NFL: Are the Browns good and 10 other questions we have after Week 4

We saw a lot of stuff happen in Week 4, but we’ve come away with questions that we absolutely need answered. 

We’re four weeks into the NFL season and we still have a lot to learn. Frankly, we were lucky to even have football to try and analyze this week after COVID-19 finally hit the NFL like we feared it might.

As of publication, the Tennessee Titans still haven’t gone enough days without a positive test to allow for a return to their facilities, which threw Week 4’s matchup with the Steelers out of order and now threatens next week’s game against the Bills. We also had our first instance of a superstar athlete testing positive for coronavirus, with Cam Newton’s positive test pushing the Chiefs-Patriots game back to Monday and throwing off the competitive balance.

The positive tests were a cloud over this weekend’s games, but most of them went on unabated. And within those games, we learned a handful of new things that give us a better idea of where the course of this season is taking us.

So as we digest Sunday’s football feast, let’s ponder a few things we’re going to be wondering about as the days turn into a week and we arrive at another Sunday of action in Week 5.

1. Are the Cleveland Browns good? 

At the risk of jumping to conclusions after just four test cases, it seems a corner is being turned in Cleveland.

Make no mistake about it.  Dallas Cowboys are bad  but the Browns of years past either outright lose Sunday’s game or do so in embrassing fashion (depending on the year, maybe a little of both).

But Cleveland did a number of things on Sunday that we’re not used to seeing it do.

• Score 31-points in the first half
• Score 31-points in the first half on the road
• Score 31-points in the first half on the road and not blow that lead

The list of insane things we didn’t expect the Browns to do does not end there, like how about withstanding an MVP-candidate throwing for over 500 yards and four touchdowns and still win. Or how about losing their starting running back and having his third string replacement lead the team in rushing even though backup Kareem Hunt went for over 70-yards and two touchdowns. Odell Beckham Jr. had over 150 total yards of offense and scored three times, including a tremendously un-Browns-like 50-yard touchdown run to seal a victory.

Simply put, we’ve never seen the Browns look like the way they did on Sunday.

Kevin Stefanski started his tenure with the weight of everything former Browns coaches left behind combined on his shoulders, plus the mounting evergreen expectations to take a talented-on-paper team to the next level. For the first time since the team returned to the NFL in 1999, it finally feels like Cleveland is rising to the occasion.

Butch Davis was the only Browns coach since 1999 to start his first season with the team with a 3-1 record. Stefanski just joined that extremely exclusive club. The hope that fans are feeling is undeniable, but a key difference between what happened to the Butch Davis Browns after that start, and what Kevin Stefanski is doing is that the latter is solving problems and finding ways to make things work that otherwise weren’t. Baker Mayfield is clawing his way out of the deep pit he fell into last season, the defense is able to offer enough support to survive a shootout, and pieces that could have been cast away and chalked up as a lost cause are getting finessed into being game changers. Odell Beckham is a Game Changer, and rather than fall into the trap both an entire franchise (the Giants) and his predecessors fell into, Stefanski is scheming Odell into positions to succeed and isn’t giving up on him. The result is what we saw Sunday, which is what we’ve been waiting to see out of Beckham since he arrived in Cleveland.

That and the success we’ve seen this season is largely because of expert coaching, which among all the other surprises is the biggest thing we’ve never seen the Browns be able to have.

2. How much worse can this get for the Jets? 

A lot.

Adam Gase is going to get fired, but whenever he’s mercifully let go the man who will take his job is Gregg Williams. No one has made a carer out of being the other guy in the room quite like Williams, who would become an interim head coach for the second time in three years. Williams has carved out his spot in the NFL as a capital-F Football Guys but another f-word is often used to describe Williams.

How’s this for an f-word attached to Williams’ legacy: Freddie, as in Freddie Kitchens. That’s who succeeded Williams as head coach in Cleveland last season and was eventually chosen instead of him to coach the Browns in 2019.  We all saw how the short-lived Kitchens era in Cleveland went, and that’s what was chosen instead of Williams despite his actual experience as a head coach in the NFL.

Williams is not a good coach. Aside from a decent few years with the New Orleans Saints, success stained by the fact he was paying his players to injure opponents, Williams is no better than Gase as a head coach. In fact, Gase is better as a coach with a .441 winning percentage compared to the .393 of Williams.

Look no further than this past Thursday as proof. Williams had to gameplan against a winless team that was on the road during a short week and hadn’t scored more than 21-points in a game all season. Oh, Denver was starting a third-string quarterback who had never started a game in the NFL before. Williams’ defense allowed 37-points, almost 400-yards of offense, and was gashed 43-yard game-clinching touchdown.

The facts speak for themselves. Things are going to get much worse for the Jets before they get better.

