Week 10 featured less NFL action than any other regular season lineup this year. With six teams enjoying their bye week, only 11 games filled select stadiums and broadcasts across the country Sunday.

That week off also applied to a handful of starting quarterbacks. Andy Dalton learned he’d been benched for a winless Bengals team more than a week ago. Jacoby Brissett’s MCL sprain kept him off the field against the Dolphins. Matthew Stafford was a late scratch for the Lions’ rivalry game with the Bears.

In their stead, unheralded passers Ryan Finley, Brian Hoyer, and Jeff Driskel each earned their first starts of 2019. None of the three were victorious, though Driskel showed off enough skill against a tough Chicago defense to build confidence as a rising backup:

There were still plenty of winners to go around, however. So who was the most impressive despite a fairly limited slate of games in Week 10?

It wasn’t ...

Not considered: Saquon Barkley, seventh-leading rusher (out of seven) in the Jets-Giants game

Barkley had played 22 games in a brilliant NFL career leading up to Sunday’s showdown with the Jets. In that span, he’d never rushed for fewer than 10 yards.

And then Week 10 happened. 13 carries, 1 net yard, 0 touchdowns.

Barkley was bottled up by the league’s top rushing defense and smothered into oblivion on a day when only quarterback Daniel Jones could find any kind of success on the ground for the Giants. Nine of Barkley’s 13 rushes ended at or behind the line of scrimmage. Although he gained 30 yards through the air in his team’s eventual 34-27 defeat, it was by far the least productive game of his professional career to date.

Those struggles persisted even when he didn’t have the ball. As a pass blocker, he missed key assignments that led to two of Daniel Jones’ three fumbles — including one that Jamal Adams returned for a touchdown.

The Jets’ underrated defense played a role, but Barkley was also hampered by injury concerns. Head coach Pat Shurmur said he was “banged up” after the game, and Barkley wound up in the club’s X-ray room shortly after the final whistle. Losing him for another extended stretch — he missed three weeks with a high ankle sprain earlier in the season — would rob the Giants of their most versatile weapon.

And now, on to ...

This week’s actual winners

6. Jets-Giants, which was more entertaining than it had any business being

Few people were hyped for the all-North Jersey showdown between the 1-7 Jets and the 2-7 Giants. Selling football fans on a Sam Darnold-Daniel Jones gunfight turned out to be just as difficult as it sounds:

That was an hour before kickoff, and the fans that trickled in later were rewarded for their faith. Even if the game was by no means a triumph of technical wizardry — the two sides combined for four fumbles and eight sacks — it was still a pretty damn exciting football game.

Jones led his team back from an early 14-0 deficit to take a 27-24 lead. All four of the Giants’ touchdowns came through the air, making Jones just the fourth quarterback since 2000 to have multiple four-touchdown games in his rookie season. He’d be one-upped by Sam Darnold, who overcame the ghosts that plagued him previously, en route to an efficient 230-yard, one-touchdown day.

Jamal Adams, still working through the sting of his team listening to trade offers that involved him, had a 25-yard fumble return touchdown. Embattled kicker Sam Ficken made six of his seven kicks, including a 53-yard field goal. Giants receivers Golden Tate and Darius Slayton combined for 216 yards and four touchdowns.

Was it poetry? Nope. But it was better than the 6-6 tie the 2019 Giants and Jets each deserved.

5. Andy Lee, who threw a legitimately great pass into coverage (despite being a punter)

Kliff Kingsbury is an innovator. He isn’t satisfied with just calling a fake punt. He’s going to fold a trick play into another trick play like a football turducken of laterals and unexpected passes.

On Sunday he dragged Andy Lee — a punter with one career pass in 15 seasons as a pro — atop his mountain of madness. And Lee, like any good Kingsbury charge, responded by throwing a masterpiece of a deep ball.

That bold call — from fourth-and-10 at the Cardinals’ own 36-yard line — was vital to Arizona’s comeback hopes. Lee’s strike went for 26 yards and kept a crucial fourth-quarter drive alive. Three plays later, Kyler Murray delivered his third touchdown pass to Christian Kirk to take a 27-23 lead with a little more than seven minutes to play.

While the Cardinals couldn’t hold on in an eventual 30-27 loss, the Lee play is another wrinkle opposing coaches have to consider when facing Kingsbury. And with Rams punter Johnny Hekker tanking his career passer rating by throwing an interception against the Steelers — it dropped from 106.0 to 81.3 — it’s possible Lee is now the NFC West’s preeminent punter/quarterback (and not the other way around).

4. The Falcons, because if you’re only gonna beat a few teams this season, they better be rivals

Atlanta not only doubled its season total for wins (from one to two!), but also did so while weakening one of its biggest rivals. The Falcons ranked 30th in the league in scoring defense and had yet to hold an opponent to fewer than 20 points this fall before traveling to the Superdome. Then they held Drew Brees, Michael Thomas, and Alvin Kamara to nine points in the biggest upset of the regular season to date.

