How to Win Without a Quarterback

We are three weeks into the NFL season, and so far all but five teams have lost at least one game. Five undefeated teams seems like a strangely low number at this early juncture, and it’s even stranger when we look closer and realize which five teams these are.

Through three weeks in the NFL season, I don’t think anyone could have predicted these five as the final undefeated teams. New England came into the season facing four games without their Hall of Fame quarterback, and it somehow got even more difficult when they were forced to turn to their third stringer after Week 2. The Broncos are the defending Super Bowl Champions, but they are starting a former seventh round pick who had more interceptions than touchdowns in his college career. The Ravens are an aging team coming off a miserable season, and the Vikings and Eagles spent the week prior to the start of the season playing a game of quarterback musical chairs.

Every year an unexpected team gets off to a hot start, but this season is something else entirely. Typical favorites Seattle, Green Bay, and Pittsburgh have all lost a game. Carolina, Indianapolis, and Arizona have each lost two. Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton, and Ben Roethlisberger have struggled, while the combination of Jimmy Garoppolo, Jacoby Brissett, Carson Wentz, Joe Flacco, Trevor Siemian, Shaun Hill, and Sam Bradford have yet to lose a game.

Before we go any further, we should be smart about how far we’re willing to take this. The quarterback has always been the most important position in sports, and this has only become truer over recent years, as rules and offenses have adapted to put even greater responsibility into his hands. So it’s understandable that some people are viewing the beginning of this season as a breath of fresh air, a sign that there may be hope out there for teams without a superstar at the position.

I’m not buying it. By the end of the year I think we’ll see things as we’re used to seeing them, with MVP caliber quarterback play carrying the elites of the league above the more mediocre options. But it’s definitely not as clearcut as some (myself included) have made it out to be. The five undefeated teams have shown pieces of the formula that can be used to find success without a star under center, a formula that very well could lead them to continued success over the rest of the season.

New England Patriots

Coaching

It will be very interesting to see, when all is said and done, what the final reputation of Bill Belichick is. He is inarguably one of the greatest coaches of all time, but the more seasons pass and the more remarkable things he achieves, I find myself starting to believe he might just be the greatest coach of all time.

Football fans are a bit over the top when it comes to tradition, and it is difficult for any modern coach to join the ranks of Lombardi and Brown and Walsh. But Belichick has every right to be in that conversation, and possibly to lead it.

Belichick has appeared in six Super Bowls, more than any other head coach. He has won four of them, matched by only Chuck Noll. He has done this in an era where the salary cap and free agency make it almost impossible to sustain success over a period of a decade. And he keeps going strong, as players move in and out of his system and the league changes around him.

Against all of this, winning three games with Garoppolo and Brissett is a relatively minor achievement. But the way he did it highlights just how much better he is than every other coach in the league. Many coaches get wrapped up in believing that they know the proper way to do things, and that it is their responsibility to train their players to use their systems. This is the mistake that Chip Kelly made in Philadelphia, and that Rex Ryan is currently continuing to make in Buffalo.

Belichick is smarter than that. Garoppolo and Brissett are not Tom Brady, so he hasn’t been using them like Brady. The offense the Patriots have constructed over the past few years has been an instruction in efficiency, carving through defenses with an endless barrage of underneath passes spreading from sideline to sideline. And while the offense under Garoppolo was very similar to this, the one he threw out on four days notice with Brissett was something else entirely.

Brissett isn’t the most mobile passer in the world, but he is far more mobile than Brady ever has been. And Belichick did not shy away from this, using the younger, more athletic player to attack the defense with misdirection. Options, bootlegs, all sorts of new wrinkles appeared in New England’s offense when they switched away from Garoppolo, an entirely new system that they built in the span of four days.

It’s almost unfair that the Patriots are going to get Brady back after this week. They don’t need him, as they’ve proven in jumping out to a two game lead in the AFC East this year. With the Jets, Bills, and Dolphins falling apart, the Patriots have the easiest road forward in the league, and the brilliant mind of their coach will only make things easier.

