Let's evaluate the four teams whose chances to make the 2021 NFL playoffs have improved the most since the start of the season, as measured by ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI).
A lot can change over the course of six weeks, and in a league in which the Titans can lose to the Jets and beat the Bills in the course of two weeks, it's not always easy to contextualize the big picture. I'll try to do that here to get a sense of what has happened to these four breakout teams and what might change for them, both positively and negatively, in the weeks to come.
Let's start with the league's lone undefeated team, which you likely expect to be on this list:
Jump to a team:
Bengals | Cardinals
Chargers | Cowboys
Arizona Cardinals (6-0)
Preseason FPI playoff chances: 32.2%
Current FPI playoff chances: 99.2%
Difference: Plus-67%
The Cardinals! Projected in most places to be the worst team in the (admittedly very good) NFC West, Kliff Kingsbury's team is a game and a half up on the Rams and way out front of the 49ers and Seahawks through six weeks. Only two of its games were close, with Arizona beating the 49ers 17-10 and topping the Vikings 34-33 when Minnesota kicker Greg Joseph missed a last-second field goal. The teams the Cardinals have beaten have gone a combined 16-12 when they haven't faced Arizona this season, so it's not as if they've played an easy schedule, either. This team is legit.
I don't think it should be any surprise that quarterback Kyler Murray is playing really well, so to understand why the Cards are off to their 6-0 start, we need to turn to what people were worried about with them heading into the season to see how and why they have exceeded expectations. What could have kept them from looking as good as they have?
Injuries. Murray was an MVP candidate during the first half of the 2020 season, but shoulder and ankle injuries slowed him down during the second half. The Cardinals fell in kind, as they averaged 20.6 points per game and went 2-5 to close out the season. The defense also dealt with injuries throughout the season; the Cardinals ranked 28th in adjusted games lost throughout the 2020 campaign.
While injuries are beginning to strike the Cardinals, they've been much healthier in 2021. Jordan Phillips has been their only long-term absence among expected starters. Kelvin Beachum missed two games, but injuries didn't really hit the Cardinals hard until Sunday's win over the Browns. In addition to Maxx Williams going down for the season and Rodney Hudson moving to injured reserve, they were down Chandler Jones, Zach Allen and Kingsbury because of COVID-19 protocols. Thankfully for Arizona, the Browns were down five offensive starters and had several more suffer injuries during the game.
Every team has to deal with injuries -- and they're unpredictable by nature -- but the Cardinals have been in good shape so far. Consider that they were expecting Marcus Gilbert and Robert Alford to start in 2019 and 2020 and neither suited up for a single regular-season game either time. Before this week, the players the Cardinals were counting on have generally been available this season. That has been a huge positive.
The back seven of the defense. On paper, Arizona's cornerbacks did not look particularly imposing to start the season. Alford hadn't played in two years. Byron Murphy had been a solid slot corner, but the Cardinals were projecting to start rookie fourth-rounder Marco Wilson on the outside. First-round picks typically struggle as a rookies, let alone midround picks. The only fourth-round corner over the past decade who was a Week 1 starter and stuck throughout the season was Bashaud Breeland for Washington in 2014. Cardinals fans likely remember third-rounder Brandon Williams being inserted immediately into the starting lineup in 2016, quickly losing his confidence and never starting again.
Well, while Wilson hasn't been good, the other guys have more than made up the difference. Alford, who wasn't playing all that well back before he missed two years of football, has allowed a 67.5 passer rating as the nearest defender in coverage this season, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Murphy has been even better, in part because he has picked off three passes in six games. Passes in their direction have produced minus-20.3 expected points added (EPA) so far this season. Wilson has given up four touchdowns and allowed 24.2 EPA, but the Cardinals have to be happy with how their cornerbacks have played.
The linebackers certainly had a better résumé, but it wasn't clear how things would go. Isaiah Simmons, the No. 8 overall pick in 2020, had been virtually unplayable early during his rookie season, and while he improved as the season went on, the Cards were hoping he would take a big leap. They then used their 2021 first-round pick on fellow linebacker Zaven Collins and immediately installed him as their starter, which led 2020 starter Jordan Hicks to request a trade.
