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 season, you’ll get my takes on what happened the previous weekend, with an eye on what’s to come.
Lamar Jackson is the MVP.
Go ahead, get on your high horse. I’ll wait. It’s too early for MVP talk. It’s only Week 6. Finished? OK, good. I apologize in advance for offending you on this deeply serious topic, but I’ll go ahead anyway and tell you why Jackson has been the most valuable player in the NFL so far this season.
I thought the Ravens offense would take a step back this season, mostly because of the moving parts on their offensive line. And through the first two weeks, it looked like my preseason forecast was on point. But now? Well, now, I look like a dummy. The Ravens have the best offense in the NFL, and it’s not particularly close. They are first in offensive DVOA, and the difference between them and the no. 2 Commanders is roughly the same as the difference between the no. 2 Commanders and the no. 11 Seahawks.
On Sunday against those Commanders, Jackson couldn’t miss. Starting in the second quarter, the Ravens scored on five straight possessions (three touchdowns and two field goals). And these weren’t gimme scores. They had touchdown drives of 78, 93, and 94 yards, but Jackson made each one look easy. The Ravens piled up 28 first downs and 484 yards of offense. Jackson surgically carved up the Commanders defense from the pocket, completing 20 of 26 passes for 323 yards. On the season, Jackson is third among quarterbacks in expected points added per pass play and eighth in the entire NFL (not just among quarterbacks!) in rushing yards. He has redefined what it means to be a dual-threat quarterback.
It sounds foolish to say about a guy who has won two MVPs, but I think this is the best that Jackson has ever played. The Ravens are nearly impossible to defend right now. Load up the box to stop Jackson and Derrick Henry in the run game, and Jackson can pick you apart as a pocket passer. Commit resources to stopping Baltimore’s passing attack, and the Ravens will gladly run all over you. There just is no great answer to stopping the Ravens unless you have a terrific pass rush that can consistently get to Jackson without blitzing. And guess what? Even that might not be enough. Jackson is taking sacks on just 3.8 percent of his dropbacks—the fourth-lowest mark in the NFL.
If you’re a Ravens hater, I know what you’re saying: Get back to me when they do it on the biggest stage in the playoffs. And I get that. But offensively, what Baltimore is doing now feels more sustainable than it ever has before. Jackson can still be Superman when he needs to. But the structure of the offense has reduced the frequency with which he has to put on the cape. Through six weeks, Jackson has been the best player in the NFL, and the Ravens are once again on the short list of contenders in the AFC.
Nick Sirianni can’t stop making himself the story.
Sirianni’s job this season couldn’t have been any clearer: get out of the way. Let Kellen Moore handle the offense. Let Vic Fangio handle the defense. Be the CVO (chief vibes officer). Run the team meetings. Come up with some hokey Football Guy slogans. Make sure the players are motivated. Answer questions from the media. Let the talent win out, and don’t screw it up. But six weeks into the season and coming out of the bye week, Sirianni has become the biggest distraction on the team. He was supposed to be a low-maintenance head coach; instead, it appears that he needs a babysitter. After an uninspired 20-16 win over the Browns on Sunday, Sirianni decided to engage in a back-and-forth with fans behind the Eagles bench.
“We thrive off the crowd when they cheer for us. That’s all I’ll say,” Sirianni said after the game. “We hear them when they boo. We don’t necessarily like it. I don’t think that’s productive for anybody. But when they cheer for us and when we’ve got them rolling, we love it.”
Sirianni added that he was just excited and that Eagles players had told him they wanted him to get back to being his authentic self. Then on Monday, Sirianni apologized for his behavior.
There’s a world in which this all shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but that’s not the case here. This should have been a sleepy October win where the story was A.J. Brown returning to the lineup or the Eagles defense showing signs of life. Instead, the only sports story that anyone’s talking about this week in Philadelphia is Sirianni’s behavior—and his job status.
