Four weeks into the NFL season, we’re finally reaching the point where we can stop calling everything an overreaction. One strange Sunday can be dismissed. Two can be a coincidence. But once the same things keep happening for an entire month, somebody eventually has to admit that maybe we’re actually learning something about these teams.
Week 4 gave us plenty to think about. Mike Vrabel apparently brought the Patriots’ old Buffalo voodoo back to New England, Miami remained winless but finally gave Dolphins fans a few young players worth getting excited about, Carolina suddenly looked like one of the most dangerous young offenses in football, and the defending expectations surrounding Philadelphia are beginning to collide with the reality of an offense that looks completely lost. So, what exactly did we learn from Week 4?
- Mike Vrabel and the Patriots Might Have Josh Allen and Buffalo’s Number
For several years, Buffalo Bills fans probably thought the nightmare was finally over. Tom Brady was gone, Bill Belichick was gone, and New England had become just another struggling AFC East team trying to figure out who it wanted to be. The Bills had finally escaped Patriots prison and were supposed to own this division for the foreseeable future. Apparently, nobody bothered telling Mike Vrabel.
New England walked into Buffalo and beat the Bills 29-26, handing Buffalo its first loss of the season, and this wasn’t some ridiculous game where three tipped passes bounced directly into Patriots defenders’ hands. New England went into Buffalo and legitimately outplayed one of the AFC’s supposed Super Bowl favorites. The Patriots finished with 405 yards of offense, controlled the football for nearly 34 minutes and ran 73 offensive plays compared with Buffalo’s 54. Those aren’t lucky numbers. Those are the numbers of a team that walked into somebody else’s stadium believing it could win.
The biggest development might have been Drake Maye. He threw for 269 yards and three touchdowns while also leading New England with 54 rushing yards, and when the Patriots needed a late touchdown to take the lead, Maye delivered. That is exactly what Patriots fans have been waiting to see. New England doesn’t need Maye to become the next Tom Brady, because asking anybody to become the next Tom Brady is ridiculous. They simply need him to become a legitimate franchise quarterback, and games like this suggest they may finally have one.
Vrabel also deserves plenty of credit because Buffalo has historically been a team he has never seemed particularly intimidated by. His Tennessee teams gave the Bills problems, and now his Patriots are doing the same thing. There is something about the physical style Vrabel wants his teams to play that seems to bother Buffalo. The Patriots ran the football 35 times, kept Josh Allen standing on the sideline and forced Buffalo to play a much different game than the track meets Allen normally prefers.
The Bills are still a very good football team, and nobody should be writing their obituary after one loss. But if New England continues developing under Vrabel, Buffalo might suddenly have something it hasn’t had to worry about in years: an actual rival inside its own division. Bills fans spent two decades begging for the Patriots dynasty to finally disappear, and just when they thought it was safe to come outside, Mike Vrabel showed up at the front door.
- Miami Might Be the Worst Team in Football, but There Are Finally Some Kids Worth Building Around
There really isn’t a polite way to say this: the Miami Dolphins might stink.
Miami fell to 0-4 after losing 15-10 to Minnesota, and through the first month of the season the Dolphins have looked like a team much closer to competing for the first pick in the NFL Draft than competing for the AFC East. They managed only 198 total yards against Minnesota, possessed the football for just 20:49 and ran only 37 offensive plays. That is almost impressive in the wrong direction. There are college teams that run 37 plays before halftime.
However, if you’re going to suffer through a rebuilding season, the most important thing isn’t necessarily winning games. It’s finding out which young players deserve to be part of the team when the winning eventually begins, and Week 4 might have given Miami fans their first legitimate reason for optimism.
Ollie Gordon II was the biggest example. He carried the football only nine times and somehow finished with 100 yards, including a 53-yard run and Miami’s only touchdown. When your running back averages more than 11 yards per carry and only gets nine attempts, perhaps the coaching staff should consider the revolutionary strategy of handing him the football again. Malik Washington also continued showing flashes, catching five passes for 67 yards, while several young defensive players finally began making an impact.
Miami’s defense actually played well enough to win. The Dolphins held undefeated Minnesota to 15 points and kept the Vikings out of the end zone, something nobody would have predicted looking at how Miami began the season. Jacob Rodriguez was everywhere, piling up tackles, while Chop Robinson finally got home and generated some much-needed pressure. If you’re searching for positives on an 0-4 football team, those are exactly the kinds of performances you want to see.
The Dolphins’ biggest mistake now would be pretending this season is something it isn’t. Don’t chase eight wins. Don’t start sacrificing future draft picks attempting to patch holes on a roster that has far too many of them. Play the young guys, find out who belongs and start building the next version of the Miami Dolphins. Gordon, Washington, Robinson and some of these other young players should be getting every opportunity possible because Miami needs to figure out which pieces are staying before figuring out which pieces are coming next.
Being 0-4 is miserable, but being 0-4 while discovering legitimate NFL players isn’t completely useless. Dolphins fans may want to cover their eyes when they look at the standings, but for the first time this season, there are at least a few names on the roster worth keeping their eyes on.
