Answering nine questions that could define the NFL season

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There’s very little settled in the NFL through six weeks. The Patriots are very good, the Dolphins are awful and just about everything in the middle seems to be up for grabs.

We’ve seen teams like the Chiefs, Cowboys and Rams go on losing streaks, while the Panthers and Saints lost their starting quarterbacks and went on winning streaks anyway. We’re supposed to know more about what’s going on in the league now.

With that in mind, I’m going to go through some of the more significant questions around the NFL and try to answer them. I’ll hit on everything from a couple of coaches on the hot seat to a brewing quarterback controversy. Let’s start with the biggest upset of the week:

Jump to a team:
ATL | CAR | DAL
HOU | KC | LAR
MIA | MIN | PHI

Yes. I’m tempted to leave things there, but Watson has been incredible over the last two weeks in leading the Texans to victories over the Falcons and Chiefs. He has thrown for 706 yards and six touchdowns, run for 89 yards, six first downs and two more scores, and posted a Total QBR of 91.7. Watson threw two interceptions in Sunday’s win over the Chiefs, but one was the product of his receivers running into the same area of the field. The other came after DeAndre Hopkins uncharacteristically dropped a would-be completion in the red zone.

The scary thing, I suppose, is that Watson could have even better numbers if he hadn’t been let down by drops from Hopkins and Will Fuller on Sunday. He’s playing absolutely lights-out football, and he was much better Sunday than his raw numbers and 77.5 passer rating indicated. While the Chiefs and Falcons clearly influenced things, one key number for Watson over the last two games has to be the zero sacks he has taken. He had porous offensive lines for his first two seasons in Houston, but he also deserved some of the blame for taking sacks as he extended plays. The line between extending plays and taking bad sacks is narrow, and over these two wins, he has toed it perfectly.

While the long-term effects of trading so many draft picks might be deleterious, the Texans are clearly a better offense after adding Laremy Tunsil to the fold. Tunsil hasn’t been the best left tackle in the league, but he has been a mammoth upgrade on what Matt Kalil would have likely done on Watson’s blindside. Tunsil also freed up would-be Kalil replacement Tytus Howard to start his career on the right side, and the first-round pick was playing well before being carted off with a knee injury against the Chiefs. Zach Fulton also ranks among the league leaders in ESPN’s pass block win rate over the last two weeks.

If anything, Watson needs more help from his receivers. Hopkins, who hasn’t scored in five weeks, has officially been credited by ESPN Stats & Information with two drops and has had a handful of other passes this year bounce off his hands. Fuller is tied for the league lead in drops with Julian Edelman at four. Kenny Stills has missed the last two games with a hamstring injury. Texans receivers have dropped five of Watson’s passes over the last two weeks.

A win over the Colts next week would put the Texans in great shape to claim the AFC South title. They would move to 5-2 and sit comfortably ahead of the 3-3 Colts, with both the Jaguars and Titans remaining under .500. A quarterback typically needs to come away with a first-round bye and rank among the league leaders in fantasy points to garner serious MVP consideration. With the Chiefs struggling, the Texans — who now hold a tiebreaker over their AFC rivals — suddenly have a 43.5% chance of taking off Week 18.


What happened to the Cowboys offense?

Watson is third on my MVP ballot behind Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson. Dak Prescott was once between those two, but he’s moving out of contention after a pair of subpar starts. The much-ballyhooed Cowboys offense is a mess; after scoring 97 points over the first three games of the season, Dallas has scored a total of just 56 in losses to the Saints, Packers and Jets. Just three weeks after starting 3-0, Jerry Jones is already having to defend coach Jason Garrett.

The simplest story is that the Cowboys faced pushovers the first three weeks of the season before moving up against tougher competition. The schedule certainly got tougher, but it doesn’t explain the entirety of what the Cowboys did when starting 3-0. When you look at what the Giants, Dolphins and Washington have allowed opposing offenses to score in their non-Cowboys games to start this season, we would have expected the Cowboys to rack up 80 points over the first three weeks of the season. The Cowboys topped that by more than 21%.

Prescott was playing unconscious football through three weeks, but that has faded. Even given the relatively easy slate of defenses, he was significantly outperforming expectations. From Weeks 1-3, the NFL Next Gen Stats model projected Prescott would complete 64.6% of his pass attempts given where his receivers and defenders were at the time of his throws. Instead, Prescott hit on 74.5% of those passes, with the resulting 9.9% difference representing the largest gap in the league through three games.

While Prescott has continued to outperform these expected completion rates, it hasn’t been quite as noticeable. His expected completion rate over the last three games has been just 60.3%, with Prescott hitting 65.8% of his throws for a 5.5% difference. He has thrown four picks over that span, although one was on a Hail Mary and another was off Amari Cooper‘s hands. Prescott’s receivers have dropped 6% of his passes over that last three games, fourth most in the NFL.

