Beating the Unbeaten

We are six weeks into the NFL season, and there are still five teams yet to lose a game, the most in any season since the merger in 1970. The teams at the top of the league are playing at an incredibly high level, while those in the middle can’t keep up even when everything breaks their way. The best teams right now are better than ever, while the mediocre teams are even more mediocre.

Already there’s been some talk about whether any of the teams could go undefeated, but I’m not buying it. All of these teams will lose eventually, probably multiple times. These teams are tough, but they all have their flaws. For each team I’ll lay out how I think they can be beaten, then identify when on their schedule I think they’ll get their first loss. Finally I’ll end with a prediction of a final record, based on their strengths, their weaknesses, and the challenges in the road ahead of them.

Green Bay Packers

We’ll start with the Packers, since we happened to see an excellent example of how to beat them this past weekend. San Diego played an excellent game against Green Bay, and with a few more breaks they would have been able to pull off the victory. The Chargers are a middle of the pack team, but they thoroughly outschemed the more talented Packers, laying out a path for other, better teams to follow.

Green Bay’s defense has played well so far this year, but it is definitely still the weakness of the team. In Week One against Chicago they showed that they are vulnerable against the run, and against San Diego they showed that they can be exploited by a quick, efficient passing game. Their defensive front can get after the quarterback, and they have defensive backs who can keep up with any receiver going deep, but a patient team can exploit their linebackers and their safeties on short passes over the middle of the field. Philip Rivers completed one pass to Malcom Floyd for 50 yards, but apart from that he rarely challenged the Packers down the field. Instead he picked them apart underneath, loading up on targets to Keenan Allen, Antonio Gates, and Danny Woodhead.

Keeping up with the Packers offense puts a lot of pressure on teams to create big plays, and that’s where opposing offenses often get in trouble. Green Bay has an opportunistic defense, third in the league in interceptions and eighth in forced fumbles. St Louis did an excellent job slowing down Green Bay’s offense two weeks ago, but four interceptions by Nick Foles were enough to kill any momentum their offense worked up. Aggression against Green Bay’s defense will get a team killed. The more effective strategy is to be cautious, to take what’s available and control the ball to keep it away from the offense.

Controlling the ball is always a good strategy against a player like Aaron Rodgers, but there is no way to keep him off the field for a full sixty minutes. He is going to get a chance to make plays, and he is going to take advantage of it. The goal of a team shouldn’t be to shut him down because that is simply impossible. The only thing a team can do is try to limit the damage.

I’m going to be as direct as possible, no matter how much it pains me. I think that Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time, and while his career accomplishments put him on top for me, I never saw him or any other quarterback perform at the level Rodgers has reached over the past three years. He combines awareness, mobility, arm strength, and accuracy in a way the league really hasn’t seen before. He is, in many ways, a perfect quarterback, and I really don’t know how a team is supposed to deal with facing him.

Past dominant quarterbacks have usually had at least one weakness, and more often than not, it was pressure. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees have always been susceptible to pressure, falling to pieces anytime someone gets near them in the pocket. No quarterback is great under pressure, but I’m not sure if there is anyone in the league (except perhaps Ben Roethlisberger) who is as unaffected by pressure as Rodgers. He moves so effortlessly behind the line of scrimmage, always finding the lanes to move up in the pocket or escape to the side. Pressuring him only encourages him to start moving, which is where he makes most of his best plays. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s broken my heart by scampering for a first down when I thought the defense had him. I have nightmares about the pinpoint bombs he launches fifty yards down the field to open receivers when he gets free on the edge. Pressure can limit Rodgers, as it did against St Louis, but it can also open up the sort of big plays that will make this Packers team impossible to stop.

The key to slowing down Rodgers is discipline. Individual rushers cannot bring him down, no matter how decisively they win over his linemen. A team needs to come together to stop him, pass rushers maintaining their gap integrity and closing in from all directions at once. San Diego did this almost to perfection, trapping Rodgers in the pocket while they closed in from all directions together. Rodgers can still make plays from the pocket, but without Jordy Nelson he doesn’t have a receiver who can win deep on a consistent basis, and this offense isn’t capable of being explosive if he’s contained.

Looking ahead at the Packers schedule, there are a couple of obvious possible losses that jump out over the next two weeks. I’ll get to Carolina and Denver in more detail below, but I have issues seeing either beating Green Bay. Both have talent on the defensive front—Carolina on the interior and Denver on the perimeter—but neither has the cohesiveness to truly contain Rodgers. Both could present intriguing matchups on offense, but I think they’re too limited to really pose a threat.

Further down the road, Minnesota looks on the surface level like a team that could stop Green Bay. They have good balance on offense, and their defensive lines is one of the best in the league. But they have always struggled to contain Rodgers in the pocket (Brian Robison in particular), and their offense has struggled with inconsistency this year.

I don’t think they’ll make it this far undefeated, but the best chance for a Green Bay loss will come against Dallas in Week Thirteen. This is obviously health pending, but if the Cowboys can get both Tony Romo and Dez Bryant back, they will have an offense that can match Green Bay’s. And even though their defense isn’t loaded with talent, they have a great coordinator in Rod Marinelli, someone who will recognize and instill in his players the importance of surrounding and controlling Rodgers.

