Three weeks might as well be an eternity in the NFL. If you're a fan of a struggling team such as the Patriots or Raiders, think about how optimistic you were before Week 1 and contrast that with how you feel right now. Things aren't even quite as bad as they are normally, given that Las Vegas is the only team to hit Week 4 without a win or a tie.
Of course, teams still can be raising anxious eyebrows with a win or two to their name. Let's leave aside the Raiders, allow the Patriots to worry about what they'll do on offense without quarterback Mac Jones and focus on four teams whose fans might rightfully be panicking after three weeks.
Three of the teams below managed to pick up a victory, although all three have only one and needed fourth-quarter comebacks to take home those W's. The fourth team below has two wins, although I've now needed to write about what a mess it is after each of its first three games.
I'll break down what's going on with four of the league's most disappointing teams on their worst side of the ball. I'll also raise the panic alarm to tell you whether you should be worried or whether their problems should get better in the weeks to come. Let's start with one of the teams in London in Week 4, as New Orleans might be facing the end of an era on offense.
Jump to a struggling team:
Broncos | Cardinals | Colts | Saints
The Saints' offense is out of sync
New Orleans is one dramatic comeback away from catastrophe. The only thing keeping the Saints from an 0-3 start in the NFC South is a 16-point fourth-quarter comeback against the rival Falcons, aided by a moment of madness in the red zone from quarterback Marcus Mariota and a terrible decision to punt by Atlanta coach Arthur Smith. Losing to the Bucs is one thing on paper, but the Saints were pushed aside by arguably the league's most injury-riddled roster before being shut out for three quarters by the Panthers in Week 3.
The Saints have scored 51 points in three games, and 38 have come in the fourth quarter. You can tell yourself they are saving their best work for the key moments of the game, but it would be more realistic to say Pete Carmichael's offense hasn't been able to do anything until teams get in prevent defenses and let them move the ball downfield. By DVOA, which adjusts for game situation, the Saints rank a lowly 26th in offensive DVOA and 28th in passing DVOA.
Jameis Winston played the best football of his career a year ago under former New Orleans coach Sean Payton before tearing his left ACL, but with Payton gone, it's worrisome to see Winston looking more like the quarterback who alternately thrilled and terrified Buccaneers fans in Tampa. He already has thrown five interceptions this season, two more than he threw across seven starts in 2021. Mike Edwards' pick-six in Week 2 was the worst of the bunch, a throw in which Winston stared down that side of the field and led the Bucs safety directly to the football.
Admittedly, one of those picks was a Hail Mary attempt on the final snap of the game, so it would be disingenuous to count that one against Winston. If we're being fair, though, some of his best passes have also been ill-advised. Marquez Callaway's touchdown catch against the Panthers is a prime example, as he threw into the end zone into a crowd with three Carolina defenders and two New Orleans receivers. It's one thing to do that on fourth-and-goal trailing by multiple scores, but he threw this on first-and-goal. Callaway made an incredible catch, but those are the sort of aggressive decisions he simply can't afford to make.
The scary element is that Winston probably has run a little hot in terms of catch rate, given that his completion percentage over expected (CPOE) is 5.2% above the expected mark, the second-best mark in football for quarterbacks with at least 10 pass attempts. NFL Next Gen Stats hasn't credited him with a single drop in three games, which will be tough to sustain as the year goes along. The Saints have an exciting set of receivers, but they haven't had a consistently effective passing game. Winston is dealing with a transverse fracture in his back, an injury that temporarily sidelined Tony Romo in the past. It's difficult to figure how that gets better without rest.
A Saints line already banged up with injuries has struggled to hold up against blitzes. The Saints' QBR against teams sending extra pressure ranks 26th, while they are 15th when teams send four or fewer, which might explain their success late in games. First-round pick Trevor Penning is on injured reserve with a torn ligament in his foot, while guard Andrus Peat suffered a concussion during the loss to Carolina. Just about everybody on the line besides center Erik McCoy has allowed a sack, and the Saints have looked amateurish with a couple of their pass-protection blunders. They look like an offense adjusting to life without a legendary coach.
The other disconcerting element is the continued struggles of Alvin Kamara, who hasn't looked the same since Drew Brees retired after the 2020 season. The running back has turned 24 carries into 102 yards, but he has generated 18 fewer yards than an average back would have been expected to gain in the same situations, per NFL Next Gen Stats. He also lost a fumble that led to a touchdown in the Panthers game, and his minus-13.4 rushing expected points added (EPA) is the third fewest in the league. He missed Week 2 because of a rib injury, which might explain some of the issues but doesn't exactly bode well for a healthy season. He also has gained just 19 yards on 11 receiving targets.
