When the Jets traveled West to play the 49ers on "Monday Night Football" to close out Week 1, there were real questions about whether we were seeing a Super Bowl preview. After a hot start by Aaron Rodgers & Co., the San Francisco offense took over and pulled away for a comfortable victory.
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Now, after five weeks, it feels like both of these teams are lost. The Jets traveled to London and became the latest in a series of teams to fall behind early to the Vikings, allowing defensive coordinator Brian Flores to put on his mad genius hat and torment Rodgers. The 49ers were able to ride a kick return to the end zone for a score and a lead at home against Arizona. Again, though, they weren't able to seal the game and hold off the Cardinals, who scored 14 unanswered points in the second half to win.
Let's evaluate these disappointing 2-3 teams. Could we have seen their struggles coming? What has gone wrong, and can these issues be fixed? I'll start with the morning game, where the Jets looked bereft of ideas in a loss that only poured more fuel on the Davante Adams fire:
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New York Jets
Week 5 result: Lost 23-17 to the Minnesota Vikings
For Jets fans, the best-case scenario of the dream they had in the spring of 2023 is gone. The idea that adding Rodgers to a dominant defense would immediately elevate New York into the ranks of football's elite teams, a dream deferred for a year by the veteran quarterback's torn Achilles last season, is not being realized. At 2-3, the Jets have the same record after five games that they had in 2023 with Zach Wilson under center. They were 3-2 with Wilson and Joe Flacco through five games in 2022. The relief and certainty that Rodgers was supposed to provide have not appeared. They're just frustrating in different ways.
The Jets' offense has been built to Rodgers' specifications. Before the team officially traded for him, it hired Nathaniel Hackett, Rodgers' former coach from Green Bay, to serve as offensive coordinator. A year ago, it signed Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard to take over as supplementary wide receivers behind Garrett Wilson and added fellow former Packers quarterback Tim Boyle to be the No. 3.
Boyle and Cobb are gone, and Lazard has been fine in a regular role after falling off the active roster at times last season, but Hackett -- and the scheme Rodgers wanted his former coordinator to install -- remains. The Jets' problems start there. It's impossible to completely separate Hackett's scheme and philosophy from what Rodgers wants to run on a week-to-week basis, but figuring out who to blame doesn't really matter. What does is the result: They have an offense that looks and feels behind the times.
Modern NFL offenses thrive by asking difficult questions of defenses. Yes, having a phenom who can extend plays forever like Patrick Mahomes or break down any defender in coverage like Justin Jefferson is always going to work, but the best offenses are forcing defenses to communicate and work together on the fly and taking advantage of the missteps that pop up when they fail to do so.
Teams that use pre-snap motion most often are generally regarded as the league's most cutting-edge offenses: The Dolphins, Rams, 49ers, Packers, Lions, Chiefs and Bills all use motion more than 70% of the time. The Chiefs essentially won Super Bowl LVII against the Eagles by exploiting Philadelphia's struggles dealing with jet motion in the red zone, with two jet-return motion concepts leading to a pair of critical touchdowns.
The Jets have used motion 43% of the time this season, which ranks 28th in the NFL. Rodgers publicly discussed his hesitations about leaning more heavily into the motion trend in 2022, and when the Packers struggled then in a loss to the Jets, he suggested Green Bay was better on the drives when it didn't use any motion before the snap. It's no surprise the Packers have upped their motion usage dramatically after he left and was replaced by Jordan Love.
The story has always been that Rodgers wants to get clean looks at the defense before the snap and use his cadence and experience to diagnose what it's trying to do. And on one hand, he is right. Rodgers is better without motion. He ranks 16th in the league in QBR when his offense is still before the snap and 26th when it uses motion. He's not going to improve if the Jets were to lean into this trend. Hackett doesn't seem like a coordinator who wants to incorporate it into his offense, either; the Broncos ranked 28th in motion rate during Hackett's lone season with Denver in 2022.