Final Prediction: 13-3

Denver Broncos

It’s amazing how quickly the story has turned on Denver. Two years ago they had possibly the greatest offense in NFL history, carrying a serviceable but unspectacular defense all the way to the Super Bowl. Two years of player development and free agent acquisitions have them playing defense at a historic level, while their offense has fallen to pieces.

The strength of Denver’s defense is their pass rush, and to beat them a team needs their quarterback can get the ball away before DeMarcus Ware and Von Miller can close in. Denver’s secondary is loaded with talent, but so far both Chris Harris and Aqib Talib have actually been a bit disappointing (relative to the rest of their defense). Both were burned repeatedly by Mike Wallace and Stefon Diggs against the Vikings, only to be saved by a pass rush that left Teddy Bridgewater running for his life. A better offensive line than Minnesota’s should be able to give at least occasional time to the quarterback, putting a greater burden on the defensive backfield.

The defense has been excellent across the board, but where they’ve really excelled is creating turnovers. They lead the league in forced fumbles and trail only Arizona in interceptions. Not only that, they’ve turned these turnovers into an insane four defensive touchdowns. This sort of playmaking is rare and phenomenal, but it is also unsustainable. This defense is good enough that they don’t have to rely on these rare events, but coming back to Earth at all could be catastrophic if their offense continues to struggle.

We knew a couple things about Denver’s offense coming into the season. We knew their receiving corps had a good top pair but very little depth, and we knew that their offensive line was going to be a mess. So far, those have held to form. Many people were optimistic that after a solid final month in 2014 CJ Anderson would be the answer they were looking for at running back. I never bought into the Anderson hype, and so far he’s lived down to my expectations. Ronny Hillman has been the best ball carrier in Denver, and he still hasn’t been particularly good.

The real problem with the Broncos is Peyton Manning. I have fought this admission for a long time now, but at this point there is no longer any way to deny the problem. His arm strength is just gone, and with it has gone all ability to pass accurately down the field. Simple midlevel throws now take everything he has, forcing him to put his whole body into twenty yard passes and stealing the precision that made him so effective for years. He still has decent touch when he has the chance to float the ball, but that’s the only thing he can do anymore. He is no longer capable of stepping into a pass and driving it through a tight window.

Manning is still the smartest quarterback to ever play in the NFL, so he isn’t completely worthless. He seems to be slowly adjusting to his new limitations, and with time he’ll get at least mediocrity figured out. But his weakness gives defenses the opportunity to exploit him with schemes that never would have worked against Manning in the past. The mind that once picked apart the holes in zones is no longer connected to a body that can fit the ball between converging defenders. If I was calling a defense against Manning, I would let my defenders sit back in a zone, let them read the quarterback as he searches the field, then unleash them to collapse down on the fluttering passes he unleashes. Two safeties will have no trouble covering sideline to sideline against him, and they can be kept much closer to the line than in a traditional two deep zone. Drop seven players in pass coverage and keep them within twenty yards of the line of scrimmage, and there will be nothing Manning can do but attempt to drive the ball with strength he no longer has.

There are a whole host of teams on Denver’s schedule who can exploit them in this way, and the first is coming at them next weekend. I don’t entirely trust Green Bay’s secondary to play disciplined coverage, and I’m worried about their thin receiving corps against Denver’s secondary. But Aaron Rodgers can cover a lot of holes on a team, and right now they are clearly playing better football than Denver.

If the Broncos somehow make it past Green Bay undefeated, they won’t last much longer. The Colts, the Patriots, the Chargers, and the Steelers will all have a shot to take Denver down. The defense is due for regression, and the offense looks fundamentally flawed. As hard as it is to be pessimistic about a team that is 6-0, I wouldn’t feel great if I was a Broncos fan right now.

Final Prediction: 11-5

Carolina Panthers

It is easy to dismiss Carolina’s success as the product of an easy schedule. The five teams they’ve beaten have accounted for a total of ten wins, and Carolina has hardly won these games in impressive fashion. At this point most people seem to believe that they aren’t even the best team in the division, that the Falcons are still the team to beat in the NFC South.

It’s easy to see why so many people feel this way. There are a lot of glaring holes on the Panthers, the sort you almost never see on teams undefeated this late in the season. Their offensive line is playing better than expected, but they’re still in the bottom half units in the league. Their receiving corps has been every bit as disappointing as we expected after Kelvin Benjamin went down, their only hope Devin Funchess somehow having as many drops as receptions through his first five games.

On offense the credit has to go almost entirely to Cam Newton. Jonathan Stewart and Greg Olsen have done their parts, but this team starts and ends with their big money quarterback. It’s almost criminal how little talent they’ve put around Newton, yet he keeps finding ways to make plays and win games. He has plenty of flaws as a passer, issues with accuracy and coverage recognition that inevitably lead to mistakes and offensive stalling, but he makes enough plays both on the ground and in the air to compensate for these lapses.

There would be much greater problems for Newton if he wasn’t able to lean on the crutch that is the other side of the ball. Carolina’s defense just keeps rolling no matter what hurdles rise up in front of it. Star Lotulelei hasn’t quite lived up to his stellar rookie season, but he’s a solid piece beside fellow third year defensive tackle Kawaan Short, who has been absolutely phenomenal manning the middle of the defense. Rookie Shaq Thompson is contributing faster than most people expected, and cornerback Josh Norman looks like one of the best young players in the league. Ron Rivera has shown over and over again that he’s one of the best defensive minds in football, and there is no reason to expect Carolina’s defense will drop off anytime soon.

