NFL teams that start the season 3-0 have one foot in the postseason door. Since 2002, 82 of the 111 teams to begin with three straight victories have advanced to the playoffs. That's a success rate of nearly 74%, and it should rise even higher with more seasons of a 14-team playoff bracket. Just three teams began the season 3-0 in 2023, and unsurprisingly, the 49ers, Dolphins and Eagles all ended up playing postseason football.
The last time a team started 3-0 and missed the playoffs was 2021, when the Broncos and the Panthers both did it and then went a combined 6-22 afterward. While those failures are clearly the exception as opposed to the rule, there are fans of one 3-0 team in 2024 that might not want to remember who the quarterback was for the Panthers then.
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Let's take a closer look at the five undefeated teams this season and how they've managed to get three straight victories. Are they exceeding expectations? One isn't. Is what they're doing sustainable? One team's success is not, although it makes a habit of breaking the rules -- and my brain -- in the process. Which team is about to be awakened by a brutally tough schedule the rest of the way? Which is the most dominant team of the bunch? I'll hit on all of those topics.
I want to start with the defending champs, though. I had lofty hopes for the Chiefs this season. Three wins in three games is all fans can ask for, but is Kansas City really playing like a dominant football team?
Jump to a 3-0 team:
Bills | Chiefs
Seahawks | Steelers | Vikings
Kansas City Chiefs
The wins: vs. Baltimore (27-20), vs. Cincinnati (26-25), at Atlanta (22-17)
On one hand, the Chiefs are probably the least surprising team of the five that started 3-0. They're the Chiefs -- the two-time defending Super Bowl champs. I pegged them as one of the teams most likely to improve this season, even given their 11-6 record a year ago. If you asked 100 fans before the season to pick one team that would begin with three straight victories, they probably would have chosen the Chiefs.
And yet, if you were judging these teams on how they've played through three games, the Chiefs are probably the least impressive of the undefeated teams. They've had to play the Ravens and Bengals, but they could very easily be 0-3 if even a play or two in each game had gone differently. They were an inch of Isaiah Likely's foot away from facing a 2-point conversion for the game in Week 1, needed a last-second field goal from 51 yards out to beat the Bengals in Week 2 and had to come up with a pair of red zone stops in the fourth quarter against the Falcons last Sunday to preserve a five-point victory.
One of the biggest reasons for my optimism surrounding Kansas City was the idea it posted an outlier of a turnover margin by its standards last season. It had an average turnover margin of plus-5 between 2018 and 2022, only for that to fall to minus-11 in 2023. Patrick Mahomes had his worst interception rate (2.3%) as a pro, and the team as a whole managed to recover just under 42% of the fumbles in their games. The Chiefs weren't going to be that sloppy again.
Well, things aren't off to a great start. The Chiefs have a minus-2 turnover margin through three games. They've recovered two of the seven fumbles. Mahomes' interception rate is up all the way to 4.3%, as he has thrown four picks. One of those interceptions was a spectacular one-handed pick by Cincinnati's Cam Taylor-Britt, but the others have been mistakes from the two-time MVP. He's not going to throw picks at that rate the rest of the way -- and the fumble recovery rate will improve -- but Kansas City doesn't look like it's about to dominate turnover margin the way I had projected.
All the speed the Chiefs brought in this offseason hasn't unlocked a deep passing attack. Mahomes' QBR on deep throws is back up to seventh in the league, but he has only completed three deep balls all season, and his six attempts are tied for 26th in the league. In part, that's because one of the deep threats never actually made it onto the roster, with Marquise Brown suffering what appears to be a season-ending shoulder injury before ever playing a regular-season snap in a Kansas City uniform. Rookie first-round pick Xavier Worthy scored two touchdowns in the season opener, but he's still a work in progress; miscommunication between Worthy and Mahomes on a third-and-2 mesh concept during the final drive Sunday forced the Chiefs to punt the ball away.
It's also officially time to be concerned about Travis Kelce. While his raw numbers were down last season, he still remained extremely efficient. A good chunk of what was perceived to be a decline was actually his routes and snap counts going down in an effort to keep the star tight end fresher throughout the season. He finished with 93 catches for 984 yards and five scores. Kelce was every bit as good in the first half of 2023 as he had been during the 2022 campaign, though his numbers did slow during the second half.
