<
        >

          NFL quarterback heat check: Sizing up Fields, Darnold, Dalton

          • Ben SolakSep 24, 2024, 09:10 AM ET
            Close
              Ben Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.

          What a Week 3! I don't know what's going on!

          Once again, big favorites just straight up ... lost. The Bengals fell to the Commanders on Monday night, chasing losses by the 49ers (to the Rams) and the Browns (to the Giants) on Sunday. Four games were played in Week 3 by favorites of at least 6 points, per ESPN BET, and only the Jets won outright. Twelve games have been played all season by favorites of at least 6 points, and those teams are 5-7 straight up.

          It's typical of the early NFL season to have some wild results, but not like this. I have a few theories as to why, but they're all half-baked. For now, I'm still trying to figure out just what is real. That's where this week's column focuses. Every Tuesday, I'll spin the previous week of NFL football forward, looking at what the biggest storylines mean for what comes next. We'll take a first look at the consequences of "Monday Night Football," break down a major trend or two and highlight some key individual players and plays. There will be film. There will be stats (a whole section of them). And there will be fun.

          Jump to a section:
          The Big Thing: Midtier QB heat check
          Mailbag: Questions from ... you
          Second Take: Seahawks to win NFC West?
          Next Ben Stats: Three wild Week 3 stats
          Monday Night Football: Trouble for CIN, JAX

          The Big Thing: Midtier QB heat check

          Every week, this column will kick off with one wide look at a key game, player or trend from the previous Sunday of NFL action. What does it mean for the rest of the season? To start this week, we dig into surprising hot starts from three quarterbacks.

          This sort of NFL season is an analyst's nightmare. Why? Because nobody who's good stays good for longer than a week, and nobody who's supposed to be good is actually good (besides the Bills and Chiefs, but that's super boring). My job is to explain what's going on, and my editors insisted that I didn't just submit several thousand shrug emojis and call it a day. So I'm looking at the early-season performance of three veteran-ish quarterbacks -- Pittsburgh's Justin Fields, Minnesota's Sam Darnold and Carolina's Andy Dalton -- and trying to figure out what led to their (relatively) hot starts. And far more importantly, will their success continue?

          Justin Fields, Pittsburgh Steelers

          Any evaluation of Fields' improvement in Pittsburgh should start with what isn't there, rather than what is there. Fields has, in a small sample, eliminated a big chunk of the negative plays that ended his career in Chicago. His sack rate of 6.7% is below league average and comfortably below his previous single-season low of 9.6%. He's turning only 21% of his pressures into sacks, too -- again, the lowest mark for any season in his career and below the current NFL average.

          Interceptions? Fields is one of only 12 quarterbacks to have thrown one or fewer picks so far this season, and it was the result of a chaotic tip drill against the Chargers on Sunday -- hardly the sort of pick we're accustomed to Fields throwing. (Don't ask me about the fumbles. Those are still around.)

          I thought the Chargers game was easily the most encouraging of the three we've seen from Fields in Pittsburgh. He was asked to be a quick-game distributor from the pocket for a large portion of this contest and answered the call better than you'd ever expect based on his film from the Bears days. In Chicago, Fields was regularly late and uncertain on the most basic of half-field concepts. Zone defenders closed windows, Fields attempted late throws into tight spots, and incompletions or interceptions ensued. Or Fields ate the throw and likely took a sack.

          But against the Chargers, Fields got the football out on time. His time to throw of 2.77 seconds was the fourth-fastest single-game mark of his career, just underneath his Week 2 game against the Broncos (2.97 seconds, sixth-fastest).

          While the Steelers are certainly giving Fields quick-game concepts, it's wrong to write a story of pre-snap reads and dink-and-dunks. Fields has gotten a roughly equal amount of throws out in under 2.5 seconds (what we typically measure as quick throws) this season as he had in three seasons with the Bears. Where he has really taken a leap is finding pass attempts in rhythm -- between 2.5 and 4 seconds, as measured by NGS.