The Panthers defense is solid all the way through, and it’s going to be difficult for any team to pile up points against them. The best way to neutralize Carolina is to attack their offense, to try to hold them down so 20 points will be enough to win the game. Cam Newton is the heart of the Panthers offense, and he is the target all defense should set their sights on. It shouldn’t be hard for even a mediocre secondary to match up man to man with Carolina on the outside, leaving their front seven free to be aggressive with pressures. Exotic blitzes will cause problems with a shaky offensive line, and dropping unexpected players into coverage could possibly lead to interceptions on hot reads to Greg Olsen. Like Rodgers, Newton needs to be contained in the pocket, but he’s actually not that dangerous as a scrambler. At times he becomes a bit too unwilling to use his legs, hanging back in the pocket in search of a play downfield rather than taking the easy running lane available.

This weekend Carolina faces off against the Eagles, a team with a front seven more than capable of shredding the Panthers offensive line. But the concerns on Philadelphia’s offense are difficult to ignore, and I struggle to see them winning even a low scoring contest. I see Carolina’s first loss coming in the obvious place, three games from now against Green Bay. The Packers might have trouble slowing down Olsen and the Panthers running game, but their offense is one of the few that can win consistently against Carolina’s defense.

The rest of Carolina’s schedule looks almost as easy as their first six games, and at this point I don’t expect we’ll see them fall apart. I think they’ll have trouble with Tennessee and possibly the Giants, and they have an interesting pair of games against the Falcons that will decide the division. But outside of that it should be fairly smooth sailing into the playoffs for a surprisingly flawed undefeated team.

Final Prediction: 12-4

Cincinnati Bengals

Of the five undefeated teams, the presence of Cincinnati might be the most surprising. After four years of the Andy Dalton era most people had given up on them taking the next step. They’ve been a good but unspectacular team for years, and there was little reason to expect them to take the next step. This is a team that rarely enters free agency, a team that spent their first two picks at a position with established starters. Looking at their roster, it looks like very little has changed since last year.

So what has the difference been? The first and most obvious piece is health. 2013 first round pick Tyler Eifert missed almost the entirety of his second season, and now that he’s healthy he’s given the Bengals the secondary weapon in the passing game they’ve been seeking for years. The changes on their defense are less obvious, but you only need to look closely at the line to figure out what’s happened. The return of Michael Johnson has provided the depth they were lacking last year, giving players like Carlos Dunlap more energy to get after the passer. More importantly, Geno Atkins looks back to his old ways after a slow return from a torn ACL last season. One of the most dominant interior forces in the league, his presence opens up so much for the rest of their defense.

The biggest surprise of the season has been the performance of Andy Dalton. He’s taken his game to another level, and while a great deal of the credit belongs to him, we have to acknowledge what his line has done m. Earlier I mentioned just how much a pass rush can affect a quarterback, and Dalton has been one of the better examples of a quarterback who struggles under pressure since coming into the league. His performance this year says as much about what an NFL passer can do when he faces no pressure whatsoever as it does about his abilities.

Obviously the Bengals can be completely thrown off if a team can disrupt Dalton, but that’s easier said than done against this line. The only way to attack them is up the middle, and even then there is only so much a pass rush can do. Defenses would be better served letting the Bengals throw the ball as much as they want, stacking the line against the run in order to force the Bengals to be come one dimensional. Giovanni Bernard and Jeremy Hill are one of the better running back duos in the league, but neither is a top ten back on his own. They can be neutralized by a quality run defense, putting even more of the burden of the offense onto Dalton’s shoulders.

Outside of the front four, Cincinnati’s defense is filled with solid but unspectacular players. They won’t be exposed by mediocre talent, but they can’t keep up with the top skill position players in the league. If a quarterback can find time to throw, these defenders will be burned by high caliber receivers. If a line can open up lanes, good running backs will produce chunks against the Bengals.

There is one obvious possibility for defeat charging up on the Bengals schedule, though it comes with a very significant caveat. A week from Sunday they travel to Pittsburgh to face the Steelers, a team with the run defense and interior pass rush to contain their offense as well as the offensive talent to overwhelm their defense. The problem of course is at quarterback, where there is still no clear timetable on Ben Roethlisberger’s return. Landry Jones looked solid in limited time against Arizona, but he’s been a disaster any other time he’s been on an NFL field. With Roethlisberger, the Steelers will have everything they need to take down the Bengals. Without him, they probably don’t have a shot.

If the Bengals make it past the Steelers, they’ll probably end up dropping either the game against the Cardinals in Week Eleven or the Rams in Week Twelve. St Louis is one of the few teams that actually can beat Cincinnati’s offensive line, and they can fluster Dalton into enough turnovers to pull the upset. So far Cincinnati hasn’t beaten a single team with a winning record, and as they start facing tougher competition, they’ll come closer to resembling the team we expected to see.