Through three games, Kelce has been anonymous. He has eight catches for 69 yards across 82 routes, good for 0.8 yards per route run. In the first half of 2023, he averaged 2.6 yards per route run. Even during the second half, when his numbers declined, he was still above average for a tight end at 1.6 yards per route run. He ranks 25th in yards per route run now, ranking between Jordan Akins and Cade Otton.
While Kelce's game has been about agility and craftiness, the data from NFL Next Gen Stats suggests he's slowing down. His average maximum speed on routes is down to 11.8 mph, having fallen in each of the five prior seasons. His average maximum speed on all snaps is down more significantly; he's averaging a max speed of 10.0 mph. He was at 10.8 mph a year ago and between that figure and 11.5 mph as his average maximum speed in each season between 2018 and 2022.
Among the 30 tight ends who have run at least 50 routes this season, Kelce's average maximum route speed ranks 29th. His median maximum route speed ranks 24th. Those figures aren't enough to eliminate him as a viable receiver -- he ranks ahead of Dallas' Jake Ferguson in both categories -- but the combination of the decline in his peak speed and his limited involvement in the passing game so far are concerning. It's only a three-game sample -- and he had a 41-yard catch-and-run called back for holding on left tackle Kingsley Suamataia -- but there's at least reason for alarm that Kelce might have slipped to the ranks of the ordinary after being a transcendent pass catcher for so long.
The Suamataia experiment isn't going well, either. Coach Andy Reid benched the rookie second-rounder late in Week 2 after Cincinnati's Trey Hendrickson appeared to be building a home in the Chiefs backfield. Reid replaced Suamataia with Wanya Morris, who wiped off a 21-yard completion on fourth-and-6 by being called for illegal hands to the face. Morris then played every snap in the win over the Falcons, with Suamataia limited to two as an extra lineman in jumbo packages.
The Chiefs drafted Suamataia because they were underwhelmed by Morris, who didn't look good as a rookie. Mahomes had a 72.9 QBR with Donovan Smith at left tackle last season, which would have ranked second in the league. That number fell to 44.7 when Morris replaced the injured Smith, which would have ranked 24th. Smith is still a free agent, and if the leash for either of the young tackles is this short, Kansas City needs to give serious thought to calling him before a team -- the Ravens or Saints? -- beats them to the punch.
On top of all that, star running back Isiah Pacheco is out indefinitely after fracturing his fibula, leading the Chiefs to turn to undrafted free agent Carson Steele and veteran castoffs Samaje Perine and Kareem Hunt. Pacheco plays a key role in punishing teams that play two-high shells and light boxes, and if Kansas City loses any sort of effectiveness running the ball, it's going to limit the answers this offense has to what has become the leaguewide defensive meta.
Elsewhere, the pass defense is still adjusting after losing cornerback L'Jarius Sneed to the Titans in the offseason. The Chiefs have fallen to 17th in QBR allowed through three weeks, and much of that is owed to the Chris Jones-led pass pressure. When they didn't get pressure last season, they ranked sixth in QBR allowed. So far this season, they're 27th. Standouts Nick Bolton (152.1 passer rating allowed as the nearest defender in coverage) and Justin Reid (129.6) haven't been quite as impressive as usual, although Bolton did make the game-sealing tackle on Atlanta's final snap of the game Sunday.
The Chiefs will be fine. The interceptions will come down, and the post-Sneed secondary will settle in. The defensive line has been great, and outside of left tackle, so has the offensive line. Rashee Rice looks like a No. 1 receiver. As someone who thought the Chiefs had a 15-win season in them, though, they haven't played at that level, even if they've won their first three games.
Buffalo Bills
The wins: vs. Arizona (34-28), at Miami (31-10), vs. Jacksonville (47-10)
What was supposed to be a transitional year turned out to be a transitional half. The Bills looked sloppy during the first two quarters of their opener against the Cardinals; at the two-minute warning, they trailed 17-3. Since then, they've outscored their opponents by a combined total of 109-23, scoring touchdowns on more than half of their offensive drives that haven't involved kneel-downs. They appear to have sent the Jaguars into an existential crisis Monday night, with the Buffalo offense scoring touchdowns on its first five drives en route to a 47-10 blowout.
