Four games no longer represent a quarter of the NFL season under the new 17-game schedule, but it's close enough for the purposes of today's column. It's easy to get carried away and overreact to one week's results, but four weeks can feel like an eternity. What happened over the first month of the season isn't necessarily going to keep recurring over the remainder of the season.
And yet, sometimes it does! Think back to Josh Allen's hot start over the first four weeks of the 2020 campaign. It would have been easy to write off his excellent four-game stretch as a mirage given how he had played in 2018 and 2019. Allen slowed a bit over the next four weeks ... and was the second-best quarterback by Total QBR in the entire league from Week 9 on. He finished second in the MVP race. Some hot starts are flashes in the pan. Allen's was not.
Let's run through a handful of situations around the league and break down what I think is and is not real from the first four weeks of the NFL calendar. I'll start with some topical news:
Jump to a section:
Derrick Henry's staggering workload
Ben Roethlisberger's struggles
Miami's biggest concern
How bad is Washington's defense?
How good is the Bills' defense?
Lessons from surprising moves
Real: Teams will value older players and players with injury histories less than you think
We've seen a pair of unexpected moves over the past 48 hours of players who once looked to be franchise cornerstones. The Cowboys first moved to cut linebacker Jaylon Smith, who had five years and nearly $51 million remaining on the extension he signed before the 2019 season. The Patriots then announced that they would release 2019 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Stephon Gilmore, who was on the physically unable to perform list with a quadriceps injury, before trading him to the Panthers for a 2023 sixth-round pick.
These moves actually reinforce what we already know about how the NFL feels about certain types of players, although there are still some questions to be had. Let's start with Smith. The Cowboys chose to pay him before the 2019 season despite the fact that they would have been able to keep him under contract for 2019 and 2020 at a combined cost of $6.1 million. Instead, the extension paid him $26.2 million between 2019, 2020 and the first four games of 2021. They're still on the hook for his $7.2 million base salary in 2021, minus the possibility of a small offset when he signs elsewhere.
Like many others, I was really happy to see Smith get paid after suffering a career-threatening knee injury in college in 2016. At the same time, it's hard to think of a decision that went wrong quicker for the signing team. Smith looked to be on the path to stardom in 2018, but he wasn't an impact player in 2017 and looked more like that guy in 2019 and 2020. The Cowboys made decisions to depend less on both him and 2018 first-rounder Leighton Vander Esch this offseason by signing Keanu Neal and drafting Micah Parsons in Round 1.
The Cowboys would have loved to trade Smith before the season (or this week), but his contract didn't have a trade market. If he were to get hurt, Dallas (or an acquiring team) would have been on the hook for $7.2 million guaranteed in 2021. That reality makes his 2021 season so strange. He started as a backup and special-teamer, but when Neal was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list, he played 119 defensive snaps between Weeks 2 and 4. Neal is expected to return for Week 5, so the Cowboys seemingly now feel like they can cut Smith.
It's one thing to say that you want to cut a player because you don't want next year's salary to guarantee but another to use that player as a starting linebacker and special-teamer for two-plus games before doing so. The Cowboys could have kept Parsons at linebacker if they didn't want to rely on Smith. Either way, Smith's tenure with the Cowboys is finished and he has signed a short-term deal with the Packers.
Gilmore's situation has some precedent. Bill Belichick's attitude toward moving on from star players in their 30s is no secret. Franchise icons such as Richard Seymour, Logan Mankins and Randy Moss were all dealt unceremoniously for draft picks when Belichick needed cap space or thought they were no longer a good fit for the organization. The writing has been on the wall for weeks with the star cornerback.
After that incredible season in 2019, Gilmore understandably started clamoring for a new extension. Turning 30 and with two years left to run on his existing deal, the best time for him to get one last big contract would have been before the 2020 campaign. The Patriots demurred. They gave him a short-term raise for the 2020 season and kicked the can about his future into the 2021 league year. He responded with a very good season in a lost year for the 7-9 Patriots, even if it wasn't quite at the stratospheric heights of 2019. He went on injured reserve at the end of the season with a torn quadriceps and later underwent surgery to repair the injury.