After Sunday’s game, Sirianni held a bizarre press conference in which he brought his kids with him to the podium and voluntarily told reporters that he was responsible for two play calls, one each on offense and defense, that went wrong. It reeked of a coach trying too hard. Look at me. I take the bullets for my coordinators. Aren’t you impressed with how accountable I am? It was a strange admission given that Eagles executives specifically hired Moore and Fangio because they wanted Sirianni to be less involved. But Sirianni didn’t sound like a man who was content getting out of the way. In some ways, he sounded to me like a man who was emotional because he thought he might have been fired had the Eagles lost that game.
What I think about Sirianni or what you think about Sirianni doesn’t matter all that much. But what he seems to be forgetting is that what owner Jeffrey Lurie thinks about him does matter. Sirianni’s self-awareness at this point might be as bad as his offensive scheming. He is supposed to be operating as a CEO-type head coach. Instead, he is operating like an overzealous intern who needs to be meticulously managed. His behavior, from the sideline antics to the botched game management decisions to the bizarre press conferences, seems to run counter to what the person who determines whether he gets to keep his job actually wants.
Philadelphia fans have long had a fascinating complex about feeling entitled to rip their own coaches and players, but when outsiders do the same thing, they start defending the very same people. That’s not happening this week when it comes to Sirianni. The Eagles are 3-2 and won a game on Sunday. They are talented enough to win the division, have an easy remaining schedule, and play in a wide-open conference. Yet no one in Philadelphia really cares because the coach has become a distraction—one who can’t get out of his own way.
The new Jets didn’t look too different from the old Jets.
As the seconds ticked down in the Jets’ 23-20 loss to the Bills Monday night, ESPN’s Troy Aikman summed up the Jets’ predicament well. “I don’t know where the Jets go from here,” Aikman said.
The point is that owner Woody Johnson already made his big move last week, firing Robert Saleh and replacing him with Jeff Ulbrich, now the interim head coach. Ulbrich then took offensive play calling duties away from Nathaniel Hackett and handed them over to Todd Downing. The result following those moves? A Jets team that didn’t look all that different from the one we saw during the first five weeks of the season.
The Jets were competitive against the Bills. They had opportunities to win the game, but they missed two field goals, went 1-for-4 in the red zone, and committed 11 penalties for 110 yards. Aside from a Week 1 loss to the 49ers, the Jets have been competitive in every game this season. They are on a three-game losing streak, but those three losses have been by a combined 10 points.
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 head coaching change is probably less interesting than the offensive play calling change. Saleh and Ulbrich are both defensive coaches, and nothing Ulbrich did on Monday night suggests that he’s incompetent or incapable of managing the game as a head coach. Offensively, though, the Jets did look more explosive than they have recently. In previous weeks, every completion felt hard. Against the Bills, they did a better job of picking up big chunks of yardage, producing a season-high eight plays of 20-plus yards. Those big plays will be critical going forward because the Jets are too mistake prone to consistently count on stringing together long, methodical drives. The offensive line still had all kinds of issues against the Bills, and in terms of down-to-down efficiency, this was the Jets’ second-lowest offensive success rate of the season. Yes, they missed two field goals, but they also scored a touchdown on a 52-yard Hail Mary at the end of the first half.
Johnson said he fired Saleh because he felt like the team needed a spark. That always felt like a silly reason from an impulsive owner who was frantically looking for answers. The truth is that the coaching change was never likely to make a big difference. The Jets are a competitive team but a flawed team. That’s what we should expect going forward until they prove otherwise.
The Cowboys offense is broken too.
The Cowboys defense was a dumpster fire on Sunday during their 47-9 loss to the Lions. But the defense has stunk pretty much all season. Part of that is easily explainable; it has been crushed by injuries. Dallas played Sunday’s game without three of its best players: pass rushers Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence and cornerback DaRon Bland. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision a scenario where they get healthier, gain more reps in Mike Zimmer’s scheme, and turn into at least a competent defense.