The star, of course, has been Josh Allen. Through three weeks, his 92.6 QBR is the best of any passer in football by more than 11 points. It's the best QBR posted by any quarterback over the first three weeks of the season since 2007, the first year for which QBR exists. And yes, that means Allen has been better through the first three weeks of 2024 than Tom Brady was across the first three weeks of the 2007 season, when he was about to post historic numbers and win his first MVP award. Allen stands as the favorite to claim that hardware, albeit with a long way to go.
The Allen story is simple: He's combining all of the good things that typically come with Josh Allen football and virtually none of the problems. He hasn't thrown an interception yet. He lost a fumble in the Arizona game but hasn't otherwise coughed up the football. On top of that, he's continuing to avoid sacks at league-best rates, with opposing pass rushers taking him down on just 2.7% of dropbacks. When a quarterback doesn't turn the ball over, doesn't take sacks and has the ability to do Josh Allen things, he's going to post historically impressive numbers.
While Allen has the arm strength to make any throw, he's picking teams apart in the intermediate range. Allen ranked 18th in QBR last season on throws in the range of 11-20 air yards, averaging 9.8 yards per attempt. This season, he leads the league with a 99.9 QBR on those throws, going 9-of-11 for 169 yards and three scores, an average of 15.4 yards per throw. It helps when Khalil Shakir, seemingly Allen's new top target, has caught all 14 of the passes thrown in his direction.
Before the season, it wouldn't have been shocking to imagine Allen playing lights-out football for three weeks. The bigger concern for the Bills seemed to be the defense, which was losing stalwart defensive backs Tre'Davious White, Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde. Things got worse when star linebacker Matt Milano tore a biceps muscle in August, then became even more harrowing when top cornerback Taron Johnson went down after just seven snaps in the opener. Terrel Bernard, who inherited the top linebacker spot after Milano's injury, suffered a pectoral strain early in Week 2 and hasn't been on the field since.
And yet, somehow, the Bills are thriving on defense. Coach Sean McDermott is blitzing less often, but they've managed to maintain similar pressure rates. When the score has been within 14 points, he has called blitzes on just over 20% of opposing dropbacks, down from 24% a year ago. Blitzing less often should mean a decrease in pressure, but after leading the league with a 32.4% pressure rate when sending four or fewer in those 14-point scenarios a year ago, Buffalo is actually up to 33.3% in those same spots this season.
The real shocker is what's happening when the pass rush doesn't get home. With the Bills signing Taylor Rapp and promoting Damar Hamlin into starting roles at safety and going without Johnson for most of the season, McDermott's secondary has managed to thrive. The Bills lead the league with a 32.5 QBR allowed when opposing passers work out of clean pockets. They're allowing 4.8 yards per attempt in those situations, more than a full yard per attempt better than any other team.
As is often the case for a McDermott-coordinated defense, Buffalo is thriving by avoiding the big play. It's the only team to avoid giving up 30 yards or more on a single play this season, which it has done despite facing the third-most snaps of any defense. The average team gives up a 30-plus yarder about once every 50 snaps. The Bills haven't given up one in 203.
Combine a defense that doesn't give up big plays, an offense that doesn't make mistakes and a quarterback who is capable of the seemingly impossible, and what do you get? Ten straight quarters of irresistible football. Things are about to get tougher for the Bills, who have a three-game road trip against the Ravens, Texans and Jets on deck, but make no mistake: This is comfortably the best team in football through three games.
Pittsburgh Steelers
The wins: at Atlanta (18-10), at Denver (13-6), vs. L.A. Chargers (20-10)
As someone who predicted the Steelers would decline for the third consecutive offseason, let's just say things aren't going well. Mike Tomlin's team is off to a great start, leading the league in scoring defense. It's already two games up on the rest of the AFC North. I feel the same way about my prediction that Doug Pederson feels about the Jaguars. Everything is on the table. We're not very good right now.
Is what the Steelers are doing sustainable? Of course not, but when has that ever mattered? On one level, they have benefited from playing a slate of limited quarterbacks. Kirk Cousins clearly wasn't fully healthy in the season opener, and Justin Herbert was dealing with a high ankle sprain even before he was forced to leave Sunday's game. Those two veterans sandwiched Bo Nix, a rookie who is still feeling his way into running an NFL offense. If you argued that all three of those quarterbacks have looked better against other opponents than they have against the Steelers, though, you would be right.