3. Can the Raiders be this year’s Titans? 

Last year the Tennessee Titans bubbled to a boil that rolled them through the AFC Playoffs and to a title game bout in which they had a lead on the eventual Super Bowl champs. The Titans wiped out at the finish line, but they were a wrecking ball in a conference that every expert had seemingly mapped out.

Out went the defending Super Bowl champs in the Wild Card.

Out went the darlings of the AFC all year and the team had pegged to be in the AFC Championship Game almost all year.

Las Vegas has all the makings of an unstable monster like the Titans were last year; unpredictable (beating the Saints in Week 2, playing the Patriots and Bills much closer than we expected) with all the right ingredients to blow it when it matters.

But as good as the Raiders have looked and can be, their ceiling is Derek Carr being the living embodiment of the Oh no, what is you doin’ meme.

It’s funny until it’s not because that fumble ended up costing the Raiders big in the end. Late in the game, the Raiders rallied to pull within a score with less than two minutes left. Carr’s fumble was part of the difference between the Raiders needing an onside kick to try and keep their chances alive and having that late touchdown mean a lot more than it did.

It’s also the difference between the Raiders simply being a problem in the playoffs and being actual contenders.

4. Where do the Chicago Bears go from here? 

To the nearest room with a WiFi connection and a device where college tape can be viewed.

Nick Foles is not the answer at quarterback, but he never was going to be. His incredible comeback last week was the stuff of instant legend in Chicago, but things normalized in a lackidaiscal performance against the Colts. In a truly Trubisky-eque moment, Foles was good for one great drive that was too little too late.

Chicago has only lost one game this year, but somehow the loss to Indianpolis felt like so much more than that. The comedown from last week’s high is a reminder that the Bears do not have a solution for its massive quarterback problem and will need to look to the draft to find one.

Which leads us to the fork in the road the Bears will be faced with this offseason. Either they can stick with a veteran quarterback (be it Foles or someone else from what will be a shallow pool) or they can draft a future franchise quarterback. Unless the Bears can land Trevor Lawrence or Justin Field, which seems unlikely, options like Trey Lance or Kyle Trask reset the Bears championship clock and mismatch with the trajectory the defense is on. Cam Newton will probably re-sign in New England and good veterans like Aaron Rodgers are still a year or two away from hitting the market like Tom Brady did this past offseason.

All of this serves as a reminder that the mistake of drafting Mitchell Trubisky and then sticking with him to a fault is a lot deeper than memes Patrick Mahomes or fantasies about what it would be like to have Deshaun Watson or Lamar Jackson. The Bears set their franchise back in a big way by mishandling the Trubisky situation as badly as they did and there’s very few ways that don’t involve sheer luck that they can dig themselves out.

5. How much longer can we do this with Bill O’Brien? 

Not much longer.

Borrowed time does not even begin to describe where we are at with whatever is happening with Bill O’Brien. If there was a team to turn your season around against, it’s the one quarterbacked by the personification of mediocrity and a defense primed to give Deshaun Watson an opportunity to shine.

Instead of beating the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, Bill O’Brien watched as his team forced itself into a corner in which a controversial call was the only thing that could get them out of the shadows — and it of course didn’t happen.

Houston is now 0-4 and truly looks like it. The Texans have been outscored 126-80, the defense is averaging over 30-points allowed per game, and Deshaun Watson is being put into situations where he finishes a game with a QBR of 37.9.

It goes beyond just coaching decisions, like going for it on 4th-and-1 from your on 34-yard line and drawing up one of the worst wheel routes ever run. O’Brien was somehow given the keys to the franchise decision-making machine and is just as bad of a general manager as he is a head coach.

Houston is spending a league-high $255 million on a roster that has yet to produce a win. De’Andre Hopkins, the kind of All-Pro you’d want your franchise quarterback throwing to, was traded away for spare parts because he didn’t fit into the bloated budget. The Texans are in the running to finish with the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft — which would belong to the Miami Dolphins as part of the Laremy Tunsil trade last offseason.

That’s malpractice.

The best thing that happened to Mike McCarthy is he chose to coach in a state where Bill O’Brien is employed because no matter how bad things go in Dallas he’ll never be the worst Football Guy in Texas as long as he’s there.

6. Can we contract the NFC East? 

No, but we should at least consider taking away the division’s automatic playoff bid.

We can’t do that but can we start a petition? Seriously.

Coming into Sunday, the NFC East was 1-11-1 outside its division and is collectively a combined 3-12-1 on the season. The Philadelphia Eagles won their first game of the season in Week 4 and are in first place — that’s where we’re at with this. The top seven teams in the league right now are division leaders, but the Eagles are the 20th-best team in football. That means there are 18 other teams, including 2 last place teams (the Cardinals and Panthers) have better records than the team in first place in the NFC East.

Bear in mind that someone is going to make the playoffs and host that game as a division winner. There may only be one official first-round bye this year, but thanks to this tire fire of a division the NFC will unofficially have two.

