Five weeks won’t define the 2022 NFL season. It will give you a pretty good idea of how things are going to shake out, however.
That’s not enough time to do anything but point a franchise toward a playoff spot, but it is enough time to fire a head coach after multiple years of fielding the league’s worst passing offense. Poor Matt Rhule was asked to rehabilitate Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold and somehow made them worse. He was a flamethrower brought to clean up an oil spill, and after 38 games and 11 wins the Carolina Panthers were sick of burning.
That’s the biggest development from the first 28 percent of the regular season, but it’s not the only one. Several trends have popped up early in 2022. Some will last and affect the postseason race. Others are bottle rockets, loudly screeching into the night before exploding and leaving little trace but the smell of charred gunpowder.
So whose hype are we buying after five games?
1
Firing Matt Rhule is going to change something -- anything -- for the Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers did what they had to do. After two-plus seasons and a 11-27 record, they fired head coach Matt Rhule.
Rhule couldn’t transform the chicken crap of a quarterback room featuring Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and PJ Walker into chicken salad as he built the league’s least effective passing offense. When his typically-useful defense finally collapsed on him in Week 5 vs. the San Francisco 49ers and Jimmy Garoppolo, he had to go.
In his place is interim head coach Steve Wilks, who’ll have the chance to put a 3-13 season as Arizona Cardinals HC behind him with a 12-game audition in Charlotte. He’ll also have a new quarterback at the helm, as Mayfield is expected to miss several weeks with a lower leg injury, carving a path for Walker — and then potentially a healed-up Darnold — to make this offense slightly less hopeless.
Buy or sell? Sell.
Poor Steve Wilks is getting thrown into another no-win situation as head coach. After getting Josh Rosen and late-stage Sam Bradford as his QBs in Arizona he now gets Mayfield/Darnold/Walker, who have proven they’re all very bad at this in Charlotte.
The good news is the defense he’d helped oversee should bring a little more fire than they did in last week’s loss to San Francisco. The bad news is it won’t matter if the offense continues to spin its tires — a scenario we’ve spent two-plus seasons watching unfold for the Panthers.
2
The New York Giants are going to the playoffs
If the 2022 NFL season ended today, the New York Giants would snap a five-year playoff drought. New York is 4-1 and has knocked off the No. 1 seeds from both sides of the 2021 postseason bracket by virtue of comeback wins against the Tennessee Titans and Green Bay Packers — both away from home.
On Sunday, Daniel Jones put together one of his finest performances as a Giant, leading a roster missing several of its best players back from a 17-3 deficit in a 27-22 win over Aaron Rodgers in London. He’s been a stable center for New York’s offensive universe, but the bigger story may be a defense that’s grown by leaps and bounds — and who tormented Rodgers late in Week 5 to snuff out his comeback hopes.
Buy or sell? Buy. Even if a regression is coming.
Jones isn’t doing much. He’s taking what opposing defenses give him and, despite his WR corps looking like the least popular pick in NFL Blitz, making it work.
More importantly, he’s avoiding turnovers and doing enough to let Saquon Barkley thrive. That, paired with a defense that ranks sixth in third down conversion rate and seventh in red zone scoring, has been enough to sprint out to 4-1.
That’s great! But even if there’s a dropoff this team still has an easy path to a winning record. Six games remain against clubs with losing records through five weeks — and that isn’t counting the 2-2-1 Colts, whose offense presently looks like someone stuck Matt Ryan in a blender and then tried to pour him back into his uniform. In an NFC where nine wins could be all it takes to make the playoffs, the Giants have a very real chance to make their first postseason appearance since Ben McAdoo roamed the sideline.
3
The Denver Broncos aren't going anywhere near the playoffs
The Denver Broncos are 2-3. Their only wins have come via a comeback effort against the Houston Texans and because Jimmy Garoppolo Dan Orlovsky-ed himself out the back of the end zone in a prime time game. Russell Wilson, acquired to be the team’s latest Peyton Manning-caliber booster rocket, has instead exploded on the launch pad.
He’s been roughly as efficient as Jared Goff through five weeks. Jared Goff is a quarterback the Los Angeles Rams effectively paid someone else to take off their hands before the 2021 season.
The Broncos have the NFL’s fourth ranked scoring defense and its 31st-ranked scoring offense. Wilson and company scored just 16 points against a Seahawks team that gave up 27, 27, 45 and 39 in the four games that followed. Denver has been to the red zone 14 times and scored only three touchdowns, easily making them the worst team in the league when it comes to seizing scoring opportunities.
Buy or sell? Hold.
