6 winners and 3 losers from Week 3 in the NFL

McDaniels took a good Raiders team, and made it suck.

It’s a particularly awful morning for the Las Vegas Raiders. As Monday dawned following Week 3 the Raiders find themselves as the only 0-3 team in the NFL, lagging behind in the AFC West, and with some major soul searching to do.

It wasn’t long ago that the Raiders were being earmarked to make noise, and rightfully so. A playoff team a year ago, Las Vegas stocked up to the moon for 2022 with a splashy signings and trades designed to mitigate their biggest weaknesses. The team needed pass rush, so it spent $51M on Chandler Jones, it needed a top wide receiver, so Vegas traded a 1st and 2nd round pick for Davante Adams. Hell, the team was even aggressive in finding a coach, convincing Josh McDaniels to return to the AFC West after years of flirtation with returning to the head coaching life.

Now, three weeks in, it’s a damn mess. Jones has yet to register a sack, Adams is on pace for 1,071 yards (his lowest full-season total since 2016), and McDaniels looks completely out of his depth — just as he did in 2010 with the Broncos. If all this wasn’t bad enough, the rest of the team is playing down to this level. Derek Carr is struggling in the new Raiders’ offense, Josh Jacobs isn’t able to carry and increased load at running back, and the Darren Waller breakout so many predicted, well, it just hasn’t happened.

That’s a whole lot of things going wrong all at once, and the nexus of all this is McDaniels. If you think that’s unfair, then say “hi” to Josh at the next family reunion, because you have to be related to the guy. Let’s be real: Hiring McDaniels was always a leap of faith. There’s a reason why McDaniels was a perennially hot commodity before teams decided to go in other directions. There was prevailing wisdom in a lot of football circles that he was a fraud, but McDaniels was a splashy hire, one for name recognition, and the Raiders love making splashy coaching hires.

Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images

I yearn to have the self-confidence McDaniels does when it comes to his job. The man is devoid of impostor syndrome. He truly believes he’s the second coming of Bill Belichick, a football genius, and nobody is going to say otherwise. It’s this kind of bravado that led to McDaniels turning down head coaching jobs as he waited for the right moment, and walking into a playoff team in Las Vegas was, on paper, the perfect scenario for an oft-critiqued coach who will forever be linked to selecting Tim Tebow with a 1st round pick —ruining the Broncos for years as a result.

The worst part about all this is that I had a feeling this might happen. McDaniels to the Raiders received one of my lowest grades when I rated each new head coaching hire back in February, and at the time this was my feeling:

“I don’t like this. Las Vegas was a playoff team already, and I think McDaniels likes to get cute just for the sake of getting cute. He’s inherited an already established team, and I can’t help but think he’s going to do something to mess with it.”

Well, guess what folks? He’s messing with it. This goes far deeper than simply integrating Davante Adams into the offense — McDaniels has completely changed the fundamental elements of the offense, and the team is absolutely not better for it. There are a few key stats that tell the story here:

• Carr’s intended air yards have dropped from 8.1 to 7.6 from 2021 to 2022
• Hunter Renfrow’s depth of target has decreased from 6.5 yards to 3.1 yards from 2021 to 2022
• Only two Davante Adams (10.8) and Darren Waller (10.6) have an average depth of target greater than 10 yards this season, compared to four receivers a year ago
• The Raiders are blitzing twice as often on defense as they were a year ago

These offensive issues are of particular concern. The entire rationale behind trading for Adams was that he could stretch the field and offer a deep threat, which would then open up YAC lanes for Renfrow and Waller — except that isn’t happening. Instead of Renfrow catching the ball and making a quick first move against linebackers, the offense is giving the box a three yard cushion to pursue, which is destroying his productivity. Meanwhile Waller, who’s at his best catching behind linebackers at the 7.5-9 yard depth range, is instead being asked to go deeper — and fight safeties and nickel corners for the ball, which isn’t his game.

There are teams in the NFL who are using quick, YAC-based passing to tremendous success, but the Raiders don’t have the personnel for it. Renfrow is not Tyreek Hill, he’s not Cooper Kupp — he can’t catch the ball behind the line of scrimmage and make something out of nothing. Trying to use him this way is a waste of his ability, and it’s leaving him on an island while Adams and Waller run depth.

This lack of personnel understanding is happening on defense too. Vegas is being pointlessly over-aggressive with its linebackers and safeties on blitzes, which is fine if you have the corners for it — but the Raiders don’t. The endless blitzing isn’t generating pressure (the team has 2.0 sacks on the season), and the secondary is struggling to stop the pass (ranking 29th in the NFL in pass defense).

Everything about this Raiders team is worse in 2022, and McDaniels has a hand in all of it. The players deserve better, the fans deserve better, and Mark Davis is getting precisely what he deserves for making this stupid hiring.