Final Prediction: 13-3

New England Patriots

There are five undefeated teams in the NFL, but there are really only two in the discussion for the best in the league. The Packers have been the most impressive team in the NFC, and in the other conference no one can match what the Patriots have done so far. They’ve won five games, and they’ve never been in significant danger in any of them. They have opened large leads in each and every game, and even late runs by Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Indianapolis weren’t enough to make the Patriots sweat.

It’s no surprise that the defending Super Bowl champions are among the best teams in the league, but it is interesting how they got here. Offensively this is a very similar team to the one that tore through the league following some early season woes in 2014. They still don’t have the receivers or the quarterback to threaten teams down the field, but they’ve built a team perfectly suited to tearing defenses apart underneath. Danny Amendola and Juilian Edelman wouldn’t be nearly as productive on any other team, but with Tom Brady throwing them the ball they’re among the best receiving duos in the league. Rob Gronkowski is obviously still a terror, and even the loss of Shane Vereen—quietly one of their most valuable weapons during the playoffs last year—was easily covered by the acquisition of Dion Lewis.

On the other side of the ball, this is a completely different team from the one we saw last season. Both their starting cornerbacks were allowed to leave in free agency, forcing them to promote Logan Ryan and Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler to starting roles. To great surprise, neither has been a particular disaster, with Butler in particular showing he’s more than a one play wonder.

But the real strength of their defense is their front seven. They are deep at linebacker, so much so that Jerod Mayo can barely get on the field. The edge combination of Jabaal Sheard and Chandler Jones has been what we all expected, and they’ve received a big boost from the return of last year’s first round pick Dominique Easley, who seems to get better with each passing week.

The defense has been playing well, but they are still a major vulnerability. Buffalo struggled in the first half, but late in the game they moved the ball at will. Indianapolis had more success against New England than anyone else they faced this year. And Pittsburgh’s offense was almost unstoppable despite missing their top running back, second best receiver, and best offensive lineman. Had it not been for struggles in the red zone and a pair of missed field goals, the end result of the game could have been a lot closer.

Scoring points against the Patriots is the easy part, the sort of thing just about any team can manage. But no team can count on scoring on every possession, and sooner or later they’re going to have to stop the Patriots. I know it’s getting repetitive, but once again I have to point out that the best way to stop a quarterback is to get pressure on him. But pressuring Brady is no easy task. He is incredibly smart, and his offense is geared towards getting the ball out of his hands as quickly as possible. Their routes are designed to clear tight man coverage, pick after pick run to perfection to stop even quality cornerbacks from cutting off the quick lanes.

There is no easy solution to beating the Patriots, and any victory is going to require as much luck as skill. And yet, strangely, I think there is a decent chance that the Patriots are the first of these teams to go down. Few teams match up well against New England, but the team they’re playing this weekend has been built with the specific purpose of taking down the Patriots. The New York Jets are one of the few teams with the depth and skill at cornerback to stymie New England to go along with a defensive line to collapse over him. Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker will tear apart New England’s defensive backs, and their offensive line will have no trouble holding up against the front four.

Of course, so much still depends on Ryan Fitzpatrick. He has to play a perfect game to beat the Patriots, a great deal to ask from one of the most turnover prone quarterbacks in the league. I still think it’s more likely than not that the Patriots will win, but I think there’s also a decent chance that they are the first of these teams to find their way into the loss column.

Final Prediction: 14-2

Plight of the Receiver

Antonio Brown is the best wide receiver in the NFL. He finished second in the league in receptions and receiving yards in 2013, then he led the league in both categories last year. His 129 receptions in 2015 were the second most by any receiver in a single season in NFL history, and he famously put together a streak of 35 consecutive games with at least five catches for 50 yards. Those numbers don’t sound that impressive, until you realize the second longest such streak in NFL history is 19 games. Over the past two seasons Brown has been both the most consistent and most productive receiver in the NFL.

The streak ended two weeks ago with a performance of five catches for 42 yards against the Ravens, followed by only three catches for 45 yards against San Diego. And it isn’t hard to find the reason for this. Each of the previous 35 games was started by Ben Roethlisberger, now out with a sprained MCL. Michael Vick has started the past two games, and while he did enough to win on Monday against the Chargers (and, realistically, enough that they should have beaten the Ravens), it would only be mild hyperbole to say he's been a disaster in the two games he’s played. Their passing game has almost disappeared with him under center, enough that the Steelers considered rushing Roethlisberger back for this week's game against the Cardinals.

(A quick side note, since I might not get a chance to talk about it elsewhere. Through five weeks there isn’t a unit in the league that has been a more pleasant surprise than the Steelers defense. First year coordinator Keith Butler has revitalized what was expected to be one of the league’s worst defenses, bringing aggression to a unit that was sorely lacking it during the final years of Dick LeBeau's tenure.  Their secondary still can’t cover worth a damn, but they’re doing a lot of damage as blitzers off the edge, creating the game changing plays that have been lacking from their defense over the past couple years. But the biggest factor in their success has been their defensive line. Second year player Stephon Tuitt has taken an even greater leap than even the most optimistic analyst predicted, and Cameron Heyward is playing at as high a level as any defensive player in the league.)

Back to the offense. Brown’s performance has been a major disappointment over the past two weeks, but he can hardly be blamed for his lack of production. He’s still getting open on a regular basis, and he can still make plays when he gets the ball in his hands, but without a competent quarterback there is only so much a receiver can do.

