The Los Angeles Rams were one of the Super Bowl favorites going into this season. They've started 4-0 and sit at No. 1 in the ESPN NFL power rankings.
The Kansas City Chiefs have the most exciting offense in the NFL. Patrick Mahomes set an NFL mark by throwing 13 touchdown passes in the first three weeks of the season. The Chiefs are 3-0 and now are considered one of this season's Super Bowl favorites.
But there's one more unbeaten team left, and it's not a team anyone would have expected before the season began.
Coming off a 6-10 season in 2017, the Miami Dolphins have started the 2018 season with three straight wins. None of the wins have come by double digits, but a closer look at the play-by-play shows the games haven't been that close, either. As a result, the Dolphins rank No. 2 in Football Outsiders DVOA ratings after Week 3. They haven't just been a good team, but a balanced one. They are in the top 10 in both rushing and passing on offense, against the run and the pass on defense, and on special teams.
How are the Dolphins doing it? And can they keep this up?
How they've gotten to 3-0
The offense starts with a strong performance from its no-name receiving corps. Miami ranks third in the league with 6.9 average yards after the catch even though the Dolphins aren't just throwing it short: Their average depth of target of 9.0 is higher than the NFL average of 8.2 yards. The biggest star so far has been Kenny Stills. He has only nine catches, but with 184 yards and three touchdowns, he ranks fifth in receiving DVOA among wideouts.
On the ground, the story is more about consistency rather than big plays. Miami has a league-average 4.0 yards per carry, but Kenyan Drake and Frank Gore are tied for 12th (among 39 backs) with a 50 percent success rate.
For the defense, Miami's success revolves around its secondary, starting with cornerback Xavien Howard. If more people paid attention to the Dolphins, Howard would be emerging as one of the top defensive stars in the NFL. He ranks fourth in the league in success rate in coverage, according to Sports Info Solutions charting, and the Dolphins rank first in DVOA against No. 1 wide receivers. Miami also ranks No. 1 in covering what we call "other" receivers -- a lot of that is the performance of rookie nickelback/safety Minkah Fitzpatrick covering receivers out of the slot.
Fitzpatrick is part of a speed infusion on the Miami defense that includes three first-year players in the starting lineup. He's joined by another rookie, linebacker Jerome Baker, as well as 2017 second-round linebacker Raekwon McMillan, who missed his rookie year because of a torn ACL.
Overall, Miami is giving up a league-low passer rating of 65.6. It has done this despite bringing less pass pressure than most teams; ESPN Stats & Information charting ranks Miami just 29th in pressure rate.
Some red flags
There are some signs that the Miami defense might not be able to keep up its rate of allowing touchdowns on only 12 percent of drives, second in the NFL behind Jacksonville. The Dolphins have been particularly good when it comes to two elements of defense that tend to be more variable: turnovers and red zone performance.
Miami is tied for the league lead with seven interceptions after it had only nine in 2017. That's a pace that's not going to continue. And as ESPN's Bill Barnwell has pointed out, the Dolphins have prevented points on five out of nine trips inside their 20. The rest of the NFL has done this only 27 times in 258 tries.
As for the offense, it probably can't count on an entire season with a league-best average drive start at the 32.9-yard line. And while Miami ranks fourth in the league with 8.3 net yards per pass attempt, that average is heavily built on a handful of spectacular plays. The offense has two gains over 70 yards, but you can't count on getting one of those every other week; there are only a handful during the whole season. Wide receiver Albert Wilson probably won't be throwing many more 52-yard touchdown passes, either.
However, not everything has been serendipitous for the Dolphins. For example, they've recovered only two of eight fumbles in their three games so far. They haven't had the kind of unsustainable success on third down that's usually a strong sign of expected regression. And as good as the defense has been in the red zone, the offense has been worse in the red zone than it has been on the rest of the field.
Should Miami fans be getting ready for a playoff run in 2018?
I went back and looked at past teams like this to try to get an answer. Before the Dolphins, 31 different teams since 1989 were 3-0 through three weeks after a losing record the year before. These teams averaged 9.4 wins and 52 percent of them made the postseason. However, some of these teams were winning early with lucky breaks, when the play-by-play showed them getting outplayed by opponents. If we limit ourselves to teams whose starts were "for real" and only look at the 22 teams with DVOA of at least 20 percent through three weeks, the average goes up to only 9.6 wins -- but now 64 percent make the postseason.
There are other elements that contribute to Miami's chance at a playoff season in 2018. If the early struggles of the New England Patriots continue all year, that obviously opens up the AFC East for Miami. But a more important factor for the Dolphins, whether they compete for a division title or a wild card, is their schedule. Based upon the average current DVOA of their remaining 13 opponents, Miami has the easiest remaining schedule in the NFL. What if we instead consider both Weeks 1-3 and preseason projections to get a better idea of how good teams really are? Based on that rating, Miami has the second-easiest remaining schedule in the NFL, behind only Green Bay.
But most important, Miami started 3-0. In the NFL, where even the best teams have a chance to lose every week, banking those three wins early on is hugely important. To demonstrate, let's look at Miami's playoff odds.
Normally, our playoff odds simulation at Football Outsiders is based on our DAVE ratings at this point, a combination of performance so far and our preseason projections. But instead, I ran a playoff-odds simulation based solely on our preseason projections, in which Miami was ranked 26th. What if, despite what we've seen the first three weeks of the season, the Patriots are still one of the two best teams in the league and the Dolphins are still one of the 10 worst?
Even in these simulations, the Dolphins still make the playoffs 55 percent of the time. They still win the AFC East 35 percent of the time. That's the value of a two-game lead on the rest of the division, even if the Patriots truly are the better team. The Dolphins average 9.0 wins in these simulations. That's the value of the easiest remaining schedule in the league.
In reality, Miami's playoff odds are probably higher than that. Based on what we've seen early in the season, Miami might not truly be the second-best team in the NFL, but it probably isn't 26th either. Our current playoff-odds simulation puts Miami in the playoffs over 80 percent of the time. If the Dolphins manage to beat the Patriots in Foxborough, that projection will go to over 90 percent.
One thing's for certain: Whether they're for real or not, Miami's season is a lot more interesting than it seemed a month ago.