It goes without saying that the Raiders are a loser for the week.

Winner: RANDOMNESS

Welcome to the 2022 NFL, where everything is made up, and the points don’t matter. If you thought the weirdness was going to end with 2021, don’t worry because it has nothing on this season so far — and I’m in love.

The NFL has always been this paragon of parity. A shining example of sports done “the right way,” but this always felt labored as hell. Sure, we got some random week-to-week results, but not this level of consistent, impossible to predict weirdness.

Here’s one weird flowchart that sums up the first three weeks:

1. The Vikings beat the Lions
2. The Lions beat the Commanders
3. The Commanders beat the Jaguars
4. The Jaguars shut out the Colts
5. The Colts beat the Chiefs

Inside all this mess you have the Eagles, who beat the Vikings, Commanders, and Lions. I think that means Philly is the best team in the NFL? Or maybe it means nothing? Who knows!

Winner: The Miami-freaking-Dolphins

The Dolphins are atop the AFC East, and I’d love to gush about them more — but the whole “putting our concussed QB back on the field and blaming it on a back injury” has me feeling a little icky.

Loser: Tom Brady

It isn’t often Brady is ever on this side of the ledger, but here we are. It’s not really anything No. 12 did, or didn’t do on Sunday — but rather the entire process of returning to the NFL this season.

I know all the rumors about Brady going to the Dolphins labored his return from retirement a little, but this whole season is not going well. The Buccaneers are struggling with Todd Bowles as head coach, and I don’t really care that this team is 2-1. They beat an imploding Cowboys team in Week 1, a hapless Saints in Week 2, and then lost to the Packers — who are a shadow of themselves in 2022.

Tom could have been kicking back, earning a boatload as an announcer, and not getting hit into oblivion each week only to limp to an eventual NFC South Championship (because the division is ass) before getting bounced in the playoffs.

Tampa Bay just isn’t good this year, and Tom had the chance to hang it up and go out on top after 2020.

Winner: Jalen Hurts

Here’s a guy who is playing out of his freaking mind right now, and it’s pretty awesome. If you haven’t watched Hurts play in 2022 you’re really missing out, because it’s like he’s a new player. We went from a quarterback in a “prove it” year, to extremely premature MVP talk — hell, he looks like one of only a couple of dudes who could push Josh Allen this year.

Hurts was functionally perfect against the Commanders on Sunday. He threw for 340 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions — running for another 20 yards, just for good measure. Hurts is thriving in Nick Sirianni’s offense, as many hoped he might, and the 3-0 Eagles look like everything the Radiers wished they’d be in 2022.

Winner: Fans who love seeing a ball get punted into a butt

Loser: Justin Fields

Man, I hate dumping on a kid like this, but we’ve got to start asking some questions here. I understand that the Bears have a bad offensive line, an offense that can’t let him shine, and that they’re seriously lacking receiving weapons — but we can’t use that to completely hand wave away how terribly Fields is playing right now.

Chicago somehow won on Sunday despite Fields having the worst QB game of the week. Hang this stat line in the Louvre, because pain can be art too:

8-for-17, 106 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT

Those two interceptions were bad, really bad. If it wasn’t for Khalil Herbert obliterating everyone in his path en route to 157 rushing yards, the Bears would have been blown out.

Winner: The Panthers defense

We will not give credit to Baker Mayfield or Matt Rhule around these parts, but you’ve really gotta watch this Panthers defense because they’re fun as hell.

Okay, I take that back, nobody should willingly watch a Carolina Panthers game if you don’t have a rooting interest — but my general point kind of stands. This defense is aggressive, it’s fast-paced, it’s fun as hell, and it’s loaded with gadgets and trickery.

The Panthers have a less than zero percent chance of winning against the Saints on Sunday if it wasn’t for their defense, and honestly it might be one of the best units in the NFL — it’s just a shame the offense is so abysmal to go along with it.

Winner: Trevor Lawrence, and literally everything the Jaguars are doing

Everything is coming up roses in Jacksonville, and it begins with Trevor Lawrence. The switch to Doug Pederson is paying off big time, and Lawrence is responding in a major way to the structure the team has now.

Next to Jalen Hurts, nobody is more improved so far this season that Lawrence, who has now cemented why he was the No. 1 overall pick so many had pegged for greatness. The kid is slinging the ball around, throwing to eight different receivers on Sunday, it’s opening up the ground game for James Robinson and Travis Etienne, and it’s honestly beautiful.

None of this would really be possible without the defense, which is absolutely smothering everyone it comes across. There was nothing the Chargers could do against this unit on Sunday, and Devin Lloyd is already looking like one of the biggest steals in the draft.

Don’t sleep on this team anymore, because they’re really damn good — and could be making a lot of waves soon.