The two sides never saw eye to eye in 2021. Gilmore skipped mandatory minicamp before reporting to training camp, at which point the Patriots immediately put him on the PUP list. He never came off. The Patriots might have cut him at the end of that period or brought him onto their roster in case of an injury. Instead, needing cap space to sign linebacker Jamie Collins, they were going to cut Gilmore on Wednesday, before trading him to the Panthers for a late-round pick two years in the future, which is essentially the NFL equivalent of a $10 savings bond.
In terms of talent, this doesn't make any sense. The Texans, for example, traded a fifth-round pick for Anthony Miller and a seventh-round selection in July before cutting the former Bears wideout on Wednesday. The Patriots sent Sony Michel to the Rams for what will become a 2022 fourth-round compensatory pick. Michel is a disappointing running back who was buried on New England's roster with knee issues. Gilmore was literally the Defensive Player of the Year two years ago. Objectively, between the lines, this is dumb.
Going beyond what happens on the field in terms of talent or performance, teams are more sensitive to price, age and injury history than most people think. No team wanted to be on the hook for $7.2 million in 2022 if Smith got hurt, and the league didn't value him as a linebacker worth more than $10 million per season when healthy. Gilmore is a great player, but the track record of cornerbacks in their 30s is spotty. Trading for him would have been one thing, but organizations were reluctant to give up draft capital and pay him market value with multiple guaranteed years on a new deal.
Shortly after the trade was announced, it became clear that Gilmore was going to play out the 2021 season on his current salary before hitting free agency in 2022. This is an example of what I refer to as the hometown premium. Gilmore wasn't willing (or at the very least excited) to play for the Patriots in 2021 for $7 million. Without a significant market for a long-term deal in midseason, though, he had to settle for making that same amount from the Panthers.
You'll notice that the Rams had no concerns about giving up two first-round picks for Jalen Ramsey, who was entering the prime of his career. Gilmore is exiting that prime, and it makes all the difference to teams. None of those veteran moves the Patriots made in the past, you'll notice, hurt the franchise all that much. The Pats got a first-round pick for Seymour and turned it into longtime left tackle starter Nate Solder. Mankins retired after two seasons with Tampa Bay. Moss was traded to the Vikings for a third-round pick and lasted four games in Minnesota before being released. I think Gilmore still has a lot left in the tank, but when Belichick decides that it's time to move on, he moves on.
With the league operating under a reduced salary cap and many teams using their 2022 cap space to help get under the line in 2021, players with big contracts are going to get squeezed. We'll see more veterans on multiyear deals move on over the next couple of years, even if they're playing at a high level like Gilmore.
Not Real: Derrick Henry's staggering workload can't continue
In 2020, the Titans gave Henry the workload of a running back from the 1970s. With 378 carries and just 19 receptions, he averaged 23.6 carries and 24.8 touches per game. While we would see running backs regularly attract that sort of workload before the past decade, they just don't get those sort of carries anymore. Henry's 2020 season was the second-largest workload of the past 10 years and just the third time over that time frame that a back has topped 350 carries. Players with that sort of workload almost always decline the following season, either through injury, a decrease in playing time or a drop-off in performance.
Well, Henry isn't averaging 24.8 touches per game this season. He is averaging way more. He has nearly matched his 2020 total with 14 catches, and the Titans have handed him the ball a staggering 113 times in four games. Henry is averaging 28.3 carries and 31.8 touches per game. Forget the workloads of the 1980s and 1990s; he might as well be in the stratosphere. He is on pace for 480 carries.
To put this in context, his 113 carries through the first four games of the season are the fifth most in NFL history. The guys ahead of him are mostly names from another era: Rodney Hampton (who had 124 to start the year in 1993), O.J. Simpson (118, 1975), Ricky Williams (115, 2003) and Earl Campbell (114, 1979). Curtis Martin, Priest Holmes and Stephen Davis are among the backs just behind Henry with seasons from the early 2000s, but this is a staggering amount of work, even by Henry's recent standards.
Going by history, it's a dangerous workload. My notes from looking at what happened at the other guys in the top 10 aren't great. Holmes, Martin, Davis and Williams were never the same after that year. Hampton immediately got hurt and missed four games; he never topped 4.0 yards per carry again after doing so in every single season up to that point. Jim Brown and Campbell, on the other hand, kept on ticking for years to come.