The old canard about how Prescott’s numbers fell off when Ezekiel Elliott left the field were always overstated, given how Elliott’s six-game absence in 2017 was directly in line with an injury suffered by Tyron Smith and how the Cowboys only kick-started their passing game after trading for Cooper last year. On Sunday, we got to see whether Elliott could single-handedly jump-start the offense, given that Smith and fellow tackle La’el Collins were out injured and Cooper followed them to the sideline after three snaps with a quad injury.

It didn’t quite work. Elliott ran for 105 yards, but it took the star back 28 carries to get there. Just 13 of his carries improved Dallas’ expected points after the handoff, and Elliott failed to convert a key third-and-1, which then led Prescott to fail on the ensuing fourth-down try. Dallas’ leading receiver without Cooper on Sunday was Tavon Austin, which should be telling in itself. I’m not sure we need to power rank the various Cowboys and their importance to the success of the offense, but it might be reasonable to put Cooper, Prescott and Smith all ahead of Elliott, who ranks 19th in yards per carry and 14th in first-down rate among running backs this season.

Some of the decline is old-fashioned regression to the mean, although the Cowboys have gone past the league average in cases. Through the first three weeks of the year, the Cowboys converted a league-high 58.1% of their third downs and converted nine of their 11 red zone trips into touchdowns, which was the fourth-highest rate in the NFL. Over the last three games, those same Cowboys have four touchdowns, three field goals and two stuffs on nine red zone possessions, with their 44.4% touchdown rate coming in at 23rd. Prescott & Co. are 16-of-36 on third downs, which is also coincidentally 44.4%; that’s the 10th-best third-down conversion rate in the league. Good, certainly, but not the best offense in football.

It was also unrealistic to fall in love with offensive coordinator Kellen Moore after three games. The former Boise State star certainly seems to be an upgrade on Scott Linehan, and Prescott’s level of play is certainly higher than it had been under Linehan in the pre-Cooper days. At the same time, when you watched what was working for the Cowboys during their hot start, it looked more like a product of great work by Prescott and bad defense than the shifting Moore had implemented before the snap. I don’t think Moore has suddenly become a disaster, of course, but the Cowboys still ran a pitch to Elliott on third-and-11 against the Jets. Some of the short-yardage playcalls that didn’t work looked unimaginative at first glance. The honeymoon phase for Moore and Cowboys fans is ending.

All this leads back to Garrett. This is the first time there has been serious unrest about the Cowboys firing Garrett since last year’s loss to the Titans, which was supposed to seal Garrett’s fate after a 3-5 start. The Cowboys have gone 10-4 and won a playoff game since. I don’t believe they would suddenly fire Garrett in his 10th season because he has lost three games in a row. Jones also wouldn’t fire Garrett unless he had a prestigious replacement lined up, and it’s easier to line up those options in December and January than it is in the middle of October. Garrett is in the final year of his deal, but if the Cowboys want to part ways, I suspect it will wait until the end of the season.

The good news for the Cowboys is that the NFC East remains eminently mediocre. The Eagles fell to 3-3 with Sunday’s loss to the Vikings and have to travel to Dallas in Week 7. The Giants are one game back at 2-4, and Washington is even theoretically in the race at 1-5, but the Cowboys have already banked a divisional win over each. The ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) still gives the Cowboys a 47.3% chance of winning the East.


Should the Chiefs sit Patrick Mahomes for a week?

For the second week in a row, Mahomes aggravated the ankle injury he originally suffered in Kansas City’s season-opening win over Jacksonville. For the second week in a row, he wasn’t anywhere near as effective after taking a hit to the ankle. And for the second week in a row, the Chiefs lost at home to AFC South competition, this time falling to the Texans 31-24.

In a game in which the Texans scored 31 points, the Chiefs didn’t exclusively lose because Mahomes got injured. Kansas City’s run defense remains an absolute disaster, and the Chiefs’ pass rush failed to sack Watson once across 42 dropbacks. After throwing for 116 yards — not a typo — and a touchdown on the opening drive of the game, though, Mahomes wasn’t effective after a second-quarter hit by Benardrick McKinney.

I went through the Jaguars, Colts and Texans games and charted Mahomes’ performance before and after he injured his ankle. (There were two moments when Mahomes seemed to aggravate the ankle in the Colts game; I used the first as my cutoff point.) The numbers can’t really be much clearer. In those three games, he has gone from before the ankle flare-up playing like the greatest quarterback who ever lived to looking more like, well, Andy Dalton:

There is a report that has suggested Mahomes might be suffering from a high-ankle sprain, which can sideline running backs for weeks but doesn’t always keep quarterbacks out of games. Peyton Manning, for one, was able to play through a high ankle sprain during his MVP season in 2013. You don’t need me to tell you how different Manning is from Mahomes, of course, and we’ve repeatedly seen Mahomes sail throws and struggle with his deep accuracy after he injures the ankle. With limited mobility, Mahomes is still a valuable quarterback, but he loses at least some portion of his magic.

