We’re out of Week 4 and heading into Week 5. That means we’re a quarter of the way into the season, we’re into bye weeks, and we’re done with the glorified preseason that is September football.
The problem is that while teams do think about those first four games as a warm-up to the rest of the season, those games are very, very real. We’ve already seen some teams have their season derailed, and some of the best players in the NFL fall into an unexpected hole.
It’s a tough start for some high-caliber guys
These are all players who came into the 2025 season as favorites (or near favorites) for MVP or Offensive Player of the Year. For some reason or another, the first month of their seasons has gone horribly wrong/different from what anyone expected.
Derrick Henry
Woof. Pretty much everything around the Ravens is trash. Very seldom can you see which play marks the downturn of a season, but for the 2025 Ravens, it was when Derrick Henry fumbled with 3:10 left in the fourth quarter of the Week 1 game, which allowed the Bills to mount their comeback.
If that was the only time that he fumbled, it’d be (more or less) fine … but it wasn’t. He fumbled in Weeks 2 and 3. The Ravens recovered the one in Week 2, so it wasn’t that bad. The one in Week 3 was a different story.
The Ravens were down 28-24 against the Lions, and Henry fumbled on his own 22-yard line with 8:31 left in the fourth quarter. The Lions ended up kicking a field goal, scoring a touchdown, and winning 38-30.
Derrick Henry is leading the NFL in fumbles, which is crazy because he’s never been a fumble guy before. He had a career-high five fumbles in 2019, and he had three total last season.
I don’t know how the Ravens deal with this. Some coaches know that one of their running backs has fumblitis and put them on the shelf for a little bit. The Ravens can’t do that because of Henry’s upside as a runner. It’s a tough spot.
On top of that, he’s had three straight games with 50 or fewer rushing yards. That’s his worst three-game stretch since 2018.
Saquon Barkley
At some points, the Eagles’ offense looks like Samson with a full head of hair, and at some points, their offense looks like Samson with Alopecia. Regardless of which version is on the field, the running game, and specifically the running game with Saquon Barkley, has just not been there.
Through the first four games in 2024, Barkley had 73 carries for 435 rushing yards and four touchdowns. Right now, he has 77 carries for 237 yards and three touchdowns. The biggest difference is that the explosive runs just aren’t there.
This time last year, he had four runs of over 15 yards. This season, he has one… and it happened in Week 1 against the Cowboys.
Jordan Mailata’s message is that they’re “one block away” from getting the ground game going. You have to take his word on that, but the fact of the matter is that the run blocking has been inconsistent across the board.
Some of that is due to teams selling out to stop Barkley, to missed assignments, to banged-up offensive linemen, to weird playcalling, and some (albeit a minor part) of it is due to Barkley himself.
Regardless of the reason, this is a big step back for Barkley, both production-wise and with the offense being centered around his explosiveness. It’s a long season and that can change, but as of right now, it’s looking like 2025 is not going to be another Saquon Barkley year.
Lamar Jackson
Going into the season, Lamar Jackson was the favorite to win the NFL MVP (and somehow he’s still second to Josh Allen). Last week, I dove into how that’s not an individual award, but more of a team award. CliffsNotes: The majority of the time, it goes to the quarterback of the team that’s either the first or second seed in a conference.
It’s going to be tough for the Ravens to work their way back from their 1-3 record to get one of those two spots in the AFC, especially since their training room must look like an ICU.
Lamar Jackson is one of those injured guys. In the third quarter of their Week 4 game against the Chiefs, he left the game with a hamstring injury. There wasn’t a clear spot where he pulled up lame or anything like that, so it’s hard to say how severe it is or anything like that…
But it’s an early-season hamstring injury. Those are the kinds of things that can linger and nag throughout a season. With how Lamar Jackson plays, it certainly feels like it’ll be an injury that shows its ugly face in December.
All of that aside, the Ravens are playing bad football right now. They have winnable games coming up, but with how bad that defense has been, it’s hard to have any faith that they’re going to get it together anytime soon.
Ja’Marr Chase
It’s absolutely not Ja’Marr Chase’s fault that his season has plummeted. Joe Burrow had the turf toe injury that took him out of commission until December-ish (but probably for the rest of the season). That meant it was Jake Browning’s time to take over again.
For about 28 teams in the NFL, there’s going to be an enormous drop in production when a QB2 has to take over. That’s emphasized big-time when it’s a quarterback like Joe Burrow who goes down.
The hope was that Browning had gotten better since he had to be Cincinnati’s signal caller back in 2023… he has not.
In the six full games Chase and Browning played together in 2023, Chase averaged 63.8 receiving yards. In the two full games they’ve played together this season, Chase has a total of 73 receiving yards. That's pretty awful for the guy who just won the Triple Crown in 2024.
Maybe something can change if the Bengals trade for a quarterback in the next month, but even then, that offensive line is abysmal, and it probably won’t be enough.
The entire idea about Ja’Marr Chase having another good season in 2025 was that the Bengals' offense is so bad that the offense was going to have to score 40-ish points every game to win. Without Burrow, that offense hasn’t just been neutered; it’s been paralyzed from the waist down, and unfortunately, Ja’Marr Chase is the guy who’s suffering the most.