The trickier mystery to solve is what’s happening with the offense. Dallas got the ball 11 times on Sunday and failed to score a single touchdown. Of the 184 leaguewide offensive performances this season, the Cowboys’ showing in Week 6 ranked 183rd in EPA per drive. And this isn’t just a one-game thing. The Cowboys rank 25th in offensive DVOA. Head coach Mike McCarthy will take a lot of the heat—and, let’s be clear, he deserves plenty—but he was designing the offense and calling the plays last season when the Cowboys ranked ninth in DVOA.
The run game was mediocre last season, and it’s flat-out bad this season. But the bigger drop-off has been with the Cowboys’ passing game. Everything Dallas does seems hard. Dak Prescott has attempted a tight-window throw on 22.8 percent of his attempts—the second-highest rate for any starter. That’s not good, but it’s also not too much different from last year. In 2023, Prescott attempted tight-window throws on 18.3 percent of his attempts, which was fourth highest. So what’s the difference? Football hipsters, you might want to cover your eyes here. I know you are quite sensitive to any Cowboys-related analysis that includes criticism of Prescott. But he’s not completing the high-degree-of-difficulty throws this season in the way we are used to. And he’s also making way too many mistakes. On the season, Prescott ranks 26th in dropback success rate, just ahead of Jacoby Brissett and just below Daniel Jones. He also ranks 29th out of 31 qualifying quarterbacks in turnover-worthy play percentage, as charted by Pro Football Focus. Last year, Prescott had the second-lowest turnover-worthy play rate.
The Cowboys head into their bye at 3-3, and it’s unlikely that their offense will continue to be this bad the rest of the way. They are 31st in EPA lost on turnovers and will likely get at least a little luckier on that front. But in terms of down-to-down efficiency, there might not be a simple fix. McCarthy is still calling the shots, which means the scheme won’t change. And unless they make a trade for a playmaker (something they don’t seem particularly interested in or able to do), the Cowboys don’t have much to threaten opposing defenses with other than CeeDee Lamb. The truth is boring: It’s on Prescott to solve their problems and make fewer mistakes. That very well could happen. We just saw a version of that last year, and Prescott finished second in MVP voting. But if the Cowboys offense keeps playing like it has through six games, this season’s headed for massive disappointment, and changes will be made.
The Bears might be turning a corner.
Sometimes in the content game, you give up on your takes too early. Before the season, I had the Bears as a playoff team. Then, after three weeks, I decided that I had made a mistake. I thought I had overrated the supporting cast around Caleb Williams. Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was on fraud watch. Head coach Matt Eberflus’s offseason glow-up was negatively impacting his in-game decision-making. And everything was going downhill. But now that we’re six weeks into the season? Well, I am begging you to let me go back to my original take.
The Bears took it to the Jaguars in London, delivering a dominant 35-16 victory. Chicago’s defense was fantastic once again. That has been a constant this season and something that has carried over from the second half of last season. Through six weeks, the Bears rank sixth in defensive DVOA. They are second in defensive success rate and third in EPA per drive.
But the reason I’m turning back to optimism with the Bears is the growth we’re seeing with their offense. And I mean real growth—not “Justin Fields had a few nice scrambles and that one throw was kinda fun” wishcasting. The Bears had the most efficient offensive performance of any team in Week 6 based on EPA per drive. In fact, it was the franchise’s most efficient offensive performance since Week 4 of the 2018 season! The Bears have started to find a run game. Waldron is scheming up some explosive plays. And Williams is making some high-level throws.
The good news for the Bears is that they are 4-2 going into their bye, and the playoffs look like a real possibility. The bad news is that things will get a lot harder when they return in Week 8. According to the betting markets, the Bears have had the easiest schedule in the NFL so far this season, but they have the hardest remaining schedule. But barring bad injury luck, the defense will keep them in pretty much every game. It will be the level of offensive improvement that ultimately determines whether they get into the postseason.
