By Miles DeRosa, Staff Writer
We’re through week ten of the NFL season, meaning we’re just past the halfway point of what has been a fairly strange year. It’s a good time to look back at some of the top story lines throughout the year, review the contenders, and look ahead to the second half.
The Chief’s felt inevitable during Patrick Mahomes first three years as a starter. His deep ball connection with Tyreke Hill was the NFL’s ultimate atomic weapon, primed to go nuclear at any time. And with Sammy Watkins and Travis Kelce sucking up coverage underneath, there was simply no good way to defend them.
But Sammy Watkins is gone. Travis Kelce had looked washed until week 10’s matchup against the Raiders—who are in a free fall to the bottom of the AFC West standings. Tyreek Hill can’t seem to get open down the field against teams running the same 2 high safety look the Buccaneers did in the Super Bowl and Mecole Hardman isn’t the receiving threat he needs to be to take the pressure off. To cap it all off, their defense is in the bottom half of the league, allowing just north of 24 points per game.
There is no point in denying that Patrick Mahomes is having a down year, even after putting over 400 yards and five touchdowns on the Raiders in week ten. He’s already thrown ten interceptions and his passing yards per game is the lowest it’s ever been. But he’s still been one of the five best quarterbacks in the NFL this season. Many of his turnovers and down games have been the product of Kansas City’s overall offensive dysfunction this season, not Mahomes individually. He will be fine and, after an offseason to recalibrate, so will the Chiefs. Although, their hopes of building a Jordan Bulls-esque dynasty are starting to slip away.
The Rams quickly became a popular Super Bowl pick after dumping Jared Goff in a trade for Lions quarterback Mathew Stafford during the off season. And then they beat the Bucs in week three, and then traded for Von Miller before the deadline, and then picked up OBJ just last week. Yea, yea. I get it. They’re stacked. But even including the Bucs, the teams the Rams have beat this year have a combined winning percentage of just 30%.
The only other good teams they’ve played (Cardinals, Titans) have crushed them. Most recently the Titans went into LA without super-star running back Derrick Henry and ran them off the field on national television. Part of the issue is Mathew Stafford’s ineptitude in big games. He looks great against the bad teams and terrible against the good ones. He threw two picks deep in his own territory against the Titans that affectively ended the game before the Rams had a chance. He threw two more picks on Monday Night Football against a mediocre 49ers team in week ten. With games against the Packers, Cardinals, and Ravens coming up, we’ll get to see what this team, and Stafford, are really made of. You know what they say. You can take the man out of the Lions, but you can’t take the Lions out of the man.
The Titans currently have the best record in the conference and are the hottest team in the NFL. And yet, I’m still not sure anyone would pick them to win the Super Bowl at this point. Who knows when Derrick Henry really comes back or what he looks like when he does, and I don’t think anyone should have complete faith in Ryan Tannehill to take this team to the promised land.
We already talked about the Chiefs. They simply aren’t a complete team this year. The Raiders went from feel good story of the season to a tire fire in a matter of three weeks, and the Chargers can’t stop the run. The Browns starting quarterback is Baker Mayfield. Enough said (if you don’t believe this is enough evidence, watch his week 10 highlights). The Patriots are genuinely good and so is Mac Jones, but I am not betting on a rookie quarterback to beat anyone in the playoffs.
If it weren’t for Ben Roethlisberger and his limp noodle of an arm the Steelers could be legitimate contenders. Unfortunately, they’ve ignored his signs of decline for three years and are now stuck with no backup plan and the most wasted receiving talent in the NFL.
I was prepared to put all my eggs in the Ravens basket before week 10, when they got beat by the Dolphins and their carousel of mediocre quarterbacks on Thursday night. The injuries on the defensive side of the ball and to their running backs may prove too much to overcome, but Lamar Jackson is reminding us all why he won MVP two years ago.
God, I wanted the Bills to be good. I really did Bills fans. But Josh Allen is proving to be closer to a top ten quarterback than a top five quarterback, which he looked like last season. Week to week this team looks completely different on offense. One week they’re elite the next they’re struggling to pick up first downs. The good news is, no one else looks great either. They might not be great, but with their defense they could be the last team standing in the AFC. Who knows, they might even get to lose their fifth Super Bowl.
Kyler Murray has arrived and so have the Cardinals. They are one AJ Green route miscommunication away from being nine-and-one and they’ve been the fifth best defense in the NFL by points allowed per game. Murray is a constant threat to pick up yards with his legs or get outside the pocket and find someone down field. They’re impossible to figure out offensively because Murray thrives in chaos. The addition of Zack Ertz will only make them more consistent in the red zone and give them another option underneath and in short yardage situations.
Even when Murray went out in week nine against the 49ers, the rest of the offense stepped up to fill in the gaps. JJ Watt went out with a season ending shoulder-injury and the defense still looked elite. They’ve been the best regular season team in the NFL this year. The only thing keeping me from crowning them Super Bowl favorites is the legitimate concern over Kyler Murray’s availability come playoffs time.
Dear Aaron Rogers,
Please stop making a fool out of yourself on national television. You’re not vaccinated, fine, but don’t lie to the fans about it. That’s not a good look for anybody. Especially someone who ran away to Hawaii after losing an NFC championship game and then demanded a trade on Draft night, only to come back for a ‘last dance’ on a team you haven’t been able to win with for a decade.
You have complained about the amount of help you have since the Packers drafted quarterback Jordan Love (which admittedly continues to look like a mistake), but I’m still not sure what you want exactly. This team has been in contention for a Super Bowl each of the last three seasons. Davante Adams is maybe the best receiver in the league and Aaron Jones is a massive threat out of the backfield. Matt LaFluer is a good head coach even if he should have gone for it on fourth down in the NFC championship game last year. The front office went out and got wideout Randall Cobb at your request. Allen Lazard and Marquez Valdez-Scantling are good tertiary options in the passing game, and you play behind a strong offensive line in the best football city in the country. What more do you want?
The Bucs have looked like a good-not-great team this year, cruising to a 6-3 record after loses to the Rams, the Washington Football Team, and a Saints team led by Trevor Semien. They’re defense has been middle of the road, not the elite unit we saw in last year’s playoffs, and they’ve been plagued by injuries on both sides of the ball all season. Against Washington they were missing receivers Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown, tight end Rob Gronkowski, and safeties Richard Sherman and Sean Murphy-Bunting just to name a few. No one seems to be talking about them. And yet, if the team is healthy for the playoffs—which they will be barring any major injuries in the second half—none of that will matter.
Tom Brady is leading the league in touchdowns with 27, next to just seven picks. He also leads the league in yards per game with 318.9. The Bucs haven’t looked as good as they did in the playoffs last year, but their issues in the secondary and with offensive consistency can be chalked up to injury. Tom Brady has looked better than he did last year and might be in route to his fourth MVP if he stays on the field. At age 44 he is still, somehow, the most dangerous quarterback in the league. The Bucs have successfully lulled the league to sleep. Soon, it will be time to wake everyone up.