Tomlin's defense is thriving by winning in the places every defense wants to win: third down and the red zone. The Steelers are allowing their opponents to convert on just 21.9% of their third downs, the best rate for any team. Likewise, they've allowed just one touchdown on six red zone trips. In a league in which offenses are converting 52% of their red zone trips into touchdowns, the Pittsburgh defense has held opponents to a 17% success rate on forays inside the 20.
We know it's not realistic for a team to come up with stops when it needs them most if it's not playing well elsewhere on defense. The Steelers, though, have been great just about everywhere. That third-down success rate is supported by a defense that ranks third in expected points added (EPA) per play on first and second down. The red zone performance doesn't seem wild considering they rank third in EPA per play outside the red zone.
For perspective, the best third-down defense in terms of conversion rate last season was Cleveland at 29.1%, and the best red zone defense was Tennessee, which allowed opposing offenses to score on 37.7% of its red zone trips. No team holds teams below 25% conversion rates on third down or in the red zone over a full season, but Pittsburgh has every right to rank among the best teams in those categories the rest of the way, even if it likely will regress toward the mean.
Justin Fields and the offense are doing exactly what they're supposed to do as part of the Steelers' formula to win games: avoid turnovers. Fields' interception in Sunday's win over the Chargers was their only giveaway of the season. They have fallen on both of their fumbles on offense. Fields had a 3.1% interception rate over three seasons with the Bears. He's at 1.3% in Pittsburgh.
The other key improvement Fields has made is eliminating what had been his biggest weakness: taking sacks. He had a 12.3% sack rate in Chicago, with double-digit rates in all three of those campaigns. Through three games in Pittsburgh, his sack rate is 7.4%. That's an improvement from last in the league over the prior three seasons to 14th-best.
If those changes don't sound significant, they are. Based on his Bears rates, Fields would have thrown 2.3 picks and taken 10 sacks this season. Instead, he has thrown a lone interception and taken six sacks. Eliminating those negative plays keeps the offense on schedule and avoids making things more difficult for the defense. It also keeps the team in range for field goals, and the Steelers are converting a league high 32.3% of their drives into three points.
Is the offense doing much beyond that? Not yet. Taking sacks and turnovers out of the equation and evaluating what every offense has done on all their other snaps, the Steelers rank 27th in EPA per play. That's only ahead of the Browns, Panthers, Broncos, Dolphins and Bears; two teams with rookie quarterbacks, one with an injured quarterback, one whose quarterback was benched and one with Deshaun Watson. Avoiding those negative plays matter, but that's most of the sum product of what the Pittsburgh offense is contributing to its victories so far.
Fields is nominally filling in for an injured Russell Wilson, but it would be a surprise if Tomlin handed the job back to Wilson when the veteran recovers from his calf injury. The offense hasn't been great, but it's doing what it needs to do to play its part in a winning formula. If Fields can protect the football and serve as a running threat in short yardage -- as he did on a 5-yard score against the Chargers -- he'll be doing his job just fine.
The most pressing concern for the Steelers might be injuries. They're facing one of the most significant injury lists in the AFC, especially along the line of scrimmage. Nate Herbig tore his rotator cuff before the season, while rookie right tackle Troy Fautanu suffered a serious knee injury in practice and could miss significant time. Guard Isaac Seumalo hasn't yet played in 2024 as he battles a pec injury, although he has avoided injured reserve, which suggests he should be able to return in the coming weeks.
There's more. Alex Highsmith, the team's second best pass rusher behind T.J. Watt, left the Chargers game with a groin injury that should keep him out for the next couple of games. Running back Najee Harris was wearing a sling in the facility this week while recovering from an arm injury, while Jaylen Warren was pulled from the Chargers game by Tomlin because of his limitations while dealing with a knee issue. Corner Cory Trice, who had the game-sealing interception against the Broncos, was also placed on injured reserve.
The Steelers keep on ticking on, though. Nick Herbig stepped in for Highsmith and had two sacks against the Chargers. Cordarrelle Patterson has a track record of thriving under Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Fields has stepped in admirably for Wilson. What would break other teams only seems to fuel the Steelers. And with games against the Colts, Cowboys, Raiders, Jets and Giants before their Week 9 bye, there are plenty of winnable games coming up for Tomlin & Co.
