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Ben Solak, ESPN
What a Week 3! I don’t know what’s going on!
Once again, big favorites just straight up … lost. The Bengals fell to the Commanders on Monday night, chasing losses by the 49ers (to the Rams) and the Browns (to the Giants) on Sunday. Four games were played in Week 3 by favorites of at least 6 points, per ESPN BET, and only the Jets won outright. Twelve games have been played all season by favorites of at least 6 points, and those teams are 5-7 straight up.
It’s typical of the early NFL season to have some wild results, but not like this. I have a few theories as to why, but they’re all half-baked. For now, I’m still trying to figure out just what is real. That’s where this week’s column focuses. Every Tuesday, I’ll spin the previous week of NFL football forward, looking at what the biggest storylines mean for what comes next. We’ll take a first look at the consequences of “Monday Night Football,” break down a major trend or two and highlight some key individual players and plays. There will be film. There will be stats (a whole section of them). And there will be fun.
Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Midtier QB heat check
Mailbag: Questions from … you
Second Take: Seahawks to win NFC West?
Next Ben Stats: Three wild Week 3 stats
Monday Night Football: Trouble for CIN, JAX
The Big Thing: Midtier QB heat check
Every week, this column will kick off with one wide look at a key game, player or trend from the previous Sunday of NFL action. What does it mean for the rest of the season? To start this week, we dig into surprising hot starts from three quarterbacks.
This sort of NFL season is an analyst’s nightmare. Why? Because nobody who’s good stays good for longer than a week, and nobody who’s supposed to be good is actually good (besides the Bills and Chiefs, but that’s super boring). My job is to explain what’s going on, and my editors insisted that I didn’t just submit several thousand shrug emojis and call it a day. So I’m looking at the early-season performance of three veteran-ish quarterbacks — Pittsburgh’s Justin Fields, Minnesota’s Sam Darnold and Carolina’s Andy Dalton — and trying to figure out what led to their (relatively) hot starts. And far more importantly, will their success continue?
Any evaluation of Fields’ improvement in Pittsburgh should start with what isn’t there, rather than what is there. Fields has, in a small sample, eliminated a big chunk of the negative plays that ended his career in Chicago. His sack rate of 6.7% is below league average and comfortably below his previous single-season low of 9.6%. He’s turning only 21% of his pressures into sacks, too — again, the lowest mark for any season in his career and below the current NFL average.