Three rookie quarterbacks took the field Sunday, and all three came away with victories. That's about all they have in common. While Jayden Daniels was carving up the Cardinals in the comfort of a domed stadium in Arizona, Bo Nix was just trying to hold onto rain-slicked footballs and survive during a brutal opening first half against the Jets in North Jersey. Caleb Williams was somewhere in the middle, with the first overall pick trying to do enough to hold off veteran Matthew Stafford and the Rams in Chicago.
Subscribe: 'The Bill Barnwell Show'
With all three rookies playing their fourth regular-season NFL games, I want to take a closer look at these victories and their starts to the campaign. Daniels is one of the stories of the young season and might be an MVP candidate, but where has he surprised? What's missing for Williams? And is Nix making strides after impressing during the preseason?
I'll touch on all three quarterbacks today, beginning with Daniels, who is inspiring comparisons to some of the best seasons produced by modern NFL offenses through four weeks:
Jump to a rookie QB:
Jayden Daniels
Bo Nix | Caleb Williams
Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders
What he did in Week 4: 233 passing yards, 2 total TDs, 1 INT, 47 rushing yards in a 42-14 win over the Cardinals
After a nearly flawless game against the Bengals on Monday night in Week 3, Daniels showed up in Arizona and looked like a 10-year veteran. Outside of a rare rookie moment on an overthrown interception in the second quarter, he picked apart the Cardinals from the pocket with smart decisions and accurate throws. He finished 26-of-30, becoming the first player in NFL history to complete at least 85% of his passes in consecutive games, per ESPN Research.
Let's start by considering his brief pro career in totality. Over his first four games in the NFL, Daniels has amassed a 73.5 QBR. With QBR data going back through the 2007 season, the only passers to top that across their first four starts are Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott and Brock Purdy. His most recent game jumped him ahead of Andrew Luck. These are quarterbacks who generally had immediate success that sustained in the years to follow, although Watson's rookie year in 2017 was curtailed shortly after his hot start by a torn ACL suffered in practice.
Let's consider what those players had to work with and what Daniels has started his career with in Washington. Watson had a 25-year-old DeAndre Hopkins, who managed to approach 1,400 yards that season with quarterbacks Tom Savage and T.J. Yates starting 10 games. Prescott had a top-five offensive line, Dez Bryant and Jason Witten, and arguably the league's best back in fellow rookie Ezekiel Elliott. Purdy had (and has) a Hall of Fame left tackle in Trent Williams and the best group of playmakers in football.
Daniels had the league's 26th-ranked set of playmakers heading into the season, and even that was a testament to how I feel about Terry McLaurin, who must smile every time he wakes up and realizes he has a capable quarterback throwing him passes. Jahan Dotson was still on the team then, and the Commanders traded the 2022 first-rounder to the Eagles before the season. It also looked on paper like Washington had one of the league's least imposing offensive lines heading into the year.
On Sunday, Daniels' leading receiver was Olamide Zaccheaus, who was the No. 4 wideout in Philadelphia a year ago. The third wideout was Noah Brown, who was cut by the Texans at the end of training camp. The running back who filled in for the injured Austin Ekeler was Jeremy McNichols, who had one rushing touchdown across eight pro seasons with five different teams before scoring twice against the Cardinals. McLaurin had 10 targets but managed only 52 receiving yards. Oh, and Daniels wasn't sacked.
What stands out about this offense is an almost unprecedented level of efficiency. There aren't many big plays -- the Commanders had two gains over 30 yards in the win over the Bengals and none against the Cardinals -- but Daniels has been able to move the chains and keep the offense on the field.
You've likely already heard the stat about how the Commanders went more than two full games without punting before finally letting Tress Way on the field Sunday. Another way to think of this is a stat called down set conversion rate, which measures how often teams take the ball on first down and turn that series of plays into either another first down or a touchdown without turning the ball over or punting.
The Commanders have pulled this off 85.3% of the time this season. If we compare that to every team since 2007 and what they did over the first four weeks, it's the fifth-best mark over that time frame. No. 1 is the 2021 Chiefs. No. 2 is the 2007 Patriots. No. 4 is the 2020 Packers. Just behind those teams are the 2015 Patriots, 2019 Ravens, 2018 Chiefs and 2013 Broncos. Those are teams quarterbacked by current and future Hall of Famers Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers, who were having some of the best seasons we've ever seen from an NFL quarterback. And Jayden Daniels!