I refuse to believe things can be this bad with a roster this talented. That may be very stupid and stubborn, but five games isn’t enough to wipe away a decade of efficient play from Russell Wilson — even if it means ignoring the fact he’s playing absolute doofus ball right now.
Russ had K.J. Hamler WIDE OPEN on the final play… pic.twitter.com/ccx4SSqqdR
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 7, 2022
The saving grace for Denver is a defense that may be, somehow, able to overcome this if Wilson can merely be average in 2022. The Broncos are asking so little of their new head coach and quarterback. So far they’ve done nothing but disappoint, but that can’t last.
Right?
4
The Miami Dolphins were a three-week mirage
For a brief moment, the Dolphins were the best team in the AFC. At 3-0, Miami was the conference’s last unbeaten and, more importantly, coming off a win against the Buffalo Bills. Tua Tagovailoa was playing like a top-5 quarterback. The defense had held two of three opponents to 20 points or fewer.
Now the Dolphins are 3-2. Tagovailoa is out for an undisclosed amount of time following the team’s malicious botching of the league’s concussion protocol. Opponents have scored 67 points in that two-game losing streak and Miami has dropped from the AFC’s top seed to third place in its own division.
Buy or sell? Sell, for now.
OK. It’s not good. Tagovailoa’s breakthrough season is on pause and may be permanently stunted from what appeared to be multiple serious head injuries in a five day span. The defense broke in a very different way in Week 5, giving up five rushing touchdowns and 135 yards on the ground after fielding a top-5 run defense through the first month of the season.
There’s a tremendous capacity for a rebound in the run up to the team’s Week 11 bye. The Dolphins will be tested at home by the 4-1 Minnesota Vikings, but Minnesota has a -14 point differential on the road and hasn’t built a ton of confidence with its wins so far. After that comes games against the:
- Pittsburgh Steelers
- Detroit Lions
- Chicago Bears
- Cleveland Browns
There’s a very good chance Miami gets to its bye at 7-3 or better, even with Teddy Bridgewater taking extended snaps behind center. That’s a lot of time for Mike McDaniel to figure out why the wheels have come off and come up with a better plan than Week 5’s hasty duct tape job in hopes of getting them back on.
Getting a healthy Tagovailoa back to his early season form would be a boon, but that’s no guarantee. The more stable fix will have to come from a passing defense that currently ranks 32nd in DVOA. That stretch of games against Kenny Pickett, Justin Fields, Jared Goff and Jacoby Brissett is a great opportunity to build confidence.
Besides, giving up a ton of points to the Jets doesn’t disqualify you from contention. The Bengals let Mike White throw all over them last October and still recovered in time to win the AFC.
5
Welp, the Tennessee Titans are gonna win the AFC South. Again
After two weeks, the Titans were 0-2. Ryan Tannehill had reverted to his rookie year Miami Dolphins self, throwing equal touchdowns and interceptions while completing less than 60 percent of his passes with a revamped receiving corps. Derrick Henry, now 28 years old and with a lifetime of carries under his belt, had just 107 rushing yards and was held to 1.9 yards per touch in a 41-7 rout by the Buffalo Bills.
After five weeks, the Titans stand alone atop the ridge of the empty crater that is the AFC South at 3-2. Tannehill has completed 70 percent of his throws and recorded a 106.1 passer rating, even with rookie first round wideout Treylon Burks dealing with an injury. Henry has 424 total yards — more than 300 of which came on the ground — and four touchdowns in that span.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have faded. The Indianapolis Colts still look like garbage. The Houston Texans exist only in the nightmares of their foes. For the third straight season, the division title is there for the Titans’ taking.
Buy or sell? Buy, just because the rest of the division is even more frustrating.
Tannehill has been impressively efficient despite a distinct lack of upper crust targets; he’s been a top-10 quarterback the last three weeks:
Henry is more of a concern despite his recent revival. His yards after contact number is still way down from his Tractorcito prime and his -41 rush yards over expected is the fifth-worst mark in the NFL, per the league’s Next Gen Stats. He’s run for 408 yards on a league-high 104 carries to start the year. In his last 107 carries of 2020 — the final four games of the regular season — he had 710 yards.
The passing defense is a similar concern, as Tennessee has given up at least 300 yards through the air in each of its last four games despite the fact the last two were showcases against the Colts’ cavalcade of failed reclamation projects. The Titans’ three-game win streak hasn’t exactly been convincing, and there’s little to suggest they’re built for a deep playoff run.
But the Jaguars have shrunk back to their natural state thanks to untimely turnovers and a baffling, habitual inability to beat even the worst Houston Texans teams. The Colts are working through an increasingly beat up Matt Ryan in what may be his final season in the league. The Texans are in the midst of a five-year rebuild. This is still Tennessee’s division to lose.