All of this leads to too many series in which the Saints can't get out of their own way. Take the first series in the third quarter against Carolina. Down 13-0, the Saints advanced into the red zone. On first down, backup guard Calvin Throckmorton was beaten at the line by Matt Ioannidis, who tackled Kamara in the backfield for a 1-yard loss. On second down, facing a big blitz and a free rusher, Winston correctly found his mismatch in Kamara and got the football away, but his pass was overthrown by several yards.
On third down, the Panthers sent a designer blitz toward the Saints, which generated a free rusher. Winston was hot on the play and needed to get the ball out, but he took a sack instead, knocking New Orleans back 11 yards. Facing fourth-and-forever, it was forced to send out kicker Wil Lutz, who pushed his 48-yard field goal wide. This team does not have the margin of error to make those mistakes, snap after snap, drive after drive.
The worrisome thing for New Orleans is that it doesn't seem to have a Plan B. Quarterback/tight end/special-teamer Taysom Hill missed the Panthers game because of a rib injury, so while he could theoretically come back as the starting quarterback, we saw that offense struggle for consistency with Payton calling plays. The jury is still out on Carmichael, but the Saints certainly don't look like they have as many easy answers for their quarterback as they did during the Payton era.
Things look even worse in the big picture. They don't have their first-round pick in 2023, as it was sent to the Eagles to grab a 2022 first-round pick. While the Saints can use cap acrobatics to clear out the $63 million in space they need next year, they would eat significant dead money to cut players such as Winston ($11.2 million), Kamara ($19.4 million), Hill ($23.8 million) or Peat ($17 million). Their path toward clearing out cap space relies on restructuring their core, which creates serious problems when they need to move on from those players.
By snap-weighted age, the Saints have been the league's oldest team through three weeks. Even with that last-ditch comeback against the Falcons and a solid start to the season by their defense, they have seen their playoff odds per ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) drop from 39.9% to 25.5%.
Five of New Orleans' next six games are at home -- one is a "home game" in London on Sunday -- a stretch that will include games against the Vikings, Seahawks, Bengals, Raiders and Ravens. Mix in a road game against the Cardinals, and the Saints probably have to go 4-2 or 5-1 over the next six weeks to keep their season on track. If not, they might need to face the harsh reality of their post-Brees and Payton future, something they've been trying to put off for as long as possible.
Panic level: Blaring alarm
The Broncos' offense is broken
If you endured the entirety of Sunday's 49ers-Broncos matchup, you saw two offenses failing to move the ball consistently. The 49ers at least have the excuse of spending all offseason preparing for a Trey Lance-led attack before turning back to Jimmy Garoppolo, but the Broncos have no such excuse. Russell Wilson was supposed to lead this long-suffering offense to new heights. After three games, they've scored a grand total of 41 points. One year ago, with Teddy Bridgewater under center, Denver had a better record (3-0) and 76 points. This is not the ride Broncos country signed up to take this offseason.
You already know one of the reasons the Broncos have struggled. I covered coach Nathaniel Hackett's disastrous game management after both Week 1 and Week 2, so I won't belabor the point again here. The decision to hire former Ravens assistant Jerry Rosburg to help with those decisions should make Hackett's process faster, but it remains to be seen whether they will make the right choices.
In the 49ers game, Rosburg talked Hackett out of a decision to go for it on fourth-and-inches from his own 34-yard line while trailing 10-5 in the fourth quarter. Disconcertingly for the Broncos, Rosburg's advice was inaccurate. By Ben Baldwin's model, the Broncos cost themselves nearly five points of win expectancy by punting in that situation. They were struggling on offense and might have failed, but then again, struggling on offense doesn't make it any more likely they will get the ball back and march the entire field for a touchdown, either. They ended up winning the game in spite of that fourth-down call.
It's fair to be disappointed by how Denver has struggled through three weeks. The offense looks disjointed and sloppy. The big plays that were the hallmark of Wilson's best moments in Seattle have appeared here and there, but Denver's rate of plays gaining 20-plus yards (6%) is league average, and it has only one 50-plus-yard play in three weeks, a 67-yard touchdown pass to Jerry Jeudy in the opener.
One of the problems, though, has been the Broncos haven't had an alternative without those big plays. Their average snap has come with 8.8 yards to go, the fifth-worst mark in the league. They're converting only 64.3% of their series into a new set of downs, which is seventh worst. Success rate is a stat that tracks how often an offense generates positive expected points and avoids falling off schedule to score. Their 37.8% success rate is the second-worst mark, ahead of the Panthers.
