After one month, the 2022 NFL regular season is going roughly the way we expected in some respects.
The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs look like the cream of the AFC again. The Philadelphia Eagles, buoyed by offseason additions, have produced the kind of improvements to transform from an easy Wild Card out to a bonafide Super Bowl contender. Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs and Cooper Kupp are catching a ton of passes.
This doesn’t mean things have been predictable. The league is loaded with surprises that could either be early season outliers or a harbinger of things to come. A four-game sample size provides just enough data to tantalize, even if there’s no guarantee these trends will prove to be more than September/October ephemera.
Let’s take a look at some of Week 4’s most interesting trends and see if they’re built to last, starting with the Green Bay Packers’ mirage of a 3-1 start all the way down to a budding quarterback non-controversy in Dallas.
1
The Green Bay Packers 3-1 record is a mirage
The Packers have battled back from an opening day spanking at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings with three straight wins — including victories over a division rival and every NFL team for which Tom Brady has ever played. That should be enough to help fans in Wisconsin R-E-L-A-X, but that record isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Green Bay hasn’t been winning as much as surviving. In Week 4, the Pack were nearly upset at home by the New England Patriots’ third-string quarterback before squeaking out an overtime victory.
Aaron Rodgers is fully aware of how grim things look despite the 3-1 record.
“This way of winning, I don’t think, is sustainable because it puts too much pressure on our defense,” Rodgers told reporters after Sunday’s game. “And obviously, I’ve got to play better and will play better.”
Does Green Bay have the personnel to change its ways? Can Rodgers be superhuman again? Through four games, this is a flawed team whose wins are entirely too close for comfort.
Buy or sell? … neither?
This is a tough spot. Team management attempted to build up the defense so it could paper over whatever flaws the passing offense had. That hasn’t happened.
The Packers knew the Patriots would be forced to run the ball in Week 4 and still gave up more than five yards per carry. Rodgers was a mess in the first half — he completed only four of 11 passes and threw a pick-six — and Green Bay trailed an inferior opponent 10-7 at the half.
Rodgers righted the ship and pushed Allen Lazard to one of his best games as a pro while continuing to build his relationship with rookie Romeo Doubs, who would have had a late-sealing touchdown late in the fourth quarter had he been able to avoid Dez Bryant-ing himself.
He still finished with five catches for 47 yards. Lazard and Doubs aren’t going to blow anyone away as a 1-2 punch, but getting any kind of consistency from that pairing would go a long way in saving the Packer passing offense.
Green Bay has some runway to set things right. The next three weeks bring matchups against the Giants, Jets and Commanders — three punchy opponents but also games most fans have penciled in as “W” on their calendars. Rashan Gary and Kenny Clark are monsters up front and this secondary has the starpower needed to keep the NFC’s top quarterbacks grounded.
There’s work to be done, but the Packers might be “13 wins” good again, even if they haven’t felt like it in the first month of the season.
2
The New Orleans Saints are spinning out without Sean Payton on the sideline
The Saints are 1-3 in their first season without Sean Payton at head coach. Their -20 point differential is tied for second-worst in the NFC. An offense that was wildly efficient with Jameis Winston behind center for seven games of 2021 has turned the ball over a league-high 11 times in four games.
New Orleans’ lone win came in a Week 1 squeaker against the Falcons that was a botched snap away from being a Saints loss. In the past two weeks they’ve lost to Baker Mayfield and Kirk Cousins. A brutal schedule remains, which would typically mean a great draft pick in response — but general manager Mickey Loomis owes the team’s Day 1 selection to the Philadelphia Eagles after acquiring the draft capital to select Chris Olave and Trevor Penning last spring.
This all points to a reckoning for a franchise that’s won at least seven games each season since 2005.
Buy or sell? Buy.
Winston sat out Week 4’s game with fractures in his back, but he hasn’t been the same player under 2022 head coach Dennis Allen that he was in 2021’s limited run with Payton. He threw five interceptions in his previous two starts, giving New Orleans glimpses of the Tampa Bay Jameis it saw twice a year between 2015 and 2019.
A formerly reliable offensive line has slipped without Terron Armstead at left tackle, leading to higher sack rates and a passing game that hasn’t been able to keep up with an improved rushing attack. This team is loaded with playmakers — Olave, Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara, etc — but turnovers and struggles on third down have kept the Saints from capitalizing on that star power.
3
The Atlanta Falcons hate Kyle Pitts ('s production)
In the first year of the Arthur Smith era, Kyle Pitts became only the second rookie tight end in NFL history to record at least 1,000 receiving yards. In the second year of the Arthur Smith era, Pitts has fewer receiving yards than Greg Dortch, Josh Palmer, Richie James, Ashton Dulin and teammate Olamide Zaccheaus.
The player the Falcons drafted fourth overall in 2021 has been an afterthought in one of the league’s least impressive passing offenses. His 22 targets rank 11th among NFL tight ends. Take away a five-catch, 87-yard performance in Week 3 against the Seahawks and he’s got five catches for 63 yards across three games.
Smith dismissed concerns about Pitts’ impact as fantasy football hand-wringing before Week 3, but it’s fair to question the usage of the highest-drafted tight end since Billy Cannon in 1960 for an offense that currently ranks 28th in passing yards per game.