If you want to put Henry in a class with the truly rare backs and suggest that he is immune to what we know about workloads, I wouldn't blame you. I didn't expect him to keep up his 2020 workload, let alone expand it. Even Brown and Campbell came down to Earth, as they went from averaging 27.6 carries per game over the first four games of the season to 20.8 rush attempts per game over the remainder of the year. Henry might just land there, which would leave him at 383 carries by the end of 2021.
And yet, I get a little wary when we think about running backs who are "exceptions" to the rule. Christian McCaffrey's injury track record before he signed his extension in 2020 was immaculate, and he has fully completed a total of four games over the past two seasons. Todd Gurley was the rare back who was able to shoulder an every-down workload until he wasn't; he was a first-team All-Pro in 2018 and cut less than two years later. He is out of the league at age 27. Henry is averaging 4.5 yards per carry, down nearly a full yard from where he was a year ago.
At 6-foot-3, 247 pounds, Henry's size makes it inviting to imagine that he stands out. But Michael Turner was 244 pounds and carried the ball 376 times for the 2008 Falcons; he got hurt the following season too. The 252-pound Jerome Bettis carried the ball 375 times for the 1997 Steelers, never came close to that mark again and only topped 4.0 yards per carry one more time. Those guys still had careers after their big season, but even they weren't able to do this year after year.
The first month of the season might have been a perfect storm for the Titans. Wideouts A.J. Brown and Julio Jones got hurt. Darrynton Evans, Henry's primary backup, was on injured reserve. They should all be back in the weeks to come. Henry's workload is going to fall some from the lofty heights of September. I just hope that the incredible work he has done over the past year-plus doesn't shorten his career.
Real: Miami has big concerns on offense
Regardless of who has been at quarterback, Miami's offense simply hasn't been good. The Dolphins rank 31st in scoring and 28th in offensive efficiency through four games, and even that took some fourth-quarter heroics from Jacoby Brissett and Mike Gesicki against the Raiders, who aren't exactly the 1985 Bears. At home in Week 4, facing a Colts team missing three starters on defense, the Dolphins amassed three points and six first downs across their first eight drives before scoring two garbage-time touchdowns.
Their quarterbacks have been dismal. Tua Tagovailoa's much-anticipated second season was off to a brutal start, before he suffered a rib injury, as he completed just 17 of his first 31 passes before going down. Brissett has been more accurate, but the former Colts starter has been painfully conservative, averaging just 4.9 yards per attempt. The only other quarterback below 6.0 yards per attempt this season is Texans rookie Davis Mills.
Miami unquestionably expected more out of its signal-callers, but the infrastructure around Brissett and Tagovailoa isn't NFL-caliber. The Dolphins have plenty of weapons at receiver, even with Will Fuller limited to just 65 snaps over the first month of the year by his suspension, injuries and a family matter. But they need more than receivers to make an offense. Their issues were apparent even before the season began.
General manager Chris Grier didn't invest much into Miami's offensive line heading into 2021, instead choosing to go to the addition-by-subtraction route by moving on from free-agent addition Ereck Flowers. The Dolphins used a second-round pick on Liam Eichenberg and signed veterans Matt Skura and Jermaine Eluemunor, but neither of the new vets made the roster. They didn't go after linemen such as Charles Leno and Morgan Moses when they hit the free-agent wire over the summer.
Just as was the case a year ago, the line hasn't been good enough in protecting its quarterbacks. The Dolphins rank 29th in pass block win rate, 25th in sack rate and 26th in pressure rate. Austin Jackson, a 2020 first-round pick and the line's highest-profile player, has committed four penalties in three games. Jesse Davis, who was protecting Tagovailoa's blind side at right tackle, was beaten on the play in which the QB suffered his rib injury. They've also lost center Michael Deiter to injured reserve; replacement Greg Mancz, the one veteran acquired this summer who did stick around, hasn't been a regular starter since 2017.
On top of that, there are questions about who should be doing the playcalling. After moving on from Ryan Fitzpatrick whisperer Chan Gailey, the Dolphins elected to go into 2021 with co-coordinators on offense in George Godsey and Eric Studesville. It's difficult to think of a scenario in which co-coordinators or co-coaches have worked, and this is no exception through four games. The coaches appear to be blaming player execution for their problems, suggesting that their system and the game plans are not to blame.