A funny thing happened on the way to the season. Despite the Cardinals telling Hicks that there would be no competition for the starting job in camp, he beat out Collins in August and has been an every-down player. Hicks and Simmons have quietly been one of the league's best linebacker duos so far this season. The Cardinals were once a defense every fantasy player targeted for easy points from tight ends, but they have allowed a league-low 5.2 fantasy points per game to opposing tight ends in 2021. Hicks and Simmons have been excellent against the pass, with opposing quarterbacks costing their team 13.8 points of EPA on throws in their direction. Collins hasn't been needed in more than an ancillary role.
With physical playmakers at all levels, the Cardinals have been able to rack up takeaways. Coordinator Vance Joseph's defense has already forced 13 takeaways. That's a huge increase for a defense that produced only 17 in 2019 and 21 in 2020. The offense has generated a league-best 55 points off turnovers and has done a better job of protecting the football. The Cards' turnover margin of plus-8 is the second best in football.
To be fair, though, the Cardinals have been fortunate in terms of their defensive timing. On first and second down, they've been a league-average defense, with opposing teams producing .04 expected points per snap. That ranks 16th in the league, which is just fine. The Cardinals can win with a very good offense and a league-average defense.
On third and fourth down, however, they've morphed into the 2002 Buccaneers. The Cardinals are producing minus-0.54 expected points per play on the money downs. To put that in context, that's the fourth-best defense we've seen on those downs through the first six weeks of the season over the past decade. If they were a dominant defense on first and second down, it would be one thing, but it's tough to believe that a league-average defense on early downs can keep being this dominant on third and fourth down over the remainder of the season.
The weapons. Any team would be happy to start its list of weapons on offense with DeAndre Hopkins, but there were fair questions to be had about the guys after the star wideout. Christian Kirk had struggled to build off a promising rookie season in 2018. Rondale Moore, a second-round pick in April, had major injury issues at Purdue and was entering the NFL as one of its shortest players at 5-foot-7. A.J. Green, who turned 33 in July, looked like he might be done in a miserable year for the Bengals.
Weapons haven't been a problem for the Cardinals this season. It's sad to say about a player who is going to be a deserved first-ballot Hall of Famer, but the reality is that moving on from Larry Fitzgerald made life easier. He spent virtually all of 2019 and 2020 in the slot and didn't offer any sort of big-play threat for Arizona. His 151 targets in the slot over that time frame generated a total of just 9.7 EPA, an average of 0.06 EPA per target. The other Cardinals players generated 45.8 EPA on 240 targets out of the slot, which was more than three times as many expected points added per target.
Fitzgerald's departure has opened up the slot for Kirk, who has consistently looked like a much better player when getting to work inside. The fourth-year wideout had a couple of drops in Sunday's win, but Kirk already has 24 catches for 339 yards and a touchdown out of the slot. He has generated 27.6 EPA out of the slot this season, and the Cardinals as a group have produced 43.4 EPA on just 59 targets. What was mostly a problem for Arizona over the past two seasons has suddenly become a problem for opposing defenses.
The newfound speed out of the slot and the addition of Moore have created more big opportunities for the Cardinals. Over the second half of 2020, they ranked 19th in terms of plays gaining 20-plus yards. So far this season, though, they rank fifth. We can't chalk all of this up to swapping Fitzgerald out of the lineup for more speed, since Green isn't really a burner on the outside at this point of his career. But the Cardinals' players around Hopkins fit much better than they did a year ago.
Can they keep this up? Yes and no. They're not going to stand on their heads on third down all season. Injuries are going to be more of a concern as the campaign goes along. They could sorely use a corner to replace Wilson in the starting lineup. With Colt McCoy as the backup, they need Murray to stay healthy all season. They're probably not going 17-0.
At 6-0, though, the Cardinals have already done enough to virtually ensure a trip to the postseason for the first time since 2015. They have enough talent on both sides of the ball to compete with any team, and they've been one of the league's best teams from snap to snap through six weeks.
Los Angeles Chargers (4-2)
Preseason FPI playoff chances: 38.7%
Current FPI playoff chances: 81.8%
Difference: Plus-43.1%
I wrote about the Chargers as part my piece on the AFC West after Week 3. Since then, the division as a whole has gone 4-5 outside of the West, including L.A.'s 34-6 loss to the Ravens on Sunday. The Broncos and Raiders, who each got off to 3-0 starts, have gone 1-5 over the ensuing three weeks, with their lone win coming with one (the Raiders) beating the other.
The biggest reason the Chargers' playoff odds have risen dramatically since the preseason is what has happened to the rest of the division. The Chiefs, who were prohibitive favorites, are 3-3 and haven't looked like their old selves. The Broncos have fallen back to earth. The Raiders are tied with the Chargers for first place at 4-2, but the Chargers won the first head-to-head game between these two teams, so Justin Herbert & Co. have the tiebreaker.