Seattle Seahawks
The wins: vs. Denver (26-20), at New England (23-20), vs. Miami (24-3)
The Seahawks have played the easiest schedule of these five teams. Their schedule has ranked 31st so far, according to ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI), and with their game against the Lions on Monday night, their slate begins to get much more difficult. They are projected to face the toughest schedule of any team over the remainder of the season. There's still time for FPI's evaluations to change and the schedule to get easier, but in addition to the Lions, Seattle has games against the Bills, Jets, Packers, Vikings and a pair of matchups against the 49ers.
Seahawks fans would also point out those teams will be worried about facing Seattle, and that's certainly true. New coach Mike Macdonald's team has sandwiched a pair of comfortable home victories over the Broncos and Dolphins with a narrower win on the road against the Patriots, who were in position to go up six points with four minutes to go on a 48-yard field goal, only for Julian Love to block the kick attempt. The Seahawks kicked a field goal of their own to tie the game, forced a pair of three-and-outs on either side of the regulation whistle, then drove into Patriots territory again for a game-winning field goal from Jason Myers.
The story here is unsurprisingly a massive improvement on the defensive side of the ball. The Seahawks haven't played any great quarterbacks so far, but the hope was always that Macdonald would bring some fresh ideas to a defense that had seemingly grown stale under legendary coach Pete Carroll. They had cycled through coordinators (Ken Norton and Clint Hurtt), made major personnel additions (Jamal Adams, Jadeveon Clowney and Dre'Mont Jones) and attempted to become a more aggressive unit, but they finished between 16th and 21st in DVOA in five consecutive seasons between 2018 and 2022 before falling to 28th last season, prompting Carroll's departure.
Through three games, the Seahawks have jumped all the way to second in DVOA. Macdonald, who formerly was the Ravens' defensive coordinator, is doing this with less notable personnel than what Seattle had in the cupboard, at least on paper, a year ago; it has swapped out Adams and Quandre Diggs for Rayshawn Jenkins and K'Von Wallace at safety and Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks for Tyrel Dodson and currently injured Jerome Baker at linebacker.
The results are much better. Macdonald's reputation was as a master manipulator of pass protection, a coach who would identify how offenses wanted to protect their quarterback and then break their rules, creating free runners while still maintaining seven men in coverage. Teams can't build an entire defense out of the sim pressure and creepers Macdonald seems to excel with, but they can be a valuable tool to confuse passers and protection schemes.
It has been as advertised. The Seahawks rank first in the league in yards per dropback (3.9) and pressure rate (37.1%) when sending four defenders or less at quarterback. They rank third in pressure rate (37.5%) despite blitzing at the fifth-lowest rate of any team. They're winning with a group effort; the only players with more than 1.5 sacks are Boye Mafe and 2023 second-round pick Derick Hall, each of whom have three. They've been great without nominal top rusher Uchenna Nwosu, who has missed the first three games after suffering a sprained MCL during the preseason.
Per NFL Next Gen Stats, the Seahawks rank seventh in their combined usage of sim pressures and creepers, but even that only amounts to about 6% of dropbacks. The majority of their sacks against the Dolphins last week came on traditional rushes. Miami is struggling up front, but it's a positive that Macdonald hasn't needed to bust out his most exotic looks to pressure opposing offenses.
In part, that's because the secondary has been excellent. When the pass rush doesn't get home, the Seahawks are allowing a 33.5 QBR, the second-best mark in the league behind the Bills. (The third-place defense is the only remaining 5-0 team we haven't yet mentioned.) Macdonald has kept star corner Devon Witherspoon in the slot, but he hasn't rushed him often; Witherspoon has blitzed on nine snaps, with opposing offenses generating just 26 net yards on those dropbacks.
The offense was due for a shift after the arrival of coordinator Ryan Grubb, whose deep passing attack at Washington elevated quarterback Michael Penix Jr. and wideouts Rome Odunze, Ja'Lynn Polk and Jalen McMillan into significant draft picks. The Seahawks certainly had the personnel at receiver to work downfield if necessary, but it was unclear what the offense would actually look like come Week 1.
We've seen two very distinct game plans over a three-week span. In Week 1, with a healthy Kenneth Walker, Seattle was extremely run-heavy, running the ball at the eighth-highest rate on early downs in neutral situations. Walker turned his 20 carries into 103 yards and a touchdown, but he suffered an oblique injury and has been out since.
