Happy Week 2 of the NFL season everyone! If you’re like me, you’re wondering what the heck just happened! The Buccaneers, Saints and Raiders all won their games as 6-point underdogs, almost every first-round pick in fantasy football got banged up and Will Levis continues to lead the league in screengrabs per week at a blistering 1.0 pace. What a Sunday!

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, in fact). And there will be fun. You can read the column all the way through or toggle through segments below.

Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Young gets benched
Contender or pretender: 2-0 teams
Mailbag: Four questions from … you
Second Take: Pass game concerns?
Next Ben Stats: Four wild Week 2 stats
Monday Night Football: Prime-time Kirk

The Big Thing: Bryce Young gets benched

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’s column, we dig into the Panthers’ decision to bench their second-year quarterback just two weeks into the season.

In one of the greatest organizational failures of recent memory, the Carolina Panthers have benched 2023 first pick Bryce Young exactly 18 games into his NFL career. Of the QBs with at least 10 starts since the beginning of last season, Young is worst in expected points added (EPA) per dropback, success rate, explosive pass rate, completion percentage, NFL Next Gen Stats’ completion percentage over expectation, yards per dropback, yards per attempt, adjusted net yards per attempt and Total QBR.

Nope, wait. Sorry, he is second worst by Total QBR.

In order for a top pick to fail this spectacularly, several things needed to go wrong.

Gambling on a historical size outlier: No matter which way you slice it, Young was a tremendous college quarterback at Alabama. He won a ton of games, made a ton of plays, earned a Heisman Trophy and put up great stats. But he did so as a smaller quarterback, even for the college ranks, and the moment he entered the NFL draft, he did so at a huge disadvantage. Young measured in at the combine at 5-foot-10 and 204 pounds. He is one of the smallest people to ever play quarterback at the NFL level.

Since 1970, 178 quarterbacks have started at least 50 games in the league. Exactly four of those quarterbacks were shorter than 6 feet — Doug Flutie, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson and Pat Haden. It is hard to play quarterback lacking height. It affects everything about the operation: how you take dropbacks, where you stand in the pocket, how you stand in the pocket, which routes you throw, which routes you don’t throw and how your throwing motion works.

I had an example of this very issue in last week’s column. Take another look at this play from the Panthers’ Week 1 loss to New Orleans.

The first interception is a perfect example of exactly the issue with Bryce’s height + size.

This is an NFL pocket. It’s far from a perfect one, but an NFL starter should be able to stand in this pocket long enough + tall enough to deliver the ball accurately to Diontae. pic.twitter.com/hvPkXQhlZc

— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) September 9, 2024

This is the sort of throw that quarterbacks need to be able to hit in the NFL, but Young just doesn’t have it in his bag. A taller, stronger QB hitches up into the pocket after finishing the dropback, giving time for wide receiver Diontae Johnson to break over the middle of the field. Because Young can’t see the route over his linemen and is fearful of playing in muddy pockets, he fades back after finishing his drop, throwing this ball early and nowhere near Johnson.

Here’s another example from Week 2, a loss to the Chargers. Veteran wideout Adam Thielen is on the over route, which should be a primary look against single-high defense. The Chargers show three-deep but buzz to single-high after the snap, and Young has a ton of space and time to climb the pocket and find Thielen. But Young is fearful of stepping into the trees of the pocket, so he drifts backward, inviting pressure and eventually scrambling.

Gotta rip it Bryce pic.twitter.com/5ZF08mVAxY

— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) September 17, 2024

Now, there have certainly been quarterbacks of prototypical size who also were unwilling or unable to make throws over the middle of the field. But it should have been far easier to see the potential issue with Young, as smaller quarterbacks regularly struggle to get between the hashes. We’ve seen that over Wilson’s long career and even over Murray’s time in the league. Drew Brees, at 6 feet tall, never had that problem, but Brees, Murray and Wilson are the exceptions who proved the rule. They’re the smaller quarterbacks who made it, because they were preposterous outliers in other ways. Brees was historically, legendarily accurate. In his prime, Wilson had one of the best deep balls the game has ever seen. And Murray is a legitimate dual threat.

