Back in early September, I asked 23 questions that would shape the NFL season. These questions ranged from philosophical ones like “Is running the ball back?” to more specific queries like “Can the Bills offense solve its red zone issues?” With nearly half a season of results to work with, we can now start to answer those questions and figure out how things will play out over the next three months. With 23 questions that need answering, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover—especially after an eventful Week 9 slate.
1. Can Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions offense keep this up?
It’s complicated. While the Lions will probably run away with the NFC North, and Goff is playing the best football of his career, technically the answer to this question is “no.” Detroit’s offense finished third in expected points added per play in 2022; it ranks 11th so far this season, per TruMedia. Goff’s passing numbers are down, but not significantly, and an improved run game has helped offset that regression. Detroit’s defense is also playing at a top-10 level after finishing as one of the league’s worst units a year ago. The team’s success isn’t contingent on having a dominant passing game, so this question isn’t as pressing as we may have thought back in early September. But navigating the playoffs without that passing attack will be a much more challenging task.
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2. Is running the football back?
One thing we can say with certainty: The passing game is not back. At the midway point of the season, NFL offenses are averaging minus-0.01 EPA per dropback. If they maintain this pace, it will be the first time this century that passing efficiency ends up in the red, per TruMedia. Offense, in general, is down, and while run plays haven’t been “worst mark of the century” bad, efficiency is down compared to last season. But some of the NFL’s top offenses are powered by dominant run games, like Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Buffalo. Running the football may not be back, but the coolest offenses in the league are doing it well again.
3. Can Garrett Wilson be Aaron Rodgers’s new Davante Adams?
The Jets reportedly tried to trade for the real Adams at the trade deadline, but the Raiders weren’t interested, so this question remains relevant. Rodgers did not attempt a single pass to Wilson before suffering an Achilles injury in Week 1, but Wilson has been doing an admirable impression of Adams with Zach Wilson under center, which is a promising sign. Rodgers seems to believe he’ll play again later this season, so we could get an answer to this question as soon as this year.
4. Where can Jordan Love and Matt LaFleur take the Packers offense?
Things could be a lot worse. The first year of the Jordan Love era in Green Bay, which, in all likelihood will extend into 2024, hasn’t gotten off to the best start. The Packers are 3-5; they’re sitting at third in a lackluster NFC North; and they’ve lost to the likes of the Falcons, Raiders, and Broncos. But the offense is hovering around league average in all of the big advanced metrics, including DVOA and EPA. And Love, despite his struggles playing behind a leaky offensive line and throwing to a young, mistake-prone receiving corps, ranks 15th in EPA per dropback after an efficient outing in a 20-3 win over the Rams on Sunday.
In his first year coaching the team without Rodgers, Matt LaFleur has restructured his offense to fit Love’s game. That means more work under center and more runs that get the QB involved. It also means more schemed-up plays, like screens or play-action shot plays, which has helped make up for the down-to-down consistency the team lost when it traded Rodgers to New York.
At this time last season, the Packers offense was producing at a similar clip. LaFleur made some changes to his play-calling, tightened up some of the pre-snap operation, and found his footing over the second half of the season. A similar development could be enough to get this team to the postseason against a soft second-half schedule. If the season ended today, Green Bay would be the seventh seed in the NFC, so the answer to this question might be “to the playoffs.”
5. Can the Bills solve their red zone issues?
The Bills rank third in the league in red zone touchdown percentage, and they’re scoring on over 90 percent of their trips inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. Both of those numbers are up over last year, when the offense just couldn’t stop turning the ball over anytime it got close to the end zone. That’s not happening as often in 2023, but it did happen in a key spot on Sunday night in Buffalo’s 24-18 loss to Cincinnati, when rookie Dalton Kincaid coughed up the football and spoiled a promising fourth-quarter drive. We picked an unfortunate time to revisit this question, but the problem has largely been solved.
Another “2022 problem that popped up again against the Bengals” hasn’t been solved, though, and that’s the Bills run game, which ranks in the top five in almost every valuable metric but was nonexistent in yet another big game. Buffalo running backs combined for 24 yards on eight carries in the loss, which puts a lot of pressure on Josh Allen to carry the offense. That’s when Allen presses, and that’s when mistakes occur. A lot of last year’s red zone blunders happened in games like the one we saw on Sunday night.