The players might not be playing all that well, but it's a lot easier to redefine coaching responsibilities or simplify the hierarchy than it is to coax great blocking out of a middling offensive line or nurse the team's most important player back to health. The Dolphins came into the season with a questionable plan on offense, and unless Tagovailoa looks like a different player when he comes back, I'm not sure there's a solution in the building.
Not Real: Washington's defense isn't falling apart
Last year, the arrival of coach Ron Rivera, defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio and rookie edge rusher Chase Young spurred dramatic improvement in Washington's defense. With four first-round picks up front, Young & Co. jumped all the way to third in expected points added (EPA) per play on defense, helping push a team with the league's worst passing attack into the playoffs. We would expect some regression from a team that improved as much as Washington did from 2019 to 2020 on that side of the football, but Washington projected to land somewhere in the top 10 on defense in 2021.
Through four games, Washington ranks 30th in scoring defense and 28th in expected points per play. Huh? Injuries haven't been a factor. The team swapped out corner Ronald Darby for William Jackson III this offseason, and Jackson has committed a league-high four pass interference penalties for 46 yards, but that can't be the whole story. Let's take a look at how Washington performs by down ...
Well, that's not how it's supposed to work. Del Rio's defense is falling apart on the most important downs of the series. Last season, Washington ranked third in the NFL in EPA per play across first and second down and ninth on third and fourth down, so this sort of dramatic gap isn't something we would expect. Teams have been able to pick on Washington's slot corner (Kendall Fuller), safeties (Landon Collins and Kam Curl) and linebackers (Cole Holcomb and Jon Bostic) in the passing game, but this is absurd.
It's also not going to keep happening. History tells us that over time a team will typically play the same way on third (and fourth) down that it does on first and second down. A good example of this last season was with the Saints' defense. Through four games, it ranked 10th in EPA per play allowed on first and second down and dead last on third and fourth down. After the first month of the season, that changed; the Saints had the fourth-best defense in the NFL on first and second down and had the second-best EPA/play in the league on third and fourth down.
Washington won't keep allowing teams to convert 59.7% of the time on third down over the remainder of the season. And on the flip side, the Lions are surviving on defense by limiting teams to converting 27.8% of the time on third down, and that won't keep up over the rest of the campaign. The league's second-best defense at getting off the field so far this season is 30th in EPA per play on first and second downs. That's not going to keep up.
Real: Ben Roethlisberger's struggles aren't going anywhere
The second half of 2020 wasn't a fun watch for Steelers fans. After starting 11-0, their team collapsed in December. Pittsburgh lost four of its final five games, before getting stomped by the Browns at home in the playoffs. More disconcertingly, Roethlisberger looked like he was a physical wreck. From the first loss of the season on, he posted a QBR of just 41.6. The future Hall of Famer averaged just 6.1 yards per attempt and posted a negative completion percentage over expectation (CPOE), and any throw beyond 15 yards downfield seemed to require a superhuman amount of effort.
There was some debate this offseason suggesting the Steelers should move on from Roethlisberger, but that wasn't really an option. If he had retired -- or if the Steelers had chosen to cut their veteran quarterback -- an already-cap strapped organization would have been forced to eat $22.3 million in dead money on its 2021 cap, before the costs of whatever or whoever his replacement would have been. Even when Roethlisberger came back, the Steelers were able to convince him to take a pay cut and then restructured his deal to bring his cap hit down to $25.9 million. Pittsburgh will owe $10.3 million in dead money for him next season.
Over the offseason, the hopes were that the Steelers could do enough to get one more playoff push out of their 39-year-old quarterback. They used their first-round pick on running back Najee Harris and promoted quarterbacks coach Matt Canada to the offensive coordinator's role. Wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster returned to the team on a one-year deal, and with the stalwarts of the offensive line aging and retiring, Pittsburgh turned over four of their starters up front.
How's it going? Well, let's compare Roethlisberger's performance from that 1-5 stretch in 2020 to Pittsburgh's 1-3 start this season:
It's the same guy. Stats don't tell the whole story, but Roethlisberger doesn't look any different on the field than he did a year ago. The running game struggled then and doesn't look any better with Harris in the fold. The rookie is averaging 1.51 yards before first contact with a defender, which ranks 18th out of the 19 backs with at least 50 carries. Only Mark Ingram gets hit faster, and Ingram is a 31-year-old power back playing for the Texans.
