1. Thursday night showdown for first place in AFC West: After an array of blowouts in the first five weeks on Thursday night football, the last two games between Indianapolis and Houston and the New York Jets and New England Patriots have shown us that we can see competitive football on a Thursday night. Thursday’s matchup promises to be the most exciting mid-week game we’ve seen all season, as it’s the most important. While their loss to the Kansas City Chiefs took a little shine off of their battle in Denver, first place will still be on the line when the San Diego Chargers take on the Denver Broncos Thursday night. While the Chargers are coming off of a loss to Kansas City, the Broncos are coming off of their most dominant performance of the season.

2. A battle for more than first place: Thursday night’s Chargers – Broncos game won’t just give one team the midseason lead in the AFC West, it could give one quarterback an early lead in the race for the MVP award.  Right now, most would agree that the NFL’s MVP is the Dallas Cowboys’ DeMarco Murray, but if Murray stumbles or can’t stay healthy, many eyes will turn to AFC West quarterbacks Philip Rivers and Peyton Manning. Both teams’ improved offensive line play or the improved defenses could easily be given credit for each team starting out hot this season, but the play of the quarterbacks has been key, and we all know quarterback play always gets more attention than any other. Rivers is having one of his best seasons as a pro, and has already been brought up in MVP conversations. The Chargers quarterback is completing on 67.4 percent of his passes and already has 1,961 passing yards with 17 touchdowns to just three interceptions in his team’s first seven games. Manning, on the other hand is continuing to play as well as he ever has, an amazing feat for 38-year old a couple years removed from neck surgeries that some believed would end his career. As impressive as Rivers’ numbers have been, Manning’s have been even better. Manning has hit on 68.7 percent of his passes while connecting for 19 touchdowns and, like Rivers, Manning has only been picked off three times this season. The pair’s head to head match-ups could go a long way in determining the 2014 NFL MVP.

3. Set your alarm for football: For the first time, the NFL is sending their product across the pond to England three times in 2014. The Detroit Lions will be the “road” team Sunday morning (At least here in America) when they play the “home” team, Atlanta Falcons in London, England’s Wembley Stadium. While the argument over whether or not the NFL should be playing games in London, or if they should consider a team in London will rage on, the 2:30 PM (England time) kick off time will have a pretty cool side effect as the game will be on our televisions at 9:30 AM Eastern and 6:30 AM PST! Unless you’re a heavy drinker, you don’t often get to enjoy football with your breakfast, so set your alarm for this one! For many of us, the morning hours drag on Sunday as we wait for football to get started so this week we can all enjoy football starting in the morning and the game in London should end about a half an hour before the 1:00 games begin. It’s a brilliant move by Roger Goodell that almost makes you shed a tear.

4. Revenge in Cincinnati: The Baltimore Ravens have a 5-2 record and are in first place in the AFC North. One of the team’s only losses came Week 1 when Andy Dalton hit A.J. Green for a 77-yard touchdown in the final moments putting the Cincinnati Bengals on top for good, 23-16. It doesn’t look like Dalton will have Green at his disposal this time around.  The Bengals started the season looking like the best team in football, winning three straight in impressive fashion. Since then, the Bengals defense has fallen off the face of the planet, giving up 80 points combined in their loss to the New England Patriots and their tie against the Carolina Panthers. Last Sunday, both the offense and defense struggled as the Indianapolis Colts dominated the Bengals 27-0. Baltimore is coming off of two dominating victories over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons, and both of their losses came to teams playing at the top of their game.

5. Birds of a very different feather: The Philadelphia Eagles are feeling good coming off of a bye and a thrashing of the New York Giants. This Sunday they face an Arizona Cardinals team that has also started the season at 5-1. Despite shutting the Giants out 27-0 two weeks ago, the Eagles defense has struggled early in the year while the Arizona Cardinals can point right to the defensive side of the ball as the reason for the team’s strong start. Offensively, the Cardinals are led by a veteran quarterback and is pretty conventional and deliberate. This is a team that seems happy to do just enough on offense. The Eagles on the other has a high flying fast paced offense that wants to move the ball quickly without huddling. Sunday’s game should be a clash of opposing styles and philosophies that are both getting results. This should be one of the weekend’s better games.

