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The Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles played an overtime thriller Sunday night, and it wasn't Dak Prescott or Carson Wentz who most informed this week's version of the NFL1000. Instead, it was the two left tackles involved—Dallas' Tyron Smith and Philly's Jason Peters—who came out on top in Dallas' 29-23 win. As our offensive tackles scout Duke Manyweather asserts, Smith was dominant against one of the better defensive fronts in the league.

Smith did allow a sack and a handful of pressures, but he just bowled people over in the run game, making the Eagles defenders look like high school kids at times. When Smith is on, there's little question he's the best in the business, and he earned his spot at the top of the NFL1000 list this week. Peters was nearly as good and wound up at the sixth overall spot.

Washington's Trent Williams is right up there with Smith and Peters—he ranked fifth overall this week—but the Redskins will have to attempt their playoff push without him for the next four games, as the NFL suspended Williams on Tuesday for violating the league's policy on substances of abuse. It's Williams's second such suspension in his career—the previous suspension happened in 2011—and backup Ty Nsekhe will have to roll in Williams' place. Make no mistake, this is a big loss.

Better news came for the Carolina Panthers, who had been waiting all season for their front four to put it together. Through most of their 2-5 start to the season, the defending NFC champs have seen different running backs gash their defense, and the team's sack and pressure totals have declined.

But in Carolina's 30-20 win over the Arizona Cardinals, Star Lotulelei and that front four went to town on Carson Palmer and his crew. Lotulelei was particularly great, amassing three sacks, three quarterback hurries and three stops. That performance game him the NFC Defensive Player of the Week award and ranked him second overall on the Week 8 NFL1000 list.

Part of Bleacher Report's NFL1000 player rating methodology that matters is the ability to look at our grades from week to week (as you, dear reader, can) and suss out which patterns are turning into trends and which are flukes in the relatively small sample size of an NFL season.

There are many ways to dissect and learn from what the NFL presents on the field every week, and the NFL1000 goes as deep as any to tell you just what's going on out there.

With a 17-person crew of experienced evaluators, we'll comb through the game tape each week to bring you concise, clear evaluations of every player in the NFL. We'll tell you which rookies are rising and which undrafted players are coming out of nowhere to make an impact. We'll tell you which players are rising and falling in performance and why.

There is no predetermined narrative with these grades. No mysterious "clutch factor." No tweaked-out quarterback ratings that defy explanation. Our grades are based on pure scouting, and lots of it. We grade the key criteria for each position based on a series of attributes and add in a score for positional importance.

In the case of a tie, our scouts ask, "Which player would I want on my team?" and adjust accordingly.

Is it a subjective process? Of course—that's what scouting is, and as we like to say, ties are no fun.

Each player is evaluated and graded by our crack team of scouts, who possess more than 100 combined years of experience in playing, front-office work, coaching and media. Cian Fahey, John Middlekauff, Alex Kirby, Mark Schofield, Duke Manyweather, Ethan Young, Joe Goodberry, Justis Mosqueda, Charles McDonald, Zach Kruse, Derrik Klassen, Jerod Brown, Ian Wharton, Kyle Posey, Mark Bullock, Chuck Zodda and Doug Farrar have watched tape for months to bring you these grades, and we'll be bringing you player grades based on the game action every week.

Here are the NFL1000 player grades for Week 8 of the 2016 NFL season.

All advanced stats are courtesy of Pro Football Focus.

All cornerback statistics obtained through self-charting by Ian Wharton and Kyle Posey.