Every week in “4-Down Territory,” Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar and Luke Easterling of Bucs Wire and Draft Wire go over the things you need to know about, and the things you need to watch, in the NFL right now. With Week 3 of the 2022 NFL season in the books, there was a lot to cover!
This week, Doug and Luke discuss:
- Which of the five rookie cornerbacks who had interceptions on Sunday has been most impressive through the season so far;
- Why the Packers are in trouble, and how they can turn things around;
- Whether the NFC East has become the best division in football after years of justifiable “NFC Least” jokes; and
- What it will take for the NFL to get roughing the passer calls right.
You can watch this week’s “4-Down Territory” right here:
Who's the most impressive rookie cornerback so far?
Five different rookie cornerbacks – Derek Stingley Jr. of the Texans, Sauce Gardner of the Jets, Kaiir Elam of the Bills, Jack Jones of the Patriots, and Tariq Woolen of the Seahawks – had interceptions in the early slate of Sunday’s games. A pretty remarkable run. But interceptions aren’t the perfect arbiter of cornerback performance. Based on their overall play this season, which of those five rookie cornerbacks do you think has acquitted himself with the most authority?
Doug: I’ll go with Tariq Woolen, because the performances this guy keeps putting up? I don’t think anybody expected this. Through his first five games, per Pro Football Focus, Woolen has allowed 11 catches on 20 targets for 153 yards, 54 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, a league-high three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 40.2, which is fifth-best in the NFL among cornerbacks who have played at least 50% of their snaps. Woolen was a size/speed guy out of the University of Texas at San Antonio who we all thought would take a year or two to get the hang of the techniques and nuances required to cover NFL receivers. Well, he went from small-school to NFL graduate degree faster than anybody could have imagined.
Luke: Usually, I like to pick someone else just for the sake of debate, but I can’t do it this time. Woolen was one of my absolute favorite prospects in this draft, and I was absolutely shocked that he fell all the way to the fifth round. Yes, his film was raw, but he has physical traits that are extremely rare and unteachable, and the confidence you have to have to play that position at the highest level. I wanted the Bucs to take him at the end of the 2nd round! He was the No. 58 overall prospect on my board this year, and the Hawks stole him at No. 153. I figured it would take him some time to develop, but he’s already exceeding my lofty expectations.
Why are the Packers losing ground in the NFC?
The Packers are in trouble, and it’s more than just the jet lag or the vindaloo from their time in London. Against the Giants at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Aaron Rodgers failed to complete any of his six deep passes, Matt laFleur quit on the run game too quickly, and the defense was abysmal. Green Bay blew a 17-3 first-half lead in a 27-22 loss against a team they have the talent to beat 10 times out of 10. LaFleur said after the game that his team was both out-coached and out-played. At 3-2, is this a contender we can take seriously right now?
Doug: It’s hard for me to take them seriously, because the defense I thought would carry a transitional offense through hasn’t worked at all. I want to give full credit to Giants head coach Brian Daboll and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka for how they schemed things up with a similarly depressed receiver corps to what the Packers have, but this defense is a problem. Under defensive coordinator Joe Barry, Green Bay has been both top aggressive (biting on any kind of motion and misdirection early in the down) and too passive (letting receivers go through their routes uncontested).
The same defense that didn’t put Jaire Alexander on Justin Jefferson in Week 1 because they were playing zone looked completely untucked against an offense that has no Justin Jeffersons. It’s bad. The Packers need to shore that stuff up, and lead with the run game, or they’re going to get Mossed right out of the postseason if they’re not careful.
Luke: I think any team with a quarterback like Rodgers will have to be taken seriously to some degree, but I agree, the rest of the team looks like a mess right now. The defense is befuddling, and the lack of commitment to the ground game on offense makes absolutely no sense. With Rodgers trying to break in rookie receivers while dealing with the absence of Davante Adams, the Packers have to rely on the two-headed monster of Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon, or the offense is going nowhere fast. This team still has the talent to be a problem in the NFC, but it’s a matter of whether or not the headsets can maximize that talent, and that’s not happening right now.
The NFC East: From NFC Least to NFC Best?
