Quarterback Re-Evaluation

The very first post on Limited Interests was published on November 7, 2013. It’s a couple weeks past the six year anniversary, and this is the 300^th post I’ve made on this site. At around 2500 words a post, that means I’ve written roughly 750,000 words about football in that time, about the same number as in the first five Harry Potter books.

I’ve had a lot of takes on a lot of topics in that time. Some of them have been right. Others, less so. Most obvious have been my annual breakdowns of draft prospects, which over the course of the past five drafts have covered about 300 NFL players. There have been some big hits (Alvin Kamara, Derwin James) and some big misses (it’s a running joke that I was way too low on Odell Beckham, but for variety’s sake let me also toss out Ronnie Stanley and Christian McCaffrey). (Actually my best hit rate has been identifying players who won’t live up to the hype. Among top five picks I’ve been skeptical of are Greg Robinson, Solomon Thomas, Leonard Fournette, and Corey Davis.)

I don’t have the time or the attention span to reevaluate every prospect I’ve ever rated. But the quarterback position is important enough for me to take a look back at it, and the events of the past couple weeks have highlighted probably my most egregious error: Mitchell Trubisky.

I loved Trubisky entering the 2017 draft. He was my clear top quarterback prospect, and in the week leading up to the draft I even made the argument that the Browns should select him ahead of Myles Garrett (who has had a rough couple of weeks as well, but for very different reasons). Two and a half years in, that was very clearly a bad call on my part. And as Trubisky was sent to the bench late in the game against the Rams for reasons that may or may not be performance related, it looks like his time in Chicago is quickly running out.

So I decided that now was as good a time as any to look back on what I’ve had to say about the quarterback prospects who have entered the league over the past few seasons. I’ve read back through my scouting reports on each and every passer who was either a first round pick or who I rated as a first round pick, to see where I went right and where I was led astray.

(Current starting quarterbacks not included in this breakdown are Brady, Fitzpatrick, Roethlisberger, Tannehill, Foles, Rivers, Flacco, Carr, Ryan, Brees, Newton, Cousins, Rodgers, Stafford, Garoppolo, and Wilson, who were all drafted before I started analyzing this. I’ll withhold judgment on rookies Murray, Haskins, and Jones. Apologies out to Prescott and Brissett, who turned into quality starters despite not being on my radar before the draft. No apologies needed for Devlin Hodges, Brandon Allen, or Kyle Allen. They won’t be starters for much longer.)

Players are listed in each draft in the order I had them ranked. The number next to their name indicates the pick they were taken with in that draft. For each I read back through my pre-draft scouting report and picked something I said that I got right, and something that hasn’t held up great in hindsight.

2015

2. Marcus Mariota

Nailed it – “Mariota doesn’t have the same upside as Winston, but he has significantly less risk.”

Swing and a Miss – “He is absolutely lethal as a runner.”

Mariota was supposed to be a safe prospect, and yet it seems likely that he won’t make it to a second contract with the team that drafted him. And yet no one would necessarily call him a bust either. He’s been effective but unspectacular, which is what I saw as the likely worst case scenario for him.

The one part of Mariota’s game that has puzzled me is his lack of contribution as a runner. In each of his three seasons as a college starter he had at least 715 yards as a rusher. His best running season in the NFL was last year, and he still failed to reach even half that number. He was never a great scrambler, but his speed made him dangerous on called runs. Unfortunately in the NFL, his coaches have shown no interest in using him in that way.

This is going to be a theme as I go through this. So many of these players are defined by the situations they find themselves in, and Mariota has unsurprisingly become a bland quarterback in a bland situation. In five years in the NFL he’s had four different offensive coordinators, and the head coach combination of Mike Mularkey and Mike Vrabel has been uninspiring. I don’t know if Mariota would have prospered in a system that opened things up and let him use his legs, but I know he would have been a lot more fun.

1. James Winston

Nailed it – “From a football perspective, the biggest red flags are the interceptions.”

Swing and a Miss – “His incredible arm is his saving grace, allowing him to deliver a perfect pass no matter what base he’s standing on.”

The interceptions were always there for Winston. He threw 18 his final year in college, and he even had 10 during his Heisman winning freshman year. It’s no surprise that he has paced the league in that statistic since he arrived. He is who he is, and I doubt that will ever change.