The way to heal an ankle injury is with rest. It would be great if the Chiefs had a bye, of course, but Kansas City’s bye doesn’t come until Week 12, meaning he is set to play through this injury for five more games. He’s also facing a short week in advance of a trip to Denver for a Thursday night game against the Broncos, who have won two straight after a heartbreaking 0-4 start to the season.

Obviously, the Chiefs don’t want to go to backup Matt Moore unless absolutely necessary. Mahomes has also been great before aggravating the ankle injury, and he played like a star between Weeks 2 and 4. Given what has happened over the last two weeks, though, wouldn’t this be a logical time to consider sitting him for a game in the hopes of getting him right for subsequent starts against the Packers and Vikings?

Ideally, the Chiefs would want a home game against the Dolphins, for instance, if they were going to sit their quarterback. That’s not happening, but given their upcoming schedule, this road game against the Broncos would be the best time to manufacture some downtime for Mahomes in advance of the bye. The Chiefs are 3.5-point favorites at Denver, and while they would certainly become underdogs if Moore got the start, it would still be a winnable contest. An extra week of rest might not heal Mahomes’ ankle, but avoiding the short week and getting what amounts to a bye would give the Chiefs the best chance of having their starter healthy for the remainder of the season.

Do I think the Chiefs will sit Mahomes? No. I could certainly see them resting him in the second half if they have a big lead or trail by a significant margin in any of their pre-bye games. If Mahomes is still ailing in Week 11 and the Chiefs have a comfortable divisional lead, they could theoretically rest Mahomes against the Chargers and give him a two-week breather in advance of the final five games of the season. For now, though, the Chiefs will likely continue to run him out there and simply hope their star doesn’t injure the ankle any further.


Which contender has the most pressing need to address in the trade market?

The Eagles have to do something about their cornerbacks. On Sunday against the Vikings, they simply weren’t competitive on the outside against Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen with Rasul Douglas and Sidney Jones as starting cornerbacks. Thielen only managed 57 yards and a lone touchdown, but that was because Kirk Cousins sailed a throw that should have set up a second score. Diggs, meanwhile, went off for 167 yards and three scores.

Diggs’ 62-yard touchdown came against what looked like Quarters coverage, or Cover-4, on Douglas’ side of the field. The Eagles dropped Douglas to the sticks and asked him to run with Diggs, which was a non-starter. Cousins threw the ball before Diggs was even past Douglas. The same couldn’t be said about the second touchdown, where Cousins actually had two different wide-open receivers; with Douglas isolated on the backside of the formation after a play-fake against Diggs, the star receiver was already more than 3 yards past the overmatched cornerback by the time Cousins hit him for a 51-yard score.

Since general manager Howie Roseman regained control of personnel in Philadelphia, the Eagles have generally eschewed spending at cornerback in favor of investing along the line of scrimmage. Philly continued that philosophy this offseason, as the only notable moves it made in the secondary were to re-sign Ronald Darby to a one-year deal and to add Andrew Sendejo on a one-year deal for close to the minimum. With coordinator Jim Schwartz traditionally preferring to rush four and avoid blitzes, stacking the league’s deepest front four made a lot of sense.

Six weeks in, though, that plan has failed. Defensive lineman Malik Jackson went down for the season in Week 1, and star interior rusher Fletcher Cox has had a disappointing start to the season, with zero sacks and three quarterback knockdowns in six games. Philly is blitzing 23.5% of the time, which is close to the league average of 26.3%. The Eagles are getting pressure, as they rank sixth in the NFL in pressure rate, but teams are picking apart Schwartz’s defense when the rush doesn’t get home.

The Eagles are allowing a passer rating of 107.5 when they don’t pressure the opposing quarterback, which is 22nd in the league. Teams have thrown a league-high 60 passes against them within two seconds of their quarterback getting the football, and those passes have generated a passer rating of 102.4, the seventh-worst rate in the league. They are 28th in passer rating against screens (117.7) and 27th in passer rating against play-action passes (120.8). When you slow down or render the Philly pass rush irrelevant, you can succeed.

I don’t think Philadelphia can get by with what it has in the secondary. It is already committed to Sendejo, Rodney McLeod and Malcolm Jenkins at safety. Darby and Avonte Maddox missed the Vikings game, and Darby has missed 18 games over his two-plus seasons with the Eagles. Counting on him to stay healthy isn’t a viable option. Cre’von LeBlanc is out with a foot injury. Cornerback Jalen Mills, who hasn’t played this season, could be in line to return from his own foot injury over the next few weeks, but he hasn’t been a difference-maker. The Eagles could nominally be deep at the position if everyone was healthy and lived up to expectations, but that’s not happening.





Source : ESPN