Denver Broncos

Pay Someone Else

 

The Broncos found themselves in a very unusual position this offseason. While still celebrating their Super Bowl victory, they had to turn their gaze ahead, to answering the most pressing issue a team can face: who is going to start at quarterback? Peyton Manning was a shell of himself last year, but he did enough to ride this defense to a championship, and that itself is hard to find, in a league where any shred of hope at the position is buried under stacks of money.

The clearest example of this came when Brock Osweiler, the assumed heir apparent in Denver, left town for an insane $72 million deal in Houston. The Broncos had plenty of space below the salary cap, and they could have matched or even exceeded this number. But, making a bold decision, John Elway decided to let Osweiler go, trusting that he could find another solution out there.

The solution Denver found isn’t one that anybody expected, least of all the Broncos themselves. They traded a draft pick to Philadelphia with the intention of making Mark Sanchez their starter, and then they used their first selection on Paxton Lynch, only to release Sanchez and relegate Lynch to the bench when Siemian earned the starting job.

These blind hurls at a dartboard have paid off so far, and they have done so at an incredibly low price. Currently the Broncos only have $3.5 million of their salary cap committed to the quarterback, more than $1 million fewer than any other team in the league.

This thriftiness made it possible for Denver to aggressively pursue negotiations with their best player over the summer. After some tense moments, they locked Super Bowl MVP Von Miller down to a $114.5 million deal. And while we can debate how much Siemian has had to do with their hot start, we certainly can’t do the same with Miller. Through three games he leads the league with five sacks, picking right back up where he left off at the end of last season.

Denver won the Super Bowl a year ago with a mediocre quarterback and an elite defense, and they believe they can do so again this season. They can do this thanks to $77 million in cap money committed to that side of the ball, more than all but three other teams. While teams like Indianapolis and New Orleans struggle to fit talent around their quarterbacks’ onerous contracts, Denver has built the deepest roster in the league, and it will keep them in it regardless of who they have playing quarterback.

Baltimore Ravens

Playing Crappy Teams

I may regret saying this later in the year, but Baltimore is not a good football team. Yes, they are 3-0 right now, but it is quite possibly the most unimpressive 3-0 start to a season I have ever seen. Their +13 point differential is tied for ninth in the league (the other undefeated teams fill in at numbers 1-4), and they’ve accomplished this against three teams that are a combined 1-8.

If you asked for a list of the worst teams in the league, the Browns and the Jaguars would be among the first anybody named, and the Bills likely would have been mentioned as well before their perplexing thrashing of the Cardinals this past weekend. And they were hardly decisive in any of these games. Beating Cleveland required a 20 point comeback, a blocked extra point returned for two, and an absolutely absurd unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The Jaguars had a chance to drive and win the game, before Blake Bortles remembered how terrible he is when a game is actually competitive.

The Ravens have had remarkable luck over the first three weeks of the season, but it isn’t going to keep up. Their next couple weeks are manageable against Oakland and Washington, but down the stretch they will face multiple games against both the Bengals and the Steelers, as well as the Giants, Eagles, and Patriots. If Baltimore plays at the level they have over the first three weeks, they will be lucky to make it to eight wins.

So is there any way the Ravens could improve? Maybe. The key will be the quarterback, the one passer among these teams who has proven himself as a capable NFL starter. Flacco has been bad for the past few seasons, but he hasn’t been as terrible as he’s played so far over these first three weeks, during which he’s thrown only three touchdowns to four interceptions.

Flacco is playing particularly bad, but he is also coming off of a serious knee injury. The ability to move behind the line of scrimmage has always been an underrated part of his game, and as he gets stronger on his rebuilt knee his performance will pick up. And the Ravens will need it to, because outside of him there isn’t much this roster can improve on. Baltimore has strung together three victories despite their quarterback, but that is more a product of luck than anything sustainable, and unless Flacco pulls it together they will fall back to earth very fast and very hard.

Philadelphia Eagles

Pressuring the Quarterback

 

Through the first two weeks of the season you could have made a very similar argument about Philadelphia’s schedule as I did about Baltimore’s. They were more decisive in their victories, but those victories came over Cleveland and Chicago, two of the four teams that have yet to win a game.