I thought that he could make enough big plays with his arm to erase these mistakes, and there are times I can still talk myself into it. He is consistently near the top of the league in the percentage of his passes that go for a first down, one of the more underappreciated NFL statistics. But I think I probably overestimated his playmaking ability, particularly the strength and accuracy of his arm. He has always made reckless throws from unusual platforms with pressure closing in. The difference is that in college these often worked out, while in the NFL they have too frequently gone the other way.

2016

1. Jared Goff

Nailed it – “I worry that his ceiling might not be at a true superstar level, but I am comfortable with his floor as, worst case scenario, a league average quarterback.”

Swing and a Miss – “He’s light on his feet, and he moves well in the pocket, sensing pressure and shifting around to give himself a lane to throw the football.”

Three and a half years into his career, I think we’re all pretty much in agreement on the first part of this. Goff is good, and in the right situation he can lead an elite offense. But he needs that right situation, and as that has disappeared this year he has struggled to produce.

It's been three and a half years, so I can’t speak to what I actually saw when I watched his tape. But it is strange that one of the things I identified as among his strengths has been his biggest weakness in the NFL. Goff does not handle pressure well, and he does not move well in the pocket. Maybe it was easier for him in college, when he executed solely from a shotgun setup where he could always play downhill and see the field in front of him. Now in the NFL he is taking a lot more dropbacks, asking him to make more complex reads. Perhaps that could be a fix for him, at least in the short term, to play more from a spread shotgun formation in order to simplify the game for him again.

2. Carson Wentz

Nailed it – “This gave him plenty of margin for error, and he took full advantage of it, consistently struggling with ball placement.”

Swing and a Miss – “Wentz can become somewhat of a statue in the pocket, and he doesn’t offer much in the way of improvisational skills.”

Wentz has talent, and it’s still easy to talk ourselves into what he can be if he puts it all together. At times he looks like an elite quarterback on the level of other young stars like Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson (both of whom are mentioned below), but every time I start to talk myself into him, he does something difficult to watch. He misses some easy targets, and he always seems just not quite all the way what he could be.

Strangely though, his most impressive moments are when the play breaks down and he has to make things up on the fly. He can make difficult throws from strange platforms, and he has an excellent understanding of where everyone is on the field and how to find his targets as he runs. This seems to be something he’s developed since entering the NFL, perhaps because he never needed to do this at North Dakota State, where the talent around him was enough to beat any opponent even if he played it safe.

26. Paxton Lynch

Nailed it – “Lynch has absolutely no idea how to play quarterback in the NFL”

Swing and a Miss – “He could turn out to be a quality starter someday, but that day is still several years down the road,”

This is probably one of my biggest hits as a draft analyst. Lynch was a first round selection, and I had him pegged as a sixth rounder. If anything I was too high on him, as he lasted all of two seasons before Denver gave up and released him. He was a disaster from the moment he entered an NFL facility, and the only real mistake I made was hedging my bets at the end and saying that he had the talent to maybe one day be a starter. The one thing I didn’t know about him—that I couldn’t know about him from just watching tape—was that he really had no interest in putting in the work required to succeed, an attitude that expedited his failure in Denver.

2017

1. Mitchell Trubisky

Nailed it – “He’ll become a little flustered under pressure and either run from a clean pocket or chuck the ball blindly down the field.”

Swing and a Miss – “His arm can get the ball to any spot on the field, and it usually ends up exactly where he wants to put it.”

As I mentioned above, this is one that hurt. Reading back through this scouting report, every sentence seems worse than the last. I didn’t even highlight the part where I said, “The most likely outcome is a comfortable top ten starter.” It’s pretty reasonable to say at this point that this is never going to happen.

So where did I go wrong? Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t obvious to everyone who watched college football that this pick was a mistake. In his final year in college, Trubisky had a better completion percentage, higher yards per attempt, better passer rating, and fewer interceptions than Deshaun Watson. He was a very successful, very effective quarterback in his one year as a starter, and that simply hasn’t carried over to the NFL.

Some of my mistake can be blamed on the scheme he played in. On the surface it looked like a fairly complicated scheme, asking him to work across the field and make difficult reads. But the hardest part of evaluating a quarterback on film is that you can never say what is going on in his head. Was Trubisky really getting three or four receivers deep on his progression, or was he just well trained in using his eyes as part of the same mechanical process? As he’s been put in more challenging situations in the NFL, it’s clear that I was tricked, and probably a lesson to be a little more skeptical of making an assumption about how the quarterback’s mind is working on the field.