Another more familiar concept is play-action. We've seen offenses from the Mike Shanahan tree Rodgers worked under with LaFleur in Green Bay thrive by massively increasing their play-action rates, making stars out of Kirk Cousins and Jared Goff in the process. In 2007, the first year ESPN has play-action data, the league used play-action on fewer than 18% of offensive dropbacks. That has steadily risen up to close to 24% of dropbacks this season.
Every offense uses play-action, but some use it more consistently and effectively than others. Rodgers doesn't typically use it often, owing in part to the fact he needs to turn his back to the defense when executing play-action from under center. Again, he wants to use his brain and his eyes to manipulate and break down coverages. Turning around gives the defense a chance to reset and muddle the image.
In a league where quarterbacks as a whole post a QBR 15 points better with play-action than they do without, Rodgers' QBR is 13 points worse when he uses play-action this season. The only quarterbacks who decline more significantly when they use play-action are Caleb Williams and Geno Smith. NFL quarterbacks average 8.7 yards per pass attempt when they use play-action from under center; he is averaging 3.9 yards per pass on those throws.
Again, this is by design. Rodgers isn't being forced into an offense he hates. The Jets run play-action less than 21% of the time, which ranks 25th. Just under 17% of his passing yardage is off play-action, the third-lowest rate in the league. On Sunday, they actually upped their play-action usage, as he was 6-of-10 on 12 dropbacks for 71 yards with play fakes. His 4.4 yards per dropback was about half of the day's league average.
Yahoo Sports writer Nate Tice refers to elements like play-action and motion as "easy buttons" for the offense. They aren't going to make a bad offense good, but they create friction for the defense and the potential for mistakes. With those buttons rarely used and not offering the same sort of effectiveness we see for other teams, the Jets have to thrive without relying on them in the same way.
At his peak, Rodgers had no trouble working without those elements because of what he did within the confines of the offense. He had inch-perfect accuracy and the league's fastest release, allowing the future Hall of Famer to fit throws into any window. He was able to use his legs to extend plays and had a preternatural connection with his receivers to find them on scramble drills for big plays.
He might not be the same athlete he was at his peak or even before the Achilles injury, but his arm strength isn't the issue. He has made some spectacular throws this season. The familiarity and comfort with his receivers are more the concern. It's telling that the team's leading receiver before Sunday was Lazard, the former teammate whom Rodgers looked to on a free play for a touchdown in Week 1.
While Rodgers targeted Wilson a staggering 22 times on 56 routes Sunday, Wilson was able to produce only 101 yards for a solid (but unspectacular) 1.8 yards per route run. Garrett Wilson was more productive with Zach Wilson at the helm over the prior two seasons on a route-by-route basis.
The communication issues reared their head on the game-ending interception, when Rodgers seemed to want to throw a back-shoulder or some sort of fade route to Mike Williams. Williams released outside and never turned around for the ball; Rodgers' throw was low and to the inside of cornerback Stephon Gilmore, with the former Defensive Player of the Year picking the ball off from his back to end the game. The concept was just three vertical routes; while there's nothing wrong with calling go routes in key situations, it's the sort of concept in which Rodgers needs to trust that his receivers will be in the right place, take the right releases and adjust accordingly to where he's going to place the football. Williams didn't, and it ended the game.
On top of that, the rushing offense has become entirely stagnant. Jets run plays are expected to gain an average of only 3.7 yards per carry according to NFL Next Gen Stats, the worst mark for any rushing attack in football. Breece Hall, who looked great running behind backups and with Wilson under center last season, is averaging 3.0 yards per carry and has 27 rushing yards on 19 carries over the past two games. Hall is a home run threat, but he has just one run for more than 20 yards this season.
What's left is a static offense that defenses are able to attack. Coordinators aren't afraid Rodgers will pick them apart if they go after him, and they're not worried the receivers beyond Wilson are going to give them trouble. With the offensive scheme relying on Rodgers to create his way out of problems, we're seeing defenses give Hackett's offense fits with the same concepts from game to game.
