One Statistic That Should Make Every Contender Nervous
No team is perfect, nor is a team ever a given to win a Super Bowl at the start of the season. In fact, no team is ever close to it. Last season was a perfect example. If you recall, the Bills were given more than double any other team’s chances to win the Super Bowl before week 1. Many fans, including myself, were wondering if the Bills could run the table and go 17-0 with the strength of their roster. It only took three weeks for Buffalo to be defeated, and they would eventually get demolished in the divisional round.
As good as Buffalo looked on paper before the season began, there were flaws between the lines. So, without revealing what those flaws are (because the Bills will be great again this year), let’s put each contender on notice by pointing out their biggest flaw.
Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia got off to a hotter start than anyone could have imagined last year (except me who overestimated their 8-0 start and predicted they’d get to 10-0). To no discredit to Philadelphia’s fantastic 2022 campaign, their strength of schedule was among the easiest in the league last year—2nd behind the Giants. In fact, only the Giants will experience a more drastic increase in opponent difficulty from 2022 to 2023 than the Eagles will.
Let’s go over the Eagles schedule from last year, and put a bit of an asterisk next to some for the games for the fun of it.
They also only beat the Bears, Cardinals, Colts, Lions, Packers, and starter-less Giants by one score. I’m not saying the 2022 Eagles were a fluke but its almost guaranteed that their path to a Super Bowl will be harder than last season if they are able to make it back.
Buffalo Bills
When Josh Allen is playing his best, he’s virtually unstoppable. Remember his perfect postseason back in 2021 (partially why people had them going 17-0 in 2022)? But what are the Bills backup options on offense when Allen isn’t playing his best? Well, that’s just the issue—there aren’t many.
Josh Allen led the team in rushing for 10 of the team’s 18 games last season. Devin Singletary and James Cook each led 4 times.
For some perspective, here is the same graph, but with Lamar Jackson’s 2019 MVP season in which he broke the single-season rushing record for a quarterback.
In this season, Jackson only led his team in rushing for 9 of their games. Mark Ingram led 5 times, and Gus Edwards led twice.
It’s hard to see much of a difference between the two graphs. The difference is that Jackson’s 2019 campaign was the greatest QB rushing season in NFL history. Josh Allen’s 762 rushing yards in 2022 were the 17th highest of all time by a QB in a season.
Additionally, in Jackson’s record breaking season, he only accounted for 29.5% of the teams carries and 36.6% of their yards. Last season, Allen had 28.8% of his team’s carries—right up there with Lamar—and 34.1% of the Bills’ rushing yards. Despite Allen having a similar workload to Jackson, Jackson’s YPC was 6.8 to Allen’s 6.0.
Sure, the Bills can be a great team when Josh Allen is gunslinging at his finest, but when he is reckless with the football like he was against the Jets last Monday night, it’s imperative that Sean McDermott and the Bills coaching staff create a more balanced, run-based attack.
San Francisco 49ers
As you might have expected, the 49ers were the toughest team to combat with a graph because of how complete their roster is. So, I had to ask: what has held them back in all their years of being a contender? The answer is health.
Only four teams have been affected by health more than San Francisco, and all have been heavily hindered as a result. If it’s difficult to picture how their health has actually affected them in game form, look no further than last year’s NFC championship game when Brock Purdy went down early in the first quarter, and Josh Johnson was injured later, leaving Christian McCaffrey to play quarterback. And the Niners wouldn’t have seen Purdy in action if it weren’t for season-ending injuries to Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo.
The 49ers are my favorites to win it all at the moment, but it’s going to take a rare season where they are not demolished by injury in order to go the distance.
Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs have two very visible concerns. One of them is that they played in the most one score games of any team with 13, perhaps making their 17-3 record for the season a bit misleading. A few teams that the Chiefs beat last year: Broncos by 6, Broncos by 3, Titans (Malik Willis led) by 3, Texans in OT, and Raiders by 1.
But the Chiefs’ biggest problem is within their roster, and it’s what everyone has been talking about ever since Kadarius Toney’s disasterclass on opening night against the Lions.
Kansas City’s wide receiver depth is by far the worst it has been in the Patrick Mahomes era, but as you can see from the graph, it’s even worse than you may have thought. The Chiefs’ starting receiver corps of Kadarius Toney, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and Skyy Moore ranks 27th in career games started, and 30th in career receptions. Even last year, when it felt like Patrick Mahomes dragged the offense through the playoffs, he had Juju Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman at his disposal. We have already seen the Chiefs offense look ugly through two games this season, and it’s been a product of this inexperienced group.
Sure, I could also point to the fact that no team has won back to back Super Bowls since the Patriots from 2003-2005, but the wide receiver woes present a problem that the Chiefs won’t just have to deal with in the playoffs, but one that they have to get sorted right now.
Dallas Cowboys
It’s no secret that Dak Prescott held the Cowboys back last season. He led the league in interceptions despite playing just 12 games. The Cowboys only scored 12 points in the Divisional Round against the 49ers as a result of Prescott’s poor play. In the offseason, Jerry Jones tinkered with the roster, adding depth within the front seven through the draft, and veterans Stephon Gilmore and Brandin Cooks to add support to CB1, Trevon Diggs, and WR1, Ceedee Lamb.
As a result of the Cowboys’ moves, it seems that Prescott is the X-factor in Dallas this season. If he plays clean, complementary football, Dallas is a top-3 Super Bowl contender. If not, they will once again be vulnerable in the early rounds of the playoffs. This graph should have Cowboys fans worried for the worst.
Cowboys fans can be as optimistic as they want. At the end of the day, their quarterback had the second worst QBR of any starting quarterback whose team made the playoffs last season. The QB’s who led their teams to their conference championship games all ranked top-6 in QBR—a realm that Prescott was nowhere near last season. It will be impossible to win a Super Bowl this season if Prescott doesn’t raise his level.
Cincinnati Bengals
Lots of people are forgiving the Bengals for their 0-2 start because of past history—last year, they started out 0-2, and finished 12-4. Sure, Cincinnati is great on paper, and they looked better in the second half of week 2 than the first three halves, but this season is different from last.
Aside from the turnovers against Pittsburgh in week 1, Joe Burrow was not bad through two games in 2022. In fact, along with the entire team, his performance was slightly above average. Cincinnati was a missed extra point away from beating the Steelers in week 1 and lost on a game winning field goal against Dallas in week 2. This year, the numbers tell the true story. They were the second worst team in the entire NFL in week 1, when they were annihilated by the Browns, and never had much of a chance against the Ravens in a game where the score makes the game look a lot closer than it actually was.
Additionally, after their loss to Dallas in week 2 of 2022, Cincinnati only trailed the division lead by one game—The Browns, Ravens, and Steelers were all 1-1. Now, Baltimore is 2-0 and has the head to head over the Bengals. Thus, it looks like Cincinnati will have to get into the playoffs through the back door which is the wild card race against teams like the Dolphins, Bills, everyone in the AFC North, and the Titans, and Jaguars.
It’s far from over for Cincinnati, a team whose been in the final four each of the last two years, but it might be time to accept that these aren’t the same Bengals from a year ago.
Once again, the point of this article is to remind you all that no team is perfect, and before you think that the 49ers and Cowboys are flawless, remember how San Fran’s health and Dallas’ QB play have plagued them in years past including in 2022. Before you lock a Super Bowl rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs, think about Philly’s brutal schedule and Kansas City’s depleted wide receiver group. Maybe the champion is not listed in this article (Miami and Baltimore also look great), and maybe they are. Either way, the NFL season is a marathon, not a sprint. A lot can change four and a half months from now, and a lot will.