In order for Young to have succeeded in the NFL, he needed to balance his outlier size with another outlier-caliber achievement in a different facet of his game. Draft analysts cited his Steph Curry-like knack for improvisation and quick releases, but the cardinal traits were never there. The Davids need to be giant slayers among the Goliaths of the NFL, and Young simply never had greatness in his game. Not in his arm strength, accuracy, processing, creativity or mobility. It wasn’t there.

But even if it was there, the Panthers were still betting on a historic size outlier for the position. It wasn’t an indefensible bet: The Cardinals had made a similar one just five seasons previous when they took Murray with the No. 1 pick in 2019. Of course, the quarterback contemporaries of Murray in 2019 were Daniel Jones, Dwayne Haskins and Drew Lock. In 2024, the contemporaries were C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson. The decision to take on the risk of Young should have been far tougher. And that brings us to the second thing that went wrong.

Grotesque organizational failure: Panthers owner David Tepper purchased the team in 2018, and nothing has gone well since then. He was caught on camera throwing the content of a drink at Jaguars fans and berating the owner of a Charlotte restaurant. He launched an $800 million dollar practice facility project in 2019 then shuttered it and filed a bankruptcy claim a few years later following financing problems. And that’s before we get to the football of it all.

Of the 10 head coaches in the history of the Panthers franchise, which saw its first season in 1995, Tepper has fired, hired or promoted seven of them. He oversaw the departure of key franchise players such as Christian McCaffrey and Brian Burns. Since 2018, no team has won fewer games than Carolina, and only two teams have played more starting quarterbacks.

The dysfunction of the Panthers organization under Tepper allows us to take reports of the Panthers’ 2023 draft process at face value. In late March and early April, after the Panthers had acquired the first pick from the Bears, reporting had it that the Panthers preferred Stroud over the other QBs. As the Panthers’ 2023 season derailed under Young, rumors came out that Tepper was the guy banging the table for Young, not Stroud, when Carolina finally got on the clock in late April. When former Carolina coach Frank Reich was speaking about the heavy involvement of Tepper as an owner, ESPN reporter Stephen Holder tweeted, “It’s an open secret in the league that the owner heavily influenced the QB choice, which is never ideal.”

Now Young didn’t bust because Tepper was involved in the pick process. But if the coaching staff and front office really did prefer Stroud over Young, it’s no wonder that Young’s rookie season started him so far behind the eight ball. Reich and his staff would have had their hearts set on Stroud, instead getting dropped into an arranged marriage with a quarterback who needed a far different set of circumstances to succeed. This is why owners hire general managers and let them make the roster decisions and hire head coaches and let them make the football decisions. But that isn’t what happened with Carolina. An owner seemingly made the call to draft that historical outlier, putting everyone else’s job (except his own) on the line.

Poor infrastructure: The last thing that led to Young’s brief and terrible stint as a starting quarterback in this league was the state of that roster. The Panthers’ lineup was not ready for a rookie quarterback. It’s always easy to say this in hindsight, of course, but even at the time, the state of their roster was well known. When Young was drafted, the Panthers had serious offensive line problems, headlined by a struggling left tackle in Ikem Ekwonu. Their top receiver was Thielen. Well, wait. Their top receiver was actually DJ Moore, but they sent him in the trade package to the Chicago Bears to move up from the ninth pick to the first pick in order to get Young.

Here lies a fundamental misunderstanding in how to help a young quarterback succeed. Young signal-callers cannot and should not be expected to elevate their wide receiver room. Rather, they need talented pass catchers who can widen their margin for error. Consider what Tyreek Hill did for Tua Tagovailoa or A.J. Brown for Jalen Hurts or Ja’Marr Chase for Joe Burrow. You can argue that Moore isn’t that caliber of receiver (and I’d agree with you), but there’s no way you can argue that Thielen is that caliber of receiver.

Instead of considering how star receivers have helped young passers, perhaps it is better to consider what Baker Mayfield has become with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after escaping the Cleveland Browns or what happened to Jared Goff after a terrible pre-Sean McVay rookie season with the Los Angeles Rams. Quarterbacks can start poorly and get better if the infrastructure around them is good enough to sustain development. But Carolina’s infrastructure simply has not been good enough.