Over the ensuing two games, the offense has been extremely pass-heavy, throwing nearly 70% of the time on early downs, nearly five full percentage points ahead of any other team. According to Establish the Run, the Seahawks have a 6.1% pass rate over expectation given game situations, which is tied with the Bengals for the NFL's highest rate so far. That has come amid a season in which the league has shifted more heavily toward the run; by Establish the Run's measure, 23 of the league's 32 teams are running more often than expected, given what teams have done in similar game situations in the recent past.
The passing attack hasn't been regularly threatening teams downfield, but it has produced gobs of completions. Geno Smith ranks 17th in average air yards per attempt, but his 74.8% completion percentage is third best in the league. Just 8.7% of his attempts have gone downfield, which is below league average, but two have produced long touchdown passes to DK Metcalf. It remains to be seen whether the Seahawks will shift toward more of a run-heavy downfield passing attack once Walker returns to the lineup, which could come as early as Monday night.
The Seahawks still feel like the biggest mystery of these five teams, in part because they're still figuring themselves out. They've been missing key personnel for some or all of the season, have gone in different extremes with their game plans and have generally dominated middling-to-replacement level quarterbacks. We'll learn a lot more about their vision as they start to face tougher competition.
Minnesota Vikings
The wins: at N.Y. Giants (28-6), vs. San Francisco (23-17), vs. Houston (34-7)
The most fascinating team of these five has to be the Vikings. We spent much of the offseason discussing their decisions to move on from quarterback Kirk Cousins, draft J.J. McCarthy as the replacement and trade up in Round 1 to take edge rusher Dallas Turner. And so far, the top two picks have played virtually no role in this start; McCarthy is out for the season with a torn meniscus in his right knee, and Turner has one sack across 54 snaps, having missed last week's win over the Texans with a knee issue.
Minnesota already has had to deal with a lot of missing players. McCarthy won't play this season. Wideout Jordan Addison injured his ankle before the season and has played 28 snaps. Dalton Risner, who started at guard a year ago, is on injured reserve. Tight end T.J. Hockenson is still a ways away from returning after tearing up his knee last season. Ivan Pace, last year's revelation at linebacker, missed Week 3 with a quad injury. It has been a lot for three weeks.
And yet, the Vikings have two of the more impressive wins we've seen this season. Blowing out the Giants was one thing, but they were up by two scores for much of the second half against the 49ers, then blew out a 2-0 Texans team by 27 points. At plus-55, they have the third best point differential of any team, trailing only the Bills (plus-64) and Saints (plus-59).
Minnesota's defense has become appointment film viewing on a weekly basis. Last season, coordinator Brian Flores installed an unconventional blitz-heavy, zone-based coverage that seemed to break the rules of what defenses were supposed to do at times. As ESPN reporter Kevin Seifert documented in January, while the innovations yielded the league's best defense for a 10-week stretch, teams eventually figured out where the Vikings could be attacked. After ranking second in points allowed per drive between Weeks 4 and 14, they fell to 31st in the same category over the final month of the season, going 0-4 in the process.
The 2024 defense looks like a better and more sustainable version of the 2023 unit, combining the pre- and post-snap uncertainty that helped create its success with better players who are capable of both masking what they're going to do and actually executing a variety of responsibilities well. It's easy to tell Flores is creating havoc on a defense when the opposing quarterback compliments his scheme after a win:
"Scheme is crazy." #49ers QB Brock Purdy paid a compliment to #Vikings DC Brian Flores after congratulating Sam Darnold. #FTTB pic.twitter.com/uwrZTnbKOK
— Matt Lively (@mattblively) September 16, 2024
This is a defense full of hybrids. Players who were here a year ago continue to thrive, including Josh Metellus, nominally a defensive back whose most frequent starting position on defense this season has been lining up as a blitzer in the A-gap. The Vikings have added Andrew Van Ginkel, a former inside linebacker who played more and more on the edge with the Dolphins the past few seasons. Used full-time as a slot defender now, his ability to drop into coverage on the backside of sim pressures and overloads is lethal. He already has took a pick-six to the house on a screen against the Giants.
What Flores has done is divorce the pre-snap look opposing quarterbacks are seeing from the actual post-snap coverage they get to a greater extent than any other quarterback. There's one number that stands out to me here. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, when a Vikings defender has lined up on the line of scrimmage this season, he has dropped back into coverage nearly 45% of the time. That's nearly double the league average and seven percentage points beyond the second-placed Chiefs, who are as close to 10th as they are to first.
