Week 4 is where an NFL season starts telling you things. The Week 1 stuff is out of everyone's system, the pretenders have had three weeks to show their hand, and now the schedule starts serving up games that actually mean something. This past weekend had a little of everything: the season's first London game, a late-window collision of unbeaten teams, and enough highlight-reel touchdowns to fill a Monday film session. ESPN rounded up the best of them right here, and it's worth your ten minutes.

Start with London, because I never get tired of this part of the calendar. There was a time, not that long ago, when the international games felt like exhibition fare, dressed up with celebrity sightings on the sideline and a crowd that cheered first downs like novelty items. That's gone. Wembley and Tottenham regulars know football now, they boo holding calls they don't like, and the atmosphere this weekend felt closer to a division game than a road trip. And the players have stopped treating it like a burden, too. You used to hear grumbling about travel and body clocks. Now you hear guys talking about the crowd noise.

The unbeatens showdown in the late window was the headliner, and it delivered the way these games usually do when both teams show up healthy. Games like this are why I always tell people to ignore September records and watch September football. A 3-0 team can be papering over a bad offensive line. A 3-0 team can also be exactly what it looks like. Sunday was about finding out which kind we were dealing with, and the fourth quarter settled it with a couple of plays that'll run on highlight shows all week.

The touchdown that stuck with me was the kind of play you can hang a whole column on: a catch in traffic, on the move, with a defender draped all over the receiver. There's a lineage to that play. I watched Lynn Swann do it in January, I watched Cris Carter do it on a Sunday in old Cleveland Stadium, and I watched it again this weekend with a new name attached. The gear changes; the idea doesn't. Connecting the wire from one generation to the next is the part of this job I never get tired of.

And let's give the special teams a nod, because they never get one. There was a return in this batch of highlights that flipped field position and, with it, a game. Dave Morgan will tell you the hidden-yardage numbers mattered more than the catch, and on this one he might be right. I said might. Write that down, kid.

What Week 4 really told us is that the league has separated into its layers a little early this year. The contenders aren't who some people thought they'd be in August, a few of them are exactly who we thought, and there are two or three teams sitting at 1-3 that are better than their record. I wrote during fantasy draft season that September lies to you. It lies a little less every week.

Go watch the plays. Watch them twice. The past makes the present richer, and weekends like this one are why.