That changed this past weekend when they thrashed the Steelers, arguably the most impressive team in the league over the first two weeks. They now boast the best point differential in the league (+65, nearly 30 points ahead of second place New England), and there really isn’t any doubt that the Eagles are for real.

Most of the attention has gone to their rookie quarterback, even if it isn’t entirely deserved. Wentz has been good over the first three weeks, and he shows signs that he can develop into a high caliber quarterback down the road. But through three weeks, his performance has been more about taking care of the football than anything else.

Wentz has hit some nice deep passes when he’s been asked to, but more often than not he’s been satisfied with dumping the ball off underneath. He is middle of the pack in both yards per completion and yards per attempt, and this has come against three of the least talented defenses in the league. Even against Pittsburgh it wasn’t surprising that he managed to put up efficient numbers, facing a defense that had allowed Kirk Cousins and Andy Dalton to combine for 695 yards on 63% completion.

The true story in Philadelphia has been their defense. We knew there was some talent on this side of the ball, but the holes in the secondary and linebacker corps were enough to leave me skeptical. That skepticism is gone after seeing what they can do to the quarterback.

Through three games they are tied for third in the league in sacks, behind only two of their undefeated brethren. They knocked Robert Griffin III out for the season, sent Jay Cutler to the injury list, and harassed Ben Roethlisberger into his worst game in years.

This pass rush is legitimate, and it is coming from multiple directions. The Brandon Graham breakout we’ve been expecting for five years may be happening, with a sack in each of his first three games. Joining him with three sacks is Fletcher Cox, who after receiving the most guaranteed money in history for a defensive player has been unleashed to attack rather than just eating space. And Philadelphia’s most proven pass rusher, Connor Barwin, has only a single sack, suggesting they could potentially become more productive if he steps up.

Wentz will be up and down over the course of the season, but this pass rush is here to stay. Coordinated by Jim Schwartz, they will continue to harass opposing quarterbacks. Do enough damage in the backfield, and any team can compete in any game, a philosophy the Eagles will ride through the rest of the season as the current favorites in the NFC East.

Minnesota Vikings

Scoring in Other Ways

I could very easily talk about the pass rush of the Vikings just as I did with the Eagles. In fact, Minnesota’s pass rush has been even better than Philadelphia’s, leading the league with fifteen sacks over the first three weeks.

There is actually quite a bit in common between the NFC’s two unbeaten teams. They both tear quarterbacks to pieces with an elite pass rush. They both have knocked off preseason Super Bowl favorites (Pittsburgh for Philadelphia, Green Bay and Carolina for Minnesota). And of course, they are both paying Sam Bradford millions of dollars this season.

But as similar as they are, there are some pretty major differences in how these offenses have fared over the first three weeks. While Philadelphia has coasted to an average of 30.7 points per game, Minnesota has only managed 21.3, good for 20^th in the league. Part of this is due to the quality of the defenses the Vikings have faced, but at times their offense has looked downright anemic.

The Vikings have put up a total of only 64 points so far this season, and this number actually oversells how they’ve fared. Of those 64 points, 20 have actually been scored by the defense and special teams. With a fumble return, an interception return, a punt return, and a safety, the Vikings have found other ways to put points on the board when their offense isn’t getting it done.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it isn’t going to keep up. Non-offensive scores is one of the key stats people look at when trying to figure out if a team will regress, and right now the Vikings are screaming regression. Going forward they are going to need more from their offense if they are going to have any chance of competing, a challenge they might not be up to.

There is some reason for hope. Bradford will continue to improve as he settles into the offense. The running game still didn’t look great last week, but it showed more signs of life with Jerick McKinnon than with Adrian Peterson. Their offensive line is the worst in the league, but it can’t possibly be as bad as it’s been so far over an entire season (please tell me it can’t). And even though their defense will stop scoring points, they will still get after the quarterback and force turnovers, making life easier for the offense.

So there we have it. Five undefeated teams, each of them reaching this point without a superstar quarterback at the helm. Some have easier paths to maintaining their place at the top of the league than others, but the all have a difficult road ahead. Even deep teams like Denver and Minnesota are going to need more from their quarterbacks before the year is up, otherwise they will likely end up passed once again by the Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisbergers of the world.