Take a key play from the Week 4 loss to the Broncos. Facing a fourth-and-10, Denver showed Cover 0 before the snap, with seven defenders at the line of scrimmage, two linebackers in the A-gaps around the center and four defensive backs to cover four eligible receivers. At the snap, the Broncos dropped one of the A-gap defenders into coverage, sent both slot cornerbacks and overloaded the left side of the line with rushers, meaning Rodgers was responsible for the furthest defender and needed to get the ball out. That defender, P.J. Locke, sacked him to end the drive.
The concept Hackett dialed up for that play? Three verticals. The Broncos dropped the linebacker into Wilson's path, taking away the sight adjustment that would have allowed for an easy completion. By the time Rodgers could get anywhere else in his progression, he was down on the ground.
Fast forward to the Vikings game. Defending a third-and-6 in the opening quarter, Flores lined up the Vikings in a similar look, loading up the line of scrimmage while seemingly lining up for Cover 0 behind. At the snap, Flores overloaded the left side of the line, leaving Rodgers hot and responsible for the furthest defender on the line of scrimmage, who was coming free. Andrew Van Ginkel dropped into coverage on the other side. Rodgers had an answer to that free pressure this week and tried to throw a slant away from the blitz, but he threw it right to Van Ginkel, who returned it for pick-six No. 2 of the season:
Another Van Ginkel pick-6! Dots!@NextGenStats pic.twitter.com/tHRFRqPmB0
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) October 6, 2024
Then, on a third-and-6 in the second quarter, guess what happened again?
The Vikings lined up with the same look, with seven men on the line of scrimmage and four defenders in coverage against four eligibles, suggesting they were about to run Cover 0. At the snap, again, Flores dropped Van Ginkel into coverage and got a free rusher off Rodgers' blind side, this time Harrison Smith. Again, Rodgers was hot and needed to get the ball out. And again, with the Jets just calling four vertical routes, there was no easy solution where he could go with the football. He was sacked before he could even make a decision. That's not on the offensive line. It's on Rodgers and the scheme not giving him the answers he needs. And the choices the Jets make with their scheme fall on some combination of the quarterback and offensive coordinator.
THE HIIIIIIIITMAN!@HarriSmith22
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) October 6, 2024
📺: @NFLNetwork pic.twitter.com/wWD8ihIhrV
The Jets aren't going to make massive changes to their scheme, and it would be a surprise if they fired Hackett. The big move they would be in position to make would be changing their personnel, and there's one obvious lever they can pull. All of the bad vibes from their 2-3 start, Rodgers' struggles and the seeming in-fighting with coach Robert Saleh about using cadence would go away if the Jets traded for another former Rodgers receiver in Davante Adams.
In a vacuum, do the Jets need another wide receiver? Not really. They're not moving Wilson. Lazard, who makes $10 million this year, has been productive and already has the benefit of being on the same page with Rodgers from their time in Green Bay. The Jets are also paying Williams $10 million and expect his role to expand as the former Chargers wideout recovers from a torn ACL suffered in September 2023. They aren't going to become a spread offense, so it would seem likely that Williams would become the odd man out. It might make sense to find a trade destination for Williams if Adams joins the team.
Trading for Adams now probably would cost the Jets multiple draft picks, although they have an extra third-round selection after trading away a fourth-rounder in April's draft. For a team that is all-in until the 40-year-old Rodgers retires, it's fair to say Adams would mean more to this team than a cost-controlled Day 2 pick. Adams already has familiarity with the offense and that innate understanding with Rodgers that led to so many big catches in Green Bay.