So, yes, the red zone issue has been fixed, but the underlying problems that derailed Buffalo’s season a year ago are still festering under the surface. And a 5-4 record isn’t providing much cover for the team’s flaws.
6. Can a quarterback really learn how to fall?
So far, so good for Tua Tagovailoa, who practiced jujitsu in the offseason to learn how to fall more safely and prevent blows to the head. Tagovailoa is avoiding many of those hits this season by just getting the ball out in an instant, but even when pass rushers have hit him, the Dolphins quarterback has avoided scary moments. I’m willing to say that Tagovailoa has learned how to fall, and he’s the leader in the race for the nonexistent Best Faller award.
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Even so, Tagovailoa is mostly the same quarterback he was a year ago. His unwavering belief in Mike McDaniel’s play-calling has led to dazzling performances against lesser competition, but good defenses have taken away his first options with regularity and he has yet to prove he can consistently deliver when that happens. Miami’s still winning games thanks to an explosive run game and a reliable defense—two new developments for this season—but Tagovailoa’s ceiling is still a concern, even if falling no longer is.
7. So the Cardinals are likely tanking, but who’s joining them?
With Kyler Murray’s return ahead of schedule, we might have to rephrase this question. The Cardinals aren’t winning games, but it feels harsh to accuse Jonathan Gannon’s team of trying to lose. They nearly won a handful of games with Joshua Dobbs at quarterback. And there’s a chance this team will finish strong—and outside of the range to draft a top QB—if Murray returns to his pre-injury form.
I don’t know whether any team is properly tanking at the moment. The Bears were somehow buyers at the trade deadline. The Commanders traded away some pieces but followed that up with a win on Sunday to move to 4-5. The Raiders celebrated their first win of the post–Josh McDaniels era with cigars in the locker room. And the Titans might have something in Will Levis. Those were all the likely candidates to tank for Caleb Williams, who hasn’t looked like a prospect worth tanking for of late anyway. There’s still time for one of these teams to turn it around and get back to their losing ways, but, for now, the Tank for Caleb movement is on hold.
8. What does a pro-ready QB actually look like in today’s NFL?
It looks like C.J. Stroud, who extended his lead in the Offensive Rookie of the Year race on Sunday with a record-setting performance against a good Bucs defense. It’s not surprising that Stroud has gotten off to the quickest start of all the rookie quarterbacks. He was billed as the “high floor, low ceiling” prospect before the draft, and many believed his combination of accuracy and comfort in the pocket would make his transition to the NFL a lot easier. That’s been true! What we didn’t see coming was just how calm Stroud would be when thrown into chaos, something that rarely happened when he played in Ohio State’s stacked offense. As it turns out, the flashes of playmaking we saw from Stroud in Ohio State’s playoff loss to Georgia were signs of what was to come. That version of Stroud, the one who combined sharp processing and precision with creativity and arm talent, is the one who’s shown up in Houston.
I thought Stroud’s game-winning throw against Tampa Bay offered a nice illustration of what makes him such a promising rookie. The Texans had the ball at the Bucs’ 15-yard line, down four with 10 seconds left in the game. The Bucs lined up in quarters coverage to guard against any throws into the end zone. Houston dialed up the perfect play for that coverage, a double post concept, but that concept can be difficult for a quarterback to execute because it requires anticipation and precision. A strong arm also helps. Stroud has all three.
That’s high-level quarterbacking—the type of throw we see from only the best passers in the NFL. With the way Stroud is trending, it won’t be long before he’s in that discussion.
The other quarterbacks drafted in the first round this spring will have to wait a while longer. Anthony Richardson got off to an impressive start before a shoulder injury ended his rookie campaign. Will Levis has flashed the talent that got him drafted at the top of the second round, but we’ve also seen the mistakes and the sloppy play that made him fall out of the first round. And then there’s Bryce Young, who is having a difficult time overcoming Carolina’s lackluster supporting cast and his own height-related deficiencies. Young threw three interceptions in Sunday’s loss to Indianapolis, which is bad on its own, but looks even worse considering he rarely pushed the ball downfield in the game.
“Not Bryce Young” is another acceptable answer to this question.
9. Will Trevor Lawrence take a second second-year leap?
The answer to this question is similar to what we landed on for Goff and the Lions: The quarterback has improved in meaningful ways, it just hasn’t led to significant improvements for the offense as a whole. At least not yet for the Jaguars, but I do think that’s coming. Outside of some red zone issues and some untimely turnovers, Jacksonville has moved the ball just fine. Lawrence’s improved accuracy and down-to-down consistency is a big reason for that. The frustrating misses that dragged down his sophomore season at times have disappeared almost entirely. He’s also trimmed some fat from his in-pocket processing, which has made up for some regression along the Jags offensive line.