We shouldn’t feel too sorry for Brown. He’s had to endure Vick for two weeks, but sooner or later Roethlisberger will be back, and Brown will once again find himself catching passes from a quarterback who was as playing as well as any in the league prior to his injury. There are plenty of other receivers in the league dealing with the same circumstances, receivers who don't have the same hope on the horizon. These are players who could be superstars in other circumstances, but are instead hanging on the fringes of the public’s attention because of the disasters throwing them the ball.

Kendall Wright – Tennessee Titans

We’ll start with a player who would have been the most obvious choice on this list a year ago but now appears as if he might not belong. Wright was a first round pick out of Baylor in 2012, and though he was productive over his first three seasons, he was never really thought of as one of the top receivers in the league. He flashed potential, but his best games were usually as ignored as everything else happening in Tennessee. People who follow football closely know who he is and what he can do, but to most casual fans he remains relatively anonymous.

That looks like it could change soon. Marcus Mariota is off to a stellar start to his career, and the Titans look like a team on the rise. They’re only 1-3, but they probably should have won against both Indianapolis and Buffalo. Wright is the best receiver on an improving offense, but so far this year he hasn't quite lived up to the rest of the team, on pace for only 64 catches and 968 yards.

Those are good numbers, but they are actually below Wright’s career best 94 receptions for 1079 yards in 2013. He hasn’t exploded in the way many would expect, and he’s starting to express some frustration with his role in the offense. Mariota has impressed so far, but he’s done so in a way that doesn’t play to Wright’s strengths. Wright excels at stretching the field, blowing things open over the top and producing big plays. So far Mariota has produced through an efficient short passing attack, maximizing their offense but minimizing Wright’s potential.

The breakout for Wright is coming, and it will probably occur by the end of the year. The offense will develop as the season goes along, with Wright and Mariota powering it to new heights. By this time next year Wright will have the attention he deserves, populating an entirely different list of top NFL receivers.

Jarvis Landry – Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins are a mess, but there is one clear bright spot on this team. Landry was probably the tenth best rookie receiver in the league last year, but he also might be the most unique of the entire class. Based on his results at the Combine you’d be hard pressed to imagine him playing in the NFL, running a 4.77 forty yard dash and putting up an embarrassing 28.5 inches in the vertical leap. Because of these limitations he fell all the way to the 63^rd pick, the twelfth receiver off the board.

But things seem to change when he gets on the field, his unathleticism melting away to make him a dynamic playmaker. He doesn’t threaten teams down the field, but he always seems to find ways to create separation underneath, usually giving himself enough space to create after the catch. So far this year he’s been targeted with 46 passes, a per game rate that leaves him fifth in the league.

The problem is that he hasn’t been able to convert these targets into production. So far he has only 28 catches for 270 yards, giving him a yards per target rate fourth worst among the fifty most targeted receivers. With no one else to threaten them teams are starting to clue in on Landry, closing down the space he needs to operate underneath. He is the sort of receiver who will produce no matter what, but to truly be successful he will need some threats to take attention away from him. He needs Kenny Stills to push the safeties back, Lamar Miller to draw linebackers into the box, and most of all Ryan Tannehill to show defenses that Miami can do anything other than throw quick passes to Landry.

Allen Robinson – Jacksonville Jaguars

I promise I’m not going to just keep listing second year receivers (though I could, Mike Evans, Sammy Watkins, Jordan Matthews), but Robinson is as unique a talent as Landry. Where Landry is small and quick and capable of exploiting teams underneath, Robinson is a massive target who can stretch teams down the field. His measurables weren’t much better coming into the draft, but he shows a consistent ability to go up in the air and get the ball at its highest point, fighting off defenders to create plays even when he’s well covered.

Robinson’s failure to emerge as a star can be pinned on two sources: health and quarterback play. He was on the verge of breaking out last season before a foot injury cost him the final six games of the season. This year he is finally starting to show what he can do, and he will continue to do so if he can count on Bortles. That’s the real interesting part of the equation. Bortles has been as up and down this year as he was in 2014, but it’s been in a different way. His highs have been higher, and his lows haven’t been as low. On the whole he’s taken a step forward, and his progress is coinciding with a leap in Robinson’s production. It’s still hard to say exactly what Bortles will be in the long run, and that uncertainty will keep the Jaguars and Robinson at the fringes of attention. But he’ll continue to do what he can to produce, providing a weapon that will only help his developing quarterback.

Travis Kelce – Kansas City Chiefs

As a tight end, Kelce is in a different category than the rest of the players on this list, but the fundamental premise is the same. He is a phenomenally gifted receiver, the sort of player you could build an offense around, and in the right circumstances he could be an absolutely devastating weapon. And while his talents certainly seem to play to the strengths of Alex Smith, the issues at the quarterback position still hold him back from putting up the sort of numbers that would earn him the recognition he deserves as the second best tight end in the league.

Rob Gronkowski is clearly the gold standard of current NFL tight ends. He dominates the game both on the field and in the stats sheet, putting up numbers that (health willing) have him on the way to the Hall of Fame . No one can do the things he does, and I’m not going to waste your time claiming that Kelce is able to. But I also think the gap is much closer than many believe. Were their situations reversed, I still think Gronkowski would be the better player, but Kelce is talented enough that he could serve Gronkowski's role in Tom Brady's offense.