6. The slumping NFC South: The NFC South is bad. It’s almost shocking how down this division is in 2014. The division has four of the worst defenses in football. The Carolina Panthers are in first place with a record of 3-3-1 while the New Orleans Saints are excited because they’re only a game out of first despite being 2-4. The Atlanta Falcons are an awful 2-5 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 1-5 with and have suffered a pair of the season’s ugliest, least competitive losses. The division is bad enough, that it seems possible the division could be won by a team finishing below .500. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the entire division were below the .500 mark at the end of Week 8 as the Panthers host the Seattle Seahawks. With the Saints hosting the Green Bay Packers, the Falcons playing Detroit in London and the Buccaneers being bad enough to lose to anyone, it’s not inconceivable that the entire division will lose again on Sunday. The good news is these teams still have games against each other, so there are wins left of their schedules.

7. Can the Cleveland Browns bounce back? Just when we all started believing in the Browns, they went and pulled a Browns on us. After throttling the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-10, everything was rolling for the Browns as they looked to go to 4-2 with a game against the winless Jacksonville Jaguars. The Browns then did what they do and lost 24-6 in Jacksonville. The Browns host the Oakland Raiders Sunday and Tampa Bay Buccaneers a week later, each being games this Cleveland team should win. The question is, can they bounce back after falling to the Jaguars last week and play the kind of football they’ve shown they can, or did last week foreshadow more Browns failures?

8. The Chicago Bears Chemistry: After losing to the Miami Dolphins, the Bears fell to 3-4 and the team is struggling on both sides of the ball. The Bears defense is mediocre, and while Brandon Marshall will tell you the offense is loaded with weapons, it has struggled to get it going at times this year as well. Last week there were reports that Marshall lost his temper after the game, criticizing and confronting his teammate, quarterback Jay Cutler. The Marshall – Cutler relationship, while sometimes explosive, is also very good. With the mutual respect the pair share, it’s possible Sunday’s outburst could help pull the team together as much as it could have caused separation. We’ll have to see how the Bears respond Sunday when they travel to New England to take on the Patriots.

9. The dominant Dallas Cowboys: For years the Cowboys entered seasons with expectations they could not meet. For years we were told how talented the Cowboys were only to have the team play well below those inflated expectations. Even when the Cowboys were good enough to be a playoff team, the team often played inconsistent football. This year all of that has all changed. Bad teams don’t stumble into six-game winning streaks. Plenty of teams play pretty good football and then fall into one or two wins and have a win streak that isn’t as impressive as the streak might suggest. That’s not the story of the 2014 Dallas Cowboys; They are winning games, and winning them convincingly. While the defense isn’t dominant, the offense is, and because they’re sticking to the run, it’s allowing them to control the flow of games. Expect the Cowboys to steadily and easily walk over the Redskins Sunday, because that’s who this team has become. They are playing smart, dominant football, and while they’re beatable, this Cowboys team won’t be beating themselves.

10. Sunday night blowouts: What’s going on with Sunday night football? NBC is supposed to get their hands on many of the league’s marquee match-ups, but while everyone has spent the season pointing out the shortcomings of Thursday night football, Sunday nights have seen some of the season’s ugliest games. The campaign started strong with the Broncos besting the Colts 31-24 on the first Sunday night of the year. A week later, the Bears topped the San Francisco 49ers 28-20. Since that night, the games have been terrible, and this Sunday may be no different. Watching the way the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers have played in recent weeks, it would be no surprise if the Packers take the Saints behind the wood shed in New Orleans. If they do, it will just be part of the trend, as the past five Sunday nights have included ugly stinkers like; Steelers 37 – Panthers 19, Cowboys 38 – Saints 17, Patriots 43 – Bengals 17, Eagles 27 – Giants 0 and Broncos 42 – 49ers 17.