Welcome to NFL Under Review, a weekly column where I will sound off on misguided narratives, inexplicable coaching decisions, and other topics around the NFL. Each Tuesday throughout the course of the season, you’ll get my takes on what happened the previous weekend, with an eye on what’s to come.
The Saints are the biggest surprise of the early season.
Come on in here for a second. Let me tell you a little secret: I thought this Saints team would be terrible. Oh, what’s that? You consume Ringer podcasts and articles and already knew that? OK then, let’s just speak freely! When I did my preseason scouting, I saw a mediocre quarterback in Derek Carr. I saw a head coach in Dennis Allen with a career .361 winning percentage. I saw an unproven offensive line with a low floor. And I saw an aging defense. All of that pointed to a team that I figured would finish below .500.
Well, through two weeks—and let’s be clear, it’s only two weeks—I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was hard to put too much stock in the Saints’ Week 1 win over the Panthers, given the awfulness of the opponent. (More on them in a minute.) But in Week 2, the Saints went to Dallas and embarrassed the Cowboys. They scored touchdowns on their first six (!) possessions of the game en route to a 44-19 victory. And five of those six scoring drives went at least 70 yards. Through two games, the Saints have outscored their opponents by a whopping 62 points (no other team is better than plus-35). And while Allen’s defense has played well, the key to the hot start has been the offense. Given that the Saints’ offensive personnel hasn’t changed much from last season when this was, by all accounts, a mediocre group, it was hard to see this turnaround coming. But it appears that the difference-maker for the Saints might be new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.
If you had access to my phone, you would find a group chat or two from the summer in which friends tried to convince me that Kubiak would provide an upgrade over longtime offensive coordinator and Sean Payton disciple Pete Carmichael, and I may or may not have made fun of them for believing that this nepo baby coach (his dad is Super Bowl winner Gary Kubiak) had the goods. (I’m not proud of it, but you will get honesty in this column!) But there’s no other way to spin Sunday’s performance: Kubiak cooked Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer.
Kubiak’s challenge was to make sure that Micah Parsons and the Cowboys pass rush didn’t wreck the game. Kubiak employed every trick in the book to make sure that Dallas couldn’t just tee off on Carr, who used play-action on a league-high 58.8 percent of his pass plays, according to Next Gen Stats. On those plays, Carr went 7-for-11 for 205 passing yards (18.6 yards per attempt!). And Kubiak dialed up a 57-yard touchdown to Alvin Kamara on a beautifully executed screen pass. The Saints averaged a league-best 9.3 yards per play when using motion in Week 2. The formula couldn’t have worked any better. The Cowboys totaled just one quarterback hit; in Week 1 against Cleveland, they had 17! After the game, Parsons praised Kubiak’s “creative” blocking schemes, saying the Saints threw things at him he hadn’t seen before and describing it as going through a maze to get to the quarterback.
Of course, it’s never just the coaching. Carr has made some big-time throws. Rashid Shaheed looks like one of the NFL’s premier deep threats. Chris Olave could be making the leap in year three. And Kamara looks like he’s found the fountain of youth. Through two weeks, the Saints offense ranks first in offensive success rate, expected points added per drive, and scoring. They have scored a league-high 11 touchdowns—four more than any other team. It’s only two weeks, but if you’re a Saints fan who went into this season with no real expectations, you have to love what you’re seeing so far.
Nick Sirianni got conservative, and it cost the Eagles.
Most of the time when it comes to game management, coaches get crushed when they follow the analytics and it doesn’t work out. But what about when a coach doesn’t make the analytically sound (yet unorthodox) decision and it costs their team? That’s what we saw with Sirianni and the Eagles late in the fourth quarter of their Monday-night loss to the Falcons.
The Eagles were up 18-15 with 1:46 left and faced a third-and-3 at the Falcons’ 10. Atlanta was out of timeouts. In that spot, Sirianni should have been communicating to offensive coordinator Kellen Moore that it was four-down territory so that Moore could call plays accordingly, but that’s apparently not what happened. The Eagles called a pass on third down, and Saquon Barkley was wide open, but he dropped it. Philadelphia then kicked a field goal on fourth down. Kirk Cousins needed just 65 seconds to drive the Falcons 70 yards for the game-winning touchdown.
The Ringer’s 2024 NFL Rankings
Your hub for The Ringer’s NFL rankings has arrived. Here we’ll feature our Power Rankings, Trade Value Rankings, and, of course, QB Rankings. Check back every week during the season as we put the league in order.
The Eagles’ approach in that critical spot was flawed. Had Sirianni and Moore communicated it was four-down territory, they could have easily run the ball on third down instead of attempting that pass, which would have kept the clock running. If they didn’t pick up the 3 yards and convert, they could have gone for it on fourth down. So what’s the thinking behind wanting to be aggressive and throw it there? Back in 2020, Eric Eager, a football analyst who is now the vice president of football analytics with the Panthers, wrote about why going from a three-point lead to a six-point lead late in the game is the wrong choice. When teams are down three, they tend to play conservatively for the field goal. Had the Eagles been stopped on third and fourth down, the Falcons would have gotten possession inside their own 10 with under a minute left, needing just a field goal to tie it. Typically, the trailing team in that spot is not playing to score a touchdown. It is playing to get into field goal range, so it is not as aggressive. Hypothetically, had the Falcons kicked a game-tying field goal, the game would have gone to overtime, and the Eagles still would have had essentially a 50/50 chance to win. In other words, the downside of the Eagles failing on fourth down (the worst-case scenario) wasn’t actually that bad.