We haven’t seen the second second-year leap from Lawrence that the Jags were hoping for, but he’s a better quarterback now than he was at this time last season. We just can’t say the same about the other parts of Jacksonville’s offense, which includes the play-calling of offensive coordinator Press Taylor.
10. Bonus Jags question: Is Doug Pederson an elite head coach?
I set the bar for Pederson joining the elite class at 11 wins. The Jaguars are sitting at 6-2 and should win the AFC South by a comfortable margin. We haven’t seen a lot of great coaching around the league this year, and Pederson has a ring, so I’m willing to entertain the discussion. If he wins a second playoff game in Jacksonville after last year’s breakthrough, this one should be a no-brainer.
11. How will the new-look Ravens offense work for Lamar Jackson?
Fine? That’s as far as I’m willing to go, even after the Ravens’ dominant performance in Sunday’s 37-3 dismantling of the Seahawks. While new offensive coordinator Todd Monken has finally helped Jackson shine as a passer by just giving him a normal NFL passing scheme, the dynamic quarterback is doing most of the heavy lifting for an offense that ranks seventh in EPA per play.
Keaton Mitchell’s breakout game against Seattle notwithstanding, the running game has been mostly ineffective when the ball doesn’t end up in Jackson’s hands, and a lot of Baltimore’s run production has been inflated by quarterback scrambles. The lack of downfield passing is also an issue and has been even in the team’s best performances. Against the Seahawks, Jackson didn’t hit on a single vertical shot. Instead, he controlled the game with an array of accurate short passes.
It was a professional display of quarterbacking that would have put up points for any offense. So while Monken’s unit has been more well-rounded than those we saw when Greg Roman was in charge, that isn’t exactly a high bar to clear.
12. On a related note: How much does an offensive coordinator really matter for an NFL team?
Get back to me on this one. There are a lot of first-year coordinators on contending teams this season, and across the board, their results have been a mixed bag. We’ve already covered the Ravens and their uneven start, but the same can be said of the Chargers and Kellen Moore, who has Justin Herbert throwing the ball downfield more often but hasn’t quite figured out how to scheme around the team’s shaky offensive line; the Eagles and Brian Johnson, who has the offense playing well, just not as well as it did last season; Bill O’Brien in New England, where the offense has looked more competent than it did on Matt Patricia’s watch, but it hasn’t led to better results for Mac Jones; and Washington and Eric Bieniemy, who’s coaxed good play out of Sam Howell but also has the young quarterback on pace to set a new record for sacks.
If I do have to offer up an answer, I’d lean toward “probably not as much as we think.” A lot of the issues these coordinators were asked to figure out are still issues under the new regimes. And most of those issues are the product of flawed personnel. In other words, it’s been a banner year for the “Jimmys and the Joes,” and not so much for the offensive Xs and Os.
13. Who will win the chess matches between Joe Burrow and Ravens DC Mike Macdonald?
Get back to me in two weeks. Macdonald dominated the Week 2 matchup between these two, continuing his sterling track record against Burrow and the Bengals, but that wasn’t a fair fight. Burrow was still limited by a calf injury that kept him out of training camp and nearly sabotaged Cincinnati’s season before it got started.
After two nearly perfect displays against the 49ers and Bills, Burrow is clearly healthy now. But the Ravens defense will present a much different challenge in the rematch in Baltimore. While San Francisco and Buffalo are “line up and play” defenses, which Burrow has no problem picking apart, Macdonald’s unit combines tricky coverage disguises and schemes tailored to stop what a given opponent does well. I’ve been covering the NFL for nearly a decade, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a defense this well coordinated.
The Ravens just suffocate opponents. Everything is hard, especially in the passing game, where it seems like the defenders know the offensive play calls as well as their opponents. Geno Smith played one of his worst statistical games in the loss on Sunday, and I’m not even sure he played poorly. It’s just that most of his completions required this level of work:
The Bengals offense naturally asks a lot of Burrow, so this game could be a preview of what’s in store for Cincinnati in mid-November.