Speaking of the Giants, there are now three teams in the NFC East – the Giants, Eagles, and Cowboys – with at least four wins through the first five weeks of the season. Per ESPN Stats & Info, Since the NFL went to 8 divisions in 2002, there have been 3 other instances where a division had three 4-win teams through the first 5 weeks of the season.– the 2020 AFC North, the 2008 NFC East, and the 2002 AFC West. After all the legitimate “NFC Least” jokes in recent years, is this now the best division in football?
Doug: As Tom Brady said last week, there’s a lot of bad football out there. I see the lowest amount of bad football in the NFC East, so I guess that’s the standard at this point in the season. The Eagles won ugly against the Cardinals to maintain their status as the NFL’s only undefeated team, the Cowboys are winning with Cooper Rush because their defense is absolutely brilliant, and as we’ve already discussed, the Giants are scheming around their talent deficits to an impressive degree on both sides of the ball. Even the 1-4 Commanders have talent; they’re just mired in a bad defensive plan, and beholden to Carson Wentz’s inconsistencies.
Luke: I said it last week, Doug…you are what your record says you are, and that means the best football in the league right now is being played in the NFC East. Strange as it would have seemed just a couple of years ago, those three teams at the top are getting the job done in whatever ways are necessary, leaning on their strongest points, and doing their best to scheme around where they’re lacking at the moment. I might bet that if Sam Howell was throwing the passes in Washington, the Commanders might be better than 1-4, too.
Why can't anybody get roughing the passer right?
For the second straight week, referee Jerome Boger called a questionable roughing the passer penalty on a defender which altered the course of the game. First, it was Week 4 against Ravens cornerback Brandon Stephens in Baltimore’s loss to the Bills, and on Sunday, it was against Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett on a highly questionable call when Jarrett sacked Tom Brady. Meanwhile, Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett was hit by former Pitt teammate Damar Hamlin on a play where Pickett had clearly given himself up, and there was no flag. There was a flag on Steelers offensive lineman James Daniels for coming to the defense of his quarterback. With all the talk about player safety these days, is it time to do something about the uneven nature of protecting the quarterback?
(Note: This episode was shot before Carl Cheffers’ Monday night roughing the passer call on Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones, which was even worse than Boger’s call on Jarrett).
Doug: There’s a codicil in the NFL rule book which says, “When in doubt about a roughness call or potentially dangerous tactic against the passer, the Referee should always call roughing the passer.” You can’t give a group of officials that much variance on a call that’s not reviewable and can be that game-changing, and expect everyone to get it anywhere near right. Boger obviously has his internal checklist of what roughing the passer looks like, and whether it’s right or wrong doesn’t matter to the NFL, if you apply that part of the rule to the penalty.
As for the Pickett play, the NFL, for all its protections of quarterbacks in the pocket, don’t do enough to protect them when they’re runners. We saw this with Cam Newton for years. Pickett was sliding when Hamlin hit him – he had clearly given himself up. So, I don’t know why referee John Hussey and his crew thought that hit was acceptable – maybe because it wasn’t obvious targeting – but there was another play in that game where Bills edge-rusher Carl Lawson obviously went for Pickett’s knees as Pickett ran outside the pocket, and it was Pickett who got an unnecessary roughness penalty when he reacted to what Lawson did. Lawson was not penalized on the play, because it’s a legal hit.
Kenny Pickett got hit low by Shaq Lawson and let him know about it. pic.twitter.com/rYp2kbRNUt
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) October 9, 2022
So, as is the case with a lot of rules in the NFL, you can’t over-complicate this stuff. Not because officials are idiots; but because things happen at a bang-bang rate in the NFL, and you can’t have people flipping through their internal Rolodexes in the moment.
Luke: I’m right there with you on all of that. Sunday was a rough day for Boger’s crew in general, from missing multiple pass interference calls on deep shots to Scotty Miller, to not understanding their own rules about substitutions within two minutes at the end of a half, to more roughing the passer calls/no-calls that could have easily gone the other way. That call felt like a make-up call for missing clear DPI on the previous play, which Falcons fans felt was a make-up call for the third-down hold on A.J. Terrell that extended that same drive earlier. I think the problems with this officiating crew go far beyond that one call.