52. Deshone Kizer

Nailed it – “The problem with Kizer is that once the ball leaves his hand, you have absolutely no idea where it is going to end up.”

Swing and a Miss – “He is the smoothest, most natural operator out of the pocket in this draft.”

As you can see above, I was always a bit skeptical of Kizer. I believe accuracy is the most essential trait for a quarterback to have, and Kizer simply didn’t have it. I knew this could be a career killing flaw, and I thought the risk was still worth it on the off chance this could be fixed.

This couldn’t be fixed, and it ultimately wasn’t the only thing that did Kizer in. Between college and the NFL, everything else good about his game disappeared. He wilted under pressure, he made reckless decisions with the football, and he threw away any hope he had off success.

This is where I have to mention the misfortune Kizer had to end up in Cleveland. And not just in Cleveland, in Cleveland during the worst period of their disaster years. Hue Jackson made life as difficult as possible for Kizer, and though I can’t easily say he could have been worth where I had him ranked if he had ended up elsewhere, he at least wouldn’t have been quite as embarrassing if he had gone anywhere other than Cleveland.

10. Patrick Mahomes

Nailed it – “There is something here, and even though it may take the best coaching staff in the world to reach it, the upside is almost immeasurable.”

Swing and a Miss – “He relies on this far too often, breaking from a clean pocket and running himself into trouble.”

This is one that hurts a little. I liked Mahomes a lot predraft, and the gap I had between him and Kizer was extremely tight. I should have trusted my instincts and ranked Mahomes higher, but I was scared away by the uncertainty I saw. And the truth is, I wasn’t wrong. What Mahomes has done in the NFL is unlike anything else we have ever seen in this league before, just as what he did in college was unlike anything we had seen on that level before.

That’s the difficulty with scouting one of a kind players. There is no template for knowing what will carry over and what will fail. Aaron Donald was a similar puzzle, and while these two may provide extraordinary examples, they can be countered with names like Corey Coleman and Greg Robinson.

I don’t think I was wrong about Mahomes. He ended up in a perfect situation with Andy Reid, and he has lived up to the best case scenario entering the draft. That doesn’t mean the risk wasn’t there. Projecting a prospect is always a probability game, and just because a player hit, that doesn’t mean the initial analysis of the downside risk was wrong.

12. Deshaun Watson

Nailed it – “He has moments of exquisite touch on jump balls to a receiver’s back shoulder on the sideline.”

Swing and a Miss – “As a long term prospect, I see virtually no upside in Watson.”

Okay, I was wrong on this one. Watson is so much more dynamic than I ever envisioned him being when I watched him in college, making multiple plays each game that elevate the mostly mediocre talent around him. The Texans are alive in the playoff hunt because of Watson, where I expected him to be a mere game manager, someone who could ride a talented team to a successful but ultimately fruitless season.

There’s a section of annoying college football fans who seem convinced that it was obvious that Watson would turn into a star as he has. After all, he was a star in college, a national championship winner and Heisman Trophy runner-up. But we only have to look at the track record of national championship quarterbacks to see that this doesn’t always transfer smoothly to the league. Just in the past ten years we’ve seen titles won by Greg McElroy, AJ McCarron, Cardale Jones, and Jake Coker. Watson was a step above all those players in college, but he was still a passer who turned the ball over at a disturbingly high rate and succeeded thanks to the stacked team around him, and looking back it isn’t hard to see his career going a similar route to Winston’s.

2018

10. Josh Rosen

Nailed it – “if you can generate pressure on him he will likely be unable to complete the play down the field.”

Swing and a Miss – “He might be the best pure thrower of the football to enter the league since I started scouting players five years ago.”

I still don’t believe the book is written on Rosen yet, but I will admit that the first couple chapters are looking pretty rough. Two teams, two terrible situations, and two equally awful performances by Rosen. He hasn’t been helped by his situation, but he hasn’t done anything to indicate he could look better in cleaner circumstances, and I think the days of him walking into a team with a presumed starting role are over.

We’ll never know what Rosen could have been if he hadn’t ended up on two teams committed to building the worst offenses imaginable. He was always a player who was better at taking advantage of a good situation than elevating a bad one, and more than any of these other players he couldn’t afford to end up in a place like Arizona or Miami. At the same time, he’s been worse than even I could have expected in the places he ended up, and I’m not particularly optimistic about what will happen wherever he ends up next.

