The NFL has had its wildest offseason in recent memory. The quarterback carousel has been spinning. Record contracts have been inked. And it feels like just yesterday that Aaron Rodgers was getting intimate with oils. Here are the winners of the offseason so far.
A quick note: these are the teams that have improved their chances the most for next season.
Denver Broncos
When you move on from Drew Lock and land Russell Wilson, you know you’ve had a good offseason. There are fair questions about the fit between Wilson and the Broncos’ new head coach, Nathaniel Hackett. It isn’t a seamless melding of minds. And you can point, too, to the possibility that Wilson’s game may not age well. He still relies on his mobility as much as any of the game’s upper-tier quarterbacks. What will a Wilson offense look like once his legs start to go?
But that’s tomorrow’s problem! The AFC West is now a year-to-year gauntlet. If you’re bringing anything other than a top-eight quarterback to the proceedings, then there is no chance that you’re making the playoffs.
The Broncos started the offseason with a bottom-three quarterback situation and catapulted themselves into that small cluster of teams who can conceivably claim to have one of the five best in the game (two others happen to be in the same division). And all for a quartet of draft picks and a trio of peripheral players Denver will soon forget about.
Los Angeles Chargers
Having a top-five quarterback on a rookie-scale contract is the sport’s top market inefficiency. The Chargers took full advantage of their situation early in the offseason, investing aggressively, both in terms of cash and draft capital, in an attempt to improve their obvious flaws.
First up: A historically awful run defense. Brandon Staley, the team’s head coach, is a proponent of what is known as the ‘Light Box’ theory, which essentially involves his team vacating the box in order to invite the run – the idea being that the run-game is, in general, less efficient than the pass.
It’s a philosophy that garners talk of genius when a coach is working with Aaron Donald and Sebastian Joseph-Day. Line-up with Jerry Tillery, Justin Jones, and the group Staley was working with last season? Gulp. The Chargers finished dead last in the NFL in EPA per play against the run, a measure of a unit’s down-to-down efficiency.
Chargers general manager Tom Telesco wasted no time in trying to turn things around, trading for former NFL defensive player of the year Khalil Mack and reuniting his coach with Joseph-Day, one of the league’s most underrated nose tackles. A reinforced front with Mack alongside Joey Bosa gives Staley the bookends he needs to run his idiosyncratic early-down defense, and offers the Chargers a formidable one-two pass-rush punch on later downs.
Things have shifted on the back end, too. One element to the Staley orthodoxy is how few coverages the coach likes to run within a single game. Staley’s grand plan is to have as dynamic a defense over the entire season as possible – bouncing from one thing to another on a week-to-week basis. But in each individual game, Staley and his defense lean all the way into their chosen style. It’s not unusual to see the Chargers run the same coverage concept on nine or 10 successive plays, typically a no-no in the NFL.
Handing former Patriots cornerback JC Jackson a $16m-a-year deal is a bid by the Chargers to diversify their coverage packages. Staley likes to play zone; Jackson is a best as a man-to-man corner. The majority of NFL teams now run fancy coverages that pair both principles together. The Chargers were lacking that complexity last year, but by dropping in Jackson alongside safeties Nasir Adderley and Derwin James, Staley now has a malleable secondary that will allow him to get more adventurous in coverage.
Miami Dolphins
Over the span of a week, the Dolphins signed Terron Armstead, one of the league’s best left tackles (when healthy), and traded for Tyreek Hill, the league’s most impactful wide receiver.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Hill trade. Few trades really have the potential to transform an organization. The Hill-to-Miami deal does. Hill is one of the few non-quarterbacks whose skill-set completely shifts the geometry of the field. His ability to outpace anyone on the defensive side of the ball forces opposing defensive coordinators to commit two pieces – at a minimum – to securing leverage on his position at all times, and to back up as far from the line of scrimmage as possible, for fear of being left in the dust.
There will be no more excuses for Tua Tagovailoa moving forward. The Dolphins have secured a run-game guru at head coach, reinforced the offensive line, and added Hill to a receiving corps featuring Jaylen Waddle and Mike Gesicki. Good luck to anyone trying to slow that offense down.
Cincinnati Bengals
Like the Chargers, the Bengals had an obvious weakness and set to work remapping their weakest area: The offensive line. Cincy’s group gifted a historic amount of pressure on Joe Burrow last season, finishing with the league’s worst pressure rate and conceding 70 sacks, an NFL record.
The Bengals focused less on chucking money at their problem and more on changing the profile of their offensive line altogether. Burrow’s bobbing, weaving, create-on-the-fly style pushed the Bengals into investing in a series of latch-and-shuffle linemen early in the quarterback’s career – men who would fight and scrap throughout a play as Burrow looked to move and create.
No more. The Bengals moved to bring in Ted Karras, Alex Cappa, and La’el Collins. All three are maulers. All three play a more proactive style than the Bengals have opted for during the Burrow era. All three want to stun defenders early on, win with an initial jolt, and then hope for the best. The Bengals’ plan is clear: Win early in the rep, and then if Joe needs to make a play, he’ll figure it out.
It’s a smart change, and they’re probably not done. The Bengals are likely to explore the trade market or look to add another lineman early in the draft. Protecting Burrow is all that matters, and the typically slow-moving (read: cheap) Bengals have shown a commitment to protecting their franchise quarterback for the long term.
Buffalo Bills
Buffalo were 12 seconds of chaos away from beating the Chiefs in the playoffs last season. If they had advanced, they would probably have beaten the Bengals in the AFC title game – from there, who knows?
They have added strength on strength this offseason, signing Von Miller to a six-year mega-deal that effectively functions as a three-year, please-push-us-over-the-top plea for help. The Bills didn’t desperately need extra pass-rushing juice, but adding a future Hall of Famer who totaled 80-odd pressures last year (his best return since 2017) and delivered defining plays throughout the Rams’ run to the Super Bowl is the kind of move that shifts a team from being great into an out-and-out juggernaut.
Don’t overlook the addition of Rodger Saffold to the offensive line, either. The Titans released Saffold due to a decline in play, his advancing age, and some injury concerns. But if he’s healthy and good to go he will bring a tenacity to the Bills’ run game that has been sorely lacking over the last couple of seasons.
Indianapolis Colts
Think about this:
The Colts entered the offseason with Carson Wentz, a bad quarterback
They leave the offseason with Matt Ryan, a good quarterback, one who comfortably outperformed the surrounding tire-fire in Atlanta last season.
They did so without adding any extra money to their cap, with Atlanta absorbing a $40m (!) dead cap hit.
Ryan’s cap hold is lower in Indy than Wentz’s would have been.
They did it all for the cost of a third-round pick … and they brought in two third-round picks by dealing Wentz to Washington.
Chris Ballard has made some funky decisions over the past 12 months. But his handling of the offseason quarterback shuffle should earn him executive of the year nods already.
The Colts roster is far from complete. But unlike other sides staring down the AFC’s quarterback standoff, the Colts need only worry about contending in their own division: win 10 games, pip the Titans to the division title, and they will make the playoffs. With Ryan offering competent quarterback play and a defense laden with talent, 10 wins should be the floor.
Ryan will be the Colts’ fifth starting quarterback in five years. And it’s likely that within two years he will hit the wall and Indianapolis will once again be in the market for a quarterback. But Ryan is an undoubted upgrade over Wentz, and adding him offers more wiggle room with the cap to add other impactful pieces. An offseason doesn’t get much better than that.