Things also will be easier for the Chargers moving forward. The teams they've played so far are a combined 20-10 (.667) in games in which they haven't been facing L.A. By FPI, they've faced the league's second-toughest schedule. Over the rest of the season, the teams they'll face are a combined 29-35 (.453) in games in which they're not facing the Chargers. FPI thinks the Chargers have the fourth-easiest schedule in football over the remainder of the season. They get one more game against the Chiefs, but they won't have to face a team as good as the Cowboys or Ravens again until January.
Sunday's blowout loss should understandably raise some concerns about how things could go wrong for the Chargers, but that game is an example of the worst possible situation for Los Angeles. Brandon Staley's defense wants to let teams run the ball, and the Ravens are the league's most consistent rushing attack. Baltimore promptly ran the ball 38 times for 187 yards and three touchdowns, with Latavius Murray, Le'Veon Bell and Devonta Freeman each getting a score.
Baltimore got out to an early 14-0 lead, which led Staley to do what he has done in weeks past and get uncommonly aggressive on fourth down in his own territory. The Chargers had been wildly effective on fourth down in prior weeks and used those fourth-down successes to help fuel a comeback win over the Browns, but they weren't anywhere nearly as effective this time, converting just one of their four tries. They also couldn't run the ball all day, with Austin Ekeler and Joshua Kelley combining for 10 carries for just 14 yards.
Just as the Chargers weren't going to convert virtually all of their fourth downs all season, they're not going to whiff three out of four times most weeks. They also probably won't trail by double digits every week, as they have the past two games. The weakened schedule should help there. The Vikings might be the only team remaining on their slate with a great running game. The Chargers don't match up well with the Ravens, but a fair number of the teams they're likely to face in a deep AFC playoff run are pass-first, like the Bills and Chiefs.
We haven't yet seen the best out of Staley's defense, either. Opposing offenses are converting 43.9% of their third downs against Los Angeles so far, which ranks 25th in the league. The Chargers have blitzed at the sixth-highest rate on third down but rank 27th in pressure rate on that down. They've committed 22 penalties for 432 yards on defense, which ranks 31st, ahead of only the Buccaneers. Those issues aren't likely to keep up as the season goes along.
On the other hand, I'm worried that the Chargers won't do anything about one of the problems ailing them for years. Special teams remains a mess; they ranked 28th in Football Outsiders' special teams DVOA heading into Week 6. One of the biggest problems has been kicker Tristan Vizcaino, who has missed five extra points. Teams can be rash in making decisions about young kickers -- the Chargers once cut Younghoe Koo after a six-kick sample, only for Koo to become one of the best kickers in the league with the Falcons -- but if your kicker can't make extra points at a 90% clip and you don't have him attempting anything beyond 50 yards, how much value is he really adding?
The other big perennial concern for the Chargers is medical. Injuries have torn apart the core of this team season after season, often before the regular season has even begun. We're beginning to see issues there. The newly built offensive line is already down two starters, as Oday Aboushi is done for the year with a torn ACL, while Bryan Bulaga went on injured reserve after Week 1. In the secondary, Chris Harris Jr. has missed time, while emerging star Nasir Adderley wasn't available for the loss to the Ravens. Mike Williams has been one of the NFL's best receivers to start the season, but he was questionable for the Ravens game and didn't look 100% throughout the contest. For the Chargers to thrive, they need their starters to stay healthy.
Dallas Cowboys (5-1)
Preseason FPI playoff chances: 56.2%
Current FPI playoff chances: 97%
Difference: Plus-40.8%
The Cowboys are weird, man. Their offense has been great, but they've had to be spectacular at times just to overcome their own mistakes. Everybody talking about the Cowboys discusses their offense, and that's understandable, but the defense has kept them alive at times. Sunday's win over the Patriots was the perfect encapsulation of how frustrating and fascinating this team can be, often during the same game or even during the same drive. What a strange six weeks.
Let's start with that defense. Led by Trevon Diggs' spectacular start to the season, the Cowboys have 14 takeaways through six games. During last season's dismal 2-4 start to the campaign, they produced ... three takeaways in six games. They have at least two takeaways in each of their first six games so far. The only other time that has happened across the past 30 years was with the 2006 "They are who we thought they were" Bears. Diggs' seven interceptions have obviously led the way there, with the Cowboys picking off 4.8% of opposing passes so far.