32. Lamar Jackson

Nailed it – “The moment he steps on a field he will become the best rushing quarterback in the league, and there’s a reasonable argument to be made that he will be the most dynamic ball carrier at any position period.”

Swing and a Miss – “even if he can fix 90 percent of his flaws he will still top out well below the best NFL passers.”

I talked about the perfect situation with Mahomes above, and here we are again. Somehow, against all odds, Lamar Jackson ended up on a team that lets him be Lamar Jackson. The Ravens run an offense that is different than any other in the NFL, because they have a quarterback that is different than any other in the NFL.

Jackson has succeeded as a passer more than I expected this year, but so much of that is built around the threat of his legs. The Ravens throw to wide receivers less than any other team in the league, and they use their running game to set up quick, easy completions to their tight ends over the middle of the field. If Jackson had to drop back in a normal NFL passing game, I’m not sure he would be anywhere near as successful.

But he doesn’t, because what he brings with his legs separates him from every other quarterback who has ever stepped onto a football field. He’s not even Michael Vick or Randall Cunningham, he’s a step above either of them. Like Mahomes, he is a player who is succeeding in a way we have never seen before. And I’m glad that this time around I was willing to take a risk and grade him as a top ten selection.

7. Josh Allen

Nailed it – “A couple times each game he will pull off a play that very few quarterbacks at any level would even consider.”

Swing and a Miss – “I know what the numbers say, but when I watch Allen on the field I don’t see an inaccurate passer.”

It’s still probably far too early to really reevaluate the 2018 class, and no quarterback better represents that than Allen. A year and a half into his career, we still have very little idea of what he is going to be. Which isn’t surprising, since he was always a multi-year project.

Last season Allen was bad, but not as bad as many expected. This year he has improved, but not by enough for us to really say the Bills have found their answer at quarterback. He’s about where Trubisky was a year ago, which obviously doesn’t bode well for him. But considering how many people were willing to write him off entirely before he was even drafted, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about how highly I had him rated.

3. Sam Darnold

Nailed it – “Darnold can make any throw you ask of him, which is why it’s so frustrating that he so often doesn’t.”

Swing and a Miss – “Darnold is at his best when things get messy.”

Allen is a puzzle because he’s been kind of middling for a season and a half. Darnold is a puzzle because he has bounced wildly between both ends of the spectrum. The ability is absolutely there, but the mental part of the game still seems very far away. It hasn’t helped that he’s been put in charge of a terribly mismanaged franchise, one that constantly demands he do way, way too much. Still, his recklessness when he does try to do too much is more than I expected entering the draft.

1. Baker Mayfield

Nailed it – “Even though I don’t think he will make many plays as a rusher in the NFL he is creative enough to wreak havoc behind the line of scrimmage.”

Swing and a Miss – “Of the top quarterbacks in the draft, Mayfield will have the toughest transition from college to the NFL.”

The biggest concerns I had about Mayfield were all related to the system he played in at Oklahoma. I saw him performing efficiently but unspectacularly in a scheme that made his life as easy as possible, engineering open receivers with a regularity I didn’t expect him to find in the NFL. I didn’t see him making the plays an NFL quarterback needs to make, or so I thought.

The truth is, after decades existing in very different worlds, the best schemes in both college and the NFL have come together. When Mayfield has had success in Cleveland—as sporadic as it has been—it’s come by doing the exact same things he did in college. It worked then, and it can work now too. And with offenses like Baltimore and Kansas City demonstrating a willingness to adapt to suit the strengths of their passers, we may be reaching the point where we have to retire the notion of judging a college quarterback by his system.

2019 Midseason Review Part 2

Half the season is in the books, and half the teams appeared in Part 1 of my midseason review earlier this week. Here's part two, breaking down the sixteen teams (fifteen, really) who will be fighting for a playoff spot over the final eight weeks of the NFL regular season.

Super Bowl or Bust

These teams sit comfortably at the top of the league. They entered the year with Super Bowl aspirations, and so far they’ve lived up to the billing. The Super Bowl winner is likely going to come from this top group, as it has in each of the previous six years I’ve done this.

New England Patriots (8-1)

The Patriots lost last weekend. That was fun, if ultimately meaningless. They were never actually going to go undefeated, and they are probably going to lose a couple more times as their schedule toughens up. But by the end of the year they will still have a first round bye, and likely home field advantage as well, and they will have an easy path to yet another Super Bowl appearance.

