he had to dump the ball off for no gain. The Bills kicked a field goal.

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Josh Allen's deep pass picked off as Patriots defense holds on late

Instead of Maye, it was Allen who made the ill-advised decision that sealed the game. With the Bills trailing by three and 1:14 to go, Allen spotted late-game closer Joshua Palmer gaining a step on a deep corner route. He went to go throw the ball, but edge Dre'Mont Jones had come free on a twist and was bearing down on the quarterback. Allen ducked Jones, but after resetting, he still decided to throw the ball to Palmer on the corner route. By the time Allen released the ball, though, Palmer was no longer open, and Woodson flew over to pick off an underthrown pass and end the game. It was the wrong time to throw into what amounted to double coverage, and while Allen got away with a duck to Palmer in the Week 1 win over the Texans, he wasn't as lucky this time around.

Having averted a 1-3 start, the Patriots now head home for a two-game homestand against the Raiders and Jets, both of whom are feistier than many would have expected heading into 2026. I'm not sure they've solved their problems, but the Bills game was a reminder that Maye and the Patriots can still get results with the game on the line, even against high-end competition. That alone might be a significant confidence boost after a brutal start to the season. Getting Gonzalez and A.J. Brown back in the weeks to come won't hurt, either.