          This shows a QB who is maturing in his understanding of what to do as the play progresses. It is a totally unspectacular thing -- far less exciting than those Fields dropbacks in which he breaks two tackles in the pocket, escapes out the back door and runs for 40 yards -- but it is essential for Fields as he attempts to reconstruct his career as an NFL quarterback.

          Take this first-and-10 rep early in the game against the Chargers. This is a seven-man protection with a vertical and an intermediate-breaking route. The design is meant to open the tight end working back across the middle level of the field. It is supposed to chunk off a big gain ... but Fields immediately dumps the ball to the running back.

          This is such a risk-averse decision, and almost painfully so. But Fields sees that he can get the ball to the back quickly before the sinking linebacker stops dropping. That sets up Najee Harris for an easy completion and a few yards after the catch. This is a quarterback believing that he won't go broke taking a profit.

          The Chicago version of Fields simply did not do this. Even if he got to the RB, he got there late and pulled the linebacker down to the route with his hesitation. The briskness of his process turns this from second-and-9 into a second-and-4, which is totally unexciting. But it is an integral piece in the construction of an NFL quarterback, and it has long been lacking from Fields' game. We're three weeks in, and it seems like the change of scenery has taught him a thing or two.

          If this is Fields' metamorphosis, we should expect it to be rocky. And let's be clear, it has been rocky. Being 3-0 is nice, but Fields is still 25th of 31 quarterbacks in success rate and explosive play rate. If his inaccuracy returns -- which is a reasonable expectation, given the spray chart of his first three years in the league -- this incremental passing attack will suffer even more. Fields' 5.8 air yards per attempt show just how much the downfield element of this offense is lacking, though that's a receiver problem as much as it's a quarterback problem. Fields is doing some new good things, but this is far from a good offense, and he is far from a good quarterback.

          Because the Steelers' pass-catching room is so thin, there's a pretty low ceiling on the offense overall. As Fields continues learning how to calibrate risk and reward, he needs playmakers to turn his checkdowns into big gains and help erase his mistakes with elite play downfield. Save for George Pickens, the Steelers don't have a guy on the roster who can do either thing. This offense will likely remain oriented on ball control and manageable third downs for the remainder of the season. However, with this hot start atop the AFC North, I think a midseason trade acquisition for a starting receiver would be more than justifiable.

          If Fields continues to play as he did against the Chargers, he won't give this job up to Russell Wilson -- not even if Wilson were 150% healthy. And with every game that Fields plays, that risk calibration and metamorphosis will get one step further along. Early on, this reminds me of Jared Goff's first season in Detroit; it wasn't pretty on the stat sheet, but the supporting cast wasn't good, and the quarterback and offensive coordinator were still learning how to work with each other. The Lions churned out a top offense over the next few seasons with Goff. I think those expectations are far too lofty for Fields, who never had the success in Chicago that Goff did in Los Angeles. But a lesser version could give the Steelers a floor of quarterback play -- just average starting-level QB play -- that they haven't seen in several years.

          Verdict: He's not going to be elite tomorrow. He's not going to be elite ever. But he could be an acceptable starter for a while.

          Sam Darnold, Minnesota Vikings

          Darnold is playing good ball. Only 27 years old (and younger than Joe Burrow!), Darnold looks like a vet because, well, he is one. During his 59th career start Sunday, he was poised against pressure, able to create outside of structure, regularly found the right reads and delivered the ball accurately.

          The natural talent that got Darnold drafted third overall back in 2018 -- his arm and how well he throws from messy platforms -- was on display multiple times against the Texans. He drilled tight windows in the end zone for key scores, but this third-and-long far sideline out route to Justin Jefferson with an offensive lineman in his lap was, to me, the most impressive rep.

          These three games under coach Kevin O'Connell in Minnesota have been some of the best football we've ever seen Darnold play. The last time we saw him as a starter wasn't too bad, though. He played six games for the Panthers to end the 2022 season. With Ben McAdoo as the offensive coordinator, the Panthers went under center a lot, ran a ton of play-action and gave Sam downfield and intermediate routes to hit on long dropbacks.