The fact that it was so bad makes the timing of Young’s benching very interesting to me. Let me be clear: I also would have benched Young. I don’t think he can play starting-caliber football in the league; he’s just too limited.

But if the franchise believed that improved infrastructure could help Young make a Year 2 jump — a reasonable belief, given the team’s huge investment in offense this offseason (coach Dave Canales, Robert Hunt, Damien Lewis, Xavier Legette, Jonathon Brooks, Diontae Johnson) — then why pull the plug two games into Young’s 2024 campaign? Wouldn’t you want to see if all of your investments made things easier for Young? Wouldn’t you want to see if anything is salvageable?

Well, when the Panthers fired Reich after just 11 games last season, they made his head-coaching stint the league’s shortest of the past 45 years. And we know who made that decision: Tepper. And now, 18 games into Young’s career — and just two games into Canales’ tenure — they’ve already pulled the plug on Young. I don’t know how much of the decision was really from Canales and how much was from Tepper, but I do know that Teppers’ Panthers are once again moving quickly away from what was supposed to be a franchise cornerstone. When Andy Dalton takes his first snaps Sunday, the Panthers will only have one team ahead of them on the starting quarterback count since 2018 (Washington Commanders).

The Panthers failed Young, and Young failed the Panthers. It burns more because they traded picks to go get him, and it burns even more because Stroud looks so good with the Houston Texans and it burns all the more because there’s no reason to believe it’s going to get better. Dalton isn’t the future. The offense still has massive holes for talent across the roster. The 2025 quarterback class awaits, and while it has some splashy names — Georgia’s Carson Beck, Texas’ Quinn Ewers and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders — it doesn’t look like there’s a slam-dunk first pick in the group.

It’s a sad day and a new low for Carolina. I’d love to say it’s the lowest low and that things will turn around. But I don’t have any faith in that at all.

Contender or pretender: The 2-0 teams

There are two ways to tell if a team is actually good: its record and gut feeling. I prefer my gut feeling. There are more than a few surprising 2-0 teams as we wrap up Week 2. I want to run through them and identify those that are rightfully undefeated (the contenders) and those that are selling snake oil with its record (the pretenders).

Kansas City Chiefs: Contenders

Do I need to explain this one? No. 15 plays quarterback.

Buffalo Bills: Contenders

Do I need to explain this one? No. 17 plays quarterback.

Houston Texans: Contenders

Do I need to explain this one? While C.J. Stroud doesn’t have Mahomes- or Allen-level of trust just yet, he is picking up exactly where he left off last season. Meanwhile, the running game has taken an expected and needed leap with the Joe Mixon acquisition, and DeMeco Ryans’ defense once again looks like one of the fastest, most aggressive, most physical units in the league. I’m buying all the stock.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Pretenders

The Steelers are, in theory, a team that wins with stifling defense and methodical offense. But even as the system has “worked” over the past two weeks, their offense is in the bottom five in success rate. They have more wins than they have touchdowns, for goodness’ sake! What coach Mike Tomlin pulls off every season is impressive, but I cannot rightfully call the Steelers contenders.

Minnesota Vikings: Pretenders

I wish they were contenders. It would be so cool if they were contenders. But Sam Darnold falls below the bar of quarterback play necessary to be a true contender. The only way I’d be willing to buy the Vikings is if I were certain that coach Kevin O’Connell is so good an offensive schemer that he can do what Sean McVay did for Jared Goff in 2018 and what Kyle Shanahan did for Jimmy Garoppolo in 2019. And it’s harder to do it now than it was then. I’m just not there yet.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Contenders

Why wouldn’t they be? They just knocked off the team that expunged them from the playoffs last season. Mayfield isn’t an elite quarterback, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and the success of Mike Evans and Chris Godwin (who has had an excellent start to the season) allows him to attack one-on-ones with confidence. And the Todd Bowles defense, which was supposed to take a step back following a big talent drain, is humming along without a hiccup.