But in the scenario that played out Monday night, the Eagles kicked the field goal. That meant the Falcons were down six when they got the ball. When teams are down six, they have no choice but to be aggressive. They know they can use all four downs the entire drive because the only successful outcome is a touchdown to win the game. And that’s exactly what we saw play out.
The publicly available analytical models back up the idea that the Eagles should have been thinking four downs, and these models assume that they would have been lined up for a fourth-and-3. Again, remember that if they would have run the ball on third down, they likely would have had a shorter distance to go on fourth down.
Of course, Sirianni’s game management is not the only reason the Eagles lost. Barkley probably makes that catch nine times out of 10. This just happened to be the time he dropped it. And it never comes down to one play. The Eagles defense could have stepped up at the end, but its pass rush was a disaster.
Sirianni has been stripped of almost all of his responsibilities. He doesn’t do the game-planning or play-calling on offense. He doesn’t hire the coordinators. And he doesn’t have autonomy on roster decisions. What he does handle is game management—and he needs to nail it, especially considering that he works for Jeffrey Lurie, who has long been forward-thinking when it comes to analytics. Sirianni turtled in a key spot on Monday night, and it cost his team.
Benching Bryce Young is fine. But the Panthers still have a David Tepper problem.
When bad teams stay bad in the NFL, the heart of the problem is usually obvious: It’s at the top. Panthers head coach Dave Canales announced Monday that the team is benching second-year quarterback Bryce Young in favor of veteran Andy Dalton, a day after Young was a special kind of horrible in Carolina’s Week 2 loss to the Chargers. He completed 18 of 26 passes for just 84 yards and threw an interception. Among a sample of 646 games since the start of the 2023 season, Young’s performance on Sunday ranked 642nd in passing success rate. By that metric, it was the worst start of his career.
Watching Young over the past two seasons has been an uncomfortable experience. He seems like a good guy who works hard and is well-liked by his teammates. And he was so freakin’ good in college, when he won the Heisman Trophy at Alabama, that this version of Young seems unrecognizable. But it’s another example of how hard quarterback evaluation is. Sure, anyone can crow now about how they knew Young would be bad and that the warning signs flashing “bust” were there all along. But if those same people were to show me their prospect rankings from the last decade, I bet there are other embarrassing misses to account for. The point is that quarterback prospect evaluation is a puzzle that nobody has been able to solve.
Given that Young has shown zero signs of getting better over the course of his 18 starts, benching him is a reasonable move. His career with the Panthers is likely over, but maybe Young can find a coach who believes in him and a team that will provide him with a better situation and he’ll be able to salvage his career. There are worse ways to make a living than playing backup quarterback for a few years.
As for the Panthers, they took a big swing and struck out. It doesn’t mean that teams should never trade up for a quarterback. Imagine the conversation we’d be having if they selected C.J. Stroud instead. The narratives would be completely flipped! We’d be lauding them for their aggressiveness in moving up to no. 1 to take the quarterback they wanted. The truth is that you need a great quarterback to compete in the NFL. You can abstain from taking a big swing, but then you end up like the Arthur Smith–era Falcons. There’s no easy solution. You try to find a guy. If it doesn’t work out, you admit your mistake. Then you try again. The Panthers seem to have concluded that Young doesn’t have it, and now they can focus on trying to find their new long-term solution.
The problem is there’s no reason to believe that the Panthers will get it right the next time. During his press conference Monday, Canales declined to explain what role Panthers owner David Tepper had in the decision to bench Young. After Sunday’s game, Canales had said that Young would remain the starter. The messaging from Carolina is that Canales changed his mind after watching the film. But are we really buying that? Tepper has proved to be both insecure and incompetent since buying the Panthers. This is a man who is used to getting his way and not used to losing. This is a man who once removed a hat from a restaurant employee’s head because he couldn’t take a joke posted on the restaurant’s marquee. This is a man who has already fired three head coaches. Do we really believe that Tepper is letting the people he hired do what they think is best? Or is it more likely that he’s pulling the strings behind the scenes and attempting to spin the narrative because he doesn’t want to look like a meddling owner?
In the NFL, you can cut the cord on bad coaches and bad general managers and bad quarterbacks and try again. But you can’t cut the cord on bad ownership. And once the Panthers figure out a path forward post-Young, Tepper will still be there.
It might be time to reset expectations for Caleb Williams’s rookie season.
Williams had a rough go of it Sunday night against the Texans, completing 23 of 37 passes for just 174 passing yards and two interceptions while taking seven sacks in a 19-13 loss. Performances like that are common among rookie quarterbacks. They’re supposed to struggle. The Strouds of the world are the exception. As I wrote back in August, on average over the past 10 seasons, rookie quarterbacks have performed like the 26th-best starter in the NFL.