- Somebody Forgot to Tell the Carolina Panthers They’re Supposed to Be Rebuilding
Maybe Bryce Young isn’t a bust after all. Remember how quickly everyone had already written him off? He was too small, couldn’t see over the offensive line, wasn’t strong enough, Carolina made a historic mistake taking him first overall, and the Panthers were going to spend the next five years trying to recover from the decision. Apparently Young heard all of that and decided he might want to respond before ESPN started producing his career retrospective.
Carolina’s 32-26 victory over Detroit wasn’t just another win. The Panthers went toe-to-toe with a Lions team that most people still consider one of the NFC’s legitimate contenders and beat them behind a quarterback who looked every bit like the player Carolina believed it was drafting. Young completed 29 of 41 passes for 329 yards, threw two touchdowns without an interception and repeatedly made plays when the Panthers needed them.
Then there’s Tetairoa McMillan, who apparently decided guarding him should be somebody else’s problem. McMillan caught 14 passes for 192 yards and two touchdowns against Detroit and looked completely uncoverable for stretches of the game. That’s not the stat line of a young receiver showing potential. That’s the stat line of a superstar announcing himself to the rest of the league.
The combination of Young and McMillan is what should really excite Carolina fans. Young finally has a receiver who can take over games, win contested catches and punish defenses when they become overly aggressive. Add Chuba Hubbard rushing for 122 yards and two touchdowns, and suddenly the Panthers aren’t asking Young to perform magic every Sunday. They’re putting actual weapons around him and discovering something remarkable happens when you give a young quarterback some help.
Carolina is only 2-2, so nobody needs to start reserving hotel rooms for the Super Bowl yet, but the Panthers suddenly look like a team with a direction. There is an enormous difference between losing while hoping young players develop and watching those young players actually begin developing in front of you. Young looks confident, McMillan looks like a potential monster, and Carolina just put 32 points on Detroit.
The NFL changes quickly. A team everybody laughs at in September can become a problem by November, and the Panthers are beginning to look like exactly that kind of team. Maybe they’re not ready to contend yet, but if Young continues playing like this and McMillan continues terrorizing defensive backs, Carolina’s rebuilding schedule might need to be moved up considerably.
- The Philadelphia Eagles Don’t Have an Offensive Slump — They Have an Offensive Problem
There comes a point when you’re no longer allowed to say, “It’s just one bad game.”
Philadelphia has reached that point.
The Eagles lost 24-20 to the Rams after taking a 20-10 lead into the fourth quarter, but the final score doesn’t adequately explain how dreadful Philadelphia’s offense was. The Eagles produced only 172 yards of offense, averaged 3.0 yards per play and somehow went 0-for-12 on third down. Jalen Hurts completed only 12 passes and threw for 93 yards. That’s not a typo. Ninety-three.
We’ve reached the stage where somebody needs to walk into the offensive meeting room, turn on the lights and make sure everyone is actually still in there.
Philadelphia certainly has legitimate excuses. Injuries have taken away important offensive pieces, and losing players such as DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert and Saquon Barkley would make life difficult for any offense. But championship-caliber teams can’t completely stop functioning every time somebody goes down. The Eagles still have Jalen Hurts, a talented offensive line and enough NFL-caliber weapons that 172 total yards should be almost impossible.
Even more concerning was what happened late. Philadelphia entered the fourth quarter leading by 10 and never scored again. The Rams responded with two Kyren Williams touchdowns and stole the game while the Eagles offense essentially watched. Philadelphia had opportunities to answer and couldn’t do it, and when they finally needed Hurts to lead one last drive, the offense collapsed under pressure.
Hurts deserves some criticism, but this is bigger than one player. The play calling looks stale, the offense lacks rhythm and Philadelphia isn’t consistently creating easy opportunities. Everything seems difficult. Every first down feels like an accomplishment, every third down feels like an emergency, and explosive plays have become rare enough that Eagles fans should probably photograph them when they happen.
Philadelphia is still 2-2, so there’s plenty of time to fix this, but that’s exactly why the Eagles need to treat it like a serious problem now instead of pretending everything will magically correct itself. Teams with Super Bowl expectations don’t wait until December to figure out why they can’t move the football. If this continues much longer, Philadelphia might discover that the NFC playoff race doesn’t care how talented everyone thought your roster was in August.
Week 4 Showed Us Which Early Trends Might Actually Be Real
The first few weeks of every NFL season are filled with nonsense. One team wins by 30 and everybody books its Super Bowl parade. Another loses two games and fans want the coach fired, the quarterback traded and the stadium demolished. By Week 4, however, patterns begin becoming difficult to ignore, and this weekend gave us several that are worth watching.
Mike Vrabel is changing the personality of the Patriots, and Drake Maye is beginning to look like the franchise quarterback New England desperately needed. Miami might be staring at a miserable season, but at least some intriguing young players are beginning to emerge from the wreckage. Carolina suddenly has a quarterback playing with confidence and a young receiver who looks capable of becoming one of the league’s biggest stars. Meanwhile, Philadelphia has enough talent to contend for a championship but currently has an offense that couldn’t find a first down with GPS and written directions.
That’s what makes the NFL so much fun. Every Sunday destroys something we thought we knew the week before, and by the time we finally think we have the league figured out, another weekend arrives to make us look stupid all over again.
Four weeks are down.
Now things are starting to get interesting.