If the Jets aren't going to change their offense, having a player who can thrive within the confines of that very particular offense immediately (or, at least, after Adams recovers from his hamstring injury) is the only way they can count on improving the offense immediately. With a critical AFC East game coming up against the 3-2 Bills next Monday night, New York could take control of the division with a victory. Trading for Adams would reset the stories surrounding the team and reinvigorate the season. And, as we've learned is often most important for these Jets, it would make Rodgers happy.
San Francisco 49ers
Week 5 result: Lost 24-23 to the Arizona Cardinals
The 49ers might be more unlucky than disappointing. They were outplayed by the Vikings in a 23-17 defeat, but Kyle Shanahan's team came within a missed field goal of going up 10 points on the Rams with 2:48 to go before losing in Week 3. And on Sunday, they had seemingly slowed down the Arizona offense after a fast start, only for a pair of turnovers to give life to Kyler Murray & Co. The Cardinals erased a 23-10 lead with a short field from a Brock Purdy tipped interception and two long touchdown drives sandwiching a Jordan Mason fumble in the red zone. A game San Francisco had mostly controlled ended up producing an Arizona upset.
Let's start with those giveaways. The 49ers would have won this game if they had done a better job protecting the football. Purdy threw another tipped interception on the final drive to seal things, meaning they lost the turnover battle 3-0.
Even amid the consistent success of the Purdy era, the problem that has consistently managed to sink the 49ers is multi-turnover games. Since the start of 2022, if we include the postseason, they are an NFL-best 29-3 (.906) when they don't turn the ball over two or more times. When they do turn the ball over at least twice, they are 2-11 (.154), which ties them for 24th in winning percentage in those games. Two of those games are season-ending playoff losses in 2022 and 2023. Three more have occurred over the past four weeks of the 2024 campaign.
While the two interceptions Sunday were more luck than bad decisions, the stylistic change in Purdy's game I mentioned in last week's awards column could figure in here. His passes are traveling an average of 10 full yards in the air, the second-highest rate in the league (behind Anthony Richardson). Several of the picks have come on plays when he either threw deep or appeared to be loading up to go deep. And deep throws traveling 20-plus yards in the air are picked more than three times as often as throws that don't fit that category.
Naturally, with Purdy throwing deep far more often, the 49ers have lost some semblance of their consistency as a passing game. He posted a 54.4% success rate as a passer last season, meaning he kept the offense on schedule by expected points added (EPA) per play to pick up a first down and/or a touchdown. No other quarterback in football was over 50.2%. Second-place Dak Prescott was closer to 11th than he was to first.
Purdy has fallen back to the pack this season. His 51.4% success rate ranks fourth in the league. Even given the extra-deep passing, his EPA has fallen a bit, from 0.24 EPA/dropback to 0.16 this season. That's still an excellent figure, but it's a step backward from where he was as an MVP candidate a year ago.
I'm more concerned about the running game. While Mason was having a nice day before the fumble, the 49ers simply aren't as effective running the ball this season. They led the league in EPA per play on designed runs -- which doesn't include scrambles on pass plays -- last season. They're 19th this season, and that's mostly buoyed by an excellent performance in the Week 1 win over the Jets. They are 25th in EPA per designed run since then.
It's easy to pin that on Mason, but the blocking and infrastructure don't always make things easier. The 49ers are fifth worst in the league in expected yards per carry, with their backs expected to gain an average of only 3.9 yards on rushes. Shanahan's famous willingness to run into negative looks to try to set up big plays later probably applies here. They ranked in the bottom eight in expected yards per carry in each of the prior two seasons. (Mike McDaniel, Shanahan's former assistant, has had his Miami team lead the league in expected yards per carry each of the past three seasons.)
In some ways, the 49ers have continued to operate in rarified air. They've picked up at least one first down on more than 85% of their possessions so far, the best rate in the league by a considerable margin and the sixth-best rate for any team through five games since 2007. They possess the ball on their drives for a league-high average of three minutes and 34 seconds. They still generates first downs at the highest rate of any team. By all accounts, this should be a very productive and successful offense.