But coming into this season, there was reason to believe that Williams was walking into a good situation. The Bears had the no. 1 pick because of their trade with the Panthers. They weren’t the worst team in the NFL last season. In fact, they were a pretty competitive team! And in the offseason, they added wide receivers Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze and hired a new offensive coordinator, Shane Waldron.
Through two games, though, this offense has been a mess. The Bears have scored one touchdown on 22 possessions. They have produced three plays of 20-plus yards; only the Patriots have fewer. At the heart of the problem is the offensive line. Nobody expected this group to be great going into the season, but the hope was the line could be competent. That hasn’t happened. Williams has been pressured on 43.2 percent of his dropbacks, according to Next Gen Stats—the third-highest rate of any starter. And no other quarterback has taken more sacks. The best coordinators in the NFL have an ability to scheme around offensive line issues, but Waldron has yet to prove he’s up to that challenge.
Beyond the numbers, everything just looks disjointed for the Bears. If I didn’t see it with my own eyes on Hard Knocks, I would wonder whether this offense had ever practiced together. Cris Collinsworth must have set a record for “These guys aren’t on the same page, Mike” mentions during Sunday’s NBC broadcast.
The hope is that Williams will continue to grow and improve as he gets more experience. The defense looks legit and will keep the Bears competitive. But the bottom line is that the environment around Williams doesn’t look as supportive as it did a few weeks ago. And if that remains the case, his rookie season could look more typical than many (myself included) were expecting.
The Steelers are back to doing Steelers things.
There are four teams in the NFL that have produced just one offensive touchdown through two weeks. Let’s go ahead and check on how those teams are performing:
Teams With One Offensive Touchdown
You knew where I was going with that, didn’t you? The Steelers are Steeler-ing like they’ve never Steeler-ed before. They have two road wins, against the Falcons and Broncos, and have scored a total of 31 points. I can’t imagine anything that could make Mike Tomlin happier. Does this feel like a sustainable formula? Of course not! But when has that stopped the Steelers before?
The sustainable aspect of Pittsburgh’s 2-0 start is the defense. But this offense really isn’t doing anything well. The Steelers rank 29th in offensive success rate. Their success rate is actually significantly worse through two games than it was last season, when Kenny Pickett was their quarterback. They are also worse than last season in EPA per drive. The Justin Fields experience has been completely different from what anyone expected. Coming into the season, I thought the run game had some upside with him and new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. But the Steelers rank 31st in success rate on early-down runs so far. And the explosive plays have been hard to come by. Pittsburgh has three plays of 20-plus yards, which is tied for 28th.
The biggest surprise? The Steelers are one of three teams that have not committed a turnover. And according to Pro Football Focus’s charting, it’s not that they’re getting lucky. Fields has not been marked with a single turnover-worthy play through two games. This is a guy who committed 41 turnovers—tied for seventh most in the NFL—from 2021 to 2023. It’s possible that this won’t last once we get a bigger sample, but for now, Fields is taking care of the ball way better than he did at any point in Chicago.
If this were any other team, my take would be: The way [Team X] is winning is not sustainable. When you can’t run the ball efficiently and you can’t produce explosive plays and you’re averaging half a touchdown per game, you won’t win a lot of games. But it’s the Steelers. And it’s Tomlin. So for now, I’ll just sit back and laugh and see what happens next week.
The Bengals will be OK (Part 2).
If you are a loyal reader of this column, you might notice that I echoed pretty much the same sentiment after Cincinnati’s loss to the Patriots in Week 1. In Week 2, the Bengals lost to the Chiefs on a walk-off field goal. Two things can be true:
- The Bengals wasted a valuable opportunity to win that game.
- That was about as encouraging a performance as you can have in a loss.
Quarterback Joe Burrow played well for the most part, but he had a costly fumble that Kansas City returned for a touchdown. The Bengals defense had the Chiefs on the ropes facing a fourth-and-16 with 48 seconds left, but they committed a pass interference penalty, and Patrick Mahomes, as he always seems to do, took advantage. A play here, a play there, as coaches sometimes like to say. While the Bengals have dug themselves into an early-season hole, I still see a lot of positive signs with this team.
Burrow’s wrist looked fine on Sunday, and his dropback success rate was fifth best among all Week 2 starters. That was in a game where tight end Mike Gesicki got nine targets and Trenton Irwin got six. All due respect to those guys, but it’s pretty clear that Burrow is the driving force behind any offensive success that the Bengals are having. And while they need to produce more explosive plays (getting Tee Higgins back from a hamstring injury should help that), the Bengals are moving the ball well. Only the Saints, Lions, and Bills have produced a higher offensive success rate through two games.
Defensively, coordinator Lou Anarumo’s group limited Mahomes to just 151 passing yards. The Bengals intercepted Mahomes twice and allowed just one play of 20-plus yards. Their run defense is still an issue, but most coordinators would take that sort of performance against Mahomes every time. It’s not an ideal start, but the season just began. I still view the Bengals as an AFC contender.