New Orleans Saints: Contenders

There’s no team on which I’m eating more preseason crow than the Saints, who are just shredding on offense right now. Ninety-one points in two games is the fourth-best number in league history. Derek Carr is getting under center, hitting a play-action fake and launching moon shots. Alvin Kamara is running like it’s the late-2010s. Dennis Allen’s defense is doing what it always does. I was positive the Saints were pretenders after they beat up on the Panthers, but that win over the Cowboys was eye-popping.

Los Angeles Chargers: Pretenders

Jim Harbaugh is doing what Jim Harbaugh promised to do: bring a winning, physical culture to a Chargers team in desperate need of it. I love the start that the Chargers are on. But I also know the state of that roster. They do not have enough playmakers on offense nor enough talent in the defensive backfield to hang with a high-powered NFL offense — something they haven’t yet run into this season. Again, great start, but don’t get over your skis with Los Angeles.

Seattle Seahawks: Pretenders

I wish. I’m so close. Geno Smith looks great. The defense looks great. (Hello, Boye Mafe, the edge rusher the Seahawks have been waiting for!) They have the requisite stars for a run: DK Metcalf, Kenneth Walker III, Tyler Lockett, Jaxon Smith-Njigba. I think this coaching staff is sharp as nails too. Mike Macdonald is the defensive mind du jour, but offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb has leaped from the college ranks to the NFL with aplomb. But I don’t trust the offensive line, and I’ll never let a team with a bad offensive line trick me into believing in it. I won’t do it. I won’t do it. I won’t do it. … OK, I’m thinking about doing it.

From y’all

The best part of writing this column is hearing from all of you. Hit me on X (@BenjaminSolak) or by email ([email protected]) anytime — but especially on Monday each week — to ask a question and potentially get it answered here.

From Geoff: “Are our expectations of rookie QBs too high? Based on this two-week sample, do you think the Patriots are doing the correct thing by sitting Drake Maye?”

In that Maye currently has as many passing touchdowns as Caleb Williams, Bo Nix, and Jayden Daniels do combined, yeah, it’s tough to argue with the approach. There hasn’t been a “good” rookie quarterback performance through two weeks, but there have been more than a few big hits and back-breaking mistakes.

In general, I think the point about rookie expectations is a critical one. I find myself saying every offseason that we need to temper expectations for rookies, but perhaps never more than in this offseason, coming off C.J. Stroud’s rookie debut. No rookie should be measured against Stroud, who was as polished of a new quarterback as I can remember in 2023. But in general, when rookie quarterbacks start in Week 1, we should expect them to improve over the course of the season — not immediately dominate. That’s our expectation for rookies at most other positions, so why shouldn’t it be the case at quarterback, the most complex of all positions?

I have a ton of confidence in Williams, Daniels and Nix all improving; I’d argue both Williams and Daniels improved from their Week 1 performances in Week 2, while Nix had a tough day against a great Steelers defense. Give them time. By the end of the season, when we’re reacting to Week 17 highlights, we’ll hardly remember Week 2 lowlights.

From Jed: “Four runs for Anthony Richardson doesn’t feel like a lot.”

I’m not going to hit you with a “please phrase your answer as a question” like this is Jeopardy, but c’mon. Throw a question mark on that sucker.

It was a very weird day for the Colts offense. A few key drops. Really bad situational playcalling on critical late downs (looking at you, third-and-1 pistol speed option to Trey Sermon in his fifth-ever snap with Richardson). Hardly any time of possession following the Packers’ run-heavy approach. And as noted here, only four carries for Richardson. The thing that I found most frustrating? An unwillingness to rely on Jonathan Taylor against a Packers run defense that got demolished by Philadelphia and Saquon Barkley the previous week. We saw 34 dropbacks to 12 Taylor carries in a game the Colts never trailed by more than 13.

The Colts feel like they need an offensive identity reset. They love Richardson and his flashes, as do we all — but he is not yet ready for a heavy menu of dropback passes. Putting the kid gloves back on, to a degree, would help settle the 0-2 Colts. Heavy run, heavy run-pass options and some designed QB carries. Keep the game simple for the kid.