          That is exactly what Darnold is getting from O'Connell, who is levels better than McAdoo as a playcaller and designer, and who has far more experience in this style of offense than McAdoo did. Look at some of Darnold's production metrics, as well as some descriptors of what the offense is asking of him. He's picking up exactly where he left off in Carolina.

          It isn't bad news that O'Connell is getting Darnold to his spots on the court. It's good news! O'Connell is as good as any coordinator in the league at working around a quarterback who isn't, perhaps, at the tippy-top tier of the position. He got the best production of Kirk Cousins' career in his final couple of seasons in Minnesota. He got a month of solid offense out of Joshua Dobbs. Heck, Nick Mullens threw for 400 yards in a game last season. O'Connell is so stinkin' good at just getting a guy open -- whether by formation, motion or route combination -- that so long as he has a willing QB, this offense stays explosive.

          The question facing Darnold and the Vikings is whether they can sustain this. It is wicked hard to outscheme every Sunday opponent for a month, for two months, three, four. Almost everyone who does it comes from this offensive tree -- Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDaniel. O'Connell's offense is far more similar to McVay's than what Shanahan's and McDaniel's have become, and McVay went for the big upgrade at quarterback (Matthew Stafford) to make his life easier. Winning on the chalkboard every week for 20-plus weeks is just too tall of an ask.

          The first weak point that opposing defenses will attack? Darnold. Pressure has famously flustered him, and while those longer dropbacks are good for downfield routes putting big stresses on defense, they invite a ton of pressure. Darnold has been pressured on 35.2% of his dropbacks and has taken a sack on 9.1% of his total dropbacks, both of which are above league average. On a small sample, Darnold is holding it together when pressured (ninth in EPA per dropback, 14th in success rate), but his off-target rate is higher than all but five quarterbacks so far this season. Darnold isn't a scrambler, either; he's either going to take a sack or put that ball out there.

          This is the rub for Darnold: He has to succeed when O'Connell's machinations fail -- when he's pressured or forced to play outside of structure. And Darnold doesn't need to win on scramble-drill plays or beat free rushers or anything. If he can just continue to avoid turnovers and whittle down on sack numbers, then he'll continue doing his part for the Vikings' offense. We might call this the Jimmy Garoppolo/Brock Purdy dichotomy: Garoppolo was never able to do anything when pressured for Shanahan, while Purdy can do enough. So long as Darnold is more of a Purdy than a Garoppolo, he'll continue to produce.

          I called the Vikings pretenders in this space last week and picked against them in my Friday column. Vikings fans raked me over the coals, and Sunday, I ate my crow as Minnesota demolished the Texans at home. I'm still not convinced, though. I've watched a lot of Darnold over the years, and I know that these flashes of quality play are often chased by a few head-scratching weeks. I also watched O'Connell prop up backup quarterbacks for all of last season. It's one of the reasons I had preseason faith in the O'Connell-Darnold pairing and identified O'Connell as a Coach of the Year pick.

          I'm one step closer to believing that this will last all season. I've gone from "full-throated doubter" to "suspicious but willing to entertain."

          Verdict: Good coaches can win with Darnold. Great coaches can win with Darnold for a while. Time to make your money, KOC.

          Andy Dalton, Carolina Panthers

          I think the Panthers are going to go .500 with Dalton.

          Well, probably not. They still have all the same personnel issues that they had when Bryce Young was under center. But Dalton is just so much better at mitigating those problems.

          Here's a good example from the win over the Raiders. Left tackle Ikem Ekwonu loses in pass protection off the blind side right away. But Dalton, who knows his left tackle is shaky and understands how to adjust his process accordingly, buys some time shuffling to his right, away from pressure. He gets enough time to uncork a ball to Diontae Johnson, who isn't even really the receiver for whom this concept is designed. But Dalton gives him a chance instead of just throwing it away or eating a sack, and Johnson pays off a great ball with a nice catch. That's six.

          While accounting for the deficiencies, Dalton allowed the offense to work as intended. Johnson won on isolation routes from the slot and outside, winning as a route runner as he long did in Pittsburgh. Running back Chuba Hubbard had a great game in three phases -- catching the football, pass protecting and running behind an offensive line that largely dominated a good defensive line. Rookie WR Xavier Legette got a big catch and run, which is his path to reps as a rookie. With competency at quarterback, everything fell into place.