Buy or sell? Buy, at least until we get a quarterback switch.
The Falcons aren’t boring, but they aren’t quite the big play/scoring machine you’d expect from a lineup pairing Pitts, Cordarrelle Patterson and Drake London. Some of that can be chalked up to a run game that’s been more effective than expected; Atlanta’s 5.1 yards per carry is the sixth-best mark in the league.
Part of the problem is also that Marcus Mariota hasn’t been throwing the ball much. Things aren’t quite Chicago Bears bad, but the veteran completed only seven passes on Sunday. His 98 attempts for the season to date is lower than any player who’s made at least four starts besides Justin Fields.
Mariota is a short-term caretaker keeping a spot warm before 2022 third-round pick Desmond Ridder gets a proper audition. While the free agent signee earned a win in Week 4, he also threw an interception, fumbled once and completed 36.8 percent of his passes. Ridder, rookie or not, can certainly hit that baseline of service behind center.
Pitts is a mismatch machine; too fast for linebackers to shadow and too big for cornerbacks and safeties to contain. In no world should he have less of an impact than Taysom Hill. Fix your stuff, Falcons.
4
Jared Goff is one of the most explosive quarterbacks in the NFL
A big part of why the Detroit Lions were able to extricate two firsts and a third-round pick in exchange for 33-year-old Matthew Stafford was because they were willing to take back Goff and his onerous contract. Goff’s $134 million, four-year extension, signed in 2019 after a 13-win season, was an albatross when the young quarterback’s level of play dipped, carrying salary cap hits of $30-plus million into 2024.
Releasing Goff in 2021 or 2022 would have incurred absurd dead salary cap space. This tied him to Detroit’s rebuild for at least two years. He was mostly the guy Los Angeles no longer wanted in 2021. This fall, however, he’s been significantly better.
Here’s where 2022 Goff ranks among NFL starters:
- Passing touchdowns: 11, tied for first
- Passing yards: 1,126, third
- Adjusted yards per attempt: 8.0, seventh
- Passer rating: 99.9, seventh
- Average throw distance: 9.2 yards downfield, seventh
Welp, it’s a small sample size but the results are clear: Jared Goff is a viable NFL starter in Detroit.
Buy or sell? Buy, somehow.
Goff’s accuracy has taken a hit, but his efficiency has risen because he’s willing to trust his targets downfield. His average throw distance had decreased every year since 2017, dwindling to a league-low 6.4 yards last fall. This year he’s back to Pro Bowl levels of passing confidence and thriving in the intermediate range; here’s what he did Sunday without Amon-Ra St. Brown in the lineup.
That’s encouraging! Goff isn’t buoyed by big yards-after catch numbers. Instead, he’s making the kinds of throws that had the Rams so excited about him five years ago. It’s not ludicrous to think that at 27 years old he made lasting adjustments to his game.
Keeping that pace will be tough, but the Lions have surrounded him with help — including rookie Jameson Williams, who’ll make his NFL debut at some point in 2022 after ending his Alabama career with a torn ACL. Goff might just be good enough to help him thrive once he finally takes the field.
5
Cooper Rush has given the Cowboys an actual quarterback debate
Cooper Rush has done something no other Dallas Cowboy quarterback ever has. He’s begun his career with a 4-0 record as a starter.
Since coming on in relief of an injured Dak Prescott in Week 1, the former undrafted free agent — who earned a win in a 2021 start against the Minnesota Vikings — has been at the helm for three straight victories. After toppling the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 2, he’s since dispatched the Giants and Commanders.
He’s been an efficient, if low impact, influence behind center. Rush hasn’t turned the ball over once en route to a 100.9 passer rating. Between Weeks 2 and 4 he’s been a top 12 quarterback.
This means Prescott won’t have to rush back from the hand injury that took him off the field in September. But would he have to worry about his job security if Rush keeps guiding Dallas to wins with steady quarterbacking?
Buy or sell? Sell.
Prescott was terrible in Week 1 — legitimately the worst quarterback in the league across 16 games.
But to balance one bad game against an elite defense against the small sample size of a player the Cowboys outright cut in August would be monumentally shortsighted. While Rush’s small resume includes two game-winning drives, the only top 10 defense he’s faced in a meaningful game was a Cincinnati team that’s largely benefitted from playing backup QBs in 2022 (Rush, Mitchell Trubisky, Teddy Bridgewater and Joe Flacco).
Prescott, currently armed with a four-year, $160 million extension, had 14 game winning drives across his first three seasons while operating a lighter-lift offense before developing into a more prolific downfield passer the past four years. He averaged 303 passing yards per game between 2019 and 2021 while maintaining a 101.6 passer rating. Rush, on the other hand, has yet to throw for more than 235 yards in 2022 with a 95.9 rating.
While it would be fun to imagine another year where the Cowboys turn an overlooked quarterback into an unlikely starter by injury and continue the Tony Romo-Prescott chain, it’s probably not going to happen. Rush has been better than expected as a high-floor, low(ish)-ceiling fill-in. His presence is instrumental to Dallas’ 3-1 record.
But he’s not Prescott, whose job is safe. Unless, of course, he struggles his first few games back in the lineup. In that case, well, maybe it’s Rush season after all.
