Oh, Norv... not again... (Getty Images)When Ryan Mathews made a magnificent dive into the end zone, San Diego led 24-14 in the third quarter against an 0-4 Saints team. A Chargers team that has a laughable reputation for starting slow seemingly every season seemed poised to move to 4-1.

The Broncos lost earlier Sunday and are 2-3. The Chiefs and Raiders each have one win. If the Chargers wanted a chance to be one of the fast starters in the NFL, and take control of the AFC West, this was it.

It didn't happen. For the Norv Turner-led Chargers, it's always something.

Against the Saints' defense, which gave up 130 points in its first four games, the Chargers suddenly couldn't move the ball for the second half, and the Saints came back to win 31-24. San Diego's offense didn't score after Mathews gave the Chargers that 10-point lead with a little more than 12 minutes left in the third quarter. The long passes that worked in the first half weren't available anymore. It didn't stop San Diego from trying.

Oddly, Mathews got only 12 carries, and just one rushing attempt in the final 22 minutes of the game, even though the Chargers should have been protecting a lead and Mathews looked explosive. He rushed for 80 yards and had 59 more receiving, and proved a highlight play with his head-first leap into the end zone.

Philip Rivers had two turnovers in the fourth quarter. The first was an interception by safety Roman Harper on a deep pass, and Harper's long return set up a Saints field goal. When Rivers was strip-sacked with 14 seconds left and the Saints recovered, it completed a collapse that Chargers fans are quite used to.

(AP)

Washington Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin exited Sunday's 24-17 loss to the Atlanta Falcons with a concussion after taking a brutal (but 100 percent clean) hit from linebacker Sean Weatherspoon. Initially, the Redskins said that Griffin had been "shaken up" and was questionable to return, which Mark Maske of the Washington Post reports will prompt an inquiry from the league office as teams are required to disclose "accurate and timely injury information" during the game.

"At that time when he wasn't really sure what the score was, what quarter it was, we knew he had a mild concussion, at least according to the doctors," Redskins head coach Shanahan said. "He feels good right now—a lot better right now. But that was the situation, why he didn't go back into the game."

We hope RG3 is OK, clears the concussion protocol with flying colors and is able to play next week, but it's long overdue for the NFL to permanently remove the term "mild" when describing concussions.

Griffin wasn't the only quarterback to suffer a head injury on Sunday. Matt Cassel left the Kansas City Chiefs' 9-6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the fourth quarter after he was sandwiched by Haloti Ngata and Paul Kruger, prompting cheers from a vocal segment of the crowd at Arrowhead Stadium. Those cheers drew the ire of Chiefs right tackle Eric Winston.

"But when you cheer somebody getting knocked out, I don't care who it is, and just so happened to be Matt Cassel, it's 100 percent sickening," Winston said via the Kansas City Star. "I've been in some rough times on some rough teams, I've never been so embarrassed in my life to play football, than at that moment right there."

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith completed 18 of 24 pass attempts for 303 yards and three touchdowns in his team's 45-3 romp of the Buffalo Bills. According to Matt Maiocco of CSN Bay Area, Smith sprained the middle finger of his passing hand and underwent X-rays after the game. The 49ers host the New York Giants in a rematch of the 2011 NFC championship game next Sunday.

[Also: Andrew Luck perseveres as Colts stun Packers]

Safety Troy Polamalu exited the Pittsburgh Steelers' 16-14 win over the Philadelphia Eagles after aggravating a calf injury that had sidelined him for the previous two games in the first quarter. Polamalu could miss a few weeks with the injury. The Steelers also lost outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley to a hamstring injury.

The New England Patriots finished their 31-21 win over the Denver Broncos without 40 percent of their starting offensive line. Pro Bowl left guard Logan Mankins, who is coming off surgery to repair a torn ACL in his knee and missed last week's game with a hip injury, had a calf injury and was replaced by Donald Thomas. Right tackle Sebastian Vollmer (knee) also finished the game on the sidelines and was spelled by Marcus Cannon.

What Drew Brees is celebrating is more impressive than you may think. (AP)

In 1960, the year that Johnny Unitas completed his streak of 47 straight games with a touchdown pass, #19 also led the league in touchdown passes ... with 25. In 2011, the man who led the league on passing touchdowns was Drew Brees, with 46, and Brees had 25 by Week 11. This is one of many reasons you'll hear people say that while Brees' 48-game touchdown streak, which he established against the San Diego Chargers on Sunday night, it is still not on the same level as the mark Unitas set.

Unitas, historians will tell you, set his mark in an era far more about the run than the pass, and that's true. The NFL was still a ground-based league, and as the American Football League was just getting underway and hadn't established its own reputation for wide-open football that would change the game forever, Unitas did something that wasn't even believed to be possible.

[Also: Redskins QB Robert Griffin III KO'd in loss to Falcons]

That's a valid point, as is the assertion that in Unitas' day, receivers were mugged constantly by aggressive defenders like Dick "Night Train" Lane and Hardy Brown. Today's NFL, many will tell you, is so set up for the quarterback, it's a near-miracle that someone else didn't set the mark before.