7. Is this Peak Cowboys? 

Here’s a riddle: How do you turn a blocked extra point into two points?

The answer: Play the Dallas Cowboys.

The only thing missing is Jason Garrett on the sideline clapping and smiling as though this wasn’t as embarrassing as it was.

8. Were we too early on the Arizona Cardinals?

Unfortunately, yes.

The Cardinals are a team on the rise, but they’re not yet a truly good team. It’s incredibly reductive and simplistic to say, but the mark of a good team is that they do not lose to bad teams. The Lions and Panthers are not good teams, yet the Cardinals are among their only wins of the season (Carolina is a slightly better team than Detroit but neither are within the realm of being Good).

Kyler Murray looked like a fringe MVP candidate after the first two weeks, Kliff Kingsbury’s Air Raid offense appeared to be evoling, and the stock price of the Cardinals was skyrocketing.

Two weeks later, reality has set in and the question has become whether this is just a hiccup or if Arizona has regressed back to the mean.

The Cardinals allowed 167 rushing yards to a Panthers team without All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey — which was more yards than Carolina rushed for when McCaffrey was in the lineup. That’s entry point into the portal of how bad Arizona was on Sunday.

Three of the Cardinals first four games have come against teams with a combined record of 4-8, and they’ve managed to win only once. The Week 1 victory over the 49ers is a signature win, but it’s still too early to say it was anything more than a glimpse into what this team can be and not what it’s immediate future is.

Arizona can still have a good season, but their future is not now — and there’s nothing wrong with that. De’Andre Hopkins is siged long term, Kyler Murray is still figuring things out (and looks this good), and the defense needs to become more consistent. The future is bright, it’s just a little further off into the distance than the light initially seemed.

9. How much Justin Herbert stock is too much?

Right now it’s impossible to buy too much stock in Herbert.

No quarterback this season has more than one pass of 50-yards or more — except Herbert, who has two. He joined Cam Newton and Kyler Murray as the only quarterbacks in NFL history to have 300-yards or more in his first two starts, and already has over 900-yards total in just three starts.

This from the guy we threw ourselves against a wall over to try and get the attention of the Dolphins so that they didn’t pick him instead of Tua. Don’t get it twisted, he’s not Patrick Mahomes and still has a ton to learn as far as avoiding very bad rookie mistakes (See: A turnover in each of his three starts that changed the outcome of the game). But Herbert has already silenced and converted his haters in six-and-a-hald quarters of football, and still has an entire career ahead of him to do so much more with.

10. How is this Matt Rhule stat real? 

In his first seasons in his last two jobs, Matt Rhule only won a single game but ended his tenure in a bowl game. Rhule went 1-8 in his first season with Temple back in 2013 and 1-11 with Baylor in 2017.

Sunday saw Rhule win his second game as head coach of the Carolina Panthers, breaking his streak of only winning one game in his first season in a new job but keeping us on track for another glorious upward trajectory. The third season has been the turning point for Rhule, as that’s when he took Temple to the Boca Raton Bowl and Baylor became bowl-eligible quicker than anticipated. Carolina has been a hard out over the first four weeks of the season, and given how much house money Rhule is playing with it’s exciting to see how historically bright the future of his teams have been.

11. Is Carson Wentz actually bad? 

Carson Wentz might be bad, but it might not be entirely his fault.

Sure, the Eagles managed to upset a depleted 49ers team on the road in a nationally televised game. But Wentz was not good, and a large amount of people got to witness this first-hand.

Wentz had a worse completion percentage than Nick Mullens, who was benched by Kyle Shanahan in the fourth quarter.

The question is whether or not this is all Wentz’s fault? In his defense, half of the receivers Wentz has played with are no longer in the league, five have a combined 25 career catches and three were DeSean Jackson, Golden Tate, and Nelson Agholor.

That’s not exactly a murder’s row of receiving targets.

Beyond those sad facts, Wentz has been hammered by injuries both to himself and to the players around him. His offensive line is a revolving door thanks to various injuries and IR moves, DeSean Jackson has missed 16 of the last 20 games, Agohlor has missed 10 of the last 20 games, and Wentz himself missed 9 games between 2017 and 2018, played a full season in 2019 only to get taken out of the Eagles Wild Card game early with a head injury.

We’re in Year Five of Wentz’s career and we still don’t know exactly who he is or what he’ll be. Is he Andy Dalton or is he something more? The Eagles won a Super Bowl during his career with them but without much help from him outside of getting Philly off to an 11-2 start before tearing his ACL. It’s that What-If MVP season that we cling to when thinking about Wentz’s potential, but that season gets further and further away in the rearview.

Right now Wentz has the 4th-worst Adjusted QBR in the league and is dead last in Passer Rating. The Eagles are 1-2-1 and didn’t win their first game until the fourth week of the season. How much longer will that one almost-MVP season and a few good looking drives carry Wentz?