The biggest difference between the two quarterback situations is trust. Tom Brady knows what kind of weapon he has in Gronkowski, and he knows that his big tight end can win the ball even when he looks to be covered. He trusts Gronkowski to make a play, and because of this trust he is willing to take risks with the ball. Alex Smith is a serviceable NFL quarterback, but his risk aversion is right on the edge of a paralyzing weakness. He only throws to open receivers, and only when he’s absolutely sure they are open. Kelce is a functional route runner, and he can create separation working on a linebacker. But his greatest asset is his size, a 6’6” frame packing 260 pounds that allow him to overpower smaller defenders. A top notch quarterback (or even a mediocre quarterback not so terrified of throwing interceptions, someone along the lines of Matthew Stafford or Jay Cutler) would learn how to take advantage of his skills to power their offense. But with Alex Smith at the helm, Kelce has no choice but to settle for a spot in the second tier of tight ends in the league.

Pierre Garcon – Washington Redskins

Remember when I mentioned that Brown had the second most receptions in the league in 2013? Well unless you are as serious a football fan as I am, you probably wouldn’t have been able to guess that Garcon was the player on the list above him. In his second season with the Redskins, Garcon caught 113 passes for 1346 yards, the sort of production that should have been enough to get him in the conversation of the top ten receivers in the league. But last year proved as disastrous for him as it was for the rest of the team, as his production dropped to 68 catches for only 752 yards.

It isn’t hard to see an explanation for this dropoff. Robert Griffin III wasn’t the superstar in 2013 that he was in 2012, but he was better than most people remember, far better than he was in 2014 and better than either Colt McCoy or Kirk Cousins has been filling in for him. Without him playing at his highest level, teams no longer have to fear the versatility of his attack, his ability to destroy a team underneath with his legs and take the top off with his arm. Garcon and teammate DeSean Jackson are the perfect receivers to lead a deep passing attack, the speed of Jackson complementing the physicality and ball skills of Garcon. Their offensive line is starting to come together, but they are still sorely lacking at the quarterback position, and at this point I think it’s fair to assume that neither Cousins nor Griffin is going to be Garcon’s savior.

DeAndre Hopkins – Houston Texans

I’ll admit that it’s a bit weird to refer to the NFL’s leader in receiving yards (before Julio Jones passed him on Thursday) as someone being held back by their quarterback, but there is no receiver in the league suffering from a worse situation. Right now Houston has the worst quarterbacks in the league, bouncing back and forth between Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett without much clear purpose or direction. Both quarterbacks have been disasters when on the field, and both have been benched on multiple occasions this season. I honestly have no idea who they will play going forward, and for once I don’t have a strong opinion on what they should do either. The Texans simply do not have a worthy option to put under center right now.

It’s disappointing when any team goes through the mess the Texans are facing , but it’s particularly depressing when these problems are holding back a budding superstar like Hopkins. Right now he has a case to make as one of the five best receivers in the NFL, and no one is bothering to pay any attention to him because he’s a part of the ugliest passing game in the league. People dismiss his stats as the result of an absurd number of targets (75 so far this season, on pace for 240. The record is 208.)

But his inefficiency on a per target basis has far more to do with his quarterbacks than it does with him. For every pass that sails wildly over his head, he makes a fantastic leaping play to bail his passers out. For every time Mallett or Hoyer forces it into double coverage, he creates enough separation to give them an easy throw. Right now DeAndre Hopkins is carrying his team’s passing game in a way no other receiver in the league is, possibly in a way no other receiver in the league could. If he’s lucky, sometime down the road he’ll find a quarterback worthy of throwing to him. If he’s not, he’ll wind up walking the same path blazed by the superstar he's replacing.

The Bottom of the Barrel

 

We are a quarter of the way through the season (for everyone except New England and Tennessee, but no one cares about them anyway), and at this point I think it’s reasonable to say we have a good idea of what each team is. There is plenty of time for things to turn around, but after four games we can no longer dismiss performances as the result of competition, or just temporary flukes. Chances are good that the teams we’ve seen through the first four weeks will be the teams we’ll see going forward.

There are a lot of teams that have impressed through the first four weeks. Andy Dalton and Cincinnati have been incredible. Arizona was dominant until stumbling against St Louis last week (as every good AFC West team seems to do at some point). New England is New England and Green Bay is Green Bay, and Denver is dominating defensively almost to the same extent that they dominated on offense two years ago. Atlanta and Carolina are both undefeated as well, and it’s very possible that one or both of them could be for real.

But there’s lots of time to talk about these teams. We’ll be following them for the rest of the season, through their ups and downs until one of them (or possibly someone a bit more unexpected) claims the championship. And as much as I’m looking forward to all of that, I think we should spare some time for the other end of the league, the teams that will be forgotten as the year goes along. Fortunately, there is a great deal to talk about on that end for now, some truly terrible teams who are going down in flames before our eyes.

Chicago Bears (1-3)

I almost didn’t include the Bears on this list. The truth is, I don’t think they’re that terrible. They were obviously a wreck against Seattle with Jimmy Clausen under center, managing to pull off the nearly impossible feat of ending every single possession with a punt. But even with their offense nonexistent, they hung in that game through the first half due to a strong performance from their defense. That came two weeks after they held up well against Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay, and a week after they kept things tight with Arizona until Jay Cutler went down with an injury.