From Johnny: “How hot is John Harbaugh’s seat, if at all? Over the last four years, the Ravens have lost 10 games leading in the fourth quarter by 7 or more points, first in the league over that span. He’s vehemently defended the starting lineup of the offensive line, despite Daniel Faalele being an abject disaster at RG and continuing to rotate tackles even though none of them are injured. … Is there a clear improvement that the Ravens could hire at HC? Or is this all a massive overreaction?”

Harbaugh’s seat is cool as a cucumber. I remember when he was on the hot seat at the end of the Joe Flacco era, and then the Ravens got Lamar Jackson and rejuvenated the team. The Ravens had a contending team last season and lost a tough one to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game. It sucks, but it happens. They had a huge talent drain along the offensive line and on the defensive coaching staff. An early-season step back is not surprising.

Dropping the Raiders game is a big blow, though. The Cowboys, Bills and Bengals are the Ravens’ next three opponents, and they cannot lose the close games they’re likely to deal with over that stretch if they want to stay in the divisional race. But this is a sharp organization with a handful of legit star players — Jackson, Roquan Smith, Kyle Hamilton. Those sorts of teams tend to right the ship.

From Aariv: “Do the Cards have a legit shot at a wild-card spot? Maybe even compete for the division?”

Yes. No.

Second Take: The NFL pass game will be just fine

ESPN’s “First Take” is known for, well, providing the first take on things — the instant reactions. Second Take is not a place for instant reactions, but rather the spot where I’ll let the dust settle before taking perhaps a bit of a contrarian view on something. Today, I’m taking another look at early pass-game trends.

There’s a lot of concern for the state of passing in the NFL right now. Before the “Monday Night Football” game in Week 2, teams were averaging 193.2 passing yards per game, which is the lowest mark to start the season since 1988. Only 66 passing touchdowns had been thrown through two weeks (minus that one game), which is the lowest number since 2006.

The advanced stats bear out similar concerns. Since 2006, which is as far back as we have numbers, this season is the worst for EPA per dropback (0.01) and the worst for success rate per dropback (43.8%).

Who took all of our big passes away? Well, two-deep defenses are the big culprit. For a long time, NFL defenses prioritized stopping the run over stopping the pass, and as such, they played with an additional body in the box to halt rushing plays. In recent years, that paradigm has shifted, and defenses are aligning with multiple deep safeties to prevent vertical passes. We don’t have decades worth of data for this, but using coverage data, we can show how coverages with two deep safeties are rising in frequency, as coverages with one post safety are falling.

In theory, the more two-deep coverages played, the harder it is to throw downfield, and that’d explain why passing production is down. And yes, it’s true that air yards per attempt is down in 2024 (7.1). But air yards per attempt has actually been falling for more than a decade now. It has dropped or stayed the same in every season since it peaked in 2011 (8.5). And in 2015, quarterbacks were attempting shorter passes than they had in every previous season since 2006 at 8.2 air yards per attempt — and in every subsequent season, a new low has been set.

Yet amid that fall, we saw peak performances for passing production. EPA per dropback and success rate both peaked in 2020. Passing yards per game peaked in 2015 and 2016, but 2020 was right behind those two years. While there is no doubt that quarterbacks are throwing the ball shallower than previously, we can’t claim that shallow passing is completely at fault for the poor pass-game production to this point in the season, as it seemed to have no effect on passing production just four seasons previous.

Remember, we’re examining two-deep coverages here as a proxy of defensive intent. Our assumption is that the more two-deep a defensive coordinator is running, the more they are prioritizing pass defense. But there are many ways a defense can prioritize pass coverage. Playing nickel personnel (two linebackers, five defensive backs) instead of base personnel (three linebackers, four defensive backs) is one, and we know teams are taking more and more linebackers off the field in favor of DBs. Playing lighter, faster players overall is another response to pass defense prioritization, and we can confidently say that defenses are doing that, too.

The totality of defensive adjustments is throwing a blanket over the passing game, and rightfully so: Defenses were losing! They were giving up a lot of yards and touchdowns! What did you expect them to do? Lay down and take it?