That's probably not going to keep up. They also have seen a related element of their game regress way past the mean versus what we saw a year ago. In 2020, the Cowboys were a disaster on offense when it came to losing fumbles. Including their work on defense, 14 fumbles hit the ground in their games. They recovered just four of them, a clip of 28.6%. Ezekiel Elliott fumbled five times in six games, losing four of them. A melting defense didn't help their chances, but they put that defense in impossible positions.
Through six games this season, Dallas has recovered nine of its 13 fumbles (69.2%). The fumbles it has lost on offense have been at the worst possible times. Two have come inside the opposition's 5-yard line, including on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line against the Patriots on Sunday. A third came inside its own 5-yard line and was returned by the Eagles for a touchdown. The Cowboys won't recover fumbles as frequently as they have through the first six weeks, but the fumbles they do lose won't cost them six points as frequently as they have so far.
As you might suspect from an offense that has already lost two fumbles inside their foes' 5, the Cowboys haven't been particularly good in the red zone. Usually, when I talk about red zone performance, I'm mentioning teams that are OK outside the 20-yard line and spectacular inside of it as evidence that they'll fall back in the red zone in the weeks or season to come.
This is the opposite case. On the first 80 yards of their trek toward the end zone, the Cowboys have been a force. They average 0.15 expected points per play, the third-best mark in football. Across the final 20 yards, owing to those fumbles, they rank 21st in EPA per play. There's no reason this will keep happening. Through Week 6 of 2020, for example, the Saints ranked third in EPA per play outside the 20 and 31st inside the red zone. After Week 6? They were ninth in EPA per play outside the red zone and 11th inside of it. Dallas is too good on offense to be this bad in the red zone.
One way for this team to fail to live up to expectations on offense would be if coach Mike McCarthy interferes with the decision-making. Despite suggestions that McCarthy had studied analytics during his year away from the league, the coach who has made late-game decisions for the Cowboys looks a lot like the guy who was happy to take Aaron Rodgers off the field in the game's biggest moments during his time in Green Bay.
It hasn't yet hurt the Cowboys this season. In Week 2 against the Chargers, with the offense moving the ball in a tie game inside the final minute, McCarthy decided to settle for a long field goal. Facing a first-and-10 from the Chargers' 45-yard line with 36 seconds left to go, Dak Prescott threw a four-yard pass and stopped the clock. With one timeout, McCarthy then handed the ball to Elliott for four yards and let the clock run down to four seconds before having Greg Zuerlein attempt a 56-yard field goal, which succeeded.
McCarthy was back at it against the Patriots. The Cowboys didn't do well in short-yardage situations early in the game, and it clearly weighed on the veteran coach. A 10-yard scramble left his team two yards short of a first down in the fourth quarter. Trailing 21-20 with 2:47 and three timeouts to go, McCarthy sent out Zuerlein for a 51-yard field goal, which the veteran kicker missed. Ben Baldwin's model suggested that McCarthy's decision cost the Cowboys three points of win expectancy with the wrong choice. It got lost in the shuffle after Dallas promptly produced a pick-six and gave up a 75-yard touchdown in a matter of minutes.
What does all of this add up to? Likely something close to what our priors would have been before the season about this team with a slightly better defense. Diggs isn't going to intercept a pass every week, although it has been incredible to watch. The pass rush has been fueled by Randy Gregory, which can't be considered much more than a bonus given his history of missed games, but it should be better once DeMarcus Lawrence returns from injury.
The offense is very good and should get better in the red zone. McCarthy's game management, almost inevitably, will hurt them in an important moment. With the rest of the NFC East a combined 5-13, the Cowboys might not face a truly important moment until January.
Cincinnati Bengals (4-2)
Preseason FPI playoff chances: 15.3%
Current FPI playoff chances: 52.5%
Difference: Plus-37.2%
The Bengals are back! Like the Cardinals, we haven't seen Cincinnati in the playoffs or really in the playoff picture since 2015, when it had a 16-15 lead on the Steelers with 1:36 to go in the wild-card game, only for Jeremy Hill to fumble and a pair of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties handed Pittsburgh a chip-shot field goal. This team went 25-53-2 over the five ensuing seasons. Now, FPI projects the Bengals to finish with 9.2 wins, which would be their first winning record since that 2015 campaign.