There is one place, though, the 49ers are coming up very short: the red zone. Last season, they converted a league-high 67.2% of their trips inside the 20 into touchdowns. Through five weeks in 2024, a Christian McCaffrey-less version of the offense has converted just nine of its 22 red zone drives into touchdowns, a success rate of 40.9%. That's the third-worst rate, ahead of only the Dolphins and Patriots, two of the worst offenses in the league.
Over a large enough sample, a team's red zone performance should reflect its performance over the rest of the field. When an offense is good outside the red zone and not great in the red zone, the latter mark usually regresses toward the mean and vice versa. That hasn't typically been a problem for the 49ers, who were great in both places a year ago. Last year's team ranked first in EPA per play outside the red zone and third inside the 20-yard line.
This year's offense ranks third in EPA per play outside the red zone and 22nd inside of it. Eliminating drives in garbage time, the 49ers failed to score altogether just five times on 59 trips inside the red zone a year ago. While they've made it to the red zone a league-high 21 times this season, they have already failed to come away with points three times in five games, including twice against the Cardinals.
One of those series was ended by Mason's fumble. The other was a drive that was pushed out of a second-and-9 inside the 15-yard line by a Jauan Jennings false start and a Purdy sack. After an incompletion, a San Francisco team without a healthy kicker after Jake Moody suffered an ankle injury decided to go for a fourth-and-23 conversion on the Arizona 27-yard line, with Purdy throwing incomplete well short of the sticks.
Moody's injury was bad luck, but the 49ers made their own mistakes. The fourth-and-23 was preceded by a third-down play when a Purdy pass to an open Brandon Aiyuk was tipped at the line. On a different possession, a second-and-goal from the 5-yard line in the second quarter should have produced a touchdown pass to George Kittle, but Purdy's pass was high and forced the tight end to make a leaping catch, which prevented Kittle from generating any YAC and took him out of bounds. Purdy then stared down a three-man route concept that didn't come open on third down and threw the ball away under pressure, forcing his team to take a 20-yard field goal.
The other fail-to-score sequence came in the loss to the Vikings. There, Purdy booted and missed an open Aiyuk in the back of the end zone on first-and-goal from the 4-yard line. Mason lost a yard on second down. A throw to Kittle at the pylon came up a yard short on third-and-goal, and the aforementioned Andrew Van Ginkel tipped away a pass on fourth down to save a touchdown.
McCaffrey should help here when he returns, although his status while recovering from Achilles tendinitis remains in question. Mason has six carries inside the 5-yard line and has converted just two into touchdowns. McCaffrey was 9-for-18 a year ago and offered much more of a threat as a receiver in compressed spaces.
Moody's injury is an unexpected issue, but San Francisco's special teams have been a mess. They ranked last in DVOA even before Sunday's game. Moody had gone 11-for-12 on field goals, but his one miss was the 55-yarder that would have sealed the victory against the Rams. Mitch Wishnowsky replaced him and kicked a short field goal, but the punting has been even worse. The 49ers rank 31st in yards per punt and dead last in net yards per punt, where their 32.9 mark is last by nearly 4 full yards. They had a punt blocked by the Vikings in Week 2, then allowed a 38-yard return to the Rams late in a tie game the following week to set up what would become L.A.'s game-winning field goal. They did gain a measure of revenge this week when Deommodore Lenoir blocked a Cardinals field goal and returned it for a touchdown.
Throw in the turnovers, and the 49ers' defense is facing the shortest average field of any unit. The average possession for San Francisco's defense begins an average of about 65 yards from its end zone, the shortest average trip for any offense.
A year ago, the 49ers had the second-best average starting field position on defense, nearly 9 full yards per drive better than where they stand now. That's a staggering difference for the purposes of field position. Over a full game, they are giving up about 90 yards per contest more than they did a year ago just by sheer virtue of the gap between 2023 field position and the 2024 rate before their defense ever actually steps on the field. That's a lot of free yardage being handed to opposing offenses.
