NFL Week 4 Round-up: Worst Division in the League, plus Good Teams with Bad Records, and Playoff Predictions
Urban Meyer’s headshot for Fox Sports, via Fox Sports
This NFL season has taken my lunch money and run away with it. That’s okay -- this isn’t a gambling blog, but when I look back on my preseason predictions, I was pretty much either right on the money or tremendously wrong. Dak Prescott winning MVP was a solid prediction. He and Kellen Moore look to be in a real swing, and the Cowboys seem to be head and shoulders above their division competition. Jaire Alexander was a longshot DPOY candidate, and I’m not sure why I didn’t account for the fact that Myles Garrett just abuses professional offensive linemen on a weekly basis. Alexander had a decent start to the season before getting banged up in the last game, but Myles Garrett is playing like the most dominant pass-rusher in the league.
On the other side of things, I’m going to go ahead and take credit for a not-so-hot take that I had preseason, confirmed after week 1; The Urban Meyer experiment is going to be a complete and total disaster. I want to keep the blogging mostly focused on the field, but when your on-field product is as disgusting as the Jags have been this season, I don’t think you can separate the two. I’m not going to post it here, but Urban Meyer got caught in 4K this weekend, from multiple different angles, absolutely shitfaced with a much younger girl dancing on him. I’ll defer to fromer Super Bowl-winner Chris Long’s Twitter on this one -- where Long said that if he’s a vet on that team, he’s his own boss now. I don’t see a way in which Urban lasts through the season when a shaky locker room dynamic has deteriorated this fast. Both the players and ownership, as well as Meyer, will likely be ecstatic about a quick correction of this travesty. Players and ownership no longer have to deal with Urban Meyer and his daily drama, and Meyer gets to live out his dreams in sunny Los Angeles, coach a top college program, and hang out with a lot more blonde 20-year-olds.
Meanwhile, in light of Urban’s debauchery, I’ve been considering my options for the worst division in football.
Which is the worst division in the NFL?
There’s only one correct answer, but let me take you through the thought process. Every single division has either a playoff contender, a division favorite, or both, except for one. This means we have to remove conferences with multiple good teams from consideration. This automatically eliminates the NFC West, AFC West, AFC North, and NFC South. Both the NFC North and AFC East have conference championship favorites, which puts them out of contention. The NFC East boasts the Dallas Cowboys, who are somehow actually living up to expectations this year. Here lies the AFC South, the worst division in football. As always, let’s start negative so we can end positive.
The Tennessee Titans lost to the New York Jets. Read that sentence over again and make it make sense. Take a look at the box score, and it makes even less sense. The Titans are clearly the more talented team, but were outplayed and outcoached across the board. The biggest issue for this team continues to be a banged-up offensive line that can’t keep any continuity or consistency in protecting Tannehill. The Titans’ number one threat is the play action game coming off of the Derrick Henry run. Without Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, or any semblance of protection for Tannehill, the Titans can’t get the separation or time to create explosive plays downfield. Hopefully, this is an aberration, but the Titans lead the league in sacks allowed, and that usually doesn’t fix itself without a shake-up of some sort. The injury bug is one thing, and it was certainly apparent for the Titans on Sunday. But the injury bug isn’t a sufficient excuse for losing to Zach Wilson and the New York Jets, in a very winnable game.
The Colts aren’t even worth talking about. This team is so damn boring and un-fun that I hesitate to even write about them. Carson Wentz is exactly as advertised. No, he hasn’t been as bad as he was in Philly for the last couple years. Still, playing on two hobbled ankles, he only tossed 3 touchdowns in the first three weeks, including a goose egg in the Titans game week 3. His outing against Miami wasn’t stellar, but he played very efficiently given the Colts’ defense was having a field day against Jacoby Brissett and a Dolphins’ offense that couldn’t run the ball to save their lives. However, you can’t put all the blame on Wentz. He’s being pressured at the highest rate of his career, on 30% of his dropbacks this year, backing up a concern that few people had going into the season. Their offensive line is horrendous. Maybe, it’s not quite Titans horrendous, but it’s bad enough to be a major concern. This team will need a big turnaround to seriously compete for the division.
The Texans are the Texans, and with a rookie quarterback, they look awful. There’s still NFL-level talent on the team, but they are a write-off in nearly every game, especially with Davis Mills getting the nod while Tyrod Taylor is out.
I’ve already gone into detail on how much of a mess is on Shad Khan’s hands in Jacksonville. Urban Meyer is an unmitigated disaster, and even worse, if it doesn’t get corrected soon, Trevor Lawrence could be ruined. Good coaching makes an invaluable difference in developing young quarterbacks, and I think this could be a dark horse spot for Joe Brady to land as a head coach. He turned Sam Darnold into one of the league leaders in TD runs and led the Panthers’ complimentary offense to a 3-1 record.
It’s not like the Jags are completely talent-devoid. In fact, they led the entire way against the Bengals last Thursday. When your team is losing one score games and blowing leads consistently, the coaching deserves more blame than the players more often than not (see: Anthony Lynn’s tenure with the Chargers). I should note that I didn’t like Urban Meyer as a human or a leader before he took over the impoverished joke that is the professional football team in Jacksonville. This situation is honestly hilarious to me, as I laugh at all the pundits who thought Urban would be remotely a good coach for one of the saddest franchises in recent memory.