It will be fascinating to watch how this team evolves this year. So far they have won thanks to one of the most dominating stretches of defense in recent history, supporting an offense that has been otherwise fairly average. The defense is really, really good, but they can’t possibly stay this hot, and the offense is likely going to have to step it up as the season wears on. There’s no question that they can do so, and with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady the odds are that they will. But the style of the Patriots has flipped on its head this year, and that leaves a little bit of intrigue going forward.

New Orleans Saints (7-1)

The Saints are 7-1, and they achieved this despite being without Drew Brees for five games. That would have been unthinkable a couple seasons ago, and as well as Teddy Bridgewater played in Brees’s absence, most of the credit deserves to go to a defense that has finally put all the pieces together. With Cam Jordan and the developing Marcus Davenport chasing quarterbacks and Eli Apple and Marshon Lattimore locking down on the back end, this team is a nightmare to pass against for anyone who falls behind them.

It’s scary to think what this team can accomplish if their defense can keep performing as they were when Brees was out, and their offense can reestablish its usual dominance. With Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara dicing defenses apart down the field, and one of the best lines in football shielding the quarterback, there are very few holes on this team. And with an aging quarterback who has faded some down the stretch the past couple years, the time off could be a blessing in disguise, leaving them healthy and ready for a run come December and January.

Green Bay Packers (7-2)

Another team that has surprised with strong defense, after years of being carried by their offense. The Packers have loaded up with young talent on this side of the ball, led by recent first round picks Kenny Clark and Jaire Alexander. They’ve cooled down some in recent weeks, but combined with the free agent additions of Za’Darious Smith and Preston Smith, they have the opportunity to turn things on once again.

The problem for this team is consistency, and that starts with what used to be the only reliable part of their roster. Aaron Rodgers has been all over the place this season. One week he goes out and light the Raiders up like it was 2011 again. A couple weeks later he goes out against the Chargers and looks like he’s been replaced by Mitch Trubisky. The ceiling of this team is wildly high, and the floor is just as low. If both sides of the ball turn it on at the right moment, they can ride a winning streak through the playoffs. If not, they could fall flat down the stretch and potentially miss the postseason entirely.

San Francisco 49ers (8-0)

I’m somewhat uncertain about putting the 49ers in this category, but where else should they go? After all, they’re the only undefeated team left, and other than one game against Pittsburgh where the ball turned into a greased up watermelon whenever they touched the red zone, they really haven’t been challenged by any of their opponents so far. Their point differential of +133 is second only to New England, and third place is closer to eleventh place than they are to the 49ers.

But man, you want to talk about a soft schedule. The 49ers have good wins over the Rams and the Panthers, and other than that they haven’t faced a team above .500. They’ve played a winless team, a one-win team, and two two-win teams. And the fact that they haven’t really faced a close game is a sign for concern, especially since we haven’t seen anything from Jimmy Garoppolo to convince us that he can bear the weight in that situation. The defense can win them almost any game, but when it can’t, what is their backup plan?

Are They For Real?

There are plenty of other playoff contenders, and I’m sure all of them believe in their hearts that they can win the title this year. I’m here to tell you that they’re wrong. For one reason or another these teams will fall short when December and January come around. But for now they’re sitting pretty.

Seattle Seahawks (7-2)

Of these teams the Seahawks were the hardest to drop to this level, but I ended up doing so for a couple of reasons. First of all, the division rival above them. The 49ers have a two game lead in the loss column, and if they can split the season series, they have a much easier path to the division title. Winning a Super Bowl is hard, and it is next to impossible without claiming a first round bye, which the Seahawks could easily fall short of even if they finish with 12 or 13 wins. And they may not even make it there, if they have a little bad luck the rest of the season. Six of Seattle’s seven wins have come in single score games, a track record that has proven consistently to be unsustainable.

The one thing that makes this hard is Russell Wilson. Wilson has been the best player in the league so far in 2019, and if he keeps up his current performance he is going to run away with MVP. He has done this despite playing in an offense that never really opens things up for him, forcing him to waste away handing the ball off over and over again. If the Seahawks ever do truly cut him loose, he can carry them against any opponent. But the road ahead may be too difficult even for him to manage.

Houston Texans (6-3)

The brilliance of Wilson is the only thing keeping Deshaun Watson from rising to the top of the MVP race. The Texans are still a bad football team, with a mediocre coach and a disaster of an offensive line holding them back. And yet, with Watson at the helm they keep managing to win games, as he pulls off a couple Herculean plays each game to scrap to a victory.

