A Conference of Losers

 Seven weeks into the NFL season, the playoff races are starting to take form. On the NFC side of things we have five teams that appear destined to coast to a playoff spot, with the Cardinals, Packers, Buccaneers, Rams, and Cowboys all having one loss apiece. After that it gets a little messier, but honestly it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s the Vikings or the Falcons or the Saints who make a brief appearance in the opening round of the playoffs.

Things are a lot messier over on the other side of the league. Five teams in the NFC have one or fewer losses, and none in the AFC can say the same. The top seven teams are all sandwiched between 5-2 and 4-3, and there are five more 3-win teams breathing down their necks.

There is very little margin for error in the NFL, and the top teams in the AFC have already used up most of theirs. The Bills, Raiders, Chargers, Ravens, Bengals, Browns, and Titans all have winning records, but they’ve all dropped multiple games as well. So I figured I’d take a look at those fifteen losses and put them in order, ranking them from the most understandable to the most baffling.

You Can’t Beat Big Brother

As I mentioned above, the NFC has five very good teams this year. A loss against one of them is far from shameful, and in the long-run an out-of-conference loss will be less damaging if it comes down to tiebreakers for seeding.

Arizona Cardinals 37 – Cleveland Browns 14

Arizona Cardinals 38 – Tennessee Titans 13
I’m lumping these first two games together because they’re basically the same story. Two AFC contenders welcomed the Cardinals into their homes, and Arizona left after comfortable victories. They were even almost identical scores, in a pair of games where the Cardinals opened up first half leads and never let the opposition get within a single score.  

The only real difference was when they happened. The Titans lost opening week, before we realized how good Arizona is this year. It was a coming out party for Kyler Murray, and a bunch of red flags raised for Tennessee. By the time the Cleveland game came around, it was mostly business as usual. The Browns certainly weren’t happy to lose this game a week after dropping a close contest versus the Chargers, but it didn’t end up as a referendum about their entire season’s hopes.

Green Bay Packers 25 – Cincinnati Bengals 22 (OT)

The Bengals missed multiple field goals that would have won them this game. They also only had the opportunity because Green Bay missed multiple field goals that would have won them this game. Still, keeping things tight enough to come down to some wild field goal nonsense is impressive against one of the best teams in the NFC. The Bengals held Aaron Rodgers in check for most of the day and didn’t allow a touchdown after halftime. After wins against an otherwise easy schedule, this was probably the performance prior to this past weekend that most revealed Cincinnati as a legitimate contender.

Dallas Cowboys 20 – Los Angeles Chargers 17

The weirdest thing about this game in hindsight is that there were only 37 points scored. These are two of the most explosive offenses in the NFL, and they ended up playing a low-scoring, grinding game that ended with the Cowboys killing the clock and making a 56 yard field goal as time expired.

The Chargers should feel good about limiting Dallas as effectively as they did, and less good about only managing 17 against a poor Cowboys defense. This is the one blight on an otherwise stellar start to the season for Justin Herbert, as his 338 passing yards came with a pair of interceptions in Cowboys territory. The last of these was particularly brutal, an interception in the endzone to erase an 11 play drive at the end of the third quarter with the game tied. Instead of taking the lead, the Chargers handed the ball back to Dallas, and were only able to manage three more points the rest of the day.

 

Someone Had to Lose

These seven teams have already played each other six times this year, and someone had to come out on the losing end. Some of these games were close and could have gone either way. Others were a bit less competitive.

Tennessee Titans 34 – Buffalo Bills 31

It’s hard to hold this one against the Bills. It is always difficult to go on the road for a night game, and they were facing off against a Titans team still smarting over an embarrassing defeat a couple weeks earlier (which we'll get to below). Buffalo led most of this game, and in the first half they looked like the clear better team. But a couple of failed red zone trips early on kept the Titans in the game, followed by a big run by Derrick Henry when the offense couldn’t get anything else going. And in the end the Bills still had a very good chance to win it, only for Josh Allen to be stopped on a fourth down quarterback sneak.

Las Vegas Raiders 33 – Baltimore Ravens 27 (OT)

What did I just say about going on the road on Monday night? Baltimore entered this game as thoroughly beaten up as I’ve seen any team in opening week. They had basically no running backs, and they had to lean their entire offense on both the legs and the arm of Lamar Jackson. He’s good enough to keep them competitive when they do that, but they needed a little more out of their defense to hold the Raiders in check. Instead Las Vegas was able to turn a couple of Jackson fumbles into touchdowns to pull off this overtime upset.

Los Angeles Chargers 47 – Cleveland Browns 42

This one hurts because it feels like a game the Browns should have had. They led almost the entire day, only to surrender four fourth quarter touchdowns in a frenetic finish to what has likely been the best game of the year to this point. The two teams traded scores back and forth through the fourth quarter, and it was just one failed series that doomed the Browns.

With just over three minutes left they had the ball and a one score lead, only to go three-and-out and give the ball back to the Chargers. This series included a run call on third and nine that essentially gave up any hope of converting, and it took the Chargers only one play following the punt to make it into the red zone. Cleveland did get the ball back with a chance to drive for the win, but once again their offense came up short.