As recently as Week 1, the dominant conversation about Daniels revolved around concerns over his light frame and ability to stay healthy while taking hits from NFL defenders. In a league still adjusting to life with quarterbacks who feature in their team's designed run game, there were concerns he might be subject to the same plight as Anthony Richardson, who repeatedly left games as a rookie before eventually suffering a season-ending shoulder injury.
On a day when Richardson sadly was again forced to leave the game with an injury after taking hits as a runner, it's hard not to contrast the two. As exciting as the 6-foot-4, 244-pound Richardson's skill set is and while he possesses the prototypical size the 210-pound Daniels will never have, it also seems true he needs to be part of the quarterback run game for Indianapolis to field a successful offense. Richardson just isn't yet mature enough of a passer to thrive in the dropback game. He needs more experience to get to that point, and injuries have stunted his growth.
The opposite is true with Daniels. While the Commanders have found ways to use his legs with zone-read looks and on runs near the goal line, what he does as a runner is a bonus. He is thriving as a dropback passer. In situations in which NFL Next Gen Stats estimate there's at least a 75% probability of a pass, he is 37-of-46 for 405 yards and a touchdown. His 0.40 expected points added (EPA) per dropback in those situations is the best in football. In contrast, Bo Nix ranks 26th out of 29 qualifying passers, while Caleb Williams is 27th. Rookies are supposed to be overwhelmed when they get in obvious passing situations. Daniels looks like he knows exactly where to go with the football.
Is offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury doing things to make life easier for his young quarterback? Of course. There are plenty of RPOs in this offense or, at the very least, run plays in which there's a screen or some sort of short pass tagged onto the concept that Daniels can choose to throw if he likes the numbers on one side of the field. As Commanders analyst Mark Bullock noted, when Kingsbury does call for shots downfield, he usually adds extra protection to give Daniels more time and cleaner pockets from which to operate. Kingsbury also has avoided many of the designed quarterback runs between the tackles that end up yielding bigger hits from larger defenders; most of the QB run calls have been plays ending outside the tackles, where Daniels is typically taking on a defensive back and/or able to step out of bounds.
All of that shouldn't be surprising. What really stands out in terms of Daniels' individual play, though, is how calm and poised he has been as a passer. He has no trouble cycling through his progressions and working to both sides of the field. Rarely does he look overmatched or unsure of where to go with the football. Even when he scrambles, he does a great job of knowing exactly how much club he needs and how much of a reset is required before he throws.
His best play of the season has to be that spectacular 27-yard touchdown pass against the Bengals, which came against the sort of exotic blitz defensive coordinators such as Lou Anarumo love to save for key moments against young quarterbacks. Defenses like the Vikings are thriving on creating overloads with their blitzes and dropping defenders right to where the hot answers are for quarterbacks, typically on underneath throws. McLaurin called for Daniels to throw him a double move to take advantage of that tendency, and with a free blitzer about to lay him out, Daniels delivered a perfect throw into the end zone for a game-sealing touchdown:
Fun:
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 24, 2024
- Bengals rush two guys at the RB (57 + 22) so Daniels is hot off that side
- 24 rushes when he sees that 86 is blocking
- 58 wastes a lineman by dropping out once he's contacted, so the Bengals have two spies
- It doesn't matter because this ball's going to the back pylon https://t.co/bu5CpNjciL
With Sunday's interception as a rare exception, Daniels' footwork has been excellent, and he has been hyper-accurate as a result. The 2023 Heisman Trophy winner has completed a whopping 82.1% of his passes through four weeks, and while he's averaging just 6.0 air yards per throw, the air yards don't matter when four out of five passes are producing positive yardage. His expected completion percentage -- per NFL Next Gen Stats -- is also the highest for any starter (73.4%), but the only quarterback with a better completion percentage over expected (CPOE) is Purdy, who is two-tenths of a percentage point ahead of Daniels.
Can I poke holes in Daniels' quality of competition? Sure. After a blowout loss to the Buccaneers, the Commanders have won three straight games against the Giants, Bengals and Cardinals. It's fair to suggest those three teams aren't exactly the 1985 Bears on defense. They rank 20th, 23rd and 28th, respectively, in EPA against pass dropbacks this season. Daniels faces the Browns and Ravens over the next two weeks, defenses that should give him and his offensive line more trouble.
