The Trap Games Nobody Sees Coming: Five Week 5 Favorites About to Learn Why You Can't Take Anybody for Granted in This League

You know what I love about football? It's the beautiful, terrible, wonderful unpredictability of it all. You can have all the talent in the world, all the schemes perfectly drawn up on the whiteboard, all the momentum from winning three straight, and then boom, some team that everybody wrote off comes in and punches you right in the mouth. That's the thing about this league that keeps me coming back every single Sunday. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and Week 5 is shaping up to be one of those weeks where the favorites better bring their lunch pails and their best game because there are traps all over the field.

I've been watching football for a long time, and I can smell these things coming. You develop a sixth sense for when a team is vulnerable, when they're looking past their opponent, when they've got that false confidence that comes from a couple of wins or from being on everybody's preseason power rankings. The favored teams in Week 5 have got to be careful because there are five situations out there where I genuinely believe the underdog could walk out of that stadium with a win, and that's not me trying to be cute or trying to make headlines. That's just me looking at football the way it's supposed to be looked at.

Let me start with the Patriots because everybody's been talking about them, and rightfully so. New England has been playing better football, and they've got that championship pedigree that never really goes away. But here's the thing about the Patriots right now that nobody wants to talk about. They've been winning games, sure, but they're not overpowering anybody. They're winning with defense and field position and discipline, which is great, which is how football is supposed to be played. But when you're winning that way, you become predictable. Opposing teams can say, "Alright, we know what they're doing. We know they're going to pound the football, they're going to play tough defense, they're going to make you sustain drives." And you know what? If you're the kind of team that can just come out and shoot the lights out early, if you can be aggressive and put them in a situation where they have to abandon their game plan, suddenly that Patriots team looks a whole lot different.

The thing that worries me about favored teams in the NFL is that they start believing their own press clippings. They start thinking that the way they won the last three games is the way they're going to win forever. That's when you get complacent. That's when you start taking plays off in the first quarter. That's when the opposing team's young quarterback who you haven't spent much time studying can throw for 300 yards and catch you completely off guard. I'm not saying it's going to happen to New England this week, but I'm saying it could, and anybody who's watched football long enough knows that the biggest upsets usually come from the places where everybody says, "Nah, that's not happening."

When you look at the other four situations where I'm seeing real trap game potential, the pattern becomes even clearer. What you're looking at is favored teams that have had some success but haven't really been tested in the crucible yet this season. They haven't played a complete game against a team that's absolutely refusing to quit. They haven't been in a situation where they're down in the fourth quarter and they have to really depend on their quarterback to make plays and their defense to hold up. Those situations teach you things. They make you better. But here's the rub: not all teams respond the same way. Some teams get tougher. Some teams get softer. And in Week 5, when you're dealing with the grind of the season, when guys are getting a little bit sore, when the mental fatigue is starting to set in, that's when the trap games happen.

I think about the great upset games I've seen over the years, and there's always a common thread. The favorite has already used up their emotional energy on the previous week's game. They're looking ahead because they think they're supposed to be better. The underdog is playing free and loose because nobody expects them to win anyway. There's no pressure. There's no weight of expectation. They can go out there and just play football, and sometimes when you play football without all that baggage, you play your best. I've seen it a thousand times, and I'm seeing the ingredients for it in multiple spots this week.

One thing that people don't understand about this league is that talent is relatively evenly distributed. Sure, some teams are better than others, but when you've got 53 players on a roster and you're playing in the NFL, everybody in that locker room can play football at a level that's above 99 percent of everybody else on the planet. When you get down to it, it's about who wants it more on a particular Sunday, who's more prepared, who's getting better health back, who's got the momentum. The Patriots aren't playing against a team of amateurs. None of the favored teams this week are. They're all playing against professional football players who've got families counting on them, who've got something to prove, who've got jobs on the line.

The danger with these favored teams is that they don't respect what they're walking into. And you can't do that in this league anymore, if you ever could. Football has evolved. The parity is real. Every team gets better during the week. Every team has a game plan. Every team has a chance. The teams that understand that, the teams that go out there with the mentality that they've got to earn the win just like they've earned every other win, those are the teams that don't fall into the trap. The teams that think it's going to be easy, that think they can show up and win by talent alone, those are the teams that are sitting in the locker room at halftime asking themselves how they're down by seven to a team they were supposed to beat by 10.

I've watched New England play, and I've watched the other four favored teams that have trap game written all over them this week, and here's what I see. I see good teams, I really do. But I also see teams that haven't faced real adversity yet this season. I see teams that haven't had to dig into their bag of tricks on a Sunday when nothing was working. I see teams that have had the luxury of playing the way they want to play, with their game plan, on their timeline. And in this league, that doesn't last forever. Eventually, somebody comes along and says, "We're not doing it your way today." And when that happens, when you haven't been tested, when you haven't faced that kind of adversity before, sometimes you don't handle it very well.

The beautiful thing about football is that it humbles everybody eventually. It doesn't matter how much money you spent on free agents. It doesn't matter how many Pro Bowlers you've got on your roster. It doesn't matter if you were predicted to win your division by every expert in America. On any given Sunday, if you don't bring everything you've got and you don't respect the opponent across from you, you can lose to anybody. That's what makes Week 5 so dangerous for these favorites. That's what makes these trap games so real. And that's what's going to make this week so much fun to watch.

For the fans out there following these teams, here's what you need to understand. If your team is favored this week, you need to hope they come out with an edge, with hunger, with the understanding that nothing is guaranteed. If your team is the underdog, you need to believe that they can win because they absolutely can. The chess match of football is played not just by the coaches but by the players, and when the players on the underdog's team believe they can win, when they execute, when they play without fear, that's when the magic happens. These trap games are beautiful because they remind us all why we love this game so much. They remind us that preparation matters, that respect matters, that wanting it more matters. Week 5 is going to be special, and if you've got a favorite on your mind, don't sleep on the team coming to town thinking they've got nothing to lose. Because in the NFL, everybody's got something to play for, and anybody can beat anybody.