14. Are we in the era of QB empowerment … and witnessing the end of the system QB?
Here’s what I wrote back in September: “Over the last few years, the most successful offenses have been led by quarterbacks who enjoy the freedom to change the schemes based on their personal preferences. … The so-called wide zone offenses were once seen as the last refuge for the system QB who rarely leaves the pocket, but as more coaches lean on their quarterbacks’ creativity, that may no longer be the case.”
I think it was obvious which way I was leaning at the time, but two months later, I want to backtrack a little. We’ve seen that some of the offenses that consistently tap into the creativity of their quarterbacks have frustrating and inconsistent first halves. Kansas City and Buffalo, in particular, have been wholly reliant on the out-of-structure exploits of Mahomes and Allen, which is no way to run an offense. Meanwhile, guys like Tagovailoa and Brock Purdy, who have certainly had shaky moments of their own, are at the top of the league’s passing leaderboard playing in intricately designed schemes that dictate where and when the ball should be thrown.
As with any major philosophical question about this weird sport, there probably isn’t one satisfying answer to this question—but the system QBs are having a bounce-back year and spent the first month of the season dominating the MVP discussion.
15. Can Vic Fangio fix the Miami Dolphins defense in one year?
Based on the first-half results, which paint the Dolphins as a bottom-10 defense, you’d have to say that the answer is “no.” But we’ve seen the fully formed version of Fangio’s defense—the one with Jalen Ramsey starting at cornerback—for only two weeks, and things have gone quite well in that span. Holding the Patriots to 17 points may not be overly impressive, but holding Patrick Mahomes to 14 certainly is. The Chiefs averaged minus-0.03 EPA per play against the Dolphins on Sunday, their third-worst mark of the season, per TruMedia. The offense’s 36.1 percent success rate was the second-worst result of the year for Kansas City.
Miami’s Super Bowl hopes are contingent on Mike McDaniel’s offense being a powerhouse. If that is the case, this version of the Dolphins defense should be more than enough to help that unit get the job done. At present, though, the “powerhouse offense” part of the equation is pretty shaky. Miami’s offense had opportunities to win on Sunday and (finally) beat an opponent with a winning record. It wasted them all with sloppy pre-snap operation, miscommunications, drops, and missed throws.
16. Who is the NFL’s best cornerback?
I didn’t have an answer for you two months ago, and nothing has changed. There are usually a handful of obvious candidates, but with Jalen Ramsey missing most of the first half of the season, Trevon Diggs going down for the year early, and Sauce Gardner having a rougher go of it in year two, none are really sticking out this season. The fight for the CB1 title has been so wide open lately that we’ve seen two rookies make legitimate claims over the past two seasons. Last year it was Gardner, and now it’s Pittsburgh’s Joey Porter Jr. Plus, Seattle’s Devon Witherspoon is also making a run at an All-Pro selection.
Here’s my theory about why the answer to this question isn’t more obvious: The increase in two-high zone coverage has made it harder for true lockdown corners—the ones we typically celebrate for erasing opposing WR1s from the game—to stand out. Teams just aren’t asking their corners to play that kind of role right now, so it’s harder to pick out the truly elite guys. In the immortal words of former Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, you can go to a local 7-Eleven and find a Cover 2 corner.
17. How long can the Kansas City Chiefs defense survive without Chris Jones?
We didn’t really get a chance to find out. The Chiefs and Jones restructured his deal a week into the season, and that was enough to get the star defensive tackle to end his holdout. But while other players along the defensive line have raised their games, Jones hasn’t been his typical dominant self this season, so I’d imagine Kansas City’s top-five defense would be doing just fine if he were still on the couch.
This is one of the better units in the NFL. It’s clearly the best defense Mahomes has ever played with, as he said after its dominant performance in the 21-14 win over the Dolphins in Germany. Kansas City took the obvious approach to disrupt Miami’s offense: attacking the line of scrimmage on early downs, when McDaniel likes to dial up screens, perimeter runs, and receiver end arounds. Then on third down, the Chiefs mixed up their coverages but mostly played with just one safety deep, and relied on four- and five-man rushes to create pressure. This wasn’t some galaxy-brain game plan by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. It was a sharp one that was well executed. The corners stayed tight with Miami’s impossibly quick receiving corps. The linebackers played quickly and physically against the run. The safeties did their jobs. The Chiefs defense was just better than the Dolphins offense.