And yet, I have to compare Daniels to another second-year quarterback. This time last year, fellow second overall pick C.J. Stroud was emerging as a superstar for the Texans, throwing for 306 yards and two scores in a blowout victory over the Steelers. What might have felt like a couple of good games early in the season wasn't a fluke. Stroud had one of the best rookie seasons in recent history, and with a veteran core around him and a few young stars, a last-place Texans team jumped all the way to a division title in his first season.
Expecting that from Daniels might be a little aggressive, but he's playing at that level. Like the AFC South a year ago, the NFC East doesn't appear to be a great division. And like the 2023 Texans, as I pointed out in my column on the teams likely to improve before the season, the Commanders deliberately added veterans on both sides of the ball in free agency to try to emerge quickly out of their rebuild as a competitive team. Offseason additions Zaccheaus, Tyler Biadasz and Dorance Armstrong are making immediate impacts in Washington. I'm not sure whether Daniels is going to continue competing for an MVP award over the rest of the season, but the Commanders are a legitimate threat to win their division.
One thing I did not love that has little to do with Daniels is a statistic mentioned during the broadcast. Coach Dan Quinn has apparently adopted a key metric of 55: If the Commanders generate at least 55 combined rush attempts and completions during their game, they'll win. On Sunday, Quinn got his wish, as the Commanders amassed 37 rush attempts and 26 completions to easily pass his threshold.
This is an updated version of a metric Quinn likely heard about when he was in Seattle while working under Pete Carroll, who was fond of the same metric, but with 50 plays as the key to victory as opposed to 55. The legendary coach suggested it was the second-strongest determining factor of wins behind turnovers.
The issue here for both Carroll and Quinn is the idea that those touches determine victories as opposed to reflect them. This stat belongs in the same bucket as the ones suggesting teams that give their lead running back the ball 25 times produce a high win rate: They're indicating that a team was ahead as opposed to suggesting how it got there. This idea was debunked by Football Outsiders more than 20 years ago.
Any stat that includes counting rush attempts is going to have a strong correlation with winning because teams rack up rush attempts late in games when they've already taken the lead. Unsurprisingly, with a big lead in the fourth quarter, the Commanders ran the ball 10 times Sunday. And when they trailed by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter in Week 1, Quinn's team ran the ball only five times, four of which were Daniels rush attempts that might have been scrambles or goal-line designed rushes. Game situation dictates rush attempt totals far more than a team's style.
Just using 30 carries as a measure of success, for example, produces an even stronger correlation. Since the start of 2014, teams with 55 rush attempts and completions have won about 75% of the time. Teams with 30 or more carries have won 81% of the time. Offenses with lots of completions and very few rush attempts are playing that way because they're invariably trailing and need to catch up. Offenses with 30 or more rush attempts are playing from ahead.
As NFL analyst Mike Tanier once noted, an even better metric would be to simply encourage your team to kneel more often, since the team that kneels at the end of the game is often the victor. The 30-plus carry stats would seemingly encourage a team to run the ball virtually every snap in the first half and all but guarantee themselves victory, but the teams that ran most often in neutral game scripts last season were the Steelers, Cardinals, Falcons, Panthers and Titans. Quinn can add completions to that mix if he wants to spruce it up, but all he's measuring is what happened as opposed to why it happened or what actually wins games.
This might be a harmless metric to hand out to the announcers, but coaches actually do make mistakes when they get caught up with counting metrics that don't impact games. Mike McCarthy famously insisted on trying to get to 20 rush attempts in the second half of his Packers' fateful loss to the Seahawks in the 2014 NFC Championship Game, with Green Bay blowing a 16-0 halftime lead in the process. When he came back to the league with the Cowboys, despite purportedly undergoing an analytics cleanse during his time away, he told broadcasters 30 carries was a key number to hit in victories. Quinn's offense is off to a spectacular start, but as a coach who has to carry around the burden of being on the losing side of the most spectacular comeback in Super Bowl history, it'll be a problem if he makes meaningful decisions on a metric that doesn't do what he believes it does.
Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears
What he did in Week 4: 157 passing yards, 1 TD, 12 rushing yards in a 24-18 win over the Rams
Once the Bears traded for wideout Keenan Allen and used the No. 9 pick on wide receiver Rome Odunze, the expectations for Williams' debut season were simply set too high. There were serious questions about whether he was in a better position to succeed than any other rookie quarterback in modern league history. In all fairness, if offenses solely consisted of wide receivers, he might have had a good case.