Chicago is not a good team, but they’ve played a difficult schedule, and they may actually be better than their record indicates. They’ve shown flashes of a dangerous running game, and Cutler is playing at a high enough level to carry this offense to a couple wins. Right now Chicago is one of the first teams people mention when discussing the top pick in the draft, but I think it’s more likely that they end up picking outside of the top ten.

Cleveland Browns (1-3)

Cleveland is Cleveland, and I don’t think you really need to add that much. This is the same team we’ve seen ever since they reentered the league—pure, boring mediocrity. And no one represents this better than their quarterback Josh McCown. For a couple entertaining weeks we got a flash of something more, bumps along the road of Johnny Manziel. He and Travis Benjamin flashed in ways we haven’t seen in Cleveland for a long time, and even though that didn’t necessarily turn them into a good team, it at least made their mediocrity interesting.

But of course, once McCown was healthy enough to play, they pushed him back into the starting lineup.  In the two weeks since his return they’ve been reasonable competitive, losing a pair of games by the score of 30-27 to middle of the pack teams. They aren’t as bad as some Browns teams in the past, but they are just as irrelevant, and they will remain so until they put out a quarterback who is actually capable of making plays to help the team win.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-3)

Tampa Bay was the worst team in the league last year, but it’s still a bit of a surprise how terrible they’ve been so far. Year after year I’m fooled by their defense, looking at the stars present and expecting Lavonte David and Gerald McCoy to carry them at least to competency. It still seems strange that a unit that boasts two top three players at their positions can be so terrible, but so far they’ve failed to find even a single other above average player to put around them. Maybe I’ll know better than to expect things to be different next year. Probably not, though.

The other thing we need to talk about with this team is naturally Jameis Winston. It would be an overreaction to call him a bust at this point, but it’s not ridiculous to say he’s been a disaster. He was always going to be up and down as a rookie, but I expected to see closer to an even ratio. Instead his good moments have been few and far between, not nearly enough to overcome the wretched plays he makes on a weekly basis. He’s tied for the league lead in interceptions (somehow with Andrew Luck), and most have been of the hideous variety. He’s making the sort of mistakes even rookie quarterbacks should be able to avoid, and he’s making them over and over again. His performance will probably even out, but they need him to be a superstar to make up for the holes on the rest of their roster.

Philadelphia Eagles (1-3)

I did it. I fell under the Chip Kelly spell. In fact, I think it still might have me a little. I’m not ready to give up on the Eagles yet, and not ready to give up on their coach. I think they have a run still left in them, once the back end of their defense comes together a little and their wizard coach can figure things out on offense.

That said, it’s hard to deny that they are playing some of the worst football in the league right now, particularly on the offensive side. Sam Bradford has not stepped up as many expected him to, being somehow even more conservative than he was in St Louis. DeMarco Murray is off to a historically terrible start, and rookie receiver Nelson Agholor has not performed at the level many expected.

But really, these are all minor problems. They could live with all of this, if their offensive line wasn’t such a disaster. We were all a bit wary coming into the year after their unceremonious discarding of their two starting guards, but they still had one of the best left tackles in the league in Jason Peters, one of the best centers in Jason Kelce, and a promising young right tackle in Lane Johnson. With a trio of talented running backs, it seemed inevitable that they would be able to open things up with the running attack to take the pressure off their quarterback. Somehow their guards have been terrible enough to tank the entire unit, and unless they can take a significant step forward as the season goes on, it’s hard for me to have any confidence in the optimism I expressed above.

San Francisco 49ers (1-3)

There was a great deal of concern surrounding the 49ers coming into the season, but an opening weekend thrashing of the Vikings gave their fans renewed hope for the season. Fortunately, the 49ers played on Monday, and these fans didn’t even have to endure this false hope for a full week before it was crushed. Back to back blowout losses to the Steelers and the Cardinals were followed by a loss to Green Bay that looked far closer than it actually was. The things they did well in their first game have disappeared, their offensive line regressing sharply after a spectacular start and their defense looking like it has suffered another few unexpected retirements since holding Minnesota to 3 points.

But the biggest problem is one that lurked beneath the surface of their otherwise impressive victory. People raved about Colin Kaepernick’s performance against the Vikings, but he was quietly very mediocre, making just enough plays with his legs to cover up the fact that he was doing very little in the passing game. Only 11 of his 26 passes were thrown in the direction of wide receivers, and of these he completed seven for only 52 yards. He spent the night checking down to tight ends and running backs, never once even trying to harness his remarkable arm strength.

He won against the Vikings by playing a great deal like Alex Smith, the quarterback he replaced. In the three games since, he hasn’t been able to repeat this trick. He hasn’t gotten any better at attacking with the ball, but he has started making mistakes of the sort Smith never does. Kaepernick has regressed hard since taking this team to the Super Bowl only three years ago, and at this point it’s worth wondering if he has already reached and fallen from his ceiling. In years past he at least had one of the best football coaches in the world to put him in position to succeed, but Jim Harbaugh is long gone, and now Kaepernick is alone and overwhelmed.