Los Angeles Chargers 28 – Las Vegas Raiders 14

This was a mostly sleepy game that wasn’t even as close as the final score indicated. The Chargers were up 21 points at halftime, as the Raiders managed only one first down the entire opening half. They couldn’t get anything going on the ground against a weak Chargers run defense, ending up with 18 carries for only 48 yards. They showed a little bit of life in the second half when they decided just to put the ball in the hands of Derek Carr, but on the whole this was a concerning day for their offense. Their offensive line has been a ragged unit all year, and Josh Jacobs is clearly not at full strength, averaging only 3.4 yards per carry this season. The development of the passing game has been exciting, but Carr isn’t good enough to carry the team on his own against most top AFC teams.

Cincinnati Bengals 41 – Baltimore Ravens 17

This game from this past weekend was closer than the final score indicates. Cincinnati broke off a couple of long touchdowns in the fourth quarter to put things away, but for most of the game the Ravens appeared to be within striking distance. Baltimore moved the ball well enough in the middle of the field for most of the day, but they had three drives end in Cincinnati territory without any points and only made one trip into the red zone the entire day.

Baltimore Ravens 34 – Los Angeles Chargers 6

This is by far the most lopsided of all the games in this group. The Chargers and Ravens may be right beside each other in the standings, but two weeks ago they didn’t belong on the same field. Baltimore is simply a terrible matchup for Los Angeles, and I doubt that will change if they find themselves facing off again in the postseason. The Chargers struggle to stop the run, and the Ravens happily rolled down the field at will against them.

 

A Little Bit of Shame

The teams that won these games may not have winning records, but they at least bring something to the table. These losses could have a big impact come playoff time, but everyone drops a game or two they shouldn’t somewhere along the road.

Kansas City Chiefs 33 – Cleveland Browns 29

I’m not giving up on the Chiefs yet. They sit right now with a losing record, having just dropped a game against Tennessee where they were somehow held to just three points. Their defense is a catastrophe, and their offense has been frustratingly inconsistent all year. But the thing is, by most advanced measures they still have the most efficient offense in football, and they’ve just been killed by fluke turnovers and by the inability of their defense to get off the field. All four of their losses have come against teams in this top seven of the AFC, and the remainder of their schedule isn’t quite as daunting.

This game was an example of how I think the rest of the year will look for Kansas City. Cleveland controlled the ball on the ground and managed to prevent things from getting too out of hand, but in the end they couldn’t keep up with the firepower of Kansas City. 62 combined points may not seem like a shootout, but each team only had the ball nine times, and the Chiefs scored on six of their first seven possessions. Cleveland was efficient themselves with touchdowns on their first three possessions, but in the end it just took a couple bad plays—a sack late in the first half, a fumble early in the second half, and a botched snap on a punt—to allow Kansas City to pull away from them.

Pittsburgh Steelers 27 – Buffalo Bills 16

Pittsburgh has won two straight to get back to respectable status, but for a while this game was looking like a pretty glaring outlier. Pittsburgh certainly benefited from some fortunate breaks, with a blocked punt resulting a touchdown that allowed them to break the game open in the second half.

For the first half of this game, neither offense could really do anything. The Bills showed the first signs of the defensive resurgence we’ve seen since then, but on offense they couldn’t keep Josh Allen upright long enough to attack the Steelers downfield. Pittsburgh ripped to shreds a Bills offensive line that played a big part in their offensive breakout last year, so naturally all the questions were about whether Allen had turned back into a pumpkin. But it turns out there are very few teams that boast the talent up front that Pittsburgh does. Cleveland could present a problem, and maybe Tennessee, but otherwise Buffalo’s offense looks capable as long as they don’t cross paths with Cameron Heyward and TJ Watt again.

 

Simply Baffling The longer the season goes on, the less sense these outcomes make.

Chicago Bears 20 – Cincinnati Bengals 17

This happened early enough in the season that it kind of snuck past us. The Bengals weren’t expected to be good, and the Bears were thought to have some hope of making an NFC playoff run, so no one was surprised that Chicago managed to win this game. A month later, it looks like a pretty embarrassing early season defeat for the Bengals.

The final score makes this game look closer than it was. The Bears led 20-3 before the Bengals scored twice in the final five minutes to make it look interesting, the final flashes of offensive life after a day of seeing nothing. Cincinnati’s offense looked like this a lot during the first few weeks, when they were still taking things easy with Joe Burrow to avoid exposing him coming off his knee injury. They have since picked things up. After averaging only 25 pass attempts per game over the first three weeks, he’s averaged 34 per game since, and the Bengals offense has emerged with him.

Chicago Bears 20 – Las Vegas Raiders 9

Something about the AFC seems to make the Bears defense look like the unit it was a couple years ago. A few weeks after stifling a restrained Bengals offense, they choked the life out of a Raiders team that had looked fairly impressive to that point. Chicago didn’t do much on offense themselves, especially in the second half, but it didn’t matter when the Raiders couldn’t get anything going on the ground and Derek Carr had a flashback to the days when he was afraid to throw more than five yards past the line of scrimmage.

New York Jets 27 – Tennessee Titans 24 (OT)

There are excuses the Titans can make. They were without both Julio Jones and AJ Brown. Zach Wilson made some jaw-dropping plays in the second half that he hasn’t been able to replicate elsewhere. It was a weird game that made it into overtime, where everything is a bit of a crapshoot.

But man, it’s the Jets.