We’re going into Week 4 of the 2025 NFL season. Yes, it’s still September Football. Yes, things are still mega-weird. And yes, some teams are still treating things like an extended preseason.
However, we’ve got a pretty good idea of who the good teams and who the bad teams are going to be. A lot of that is because of decisions teams made (or didn’t make) in the offseason. For the bad teams, it’s about their incredibly regrettable decisions.
Bad teams make bad decisions
On one side of things, you have teams that are starting the season off super hot: the Philadelphia Eagles decided to exercise Jordan Davis’ fifth-year option, which ended up being a great move. You also have the Indianapolis Colts, who brought in Daniel Jones to compete with Anthony Richardson for the starting job, which also ended up being a phenomenal move.
Then there are teams that made bad decisions, but they’re too self-absorbed or ignorant to realize they made a bad decision: Jerry Jones and the Cowboys think they can still come out on top after trading away Micah Parsons, and the Bengals chose to pay Tee Higgins instead of buying an offensive line in free agency.
Then, there are teams like the Falcons, the Texans, and the Raiders who have to fall asleep at night knowing that they made terrible decisions.
Falcons: That draft day trade
Remember back in the Spring when the Falcons traded back up into the first round to pick edge rusher James Pearce Jr. with the 26th overall pick? They traded their 2026 first-round pick for him. That was dumb.
For some reason, they thought they were going to be nails this season and that pick was going to be a very late first-rounder. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Right now, they have a 1-2 record, and things are looking absolutely terrible.
The offense is unbelievably stale. They’ve gone two straight games without scoring a touchdown, they fired their wide receivers coach, and head coach Raheem Morris is making his offensive coordinator, Zac Robinson, come down to the sidelines just so he can yell at him face-to-face and not over a headset. The vibes are the exact opposite of immaculate.
This team is on a track for an implosion, and when that happens, they're going to be set up to have a top-10 draft pick in 2026… but that belongs to the Rams now, sooooo… bummer?
Texans: Blocking optional
C.J. Stroud had an unreal rookie season that ended with him being the 2023 Offensive Rookie of the Year. Going into the 2024 season, almost everyone was super high on what that team could do… and then just about everything imaginable went wrong; the crux of it was that the offensive line was straight-up terrible.
You would think that a priority for that team would be rebuilding the offensive line. Instead of that, they kind of broke it apart and put it together with other pieces that also aren’t good.
They traded Laramie Tunsil to the Commanders and their 2022 first-rounder, Kenyon Green, to the Eagles. They signed Laken Tomlinson in free agency, claimed Jake Andrews off waivers, traded for Ed Ingram, and drafted Aireontae Ersery in the second round.
They changed a lot, but turns out, it’s still all terrible. Stroud is still running for his life, getting pressured at an insanely high rate, and their running game is largely invisible.
The bottom line is that they got rid of guys and added some other guys. The problem is that they didn’t add any certified dudes… and those dudes were certainly available: Will Fries, Mekhi Becton, and even Drew Dalman.
If they really wanted to give Stroud the option to bounce back, they would’ve signed one of the better free agents or traded for Joe Thuney, which is what the Bears did.
They even got rid of their offensive line coach… they hired his assistant for the job, but that’s a whole different regrettable decision. It’s just a very unserious team.
Raiders: Ashton Jeanty isn’t that good
In the first three weeks, the Raiders found out that you don’t buy Super Premium gas if you drive a Grand Am. That’s not a team built for their rookie running back, Ashton Jeanty.
It’s always a shame when a really good player gets drafted by a terrible team. You see all of this talent, and then they go to a team where their will to compete gets sucked away from them.
Sometimes those players get out, like when Saquon Barkley left the Giants and went to the Eagles. Sometimes they don’t, like when Myles Garrett decided to stick with the Browns. Jeanty got picked by the Raiders with the sixth overall pick in the 2025 draft.
Apparently, the thought was that this guy was so special that he could single-handedly rejuvenate Las Vegas’s running game. It’s a nice thought… It’s naive as all get out, but it’s still nice.
There are two ways that you can look at this: the Raiders drafted the best player available (which is mostly a good idea), or they overestimated how good they were going to be able to block.
If it’s the latter (and given the fact that they also signed a 34-year-old quarterback in Geno Smith, it seems like it’s the latter), there’s a 100 percent chance that at least one person is regretting it… that one person is their minority owner, Tom Brady.
If Tom Brady regrets something (football-related), it counts as a billion people regretting it. They had their pick of the litter at offensive line when they drafted, but they opted not to do that.
Jeanty has 144 rushing yards this season, and per Next Gen Stats, 112 of them have come after contact. Ideally, you would want your future franchise running back to not be hit behind the line of scrimmage at the insane clip that Jeanty is, but them's the breaks.