          But then there's something beyond competency. There's excellence. This, for example, is an excellent throw.

          It's the sort of thing a veteran QB can do for your offense. There aren't that many signal-callers in the NFL who would sit in the pocket and rip that seam with a safety so close to it. Younger, scramble-friendly quarterbacks would find a different throw or get to a scramble-drill situation. But Dalton knows where his bread is buttered. If he's going to succeed at 36 years old behind an offensive line shaky in pass protection, he has to hit every glimmer of sunlight he finds in the passing game -- especially those downfield.

          So Dalton hits Thielen in stride, just beyond the hash safety and inside the coverage corner. You're not going to see a better throw than that this week. What a dime.

          Of course, we have to adjust by a factor of the Raiders' defense and calculate the "new quarterback" bump. Everyone wanted to get coach Dave Canales' first win, too. The Panthers won't look this good on offense this week. Well, wait, they have the Bengals' defense this week. They won't look this good all season.

          But again, this is what a veteran quarterback does for your offense: He brings the other pieces into clarity. It's going to be a lot easier for Panthers GM Dan Morgan to understand what he has in the wide receiver room now that they're getting regular quarterback play. When rookie running back Jonathon Brooks (knee) joins the active roster, his opportunities for development will be so much better than a 2023 rookie, such as receiver Jonathan Mingo, because the offense is functional under Dalton.

          So yeah, the Panthers might not go .500. (Dude, they really might go .500 if Dalton keeps playing like this.) But Dalton will be a rising tide that lifts all boats, and I'm not going to put a ceiling on that effect until I see it. Don't call me surprised when the Panthers beat the Bengals this week.

          Verdict: Dalton still has the juice! Time to figure out what the rest of these Panthers are made of going forward.

          From y'all

          The best part of writing this column is hearing from all of you. Hit me on X (@BenjaminSolak) or by email (benjamin.solak@espn.com) anytime -- but especially on Monday each week -- to ask a question and potentially get it answered here.

          From Josh: "Is it over for drafting QBs? We all laughed when [Brian] Daboll listed all the first-round QBs on 'Hard Knocks' this offseason, but I can't think of a time when veteran QBs pulled off the scrap heap looked so viable. The 3-0 teams outside of the Chiefs have Sam Darnold, Justin Fields and Geno Smith at QB. Baker Mayfield, Andy Dalton, Derek Carr, Jared Goff (Malik Willis! Joe Flacco!) all also have had varying degrees of success off the scrap heap. Have we reached the tipping point where rookie contract QBs aren't worth the rookie growing pains? For all the talk of 'rookie contract windows,' it doesn't seem as advantageous in a league where defenses are confusing all of the young QBs."

          Excellent question Josh. But absolutely not.

          The relative success of "veteran" quarterbacks, from the Daltons and Flaccos to the ever-young Fields and Darnolds, is a testament not to quarterback play, but to the caliber of coaching in the league right now. The connecting thread between the Shanahan offense that has proliferated in the NFL ranks and the college offenses that have trickled up into the NFL are the easy buttons that they offer to NFL QBs. It has never been easier to play quarterback in the NFL -- especially for guys who have been around for few years and know what they can (and can't) get away with.

          Pressing easy buttons for quarterbacks is far different than developing them, and that's the challenge that faces those coaches of young passers. I have no doubt that Shane Steichen could scheme up 300 passing yards for Flacco, but there's far more long-term value for the Colts -- both in terms of cap space/management and job security/yearly contention -- if he continues to ride the Anthony Richardson roller coaster. We've gotten better than ever at microwaving quarterbacks, and rookies still require some professional cooking.

          But hitting on a rookie signal-caller creates a winning window for a team that is far more meaningful than hitting on a Geno Smith mid-career resurgence. The value of saved contract space, a decade of secured QB play and team-building clarity ... it's too great to overcome.

