An NFC South team won a game without a single yard passing. That seems like the perfect encapsulation of the weirdest division in the NFL. It's hard to make sense of it. Even my power rankings from a week ago seem inadequate now, because the division just continues to be really, really strange on a weekly basis.

But you know what? Let's do our best here to figure out what the heck is going on in the southeastern U.S., where the football just hasn't been very good in 2026. (Or — if we're being real here — in any season since Tom Brady left Tampa.)

There is no favorite in the NFC South

This is, I think, the best way to sum up the NFC South: there is no favorite. In some way, every team is deeply flawed.

No NFC South team is over .500, and there's a good chance that for the second straight year, the winner of the division wins it with a sub-.500 record. The Carolina Panthers are theoretically in the best shape as they're just a game under .500, but the Carolina defense has been pretty bad, allowing 193 points through seven games. That's more than Tampa Bay and Atlanta have allowed in eight games. The team has lost two in a row, and the only time this season Carolina held a team under 20 points were games where it faced Cooper Rush and Tanner McKee. How can one trust this defense going forward?

Tampa Bay has two wins in a row, both in the division, but how does one read into Sunday's 16-0 win over the Falcons? A rain-soaked field made it impossible to throw the ball, with Buccaneers quarterack Baker Mayfield going 0-for-3. Atlanta's Michael Penix Jr. completed some passes, but "some" is the key word there, as he was 8-for-24 for 125 yards. Now, he actually had eight passes that someone caught. It's just that four of those were interceptions. His numbers also look better than they were because Jahan Dotson had a 76-yard reception.

We probably can read one thing into that game: Bucky Irving is a really good running back, and Tampa now knows it can lean on him.

On the other side, Penix had looked like the best quarterback in the division for a couple of weeks, but now ... ehh. Obviously you can't fully blame him for that showing because of the weather, but still, there's a little more doubt into how he'll play in poor conditions. That could be an issue once winter arrives.

Then there's New Orleans. The Saints are probably the one NFC South team that we do know what to make of, and what to make of them is that they aren't a good team. They've scored the fewest points in the division and also allowed the most. Tyler Shough hasn't developed in Year 2 like people hoped he would, and the team is falling short on both sides of the ball. If there's one team you can write off here, it's New Orleans.

But the other three? Anything can still happen. It's almost to the point where I don't know how to talk about it, because so much weird stuff keeps happening. What's next? Bryce Young throws for 600 yards later this month against the Saints in a losing effort? Tampa wins a second game without passing for a single yard? Atlanta is forced to turn to Tua Tagovailoa after some freak Penix injury and Tua is like, "Hey, I'm going to go nuclear here and win the division?" Sure, maybe! Let's just watch this disaster continue and try to have fun doing so.