This was not true for Wilson's offenses in Seattle. The Seahawks ranked seventh in success rate in 2020, which was his last full, healthy season as the starter. They were 20th in 2018, so it's possible for a Wilson-led offense to be below average by this metric, but it's uncommon for the Super Bowl winner to be at the reins of one of the league's least consistent offenses. This could change for Denver in the weeks to come.
The biggest problem with the Broncos' offense, though, is what happens at the end of their drives. They have made seven trips to the red zone and scored exactly one touchdown. That 14.3% touchdown rate is the worst mark in football. They have kicked four field goals and turned the ball over twice, on fumbles by Melvin Gordon and Javonte Williams at the goal line in Seattle. I'm not sure two fumbles by running backs at the goal line will convince Seahawks fans that teams should throw the ball more inside the 2-yard line, but it probably won the game for Seattle in Week 1.
Outside of the red zone, the Broncos rank 13th in the league in EPA per play, generating 0.05 EPA per snap. That's fine. Inside the red zone? Their minus-0.66 EPA per play ranks last. Not ideal. We know they probably won't keep losing fumbles at the goal line, so those drives should turn into field goals and touchdowns in the future.
We also know red zone performance, while incredibly important, can fluctuate wildly from week to week and year to year. The 0.71 EPA per play gap between Denver's performance outside and inside the red zone is the largest of the past decade, but there are teams that have come pretty close through the first three weeks of the season, with the 2021 Chargers (minus-0.47 EPA per play) as a recent example. Those Chargers ranked 25th in red zone touchdown rate during the first three weeks of the season, but from Week 4 on, they led the league.
If we take the 30 teams that posted the largest negative gap between their EPA outside of the red zone and inside the red zone through the first three weeks of the season over the past decade, that trend didn't keep up over the remainder of the season. Those teams posted an average EPA gap of minus-0.45 points per red zone play from Week 1 to 3. From Week 4 on, they were actually 0.03 points per play better in the red zone than they were outside of the opposition's 20-yard line.
In other words, while the Broncos have been a mess in the red zone to start their season, their offense inside the red zone should expect to be about as efficient as their offense outside of it over the remainder of the season. It's fair to wonder whether they have the sort of ceiling we would have imagined given their personnel after the Wilson trade, but they should be more productive in the weeks to come.
Panic level: A time for patience, not worry
The Cardinals aren't themselves -- on defense
Like the Saints, the Cardinals are one spectacular comeback away from an 0-3 start. And like the Saints, the Cardinals probably expected to start the year with a winning record. Kliff Kingsbury's team has faded in the second half during his three seasons, but Arizona started 2021 by winning its first seven games. It won those games by an average of nearly 16 points per contest, and that run included victories over the eventual Super Bowl-champion Rams, the 49ers, who nearly beat the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, and the Titans, who were the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
The Cardinals' schedule hasn't been easy this season, but they also haven't looked good. Facing three playoff teams from a year ago, quarterback Kyler Murray & Co. have been blown out by the Chiefs, have been comfortably handled by the Rams and needed multiple fourth-down and two-point conversions to avoid falling to the Raiders. Arizona ranks 31st in overall team DVOA through three weeks, ahead of only Washington.
The number that stands out to me as the first red flag with the Cardinals is something that wasn't an issue for them a year ago. ESPN defines an explosive play as a 12-yard gain on the ground or a 16-yard gain through the air. In 2021, Arizona posted an explosive play differential of plus-16, which meant it produced 16 more explosive plays on offense than it allowed on defense across the full season. The plus-16 margin was the eighth-best figure in the league.
In 2022, the Cardinals have posted an explosive play differential of minus-18, which is comfortably the worst mark in football. Over the past decade, the only teams to post a worse explosive point differential over the first three weeks of the season were the 2019 Dolphins, 2018 Cardinals and 2021 Bears. That list includes one team that was actively tanking and two that fired their coaching staff after the season. This is not a comfortable place for the Cards.
Watching those explosive plays against the league's 31st-ranked defense by DVOA, I see an Arizona defense playing undisciplined, unfocused football. It was no accident the Chiefs came out to start the season with two counter run concepts in their first three plays and went back to that run as the game went along. Kansas City found too many exposed gaps and clear running lanes. The Rams attacked that same weakness differently, going after the Cardinals with screens. An early jet-sweep touchdown by wideout Cooper Kupp created opportunities in the running game afterward, as the Cards were clearly on edge to avoid giving up another big play.