          From Casey: "What are you blaming for the Dolphins' offensive woes? Lack of a backup plan at QB? (Look at Darnold and Dalton!) Mike McDaniel playcalling? (Heavy on the pass in the first half with a great run game and a backup QB in.) Or a combination of the above? How would you fix it, or should the Dolphins consider blowing it up?"

          I think the bulk of the fault falls on whoever -- GM Chris Grier or McDaniel -- convinced the other that going into the season with Skylar Thompson at QB2 was an acceptable approach. There are too many good quarterbacks in this league, especially when playing for a QB-friendly offense like McDaniel's unit, to bring a player that inexperienced into the season as Tua Tagovailoa's backup, especially given his injury concerns. I wonder what it is they've seen from Thompson in practice, because on the field, he doesn't look comfortable executing the passing game.

          But I will say McDaniel needs to coach better around his QB2. The Dolphins were having success running the ball upfield on Seattle early in that game Sunday, when the deficit wasn't too large. McDaniel's running game is impossibly creative and creates a disproportionate number of explosives. If you can score fast and score big with your running game, why get away from it even when you're trailing early?

          The game plan the Dolphins deployed Sunday will never work with Thompson at the helm. They either need a different QB or a different approach.

          Yes, Twitter man.

          Second Take: The Seahawks going to win the NFC West

          ESPN's "First Take" is known for, well, providing the first take on things -- the instant reactions. Second Take is not a place for instant reactions, but rather the spot where I'll let the dust settle before taking perhaps a bit of a contrarian view. Today, I'm taking another look at the Seahawks' chances to win their difficult division after starting 3-0.

          I asked the good folks at ESPN Research this week what percentage of 3-0 teams win their division at the end of the season. Since 2002, when the current framework of eight divisions began, it's 54% of the time! That's way bigger than I thought.

          Then I went over to ESPN BET to check the odds on the current 3-0 teams to win their respective divisions. The 3-0 Vikings are +185, lurking behind the 2-1 Lions (who lead at +150). The Chiefs are huge favorites in the AFC West, of course, at -900. The Bills are -200 in the AFC East. The Steelers are +200 behind the Ravens (+135) in the AFC North. And the 3-0 Seahawks are +175 behind the 49ers, who are +100 -- an implied chance of 50%.

          But wait. The Seahawks have a two-game lead on the 1-2 49ers, the 1-2 Rams and the 1-2 Cardinals. Per ESPN Research, 12 of the 18 teams that have led their division by two games just three weeks into the season have gone on to win it. That's 67%.

          The market's doubt in the Seahawks is as perplexing as their faith in the 49ers, who just lost starting defensive tackle Javon Hargrave to a torn triceps. Star running back Christian McCaffrey is seeing a German specialist to address his ongoing Achilles tendinitis. Yes, they should get McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel Sr. (calf) and George Kittle (hamstring) back during this season, but all three of those players have dealt with nagging injuries during their careers.

          But this isn't about the 49ers (though my questions about their defense continue to grow every week). This is about the Seahawks, who have a top quarterback, a quality defense and a great coach. Are those not the component parts of a division winner?

          If you don't think Geno Smith is a significant starting QB, you haven't been paying enough attention. Since the start of last season, he is eighth in success rate and 12th in EPA per dropback despite facing pressure on 34.4% of his dropbacks -- a top-10 number. He isn't an elite scrambler, but he is an effective one; he doesn't have a crazy arm, but he has plenty of extra mustard; and he isn't billed as a supercomputing processor, but man, he's rarely wrong from the pocket. Jared Goff and Brock Purdy quarterbacked the teams in the NFC Championship Game last season, and I'd take Smith over either of them.

          On defense, we're going off a far smaller sample here, as the Seahawks' defense was shaky in 2023 but looks rejuvenated in 2024. So far this season, the Seahawks have faced Jacoby Brissett, Bo Nix and Skylar Thompson, so I'm not yet ready to get over my skis on their pass defense. But I think that pass rush is for real. Boye Mafe, a third-year pro, is fifth in the league in pass rush win rate off the edge. Derick Hall, who joins Mafe on clear passing downs, is 26th. They sprint off the edge while a stout interior defensive line room -- Leonard Williams, rookie Byron Murphy II (who looks excellent), Jarran Reed and the eternally underrated Johnathan Hankins -- mucks everything up between the tackles. This front is winning for real.