Whenever that talk came up, though, I tried to mention people were spending too much time focusing on the wide receivers and not enough on everything else that was worrisome about this offense. The line hadn't been great a year ago and wasn't addressed significantly during the offseason. Running back D'Andre Swift had been an efficient runner only in Philadelphia, where every back looks good. And coordinator Shane Waldron's offense in Seattle had been inconsistent, with Seahawks fans often frustrated by the team's inability to take advantage of what looked to be superior playmaking personnel.
Unfortunately, those concerns have meant more than the wide receivers through the first few weeks of the season, and as a result, we've only seen glimpses of the Williams that Bears fans dreamt about all summer. He might already be my favorite quarterback in the league to watch throwing out-breaking routes to the sideline given his anticipation and arm strength, and the ability to make those throws reliably creates a lot of easy answers if he can stay on time within the offense.
A lot of things, though, haven't come easy. Williams and the Chicago offense have struggled to sort out pressure, and he hasn't often looked on the same page with his receivers when he's attempted to create out of structure, something he did with aplomb at USC. As a result, the only thing that has really worked for the Bears has been the quick game. Through three games, he ranked 19th in the league in EPA per dropback on passes thrown within 2.5 seconds of getting the snap. Anything after 2.5 seconds was a nightmare: He had gone 25-of-61 for 361 yards with a touchdown, four picks and the league's worst EPA per dropback.
For one week against the Rams and their oft-overmatched secondary, though, Williams looked much better. He was above average by EPA per dropback in that post-2.5-second range and downright excellent in quick game, where he was 9-of-10 for 72 yards. The only miss, unfortunately, was a third-and-15 fade to DJ Moore for what should have been a touchdown where the two players weren't on the same page, a miscommunication Moore took the blame for after the game. One of those quick completions was Williams' best throw of the day, a 22-yard completion off of play-action to Cole Kmet up the seam.
We also saw a better version of Williams against the blitz, which the Bears had struggled to deal with through the first three games. Before Sunday, he was 14-of-31 for 70 yards with a touchdown, an interception and six sacks against the blitz, with teams successfully converting more than 51% of their blitzes into pass pressure. The only teams being successfully blitzed into pressure more often through three games were the Patriots, Titans and Chargers.
The pressure continued Sunday, but Williams shined anyway. Despite the Rams generating pressure on six of their nine blitzes, he went 7-of-8 for 65 yards with just one sack. One of those completions was a touchdown pass to Moore, a play in which the rookie had enough time to scan both sides of the field before identifying Moore in a mismatch out of the slot against Rams linebacker Christian Rozeboom. It was a rare triumph for everyone in the offense: The line held up, Waldron schemed up a mismatch and Williams fired in a perfect pass to his top target for a third-and-6 touchdown.
The line rates better by pass block win rate (19th in the league) than it does by perception, and there's no doubt Williams could stand to speed up and help out his blockers. He took a bad sack on that two-minute drive at the end of the first half while waiting for something to open up downfield when a checkdown was available with a path to get out of bounds. He was terrifying as a scrambler and creator out-of-structure in college, but when scrambling as a pro so far, he's 2-of-10 for 23 yards with an interception and two sacks. He's still getting used to the speed of NFL defenders and calibrating how much time he has to move around before needing to get rid of the ball.
One thing Waldron and the Bears could do to make Williams' life easier is get the running game going, and Sunday was a big step in that direction. Through three games, the Bears ranked 31st in yards per carry (3.0), 29th in rush yards over expectation (minus-61), 27th in success rate on the ground (34.7%) and 30th in first downs over expectation (minus-6). Swift, the team's prized acquisition, was averaging 1.8 yards per carry and had one first down on 37 carries.
The talk heading into Sunday was that the Bears would give Swift more rest in favor of Roschon Johnson, but that didn't really happen. Swift played 68.5% of the snaps in Week 1 and 66.7% of the snaps in Week 2, but after ceding time to Johnson and playing 52.4% of the snaps in Week 3, he was back up to 66.7% of the snaps Sunday. Johnson, who went from being a healthy scratch in Week 1 to garnering 13 touches in Week 3, had seven carries for 26 yards and a 1-yard plunge into the end zone.
Swift, on the other hand, had his best day of the season. He carried the ball 16 times for 93 yards and added seven catches for 73 more. The highlight was a 36-yard touchdown on a split zone concept, a rare successful run through the middle for the speedster. I'm not sure it was a triumph of play design or will as much as it was Rams safety Kamren Curl ending up blocked out of the play without ever being touched, creating a lane right through the middle of the field for Swift. He has never lacked for speed, so it was no surprise Swift then beat Kamren Kinchens in the open field for a critical touchdown.