I don’t think that’s enough in the long run though. Not with JJ Watt done for the season, and the offense still perilously thin at just about every position. Laremy Tunsil has helped a lot to lock down Watson’s blind side, but that leaves four positions on the line that still need to be filled. Watson can do incredible things, but you can’t count on him to do them while under duress every single play. Eventually, this team will crack.

Baltimore Ravens (6-2)

It doesn’t get much more impressive than Baltimore’s win over New England last Sunday. They took on the Patriots, and they made Bill Belichick look utterly perplexed, forcing one of the best defenses in the league to run in circles chasing an offense that was more or less lining up and punching them right in the face. Lamar Jackson is a problem, and there really isn’t a solution if he’s on his game.

The problem is, he is still a 22 year old quarterback, and being on his game week in and week out is not something he is capable of just yet. He’s turned in disappointing performances that cost them against both the Chiefs and the Browns, and probably should have lost them the game against the Steelers as well. Quietly this defense has not played up to their expectations, and if Jackson is anything less than a magician against a top quality team, the Ravens are going to be in for a fight they probably can’t win.

Minnesota Vikings (6-3)

The Vikings have improved in a lot of ways from a year ago, especially on offense. Their line isn’t good, but it’s not a disaster, and a healthy Dalvin Cook has given them an elite rushing attack. And when that rushing attack is going strong, when they can get out to a lead and lean on play action, Kirk Cousins is playing at the highest level of his career.

But in a lot of ways, this team has the same flaws it had a year ago, specifically on the road and against high quality opponents. When things start going bad, things fall apart very quickly for Minnesota. Cousins struggles when asked to carry an offense. Their defense struggles when they can’t just key on the pass and their cornerbacks are placed on islands. In the games they’ve won, they’ve run out to early leads and coasted to victories. If they face off against anyone who can actually fight back, they’re going to be in for a rough ride.

Dallas Cowboys (5-3)

Dallas made the playoffs last year on the strength of a dominant defense, and even though the defense has predictably regressed some this year, the offense has stepped it up to fill in for them. Speciically Dak Prescott, who has rediscovered his rookie form on the way to leading one of the most underrated offenses in the league. With center Travis Frederick back after missing all of 2018, their offensive line is an elite unit once more, giving them security and consistency in both the running and the passing game.

And yet, just a few weeks ago this team got run off the field by the Jets, arguably the worst team in the league. Their five wins have included two victories over the Giants, plus a pair over the Dolphins and Redskins. They’ve appropriately erased the bad teams they’ve played (except for that increasingly perplexing performance against the Jets), but they were fairly noncompetitive against both the Packers and a Saints team missing Brees, which bodes poor for their chances once the postseason comes around.

Waiting to Explode

We thought these teams had a chance to win the Super Bowl prior to the season, and that potential still remains. But so far they haven’t showed it, looking like mediocre teams who will be fighting just to make the playoffs when the season ends.

Los Angeles Rams (5-3)

The defending NFC Champions just haven’t been right this year. Most of this can be placed on the shoulders of their offense. They haven’t been able to run the ball this year, and at times have simply avoided giving the ball to Todd Gurley, feeding the rumors that have lingered since the end of last season that his knees are ruined beyond repair. Rookie Darrell Henderson hasn’t had the impact as a big play threat that some people expected, turning this entire offense one dimensional.

The Rams aren’t talented enough offensively to survive playing one dimensional. Even last year their passing game was built off of their ability to run the ball, relying on play action to twist the back end of defenses and slow down the pass rush. Without the threat of the run, Jared Goff has been trapped in the pocket as pass rushers clamp in around him, and unless they are just keeping Gurley in reserve to avoid wearing him down, they may not be able to rediscover the explosive form they had last year.

Philadelphia Eagles (5-4)

I’m not sure what happened to Philadelphia’s defense. Yes, their secondary is vulnerable, but that’s been the case for years, and they’ve always found a way to make it work. They’ve had some injuries along the defensive front, but the whole point of this team is that they are loaded with depth that should give them the ability to get after the quarterback no matter what.

That hasn’t happened, and without an elite pass rush, every other piece of this team comes tumbling down. If they can’t manufacture short fields with their defense, their offense doesn’t have the explosiveness to run out ahead. If they can’t get early leads, their run defense lets opposing teams move easily down the field. Rediscovering that elite pass rush could turn them around, but with Dallas sitting at the top of the division and a competitive wild card race, the Eagles will have to find this magic switch fast.

