The NFL season is barely three weeks old, but the volumes of predictions, expectations and analysis that populated the web since May is infinite.
Most good analysts will tell you who they think the good teams are and more often than not, be correct. In the NFC, the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers were the odds on favorites to meet in the NFC Championship game from the outset. The AFC was more complicated but the default choices of the Kansas City Chiefs meeting one of the Cincinnati Bengals or Buffalo Bills seemed likely.
However, every analyst also wants to take a shot at someone unexpected.
Chris Broussard predicted the Bengals and Ravens would be the tops of the AFC with the Ravens winning. In the NFC, he predicted the Eagles vs. the 49ers with the Eagles emerging victorious.
Eric Mangini predicted KC as tops in the AFC over the Bengals but preferred the the 49ers in the NFC.
Nick Wright predicted KC over Jacksonville in the AFC. However, while he saw the NFC on paper as still being Eagles and Niners, he predicted Dallas vs. Seattle in the NFC Championship, with the Chiefs topping out over the Cowboys.
Sephen A. Smith believes the Eagles will reign supreme when it all plays out;
And Keyshawn Johnson threw perhaps the riskiest Super Bowl fortune :New Orleans defeating Baltimore.
Regardless of what we all thought we knew about this NFL season going in, it's as if we're existing in a multiverse, where bizarre losses, substandard calls, and crazy turnovers show up at crucial moments.
Week 1 saw Kansas City drop their home opener against an upstart Detroit team. The Steelers got destroyed at home by the now undefeated 49ers, and the Giants were owned 40-0 by the Dallas Cowboys. Then the Jets held on to upset Buffalo on Monday night despite losing their franchise in Aaron Rodgers.
Week 2 showed us a little more normalcy based on the preseason speculation, but then Week 3 occurred. Baltimore dropped a game at home to a Gardner-Minshew-led Colts team. Arizona beat up the Cowboys on the ground. With Derek Carr knocked out, New Orleans' offense became anorexic and lost to Green Bay after leading 17-0 at the start of the 4th quarter. Most surprising perhaps, the Houston Texans under the helm of rookie C.J, Stroud put up 37 points against division rival Jacksonville at TIAA Bank Field.
It’s only a matter of time before experts blame Lamar Jackson or Daniel Jones’ lackluster QBR on their big contracts. The old trope of the Chargers and the Bengals are franchises that can’t get out of their own is bound to rear its head.
Are players just taking weeks off like the NBA players do? Or is it more complicated than that. While there are always a few teams which are underrated by the pundits, things are not so erratic, at least not from teams so decidedly predicted to win. Where did the Bengals go? How about the Jags, last year's AFC South winner. Did anyone forecast that Sean Peyton's new toy in Denver would ever give up ten touchdowns in the first three games, let alone one week?
Though it may feel like the NFL has shifted into the world of the Matrix, there are some legitimate reasons why these things might be happening. Take the Blue pill and come back to the real world.
1) NFL teams now play 17 games. That one extra game is important in terms of player preservation.
2) Most teams don't play their starters (particularly their quarterbacks) but for maybe a few quarters in the preseason.
3) The QBs for the upset winners in Week 3 all played a ton of this preseason
4) The QBs for Dallas, Baltimore and Jacksonville did not.
5) While the elite teams in both conferences appeared obvious on paper (the Eagles and Niners in the NFC, the Bills, Bengals and Chiefs in the AFC), teams like the Falcons, Commanders, Lions, Packers, Browns, Colts, Steelers and Dolphins were not easily defined. We believe some if not all of these teams will be improved, but there are big question marks that will determine the outcomes.
To address these one by one - Adding a seventeenth game is a big deal. It means starting 0-3 might not be a playoff death sentence. The Vikings aren't out of it....yet.
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Combined preseason snaps for Allen/Herbert = zero |
With a shorter preseason, most of the starters are not playing anymore. Like not at all. Patrick Mahomes took 26 snaps this preseason. Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen all took zero. Trevor Lawrence threw 16 passes. The one QB who spits in the face of this analysis is Tua Tagovailoa who played 14 series spread over two games and he's been nothing short of amazing thus far, though his offense is basically unchanged from last year.
While on paper we can look at a team and make some pretty decent assumptions, execution in football comes down to repetition. Depending on how many rookies your franchise is starting, the more in-game scenarios these guys face, the more prepared they’ll be. As Jimmy Garoppolo said of his new WR Davante Adams, and I paraphrase, ‘I had to take a whole course in Davante.’
We need to consider the first two weeks of NFL Football as the pre-season now for most starting quarterbacks, if not most teams.
Thinking of those games this way explains the timing issues you've seen between quarterback and receiver. There have been multiple plays with blown coverages and missed assignments. Kenny Pickett threw Marcus Peters a pick-six (to a receiver that ran the wrong route) that was so gift-wrapped Peters dropped it. Those kind of miscues often determine the outcome of games.
Because of this, suppositions based on the first two weeks are precarious. Is the Dallas defense the same group that shutout the Giants in Week 1, or was Daniel Jones and his unsteady receiving corps just off? Because Dallas’s defense just got manhandled at by the Cardinals to the tune of 7.2 yards per carry with career backup Josh Dobbs at quarterback, but a backup who did play the entire preseason. Where did Trevor Lawrence go and that Jaguars defense go? Or is Houston developing under C. J. Stroud’s new leadership?
For the NFL, familiarity breeds execution. In my estimation, what we’re seeing is the adjustment by many teams to new personnel, new coaching schemes and some overall rust. Week 4 should begin to reveal some consistency, and barring major injuries like the one to Browns RB Nick Chubb, better teams should begin to figure things out.
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