The problem with that theory is that it fails to account for the fact that the defenses Brees faces on a week-to-week basis are so much more complex than what Unitas had to deal with, the difference can barely be explained. Unitas played in an era in which many teams didn't yet run the 4-3 defense, which was established by New York Giants defensive coordinator Tom Landry in the mid-1950s. Before Landry's 4-3 and flex concepts, many teams played straight five-man fronts, aligned and assigned to stop the run.

[Also: Andrew Luck perseveres as Colts stun Packers]

That's the counter-argument to the "Unitas did what he did before the NFL became a passing league" argument -- Unitas also did what he did when most defenses didn't even know how to defend the pass in a modern sense. The zone passing defense wasn't really in play in the NFL until the late 1960s, and the pure 3-4 defense, which really started in the AFL, wasn't a universal football conceit until the two leagues merged in 1970.

The 3-4 then grew into the precursor to today's multiple and hybrid fronts when the New York Giants selected linebacker Lawrence Taylor in the 1981 NFL draft and gave rise to the pass-rushing lineman who could move all around the front and confound quarterbacks from different angles and attack points.

The difference between Brees and Unitas is the difference between color and black-and-white. (AP)

From there, the expansion of NFL defenses went to a different dimension. Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau devised the zone blitz in the early 1980s in part to counter Bill Walsh's West Coast offense, and all of a sudden, quarterbacks couldn't be sure whether linemen were dropping into coverage at the same time defensive backs were blitzing.

Nickel and dime defenses grew in popularity to counter other offensive developments, and coverages became more complex every year. LeBeau, Bill Belichick, and many other defensive geniuses were like mad scientists in laboratories, inventing new ways to torture quarterbacks from a schematic perspective with alarming regularity.

As a result, the sheer amount of things Brees and other modern quarterbacks must decipher at the line of scrimmage puts it past the idea that Brees and his contemporaries are playing chess while guys in Unitas' time were playing checkers -- we're talking more about the difference between the early Henry Ford motor cars and the technology that allowed men to walk on the moon.

[Also: Reggie Wayne delivers best game in emotional winning tribute]

Football is an emotional game, and sometimes, people just pop off. On Sunday, two safeties playing for different teams became quite incensed with the game officials.

With 10:21 left in the third quarter of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 16-14 win over the Philadelphia Eagles, Steelers safety Ryan Clark was flagged for unnecessary roughness after a helmet hit to Eagles tight end Brent Celek. After the call by referee Tony Corrente, Clark could be seen going off on back judge Greg Wilson, to no avail.

It's tough to understand Clark's willingness to argue this call -- as Celek was being brought to the ground by two other Steelers defenders, Clark clearly launched himself at Celek, and led with his helmet in doing so. There are plenty of instances in which officials call roughness penalties when they probably shouldn't, but this was a textbook example of what the NFL does not want defenders to do.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Vikings safety Harrison

Drew Brees greets Joe Unitas, Johnny Unitas' son, before Sunday night's game (US Presswire)

The beauty of Drew Brees breaking Johnny Unitas' NFL record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass is that everyone knew he would break it.

Throwing a touchdown pass in an NFL game shouldn't be a given. There's a good reason Unitas' record of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass stood for an incredible 52 years.

[Also: Andrew Luck perseveres as Colts stun Packers]

But Brees has become as sure of a thing as there is in sports.

(Associated Press)

Russell Wilson led Seattle to one touchdown on Sunday. He also led Carolina to one touchdown, throwing an interception that was returned for a score.

Seattle won 16-12 at Carolina, but that was more because of a Herculean defensive effort than Wilson carrying the team to a victory.

Wilson has looked like most rookie quarterbacks not named Cam, RG3 or Luck. That shouldn't be a surprise, but coach Pete Carroll doesn't seem to mind. Carroll's stubbornness might end up keeping Seattle from reaching its vast potential.

[Also: Andrew Luck perseveres as Colts stun Packers]

The Chicago Bears routed the Jacksonville Jaguars 41-3 on Sunday afternoon. Two of those touchdowns came from the defense, which is proving to be a more potent scoring threat than Devin Hester or the Jay Cutler-Brandon Marshall connection.

Charles Tillman picked off Blaine Gabbert in the third quarter and took it for a 36-yard touchdown. In the fourth quarter, Lance Briggs got a pick-six of his own.

Briggs and Tillman also managed defensive touchdowns in the Bears' Week 4 win over the Dallas Cowboys. This is the third straight week the Bears defense has scored a touchdown. It's also the first time in NFL history that a pair of teammates have returned interceptions for touchdowns in back-to-back weeks.

Heading into their bye week, the Bears are 4-1 and tied with the Minnesota Vikings for the lead in the NFC North. Briggs and Tillman will have to wait a week before they head to Detroit to see if they can go for a three-peat.

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Dwyane Wade once tried a similar move on Mike Bibby, but it seems like a more difficult way to defend a player than say, wrapping up a tackle correctly.

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