All this to say, the AFC South is the new NFC East. Multiple years running, the NFC East has been a trash heap of terrible football teams (and still is), but this year, there’s not a clear pull-away favorite in the AFC South. It’s going to come down to the Titans and the Colts, but whichever team hosts a wild card game will likely be the worst team to make the playoffs this year. The AFC South is the worst division in the NFL.
Good Teams with Bad Records
Speaking of one-score games, are the Minnesota Vikings a good team in disguise? This is where I run for the door as everyone dances on their 1-3 grave. Every game they’ve lost has been winnable -- all one score games. The Bengals loss is just week 1, but a heartbreaker against the Cardinals (the only undefeated team in the league) really set this team back. Despite the fact that they’re middling to below average in nearly every major stat, their top-10 passing game is keeping them in ball games. I actually believe that, if Dalvin Cook can stay healthy, this team could start pulling out some of these tight games, especially if Kirk Cousins continues to play turnover-free football.
I am acutely aware of Cousins’s limitations (creating plays with his legs, low EPA/play), but the Vikings have done a phenomenal job surrounding him with talent, featuring Justin Jefferson. Despite having less time to throw (avg. of 2.3 sec./throw in 2021 vs. 2.7 in 2020), his receivers are getting early and consistent separation so that he doesn’t have to hold onto the ball. Whether they can get out of their 1-3 hole is an entirely different conversation, but they’ll have 4 games combined against Matt Nagy and Dan Campbell’s respective shit shows to bolster their record towards the playoffs. Bottom line: Don’t count out the Vikings, even though their record doesn’t look great.
The Seattle Seahawks got a huge win this weekend to bring their record to 2-2. I don’t expect them to burn everyone from here on out en route to a division title, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they could end up in a Wild Card spot. Boasting the league’s worst rushing defense certainly won’t help them, but they’re not even bottom-10 in points scored per drive. Long gone are the days of the Legion of Boom -- it’s year 3 or 4 of “Let Russ Cook.” When Russ cooks, though -- or doesn’t -- it puts their horrible defense back on the field. The Seahawks take the cake through 4 weeks for worst in the league in time of possession and plays attempted. They’re not turning the ball over, but they might as well be. It’s truly a boom or bust offense, one that can be really explosive if Russ is completing long balls to Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalf. The problem is that their defense isn’t good enough to hold up. It’s not what Seahawks fans want to hear, or really any football fan for that matter, but the offense has to control the ball more often, accumulate more plays, and chew up clock in order to account for a defense that can’t stop anyone on the ground, even with the league’s best average starting field position. Seattle will be a very fascinating team to watch down the stretch, especially if their defense can start to pull together, and if Russ’s offense can actually stay on the field.
There are some honorable mentions here, even though I think those two teams are the most up for debate. For every other team, I really lean in one direction or the other. I’ll give some quick comments on them.
New Orleans: The Jameis experiment is working for reasons that have nothing to do with Jameis Winston, including Alvin Kamara and a feisty defense. This team will probably get a Wild Card spot, but an awful, season-ruining Jameis interception is looming on the horizon, waiting to show itself.
Kansas City: Is this really a debate? The Chiefs are obviously good. They just have to fix the defense. Hello Jaylon Smith or Stephon Gilmore?
San Francisco: I think the jury is more out on SF than any other NFL team. They’ll compete in every game, but for as much as we love to dissect Kyle Shanahan as an offensive deity, he has some real play calling warts, and I think it’s going to be an uphill climb for Trey Lance this year. This should be an Alex Smith/Patrick Mahomes situation, and the Niners should try to get it done with Jimmy G this year, though he’s not going to take them above and beyond.
Giants: Stop pretending Daniel Jones is going to win you football games. Go home. You have no hope.
Indianapolis: No team with 2021 Carson Wentz as their QB will ever be NFL “good.”
Playoff Predictions:
Now that we’re about a quarter of the way through the season, I can start to make some predictions. This is not a projection, but a prediction. It’s how I think the season will shake out based on 4 weeks of action. I won’t give record predictions quite yet -- I’m not that ballsy.
AFC:
1.) Browns
2.) Bills
3.) Chiefs
4.) Titans
5.) Chargers
6.) Raiders
7.) Ravens
Notes: First, I think there’s a realistic shot that the Broncos could make the playoffs, but I won’t put all four teams from a division in. Second, this would mark the third postseason in a row that the Titans and Ravens both get to run the ball at each other into brick walls for 60 minutes straight en route to a 24-17 game. Third, you could pick any order for Raiders, Chiefs, and Chargers. That race could go any direction.
NFC:
1.) Rams
2.) Cowboys
3.) Packers
4.) Buccaneers
5.) Cardinals
6.) Panthers
7.) Seahawks
Notes: The Saints will inevitably come back to bite me here, but I don’t care. Jameis Winston is not a playoff quarterback, even if his defense is playoff caliber. I’m also not totally sold on the Panthers, but Matt Rhule’s coaching job thus far has been superb.
That’s all for this week’s NFL Round-up. Catch the Blanket Coverage Podcast on Wednesdays and Thursdays as we visit these matters more in depth. Follow us on Twitter @BlanketCovPod, and make sure you stay up to date with all of the GTD family as well.