Teams have picked apart Arizona's zones, especially the linebackers over the middle of the field. Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph's blitz packages ask his linebackers to read and react in coverage within fire zones, and I'm not sure Zaven Collins and Nick Vigil have either the range or awareness to pull that off consistently. There have been too many easy completions to receivers splitting between two zone defenders, who haven't been quick enough (or capable enough) to react to and match the routes they're seeing.
Vigil is in the lineup because the Cardinals benched 2020 first-round pick Isaiah Simmons after a disastrous Week 1, dropping him from 57 snaps in the opener to 30 over the past two weeks combined. Simmons was dominated by Kansas City wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster and tight end Travis Kelce while struggling in the run game, so he can't have too many complaints. The Cardinals used back-to-back first-round picks on off-ball linebackers Collins and Simmons, and I'm not sure either is a starting-caliber player yet.
Having used those first-round picks on underwhelming players at the position where it's easiest to find pieces on the defensive side of the ball, the Cardinals are laboring elsewhere. They're playing a pair of replacement-level corners -- Jace Whittaker and Marco Wilson -- for significant snaps each week. They will get Trayvon Mullen into the lineup soon, but the Raiders aren't exactly loaded with cornerbacks, and they dumped Mullen for a swap of late-round picks at the end of the preseason. J.J. Watt has returned from injury, but Michael Dogbe and Leki Fotu haven't been able to hold up along the defensive line.
Joseph always has been able to create pressure with his creative blitz packages, but the Cardinals are almost entirely reliant on him to make magic happen to get home. They're blitzing at the league's highest rate, but they are only 19th in the league in pressure rate. Whether they pressure the quarterback or not, teams have carved up those blitzes. Opposing passers are 35-of-49 for 329 yards and seven touchdowns against their blitzes this season, good for the league's fifth-worst QBR.
In years past, for all the hype afforded the offense, it was the defense that pushed the Cardinals further toward victory. Joseph's defense ranked higher in DVOA than Kingsbury's offense in both 2020 and 2021. While Arizona's offense hasn't been great this season, it ranks 21st in DVOA, while the defense is 31st.
There might be a universe in which Murray and the offense are firing on all cylinders and carrying the defense to victories, but that offense has been surviving mostly through succeeding on fourth downs. The Cardinals sorely miss suspended wideout DeAndre Hopkins, who gave Murray an answer on third downs and on contested passes. Slot receiver Greg Dortch has been a pleasant surprise and is a reminder there are more qualified slot receivers in the NFL than jobs available for those players, but the Cardinals don't look explosive or steady on offense.
Everything I've told you is true, but ESPN's FPI is a lot smarter than I am, and it doesn't see any reason to be alarmed. FPI wasn't too optimistic about the Cardinals before the season, pegging their chances of advancing to the postseason at 37.3%. With the rest of the NFC West also struggling, FPI believes they are actually better off now than they were in August, assigning Kingsbury's men a 39.1% chance of making the playoffs. Joseph is a good enough defensive coordinator to turn around the ship, but he might not have the players to live up to FPI's expectations.
Panic level: Be very scared
Matt Ryan (and the Colts offense) might be toast
The Colts pulled out their first win of the season Sunday, but it wasn't thanks to much help from their offense. Their defense and special teams won the day against Kansas City, while the offense scored two touchdowns. One came on a 4-yard field after a muffed punt by Chiefs return man Skyy Moore, while the other required an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on defensive tackle Chris Jones to extend a drive.
Frank Reich's offense ranks 32nd in DVOA through three weeks. That's down from 13th in the NFL a year ago, and that was a season with the much-maligned Carson Wentz at quarterback. The Colts' latest veteran signal-caller is Ryan, and with the 37-year-old throwing more interceptions than touchdowns over three games to start his Indy career, there are concerns they might have acquired a lemon from the Falcons.
With aging quarterbacks, the first concern publicly is always that their arm strength has gone. It's too early in the season to draw conclusions in ink, but there are reasons to be worried about Ryan. On deep throws (passes traveling 16 or more yards in the air), he is 6-of-14 for 151 yards with three interceptions. His QBR on those passes is a mere 34.5, which ranks just below Joe Flacco for 28th in the league. Ryan was far better in every category as a deep passer last season.
There are some extenuating circumstances here in a 14-pass sample. Rookie wideout Alec Pierce dropped a would-be touchdown in the opener on a good throw. Ryan still looks like he's growing comfortable in Indianapolis' offense and with his new receivers, so there have been moments in which he has looked hesitant with his throws or put them in places where his receivers didn't end up running. Hopefully, those issues recede as the season goes along.