The frustrating thing for this team is that it could easily be 5-1 and tied for first place in the AFC North, given that it missed two winning kicks against the Packers in what eventually became a 25-22 loss. Of course, it took fourth-down conversions against the Vikings and Jaguars to set up three-point victories, so the Bengals could almost as easily be 2-4. Their most impressive victory was the 24-10 manhandling of the rival Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Most of the big stories surrounding the Bengals this past offseason talked about whether Joe Burrow would be able to return from his serious knee injury or how their trio of talented wide receivers would look in a pass-happy attack. I'll get to all of that in a second, but they haven't been the story so far this season.
To the contrary, Lou Anarumo's defense has been driving the success. The Bengals rank fifth in the NFL in scoring defense, allowing 18.5 points per contest. They also rank fifth in EPA per play on that side of the ball and seventh in defensive win probability added. If anything, they've run a little cold; the Bengals are fifth in EPA per play on first and second down but only 19th on third down.
The Bengals have spurred improvement on that side of the ball with signings the past couple of years. Trae Waynes has played only two games this season, but cornerback Eli Apple has started in his place and looked like an effective starter for the first time since 2018. Apple has allowed a 90.4 passer rating in coverage as the nearest defender. Mike Hilton and Vonn Bell have been acceptable, but Chidobe Awuzie has been excellent, posting a 70.7 passer rating allowed.
I've got to eat some crow, however. I didn't love the Bengals swapping Carl Lawson for Trey Hendrickson this offseason. The former Saints edge rusher had only one season with significant production, and the Bengals were guaranteeing Hendrickson what amounted to $20 million for the 2021 season. The track record of teams guaranteeing No. 1 money to edge rushers with short track records who were the No. 2 guys on their old teams hasn't been good.
Well, I was wrong about Za'Darius Smith joining the Packers, and I have been wrong about Hendrickson through six games. The 26-year-old has 5.5 sacks and 11 knockdowns in six games. He's comfortably been the best pass-rusher for the Bengals, although former Giants tackle B.J. Hill has chipped in with three sacks. Eight of the 12 most used players on Cincinnati's defense are players who were signed in free agency, and that doesn't include Waynes. I don't know how often that formula works, but the Bengals are having plenty of success with it.
If Hendrickson was the biggest addition the Bengals made on defense this offseason, Ja'Marr Chase was their most notable new player on the other side of the ball. As you might have noticed, despite preseason concerns that Chase wasn't separating and was dropping too many passes, the No. 5 overall pick is off to a spectacular start. He has 553 receiving yards and six touchdowns through the first six games of his career. The only receiver since the merger with more receiving yards through their first six games is Anquan Boldin (592). It's easier to catch passes in the modern era, but Chase is ahead of guys such as Justin Jefferson, Amari Cooper, Andre Johnson and even Randy Moss.
Many argued that the Bengals should have followed a year in which Burrow was running for his life by drafting top offensive tackle Penei Sewell over Chase in Round 1. It's too early to make that call, but they have done a much better job of protecting their star quarterback. In 2020, they had a teamwide pass block win rate (PBWR) of just 50%, which ranked 30th in the NFL. Through six weeks, they are up to 19th in PBWR, at 56.7%. That's a major step in the right direction. Jonah Williams & Co. are also eighth in run block win rate (RBWR).
And for whatever concerns there were about Burrow over the summer, he doesn't look like a quarterback concerned about traffic around his knees. If he was hesitant to plant, we would see him posting a significant off-target rate, and that hasn't been the case. Just 13.3% of his passes in 2020 were off-target, which was the fifth-best rate in football. This season, coming back from that knee injury, he has thrown only 12.4% of his passes off target.
Burrow has also torched teams that have tried to send extra pressure. He has posted a league-best 97.1 QBR against the blitz so far, a season after he ranked 26th in the same category. Chase isn't an offensive lineman, but adding Burrow's former LSU teammate gave the quarterback someone he trusts implicitly on hot routes and 50/50 balls, allowing him to get the ball out before the blitz gets home. Chase leads the league in receiving yards (273) when Burrow has been blitzed.
The Bengals can build on their hot start over the next three weeks. Two of their next three games are in the division, including a road trip to play the Ravens on Sunday and a home game against the Browns in Week 9. If they can win one of those two games and hold serve at home against the Jets, Zac Taylor's team will hit its bye at 6-3 and with a 2-1 record in the AFC North, which should put them in solid position to make it back to the postseason.