The pass rush was a team effort, which hasn’t always been the case for Kansas City. Edge rushers George Karlaftis and Charles Omenihu led the team with five and two pressures, respectively, while Jones chipped in with two. Kansas City’s pass rush has been less reliant on its star in the middle this season, and Sunday’s game followed that trend. Jones didn’t have a proper training camp or preseason. He joined the team in Week 2 and could ramp things up by the time we hit January. If he does that, the defense should continue to be one of the NFL’s best. At the very least, it’s a more balanced unit—from front to back—and one more capable of handling the league’s most dynamic threats.
18. How much will the 49ers miss former defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans?
Despite a lot of hand-wringing by 49ers fans and pundits (like me) over the performance of San Francisco’s defense, there have been some notable improvements in Steve Wilks’s first season coordinating the unit. The pass rush is creating more pressure, interception and negative play rates are both up year over year, and the third-down pass defense has markedly improved.
49ers Pass Defense on Third Down, 2022 Vs. 2023 (via TruMedia)
Even though it’s better in a few key areas, though, the defense’s overall numbers have dipped slightly, and that’s almost entirely due to its struggles against the run. The run defense has been comically bad on third-and-short. San Francisco has defended 13 runs in that situation, and it has prevented a conversion on exactly ZERO of them. Not one stop! Opposing offenses have a 100 percent success rate when running on third-and-3 or fewer, and they’re averaging 1.13 EPA on those plays, per TruMedia. Outside of that very specific situation—and one bad game against Cincinnati—the run defense has been just fine. On first and second down, it ranks in the top half of the league in most measures, including yards per attempt and EPA allowed.
So while the obvious answer is “Yes, the 49ers desperately miss DeMeco Ryans,” we probably need more time with this one. Outside of one unfortunate Cover Zero call before the half in Minnesota, Wilks hasn’t made any egregious blunders. If San Francisco can sort out its short yardage situation—the trade deadline deal for defensive end Chase Young should help—its defense should get back to playing at an elite level.
19. Did we underrate the 2022 NFL QB class?
No, no we did not. Of the guys who headlined the class, Washington’s Sam Howell probably has the best shot at retaining his starting job in 2024. Kenny Pickett is setting post-merger records for passing futility, Desmond Ridder may have been shadow benched, and Malik Willis can’t get off the bench in Tennessee—and at the rate he’s taking sacks, he might not even make it to December.
Then there’s Brock Purdy, the last pick in the 2022 draft, who is single-handedly keeping the dreams of this class alive. We definitely underrated him, but we overrated everyone else, so it all evens out. Purdy is just good enough, and surrounded by enough talent, to hold on to the 49ers job for at least another year or two. But there’s a very real possibility that the second half of the season will be the last real shot the other passers in this group get to lock down a starting job of their own.
20. Why are there so many regulations on NFL uniforms?
It’s been two months since I asked this question, and I’ve grown only more frustrated by the lack of answers. Over the past month, we’ve seen the Buccaneers, Seahawks, Titans, and Eagles all rock beautiful throwback jerseys that just about everyone on the internet approved of. Nobody on the internet agrees on anything anymore, especially not uniforms, but there was a consensus here. Not only should those teams be able to wear their throwbacks whenever they please—Seattle should do it every week—but other teams, inspired by those looks, should also have the freedom to choose alternate jerseys of their own without getting league approval during the offseason.
21. Can Micah Parsons take over as the NFL’s best defensive player?
Parsons is the betting favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year and has been even more dominant than he was a season ago, when he nearly won the award. With that said, Aaron Donald is still playing like Aaron Donald and has just one fewer sack than Parsons. The Cowboys superstar may have to wait at least one more year before he can claim the title.
22. Where will Jonathan Taylor play this season?
A few weeks after we asked this question, which was inspired by a trade request and some very public complaints from Taylor’s agent, the running back signed a three-year, $42 million extension to remain in Indianapolis. Taylor had some rust to knock off after missing training camp, and he had strung together two productive games before averaging 2.6 yards per attempt on Sunday against the Panthers defense, which had little interest in defending the Colts passing game. With Gardner Minshew at quarterback, Taylor can expect to see similar looks all season long. He’ll have to be better if the Colts are going to make a run at the AFC South title.
23. All right, so who’s winning the Super Bowl?
I believe the Ravens are the best team in the NFL right now, but I’m sticking with the Chiefs as my pick to win the Super Bowl. As long as Mahomes is healthy, that won’t change.