Kansas City Chiefs (6-3)

There are reasonable excuses that can be made for Kansas City’s slightly below-expectations record. Obviously losing the defending MVP hurts, though only one of their defeats came with him out. There are a bunch of other injuries you can point to—Eric Fisher, Frank Clark, Tyreek Hill—and maybe once they get completely healthy they’ll jump to the top with the other elite teams.

But for now it’s worth asking some questions about their performance. Their pass defense has been stout despite some clear holes on the back end, but it is still far too easy to run straight at them. And even before Mahomes was sidelined this offense wasn’t clicking with the same electric energy it had last season. It might not take much to get them back to that point, but unless their offense is firing on all cylinders they don’t have a team well rounded enough to compete for a title.

The Also Rans

These teams have strong records, and they may even make it to the postseason. But that doesn't mean they're actually good at football.

Buffalo Bills (7-2)

Buffalo’s defense has looked legitimately excellent, though it’s hard to separate that from the quality of opposition they’ve faced. The only teams to reach 20 points against them this year are the Eagles and, somehow, the Dolphins. And yet they rank only 15^th in the league in DVOA, which punishes them for games against the Jets, Giants, Bengals, Titans, and Redskins. And yet the Patriots only managed 16 points against them, in one of the more impressive defensive performances of the season.

I don’t know if Buffalo’s defense is actually good, but it’s hard to say they’ll be exposed the rest of the year. They still have another game against both the Jets and the Dolphins, as well as matchups against the Browns, Broncos, and Steelers. This defense is not going to allow a lot of points the rest of the year, and that will give them a chance to ride their already strong record to a playoff spot, even if their offense remains nonthreatening.

Indianapolis Colts (6-3)

The Colts weathered the loss of Andrew Luck before the season and have ridden the quiet consistency of Jacoby Brissett to a comfortable lead in the wild card race. They’ve somehow done this without playing a game with a final margin larger than seven points, which suggests a lot of this is due to good fortune. But they’ve also had some bad luck as well, such as losing to Pittsburgh on a missed field goal by Adam Vinatieri.

They’re tied for the division lead with Houston, and they have the advantage having beaten the Texans earlier this year. But man do they not pass the eye test. Their defense hasn’t been as extraordinary as it was down the stretch a year ago, and their offense is toothless attacking down the field (TY Hilton has missed some time, but even on a per game basis he’s having the worst year of his career). This team does enough good things to make the playoffs in a weak AFC, but they are going to be overmatched against any real competition.

Caroline Panthers (5-3)

Cam Newton is officially done for the season, and now it’s up to Kyle Allen to lead this team to the playoffs. Theoretically he should be up to it, based on how the season has gone for him so far. He’s taken care of the ball, and he’s let the team ride on the shoulders of Christian McCaffrey and Luke Keuchly, getting them to the halfway point of the season with a winning record.

But that’s all he’s going to be able to do. Because this team has been for from impressive so far, and their schedule is about to be brutal. Over the final eight games they have to play the Packers, the Seahawks, and the Colts, plus both their games in the series against the Saints. I can’t see them winning more than one of those games, and that is going to leave them far short of a playoff spot.

I Screwed Up

I put this list together earlier this week, before the Thursday night game. But that’s no excuse for making the same mistake I always do, which is trusting the Chargers. This team should have been in the first half of my preview, and the Raiders probably should have replaced them up here, even before Oakland walked away on Thursday night with a victory over their division foes.

Los Angeles Chargers (4-6)

I don’t know what to say about this team anymore. How many times can you be bitten by a snake before people start asking what the hell is wrong with you? On paper this team should be up there with the best in the league, and they should be ready to turn it on with star safety Derwin James likely to make his return in a couple weeks. Instead they have floundered their way to multiple embarrassing and perplexing losses, and now they’re probably too far out of the hunt to have any shot of making the postseason.

Maybe the issue is coaching. Maybe the issue is Philip Rivers. Maybe the problem is their run defense. All of these pieces have faltered when they’ve needed them, but more than anything else I have to put the blame on the offensive line. For years now it has been a disaster, and somehow it might be even worse this year. On Thursday night they wilted like a few spindly blades of grass in front of their quarterback, and not against a particularly intimidating pass rush either. And in doing so they cost the Chargers whatever faint hopes they still had for this season, as they have cost them the entire last half of the Rivers era.