          The defense is far more likely to end up the 16th-best unit than the sixth-best, but that's OK. Average defense and above-average offense is a standard recipe for NFL success, and that's what the Seahawks have cooking.

          There's one key way the Seahawks do lose this division, though: losing their interdivisional games. They've yet to play a division rival, and while every other NFC West team is 1-2, these are three of the most dangerous offenses in the league. That's where coach Mike Macdonald comes in, as a defensive coach hired into a division featuring McVay and Shanahan. It's more than just the schematics, though Macdonald did give Shanahan schematic troubles last season (McVay, not so much). McVay and Shanahan are both questionable game-managers, whereas Macdonald has so far made great in-game calls.

          I believe in Macdonald. He was my favorite candidate of the cycle, and he landed in a great spot in Seattle. I believe in Geno, too. And I'm saying it before they beat the Lions in Detroit on Monday: The Seahawks are going to host a playoff game.

          Next Ben Stats

          NFL Next Gen Stats are unique and insightful nuggets of data that are gleaned from tracking chips and massive databases. Next Ben Stats are usually numbers I made up. Both are below.

          2: That's how many first-down plays were successful for the Saints against the Eagles. They had 20 tries.

          After enjoying two games with a consistent ground game and a correspondingly devastating play-action passing attack, the Saints discovered in Week 3 what happens when a grain of sand gets stuck in that fine-tuned machine. Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, whose defense famously stymied McVay's outside zone running game in the 2018 season and then saw it replicated by Bill Belichick in that season's Super Bowl, dusted off some of his old fronts and suffocated Alvin Kamara's running lanes. With the Eagles' front dominating against the run, the linebackers and safeties were free to play the run slowly, which meant the deep play-action shots weren't there for Saints quarterback Derek Carr.

          The Eagles' defense is far from fixed, and the Saints' offense is far from figured out. But in the eternal struggle between Fangio's defense and the Shanahan offenses, chalk up another tally in the win column for Fangio.

          13.9: C.J. Stroud dealt with an average of 13.9 yards to the sticks on third down in Week 3 against the Vikings. It is the fourth-biggest number for a QB in a single game since 2010.

          Now, Stroud had a third-and-31 late in the game that's juicing the stats. But he also had 10 third-down dropbacks and never had one shorter than third-and-7. That's a recipe for complete disaster against a Brian Flores defense that wants to get exotic on known passing downs.

          Stroud was blitzed on three of those dropbacks but pressured on five, and he converted only twice. But the story isn't the third-down performance. It's the bad early-down performance that stuck Stroud in those impossible down and distances. With Joe Mixon out and Cam Akers in, the Texans had 11 runs in this game -- all on early downs -- and gained more than 3 yards on two of them.

          The early-down run game was the culprit against the Vikings, but the Texans' offense has been bad on early downs all season. They're 31st in success rate and 29th in EPA per play. By EPA per dropback, only the Packers and Browns are worse. The early challenge for the Texans is clear: They need to figure out first down. They cannot live on Stroud late-down heroics forever.

          35.3%: Per NFL Next Gen Stats, 35.3% of Dak Prescott's throws went into a tight window against the Ravens, the highest number in a game for Prescott in the past six years.

          Turn on the film from Dallas' past two embarrassing losses, and the problem is clear -- the Cowboys don't have anyone who can get open. The league-average amount of separation for wide receivers and tight ends, as tracked by NGS, is 3.2 yards. Cowboys wide receivers Jalen Tolbert, Brandin Cooks and CeeDee Lamb all come in below that number, as does tight end Jake Ferguson.

          Let's get even more worried: Lamb's average separation of 2.7 yards is the 11th-worst figure in the NFL (looking at wideouts and tight ends who have run at least 50 routes), and Cooks is one of the 10 guys who's worse. In a weird way, I think Lamb's lack of separation is a symptom of the larger problem -- the lack of separation from the other guys. Opposing defenses are playing man coverage against the Cowboys at a pretty serious click (54.5%, third-highest in the league) because they can stick Tolbert, Cooks and Ferguson one-on-one. Lamb has lined up outside 75% of the time this season, the highest single-season mark of his career. So if you have an outside corner you trust to use the sideline and bully Lamb physically, you can blanket the Cowboys' passing attack pretty easily.