The Saints rolled into Week 10 as a 14-point favorite and then left the home fans with nothing to cling to but some pallid “28-3” jokes. An Atlanta defense that had recorded seven sacks in its first eight games got to Drew Brees six times for a net loss of 46 yards — and this included big plays on what were decidedly not blitzing downs.

Younghoe Koo, signed 11 days earlier off the street as a free agent, converted all four of his field goal attempts. Matt Ryan, making his return after missing his team’s last game due to a high ankle sprain, only threw for 182 yards but didn’t need to do much more. The Falcons limited a hobbled Kamara (12 total touches for 74 yards) and refused to let a typically impactful day from Michael Thomas (13 catches) beat them. In the process, they chipped away at their rival’s case for a postseason bye.

3. Minkah Fitzpatrick, who was absolutely worth a first-round pick

Back when the Steelers freed Fitzpatrick from Miami, it looked like the former Alabama standout had just traded one scuttled boat for another. Pittsburgh was 0-2 when it added the playmaker to its secondary, and would be 1-4 with only a win over the lowly Bengals to its credit three weeks later. With Ben Roethlisberger out for the season, the team’s playoff hopes had been left for dead.

And Fitzpatrick has revived them.

The rangy safety has been electric his last four weeks, turning up on the happy side of five different turnovers (four interceptions, one fumble recovery) as the Steelers have rallied from 1-4 and a spot at the top of next year’s draft order to 5-4 and a spot on the periphery of the AFC playoff race. His last two turnovers were the key to upsetting the Rams, who’d arrived in Pittsburgh as 4.5-point favorites, in a 17-12 victory.

The first, a 43-yard fumble return touchdown, ensured the home team hit halftime with a 14-7 lead:

The second didn’t end in a touchdown, but was arguably more important. The Rams had their backs against the wall when they got the ball with 61 seconds left. A 60-yard touchdown drive would give them the win. Instead, Fitzpatrick made sure quarterback Jared Goff wouldn’t redeem himself after a terrible start.

He was on the end of Goff’s final pass of the afternoon, a tip-drill interception that quashed Los Angeles’ comeback hopes and launched a thousand “are the Rams washed?” tweets across the universe.

In the Steelers’ four-game winning streak, Fitzpatrick has played 100 percent of his team’s defensive snaps and averaged 1.5 passes defensed and an interception per game. He’s also got two return touchdowns for a Pittsburgh team that would almost certainly rather have him than a mid-round Day 1 pick next spring.

2. Lamar Jackson, who we should all just assume is on this list unless otherwise noted

Jackson has been one of the league’s brightest stars throughout 2019. Even after proving he could beat an elite team a week earlier by toppling the Patriots, Sunday gave him the chance to turn the difficulty down from “expert” to “beginner” against winless Cincinnati. He then put together one of the finest games of his budding career.

The former Heisman Trophy winner’s 16th start saw him finish with 15 completions in 17 attempts for 223 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions. That was good enough to make him one of just six quarterbacks to have multiple games with a perfect 158.3 passer rating in his career. He sliced up the Bengals’ AAA secondary with ease through the air, but also showed no mercy on the ground:

Jackson got things done on his own, but he also used that rushing threat to lift his teammates — notably fellow former Heisman winners Mark Ingram and Robert Griffin III, with whom he teamed up to run a throwback college-style option. In a 49-13 rout, the Ravens emptied their bench and Jackson watched the last quarter wearing Dwight Schrute’s Terminator glasses:

As for the Bengals, well ... at least their race to the top of the 2020 NFL Draft is going well.

1. Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill, the Titans stars we always knew they’d be

The theme of Sunday was upsets. The Steelers took down the Rams. The Falcons shut down the Saints. And the Titans, led by Tannehill and Henry, dropped Patrick Mahomes to 0-3 in the last three games he’s been healthy enough to finish.

Henry had only had one game this season with more than 90 rushing yards. He more than doubled that mark with a 188-yard, two-touchdown performance that hit the Chiefs’ run defense on fire and then trampled the ashes.

But when the Titans needed a big drive to cap a comeback, Tannehill delivered. While Mahomes outgained him by 265 passing yards, the former Dolphin was responsible for all 61 yards of a drive that turned a 32-27 deficit into a 35-32 lead — including running in the two-point conversion that meant Kansas City could only tie the game up with a last-ditch field goal.

Instead, Harrison Butker’s 52-yard attempt was blocked, and the Titans got back to .500 — and one step closer to their 9-7 destiny — with an affirming upset in Nashville.

Tennessee has a shot to reel in the fading Colts and bully its way into the AFC South title race. That success starts with Tannehill, who has engineered game-winning drives in each of his three wins (in four chances) as a starter after replacing Marcus Mariota behind center.