Somehow, we're already four weeks into the NFL season. For me, that means one thing: quarter-season awards. I'm always excited to encapsulate the first month and pick my favorites in six categories: Coach of the Year, Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year, Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year and league MVP.
We're only four weeks in, of course, which makes this a wonky exercise (and there are now 17 regular-season games, anyway). It's difficult for players to truly separate from the competition over four games, so there's usually way more candidates who garner real consideration for each trophy. That leads to results that will look funny in hindsight, like last season, when Devin Lloyd was my pick for Defensive Rookie of the Year after the first month of the season. Lloyd struggled afterward and was benched down the stretch in November and December. Good start to the season, though!
I end up being more vigilant about eliminating players who missed more time during the first month of the season because even a half or a full game is a significant chunk of time. Missing one game in a full season is just under 6% of the campaign. Missing one of the first four games and judging based on that four-game stretch means a player was out for 25% of the action. I'll forgive players who were sitting in the fourth quarter because they had already dominated the opposition, but it's tough to miss a game because of an injury and still take home hardware here.
These awards are strictly for what a player has accomplished over the first four games. I might mention what they did last season -- or discuss what they need to do to win the award at the end of the season when the actual voting takes place -- but I'm considering how a player performed over only the past month in evaluating who should win here.
I'll begin with our lone coaching award before working through the players:
Jump to an award:
Most Valuable Player | Best coach
Best rookies: Offense | Defense
Players of the Year: Offense | Defense
Coach of the Year
This was a much tougher award to hand out than it seemed at first glance. I put together a short list and had a quarter of the league's coaches seemingly deserving consideration. The template for responses to this column starts with "What about" or "Forgot about"; I'll get a lot of these here. Dan Campbell? Nick Sirianni? Sean McDermott? John Harbaugh? There are too many doing impressive work.
I narrowed my list down to three and found there was a common thread: As recently as two years ago, they were all on the same staff.
3. DeMeco Ryans, Texans
I believe there were people who expected the Texans to win two games all season. Instead, Ryans, in his first season as a head coach, has them at 2-2 after the first month, with two wins over teams that had winning records last season. In the four-way tie at 2-2 in the AFC South, Houston has the best point differential (plus-17) in the division.
We'll talk about rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud later, but Ryans has almost immediately turned around this defense, which ranks 15th in DVOA through four games. If anything, the Texans have been a little unlucky with timing, given that they rank 27th in third-down conversion rate on that side of the football. They have pulled that off, while the three best starters in the secondary -- Derek Stingley, Jalen Pitre and Jimmie Ward -- have missed two games each.
There's still a lot of work to be done in Houston, and some rebuilding teams get off to a hot start and quickly fade. (Think about the 2022 Bears, who began 2-1 and then have gone 1-17 since.) With Stroud playing well and the Texans likely to get healthier as offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil and others return to the lineup, chances are they should get better as the season goes along, not worse.