It's yardage the 49ers can't afford to hand to opposing teams, especially given their rash of injuries on the defensive side of the ball. Dre Greenlaw is yet to return from his torn Achilles suffered last February. Talanoa Hufanga has missed three games and left Sunday's loss after 11 snaps with a wrist injury. Javon Hargrave is done for the season with a partially torn triceps, while Yetur Gross-Matos was placed on injured reserve with a knee injury before the Cardinals game and will miss the next month. That is three key starters and a player the 49ers expected to be part of their edge-rushing rotation this season. Fred Warner, my pick for Defensive Player of the Year through four games, was also limited all week by an ankle injury and didn't look like his usual self Sunday.
The Cardinals were able to pick on the weak spots of this 49ers defense. De'Vondre Campbell wasn't able to make an impact on two big plays early in the game, as he was part of a miscommunication on the first Cardinals snap that left Trey McBride wide open for a 20-yard completion. On the next play, McBride blocked Campbell and created a running lane for Murray on a zone-read concept, and when Hufanga crashed down from center field prematurely, Murray was able to run unfettered into the end zone for a 50-yard touchdown.
There was more miscommunication late in the game. A crucial third-and-6 turned into an easy first down for the Cardinals when Charvarius Ward and Ji'Ayir Brown ended up defending the same player, leaving Michael Wilson open for an easy conversion. An even more important fourth-and-5 saw Murray scramble away from pressure and throw up a frantic lob to Marvin Harrison Jr., who outjumped Isaac Yiadom for the first down.
Ward, one of the league's best cornerbacks over the past few years, allowed a team-high 67 passing yards as the nearest defender in coverage. Hufanga got a little too aggressive at the wrong time. Warner wasn't able to stop Murray from scrambling for a first down on a third-and-9 rush at the end of the first half. Even San Francisco's stars didn't have their best afternoons.
An unnecessary penalty compounded the problem. When the Cardinals scored the short touchdown that made it 23-19 with four minutes to go, they were given another gift by the 49ers by virtue of a penalty. Sam Okuayinonu was flagged for roughing the passer on Murray, allowing the Cardinals to take the ball from the 1-yard line. The math suggests teams should try the 2-pointer given the game situation from 2 yards out, and the Cardinals did so, converting with a James Conner run. When Arizona then drove down the field late in the fourth quarter, its possession wasn't to tie the game with a field goal but instead to win, which is exactly what it did.
And now, things get even more interesting. A beaten-up 49ers team gets the Seahawks on a short week Thursday. While Seattle just lost to the Giants in frustrating fashion, coach Mike Macdonald was hired by the organization to do what Pete Carroll was increasingly unable to do: shut down the Shanahan offense, something he did in the blowout Ravens victory over the 49ers last Christmas that ended Purdy's MVP campaign. McCaffrey reportedly won't be ready to play in that game, but San Francisco undoubtedly will hope he's back for the following week's Super Bowl rematch against the Chiefs.
I believe the 49ers will be fine. Their red zone performance will regress toward the mean. They'll get Greenlaw and McCaffrey back at some point. The special teams can't be this bad all season, and they had a big moment Sunday. Purdy is hardly afraid to put the ball in harm's way, but he won't have many games with two interceptions when the ball is tipped or impacted by pass rushers the way it was against Arizona. They won't have as many multi-turnover games over the remainder of the season as they've had over the past month.
But for a team with Super Bowl expectations, getting off to this sort of start is dangerous. The NFL Next Gen Stats playoff model has San Francisco's playoff odds down to 53% and its chances of winning the top seed in the NFC all the way down to 2%. The Rams and Seahawks both lost, which helped cushion the blow of losing to the Cardinals, but this team needs to find its formula and how it wants to consistently win. Right now, it feels like the 49ers are playing sloppy football while waiting for McCaffrey to return.