Flores is still sending plenty of blitzes -- Minnesota's 39.3% blitz rate is the third highest in football -- but most of those pressures are coming on first and second down, where the unit is blitzing at the second-highest rate. On third down, the Vikings blitz only 23% of the time, which is below league average (22nd). The Kyle Shanahan offenses thrive by picking defenses apart on early downs, and Flores has outmaneuvered them in back-to-back weeks. Then, on passing downs, his defense drops into coverage and swallows everything up.
This led to a frustrating game for Brock Purdy and an exasperating one for C.J. Stroud, who threw two interceptions and got away with at least a couple more. The Texans gained six net yards on 18 second-down plays last Sunday. Yes, that's 0.3 yards per play. Only three teams have had a worse day on second down in any game over the past five seasons. That meant Stroud faced third-and-10-plus on 10 different occasions, the first time that has happened for any team since 2022. Stroud spent many of those snaps scrambling and struggling to find any of his star receivers open.
While much has been made of general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's 2022 draft class and their struggles to get on the field for various reasons, the Vikings have managed to cobble together a cornerback room of veterans for relatively cheap. Byron Murphy, Shaquill Griffin and Stephon Gilmore were all signed as free agents, with Murphy coming in last season, Griffin signing in March and Gilmore joining in mid-August after a multiyear market never developed. They've helped Minnesota rank third in QBR allowed when the pass rush doesn't happen to get home. Even special-teamer Kamu Grugier-Hill managed to come away with an interception while filling in for Pace at linebacker last week. This is the league's most entertaining defense.
If I'm wildly optimistic about the defense, I'm a little more concerned about the offense. The McCarthy injury forced the Vikings to turn to Sam Darnold, who signed a one-year deal for about $10 million in March. They have to be thrilled with the early returns. He ranks fifth in the NFL in QBR (73.5) and is averaging 8.4 yards per attempt while throwing a league high eight touchdown passes.
Have the Vikings unlocked the Darnold many expected when the Jets drafted him with No. 3 overall in 2018? I'm skeptical. We've seen him show off his talent and make some spectacular throws, most notably the 97-yard touchdown pass to Justin Jefferson, but that shouldn't be a surprise. He always has had an NFL-caliber arm, and he once held the league lead for rushing touchdowns during a hot start to the 2021 season with the Panthers.
That season, though, bears some parallels to this one. That version of Darnold and the Panthers got off to a 3-0 start, and he was able to spend virtually all of those games playing from ahead. When Christian McCaffrey went down injured and Carolina started to trail in contests, his hot start quickly dissipated.
Darnold has taken only three dropbacks this season in situations in which the Vikings were trailing. They were in the opening quarter of Week 1 against the Giants, which didn't really qualify as an obvious passing situation. To use the Next Gen Stats model of how likely a pass attempt is to occur on a given play, 41 of Darnold's 89 dropbacks have come in situations where the likelihood of a pass was 75% or greater.
In those situations, Darnold averages 5.8 yards per attempt, which ranks 23rd out of 31 quarterbacks. He has four touchdown passes on 34 attempts, which boosts his passer rating up to a very impressive 116.8, but I'm not sure he has been great in those spots on the whole. He ranks second in the NFL, on the other hand, in yards per attempt in all other situations.
Even given that he hasn't been trailing often, there's been enough of the old Darnold that I'm hesitant to jump onboard with the idea that this is a new quarterback. He has fumbled three times, including a contested pass that went 5 yards backward, and an inexplicable overhand pitch attempt on a play whose timing was busted. Minnesota has recovered all three. He has thrown two bad picks and had, by my count, at least four interceptable passes in his first three games that fell harmlessly to the turf after being defensed. He added a dead-to-rights intentional grounding penalty against the 49ers, admittedly on a play in which there was instant pressure up the A-gap.
The truth on Darnold probably falls somewhere between the guy who struggled badly with the Jets and Panthers and the one who's off to a 3-0 start. The Vikings will inevitably be in situations where he needs to throw, and that's where we'll get the best sense of his development over the past few seasons. A matchup with a Packers defense that just walloped Will Levis should be compelling, but the following week will be must-see television: Darnold will get a rivalry game against his old organization, facing the Jets in England.