Will we look back on this game as the moment the season turned around for Williams? I'm not sure. This was a game in which he threw only 23 passes, generated 157 yards through the air and was lucky to avoid losing a fumble on a strip sack. The issues with the pass protection remain. I'm not convinced Waldron has shown much in the way to make teams afraid of all three Bears wide receivers, and they've actually had a better success rate throwing the ball out of 12 personnel (44%) than 11 personnel (40%) so far.
And yet, we might very well look back at this game as a moment when Williams felt the game slow down and look more like the one he had such mastery over at USC. I'm not concerned about his skills or mind translating the way that I might be about the next quarterback we're about to discuss. Everything was just a tiny bit better against the Rams than it had been in the previous weeks. Although the Rams have one of the worst defenses in football, Williams is about to face the Panthers, Jaguars, Commanders and Cardinals over his next four games. The arrow is pointing up.
Bo Nix, Denver Broncos
What he did in Week 4: 60 passing yards, 1 TD, 3 rushing yards in a 10-9 win over the Jets
Being a young quarterback can be as much about surviving as succeeding at times. While Daniels might step in and look as if he's been in the NFL for a decade, other quarterbacks don't have it quite as easy. And when a passer is facing a great defense in a driving rainstorm without great receivers, well, he can occasionally set NFL records for futility.
In the first half of Sunday's game against the Jets, Nix went 7-of-15. That's not ideal. Those seven completions produced minus-7 yards. That's historic. It's not net yards, which would include sack yardage. The 12th overall pick had one completion that generated 2 yards, two that each produced no gain and four that each yielded negative yardage.
ESPN has data for quarter-by-quarter statistics stretching back through 2000. Nix's minus-7 passing yards in the first half is the fewest for any player in any single game over that time frame. He's the only player with multiple completions in the first half who didn't land on the positive side of the yardage ledger by the break. There's a chance this was the worst passing performance by yardage of any first half in NFL history.
What didn't happen, though, is a series of turnovers. Nix might have had a longest completion of 2 yards, but he didn't throw any interceptions or fumble the ball away. Tyler Badie lost a fumble on the ground, but the Broncos were able to hold up on the short field and limit the Jets to a field goal. Trailing 6-0 at half didn't feel like the end of the world.
And then, after the rain subsided in the third quarter, Nix was able to lead the best drive of the day. The Broncos went 73 yards on 11 plays for the game's only touchdown, converting three third downs along the way. He connected with Courtland Sutton on a well-thrown dig route for 29 yards to pick up third-and-11, and when nobody ran with Sutton as Denver ran mesh on third-and-7 inside the 10-yard line, he found his receiver in the back of the end zone for a crucial touchdown. The team added another field goal on its ensuing possession, and when both teams missed late 50-yard field goals, the touchdown was the difference in a one-point Broncos victory.
It seems fair to mostly throw out the first half of this game in terms of evaluating Nix and the offense. Amid the same conditions, Aaron Rodgers was 8-of-16 for 81 yards. I suppose there's some concern about how Nix will handle the weather that shows up in Denver later in the season, but this was an offense-altering rainstorm for most of the first half. It's actually a bit of a pleasant surprise the Broncos ran the ball 10 times for 53 yards in it.
I wrote about Nix and his struggles getting the ball downfield after his 0-2 start, but the Week 3 win over the Bucs was his best performance. He went 3-of-8 for 70 yards on throws 11 or more yards downfield against Tampa Bay, which wasn't great but was a definite step in the right direction. On Sunday, he was 2-of-10 for 52 yards on those same throws. Although the weather didn't help, many of those throws weren't catchable.
In all, through four games, Nix is 5-of-23 for 98 yards in that intermediate range (11-to-20 air yards), and his QBR is a league-low 9.5. He actually has been better on deeper passes, where he's 5-of-17 for 156 yards, but that's still good for only 24th in QBR. I'm not sure it's possible to struggle that much on intermediate throws with his skill set and survive in the NFL for very long. Anthony Richardson can struggle there because he has the ability to terrify teams with his arm strength as a deep passer. Nix can make deep throws, but that's not going to be his game in the same way.