Houston Texans (1-4)

I don’t understand why everyone is so surprised that Houston is terrible. They have a budding star in DeAndre Hopkins and possibly the best player in the league in JJ Watt, but other than that there isn’t much to like on this roster. I picked them to win six games this year, and right now that looks like an optimistic forecast. In the past two weeks they’ve been embarrassed by the Falcons and lost at home to an Indianapolis Colts team that was without Andrew Luck. Their schedule is favorable going forward, but they are far enough back that there is almost no chance of them making the playoffs.

Much of the criticism has gone to the quarterback position, and while the combination of Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer has been a mess, they are hardly the only problem with this team. They were thin at wide receiver even before losing Nate Washington and Cecil Shorts. Arian Foster is productive when healthy, but that is becoming increasingly less frequent. Their offensive line isn’t a disaster by any means, but it no longer deserves to be considered the strength of the team.

If the Texans were going to have any success, they needed to dominate on defense. And even with the best defensive player in the league, they simply aren’t capable of doing that. Their defense is populated by veterans past the prime of their career, big names like Vince Wilfork, Jonathan Joseph, and Brian Cushing who are not close to what they once were. Even solid work from Jadeveon Clowney hasn’t been enough to lift them above mediocrity, and unless rookies Kevin Johnson and Benardrick McKinney step up, there is no reason to expect this unit to improve this year.

Miami Dolphins (1-3)

I honestly have no idea where to begin with this one. After promising development during 2014, Ryan Tannehill received a big contract extension, and so far this year that looks like potentially the biggest mistake of the offseason. With the exception of Jarvis Landry their revamped receiving corps has been mostly anonymous, injuries and ineffectiveness neutralizing Kenny Stills, Greg Jennings, and DeVante Parker. And somehow the passing game is the strength of their offense. They cannot run the ball at all after being one of the most effective running teams in 2014. There is no part of this offense that looks good, and very little reason to be optimistic it will get better.

On the defensive side of the ball, things are pretty much the same. We knew their secondary would be bad, and the injuries to Louis Delmas and Brent Grimes have only made things worse. The truly perplexing part is the struggles of their big money defensive front. The fact that they have only one sack through the first four games is the most insane thing that’s happened since St Louis had only one sack through four games last year. What I’m trying to say is, maybe their defensive struggles are a bit of a fluke, and maybe their line will pick things up much as the Rams did down the stretch last year.

But even if that does happen, do we have any reason to believe it will do any good? The Dolphins are terrible at every aspect of the game, and they aren’t going to improve across the board no matter what they do to their coaching staff. The record may disagree, but right now this is the worst team in the league. (And yes, I did pick them to win ten games and make the playoffs before the season started.)

Detroit Lions (0-4)

I just got done tearing apart every part of the Dolphin’s roster. So clearly you’d expect me to have some harsh things to say about the only team that has yet to win a game. And yet, strangely, I don’t have that much negative to say about the Lions. Their offensive line is bad, but there are worse lines in the league (just look at the four teams they’ve played so far if you want examples). Their defense struggled in the second half against San Diego, but over the past two weeks they’ve held both Seattle and Denver in check offensively. Looking at this team, there is nothing that they are extremely bad at. The problem is, they aren’t really good at anything either.

The Lions defense is pretty much what we expected it to be. It would obviously be better if they had DeAndre Levy, but even with him around this would be a mediocre unit from top to bottom. Ziggy Ansah is a developing player, but he’s not the superstar his sack numbers so far this year says he is (again, look at the offensive lines in San Diego, Minnesota, Denver, and Seattle). Darius Slay is better than he’s played so far, but he’s not one of the top ten cornerbacks in the league. And while Haloti Ngata was once a superstar, at this point in his career he is a clear dropoff from both Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley. This is a defense populated by mediocre players, the sort who would look good supporting a couple stars but aren’t enough to carry things on their own.

The offensive side of the ball is a bit more complex. The line is trouble, and the running game has been a mess for years, but coming into the year their passing game looked like it had all the pieces necessary to succeed. Matthew Stafford has his flaws as a quarterback, but he has always had the ability to put up high volume numbers. And in Golden Tate they finally had a quality receiver to put across from Calvin Johnson, giving them perhaps the best one-two punch of receivers in the league.

So what’s happened? Why can’t they move the ball through the air? Again, part of the problem is the line. Given more protection, Stafford could probably make more plays. And Stafford has regressed as well, failing to create the plays he made on a consistent basis three years ago. But the biggest problem with Detroit’s offense is Calvin Johnson. After a couple of injury plagued seasons, the 30 year old receiver has clearly lost a step. He is not the player he once was, no longer the clear top receiver in the league. In fact, he’s not even a top five receiver, and it’s very fair to say he’s on the fringe of the top ten. A top ten receiver is still a great thing to have, but when a team is built around a player performing at a superhuman level, mere excellence is a recipe for the sort of disaster we are witnessing now.

So there you have it. I’ve now torn apart the eight teams sitting at the bottom of the league. Of course, this means that one (or more) of these teams will go on to make the playoffs, and I’ll end up regretting everything I put in this post. With three quarters of the season left, all sorts of things could happen. And I for one can’t wait to see what sort of wretchedness the NFL has waiting for us.