The Colts also still seem to be sorting out their pass protections, which is strange for a team with a veteran quarterback in Ryan and a star center in Ryan Kelly. They looked flummoxed at times against the Chiefs, who were able to do things NFL defenses simply shouldn't be able to do. It's one thing for an edge rusher to win one-on-one against a tackle, but they were blowing the core components of pass protection. They allowed unblocked rushers up the A-gap (on either side of the center) on three different plays and an unblocked rusher up the B-gap on a fourth. That's unforgivable for any offensive line, let alone a good one. Indianapolis also blew a protection on a L'Jarius Sneed fourth-and-1 strip sack.
This is the first third down of the game for the Colts. They have superstars at left guard and center and a QB who has seen everything. How do you let a free rusher run up the A-gap? Not the only time this happened in Week 3, either. pic.twitter.com/fcmI5hmbzx
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 28, 2022
Right guard Danny Pinter, a full-time starter for the first time after Mark Glowinski left in free agency, looked overmatched Sunday. He was run over altogether on one sack by edge rusher Frank Clark, while Jones repeatedly gave him trouble. Those are two great players, to be fair, but Pinter also struggled to move from one assignment to the other when the blitzer he was expecting to come didn't arrive, regardless of who that blitzer was. Indy doesn't have much depth on the interior, so he's going to need to figure this out on the fly.
Leaving aside Ryan's teammates, there are real worries about the lack of zip on his passes. He has to be able to hit shots into holes against Cover 2 or back-shoulder passes in this offense, and even when he has completed those throws, they've been more like lobs than the sort of driven passes we typically see from NFL quarterbacks. It might be telling that Indy took only one single shot downfield against the Chiefs, a 50/50 ball Ryan completed to Pierce in the shadow of his own end zone for a 30-yard gain.
It's fair to note Ryan isn't exactly playing with great playmakers at receiver, although that shouldn't impact the zip on his throws. With Pierce and Michael Pittman Jr. missing the Week 2 loss to the Jaguars, Ryan's targets at receiver have gone to Ashton Dulin, Kylen Granson, Mike Strachan and Dezmon Patmon. Pittman can be a borderline No. 1 wideout when healthy, and his absence was a huge hindrance, but there's no depth within this receiving corps.
Parris Campbell, finally healthy after missing most of the past three season because of injuries, hasn't been noticeable on the field. His 110 routes lead the team, but he has mustered only 47 receiving yards on eight targets. The 2019 second-round pick, drafted just ahead of DK Metcalf, Diontae Johnson and Ohio State teammate Terry McLaurin, is averaging just 0.43 yards per route run this season. Out of 95 qualifying wideouts, that figure ranks 94th through three weeks, ahead of only Arizona's A.J. Green.
Where Ryan still succeeds is distributing the ball on quick game. Given the opportunity to use his brain and experience before the snap and make a short throw after the snap, he has been effective. His 82.0 QBR on throws within 2.5 seconds of getting the snap ranks eighth best, while his 82.8% adjusted completion percentage (a measure that weights difficulty by air yards and removes throwaways and drops) on those attempts ranks first.
You can make an offense out of quick game, especially if you run the football effectively. Jonathan Taylor's fantasy managers are beginning to worry after two consecutive middling games by the superstar back, but I'm not concerned. We're not seeing teams stack up defenders near the line of scrimmage against him, as just under 15% of his carries have come against a loaded box, which is way below players such as Leonard Fournette and Derrick Henry.
Taylor averaged an outrageous 1.7 yards over expectation per carry a year ago, meaning he gained an average of nearly two yards more than what a typical back would do with the same blocking on the same play, per the NFL Next Gen Stats model. This season, he has not been quite as effective, but he's still 0.4 yards over expectation, which ranks 15th in the league for backs with at least 20 carries.
The big plays have been missing for the 2021 All-Pro, however. Taylor produced eight gains of 30 yards or more as a runner last season, which led the league. He also carried the ball more often than anybody else, but given his rush attempts, he generated a 30-plus-yard gain once every 41.5 carries. This season, on 61 attempts, Taylor doesn't have a single run longer than 21 yards. This likely isn't much more than randomness.
Taylor will get better as the year goes along, and the Colts should be able to sort out some of their pass-protection issues. From their perspective, though, they'll be hoping Ryan's arm doesn't decline. They would be on the hook for $18 million in dead money if they need to move on from the 2015 MVP after the season, a hit that will hinder them if they extend Taylor's contract and need to find a new signal-caller.
Ryan never was expected to be a long-term commitment, but he was supposed to be an upgrade on Wentz and a short-term stabilizer. Right now, the Colts look like they're still a work in progress on offense, which is dangerous in advance of a divisional matchup against the rival Titans on Sunday.
Panic level: Cautious optimism ... for now