If a signal-caller is primarily throwing short passes, he needs to complete a Drew Brees-level percentage of his throws to keep the chains moving. The Broncos aren't at that level. Just 18.1% of Nix's passes are producing first downs, which is the lowest rate in the league. That's the worst rate for any quarterback through the first four weeks of the season dating back through 2007, with Nix narrowly beating Justin Fields' 2021 rookie campaign out for that distinction.
The list of quarterbacks below 30% is a mix of guys who never made it, struggling rookies and passers stuck with terrible coaches, with one exception: Brees' 2007 season, when he missed a game and otherwise turned 26.7% of his passes into first downs during a slow first month of the campaign. He was all the way up to 37.9%, one of the best marks in football, over the remainder of the season.
When Brees was in his early days with the Saints, coach Sean Payton was widely regarded as one of the league's craftiest offensive minds, a reputation he held on to throughout the entirety of the Brees era. Payton then coaxed excellent numbers out of Jameis Winston in 2021 before a torn ACL ended the 2015 No. 1 pick's season, and after that year, the longtime coach left the Saints before ending up in Denver. When Payton failed to get Russell Wilson back on track last season, Wilson was released, with the Broncos taking on $85 million in dead money.
With Nix struggling, it's fair to at least wonder whether Payton's offense is really as modern and impressive as it once was. Seeing what Klint Kubiak has been able to do with Derek Carr in New Orleans after taking over for Payton lieutenant Pete Carmichael seemed instructive, although injuries to the offensive line have slowed down what looked like the league's most explosive attack after two games.
We've seen the league's top offenses lean into heavier doses of play-action and motion to try to manipulate defenders, create space and produce communication breakdowns on the defensive side of the ball. Motion and play-action alone aren't enough to make a bad offense good, but they help. The average play-action pass dropback has generated 0.12 EPA this season, which would be the sixth-best offense in football. The average pass dropback without a play fake is at minus-0.02, which would be 23rd. The average play with motion before the snap generates 0.02 EPA, while plays without motion generate minus-0.02 EPA per play.
The Broncos don't often try to gain those advantages. They use motion on just 23.5% of plays, the league's lowest rate by a considerable margin. The league average is over 55%. They rank 23rd in play-action rate and just 14.6% of their passing yards have come out of play-action, the second-lowest figure of any team. There are successful offenses that don't use much motion or play-action, like the Cowboys', but the proof is in the results, right? If Denver were thriving without these concepts integrated into the offense, it would be one thing. Flailing without them suggests it's behind the curve.
The Broncos really have only one playmaker who can beat defenses in Sutton, and even he can go missing for games at a time. Josh Reynolds, added this offseason from the Lions, has run only about 24 routes per game. Marvin Mims, whom Payton traded up to acquire in the 2023 draft, has just two catches for 19 yards all season. The Broncos threw eight targets to Devaughn Vele in the opener, but after a rib injury kept him out of Week 2, he has been a healthy scratch in the two ensuing victories.
There's also a question of whether the Broncos have a running back who can make Nix's life easier. Payton challenged Javonte Williams to get thinner and faster during the offseason, but the 2021 second-round pick hasn't shown much burst this season. His 40 carries have produced 129 rushing yards and minus-36 rush yards over expected (RYOE). Denver's three other backs -- Badie, Audric Estime and Jaleel McLaughlin -- have combined for 186 yards and 45 RYOE on their 40 rushes. Badie might have been in for a larger role Sunday, but he fumbled on a reception and was later stretchered off the sideline with what was reportedly a back injury.
There's just not a lot here. Teams can't build an offense out of almost exclusively short passes when they aren't running the ball well and don't have a historically accurate quarterback. The Broncos rank 30th in EPA per play and 31st in points scored per possession. While acknowledging that Nix is a rookie and we don't need to make judgments about his future after four games, the idea that he was a wunderkind from his preseason success has simply not extended into the regular season. He is still a work in progress, and this offense isn't very good.
Instead, the Broncos are 2-2 because Vance Joseph's defense ranks in the top three in both of those categories on the defensive side of the ball. Pat Surtain & Co. held the Jets to two field goals on their two trips inside the red zone, including three stuffs from the 1-yard line before a bizarre hard count from Rodgers on fourth-and-goal backfired and produced a false start. After a pass interference call got the Jets into field goal range on their final drive, the defense allowed only 4 yards on three subsequent plays, forcing Greg Zuerlein into a 50-yard attempt that blew wide of the uprights. Nobody will look back on Sunday as a banner day for Nix and the offense, but give the rookie credit for doing just enough to come away with a road victory.