The offensive line is cheaper and doesn't have the same trophy room, but it ranks 27th in both pass block win rate and run block win rate. The offense has actually gotten worse, with Pittsburgh falling from averaging 1.7 points per drive during the disappointing stretch in 2020 to 1.4 points per trip this season. The Steelers have just 13 plays of 20 yards or more, which ranks 24th. As a neutral observer, it is agonizing to watch them try to score.
Canada's reputation as a longtime college coordinator was as an offensive mind who loved using motion to create mismatches and opportunities for his quarterbacks, but the Steelers don't look anything like that. They're static and don't move at all on more than 63% of the offensive snaps, which is the fifth-highest rate in the league. When they do use motion, it has generally been a disaster; the Steelers' 22 plays with motion at the snap have produced just 32 yards, which is the second-worst mark. Only the Giants (16 plays, 20 yards) have gotten less out of the tactic.
The two most frustrating moments of the season have come on fourth downs.
With the Steelers facing a fourth-and-10 late in the game and down 14 points against the Bengals, Cincinnati showed pre-snap pressure. The Bengals dropped out immediately upon taking the snap and sent a three-man rush, but Roethlisberger held the ball for just 1.7 seconds before throwing a swing pass to Harris, who was quickly tackled for a one-yard loss.
Against the Packers last week, facing a fourth-and-4 in the third quarter, virtually the same thing happened. Green Bay showed a pre-snap blitz before dropping out and rushing three. Roethlisberger held the ball for 1.7 seconds before throwing a swing pass to Harris. This one was more defensible, given that the Steelers only needed four yards for a first down and weren't in the compressed space of the red zone; but the play went nowhere. Cornerback Jaire Alexander came off his man to slow Harris before two other Packers finished the job:
Ben Roethlisberger's fourth-and-4 swing pass to Najee Harris against the Packers pic.twitter.com/UsRN1lTDQp
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) October 6, 2021
Throwing a swing pass can work on fourth down, but I don't think a young Roethlisberger would have made those decisions in those moments. I can't say whether he just doesn't trust his offensive line to hold up against those blitzes he is expecting to see, whether opposing defenses don't fear him beating them deep on fourth down, if he's predetermining where he'll go with the ball before the snap and getting rid of the ball before questioning his read afterward, or something I don't understand. I'm open to believing it's the latter, but either way, it hasn't worked.
Roethlisberger is now on the injury report with pectoral and hip issues. The Steelers are 1-3, and that win came in a game in which their defense held the Bills to 16 points and the special teams scored on a blocked punt. The offense isn't creating big plays and is turning the ball over; the same Steelers who lost the turnover battle just once during that 11-game win streak last season have turned the ball over more than the opposition in each of their three losses this season. The possibility of playing Denver's Drew Lock in Week 5 might fuel the defense, but this offense looks and feels utterly broken.
Not Real: The Bills' defense is good, but not this good
Let's finish with a commonsense one. The Bills have the league's best defense through four weeks, holding opponents to a league-low 11 points per game. One of those touchdowns was the blocked punt from the Steelers, which shouldn't be on the defense's books. The Bills have allowed one offensive touchdown per game and already have two shutouts this season. The last team to pull off two shutouts in the first four games of the season was the 2000 Ravens, who won the Super Bowl and went down in history as having one of the best defenses in NFL history.
The Bills have a lot of talent on that side of the ball, and I suspect they'll finish the year as one of the best defenses. They're also not the 2000 Ravens. Three of the Bills' first four games have come against backup quarterbacks. Jacoby Brissett took nearly all of the snaps in the Dolphins matchup after Tua Tagovailoa was knocked out of the game, and Buffalo went up against Taylor Heinicke and Davis Mills over the ensuing two games. I guess you could "credit" the Bills for knocking Tagovailoa out of the Dolphins game, but they inherited the matchups against Heinicke and Mills (and were denied two revenge games against Ryan Fitzpatrick and Tyrod Taylor in the process).
This week, the Bills get Patrick Mahomes. The 2000 Ravens got their third shutout of the season in Week 5. If the Bills pull that off Sunday, we can start comparing them to historically great defenses.