          Of course, the Cowboys have played two of the better man-coverage defenses in the NFL through two weeks (Saints and Browns), so maybe this will get easier. Then again, Dallas was forced into 35.3% tight-window throws against the Ravens, who previously held the Chiefs and Raiders to 7% and 16%, respectively. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but a Mike McCarthy passing playbook might be growing stale.

          24.3: That's how many air yards per target Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin got Monday night against the Bengals. It is just barely the second-highest single-game mark of his career. I do think Scary Terry enjoyed this game far more than he did his Week 14 game against the Cowboys in 2021, though (four targets, 25 air yards per target and 0 catches). Tonight? McLaurin caught all four of his targets for 100 yards and two scores.

          I was hoping the Commanders would give McLaurin more downfield targets this week, and they immediately delivered. Finding one-on-one opportunities for him downfield was a critical evolutionary piece of this offense because of what we saw from rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels in college; he was a delightful downfield thrower at LSU and trusted his top receivers on vertical shots almost to a fault.

          There was no fault in what unfolded for the Commanders against the Bengals. They moved the ball effectively in the running game, found quick throws for Daniels underneath and hit on their shots. This was the ideal Kliff Kingsbury/Daniels game and should be the model for the Commanders moving forward. And how can you not be happy for McLaurin, who has labored in bad Commanders offenses with bad quarterbacks for years now? This was the sort of night he has long deserved.

          Monday Night Nuggets

          Each week, we will pick out one or two of the biggest storylines from "Monday Night Football" and break down what it means for the rest of the season.

          We watched two seasons end Monday night -- that of the Jaguars and that of the Bengals. Consider that 0-3 teams have made the playoffs exactly six times in the Super Bowl era, or 2.4% of the time. So unless the Jaguars or Bengals hit a 1-in-40 window, they're playing for draft position and bragging rights for the rest of the season.

          That's a scary reality, but hey, things were already scary in Jacksonville. Independent of your opinion on Trevor Lawrence -- a lot of people loudly informed me over the course of the evening he's extremely overrated -- you cannot argue that a team he leads should reasonably lose eight straight games. But that's exactly what has happened, going back to November 2023. Travis Etienne Jr., Christian Kirk, Evan Engram, Cam Robinson ... these are solid NFL players. The Jaguars should be better, and that has been true for a while now. A coaching change is needed in Jacksonville, and I'd argue a front-office change needs to be made, too.

          For the Bengals, it's easier to don rose-colored glasses. Were it not for a fourth-and-long pass interference, the Chiefs are never hitting a game-winning field goal as the clock expires. Were it not for a missed pass interference call on a 2-point attempt to Tee Higgins, perhaps the Commanders game would have ended differently. Oh, if onlys and justs were candies and nuts!

          Even if those games were near-wins and you played so well, now that you're 0-3, you can't afford any more near-wins. The margin for error becomes infinitesimal down the stretch. And I'm not so convinced that the Bengals did play well. Their defense has lost to the running game in three consecutive weeks. The Commanders leaned on them and the clock late, just as the Patriots did in Week 1, before Daniels dropped the dagger on them on third-and-7. Speaking of which, the defense is giving up explosive passes at the same exorbitant clip as it did last season. Efforts to add schematic depth to offense has resulted in a ton of shallow targets to a platoon of tight ends ... and not much else.

          The Bengals trusted the nucleus of their 2021 Super Bowl run -- Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase, Trey Hendrickson and Higgins -- to continue powering them to 2024 contention. But that's the thing about the NFL -- it's Not For Long. What worked three years ago rarely works this year. Talent drain wore down this defensive depth chart, and even a return of the downfield Chase magic of 2021 wasn't enough to keep pace with a rookie-led Kliff Kingsbury offense. The Bengals will win some games now that they're healthier, but this hole might be too deep to climb out.