It’s the very fact that defensive coaches are making this choice that makes me confident that passing will bounce back. There are smart coaches on the offensive side of the ball, too. Just as defensive coaches didn’t let passing production balloon year over year, so too will offensive coaches not let defensive coaches dictate their passing game at will.

We can use the Chiefs’ evolution as an example of the expected arcs. Of course the Chiefs would love to go back to the offense with which Patrick Mahomes was lighting the league on fire in the late-2010s, but as defenses started to blanket them with deep zones, no blitzes and cautious coverage, the Chiefs themselves adapted.

First, they invested in the running game. They signed Joe Thuney and drafted Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith on the interior offensive line. They also started running more multiple tight end sets and getting under center more often. And they learned how to run the ball.

But they aren’t waving the white flag on the passing game. They added an elite after-the-catch player in Rashee Rice to get more explosives out of their shallow passes, and hey, he caught a deep touchdown on Sunday on a tendency-breaking go ball. They added Hollywood Brown and Xavier Worthy this offseason not just to present speedy deep threats but also add playmakers who can take an underneath touch the distance. Already, Mahomes has more deep passing touchdowns this season than he had in the previous two campaigns combined. That’s the product of an improved running game and an improved underneath passing game — defenses have to start defending the new stuff, and you can then get back to the old stuff.

The pendulum may not ever swing back to where it once was. (Mahomes is currently last in the league in average depth of target.) But passing isn’t being phased out of the NFL; big plays haven’t been wiped from the game. The passing game is losing the battle right now, but it is still a critical piece of the war.

Next Ben Stats

NFL Next Gen Stats are unique and insightful nuggets of data that are gleaned from tracking chips and massive databases. Next Ben Stats are usually numbers I made up. Both are below.

0: That’s how many snaps edge rusher Maxx Crosby has missed this season for the Raiders’ defense. Having a 100% snap participation for a defensive lineman is just preposterous. He is the only defensive lineman to have not yet missed a snap this season (his teammate, Christian Wilkins, is second at 95%). This comes after leading all defensive linemen last season in snap participation (95%) and after leading all defensive linemen in snap participation in 2022 (also 95%).

He is one of the league’s great iron men, and as you’d imagine for a player who never leaves the field, he is unbelievably disruptive. Game ball for the Raiders’ surprise win over the Ravens in Week 2 goes to Crosby, who lived in the Ravens’ backfield against the run and the pass.

Mad Maxx pic.twitter.com/jV977RAFQQ

— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) September 17, 2024

66.1%: That’s Kyler Murray’s completion percentage over expectation on deep passes in Week 2 against the Rams, per NFL Next Gen Stats. That’s the second-best number for a game with at least five deep attempts in the NGS database (which goes back to 2016).

Murray had an expected completion percentage of 33.9% on his five downfield throws against Los Angeles, but he didn’t miss any, going 5-for-5 for 156 yards and three scores. The downfield passing attack was nowhere to be seen for Arizona in Week 1, as winds gusted over 25 miles per hour in the Buffalo air — and so too was rookie WR Marvin Harrison Jr. nowhere to be seen in Week 1.

But Harrison was the recipient on three of Murray’s five heaves, including two of the touchdowns. This is what I wrote about the Cardinals’ offense last Tuesday: “While the passing game largely operated underneath, Kyler Murray looked as comfortable from the pocket operating with timing as I can remember him looking. The downfield reps will come, as will success for Marvin Harrison Jr. as their chemistry grows.”

Box checked in Week 2. I’m telling you: The Cardinals’ offense is going to win them more than a few games this season.

151: That’s how many yards Patrick Mahomes produced through the air in Week 2 against the Bengals. It’s the lowest number for any game he has started and finished in his career.

Across six games against Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, Mahomes has produced progressively worse passing performances. His success rate was 41.9% — worst in any game against the Bengals and 12th-worst of his 116 career games. He produced a first down or touchdown on 25.8% of his dropbacks — worst in any game against the Bengals, fifth-worst of his 116 career games. And he threw two picks.

Yet, it didn’t matter. The Chiefs still won. If I were Anarumo — the lone defensive coordinator in the league who is consistently good against Mahomes — I would be tearing my hair out. (Though I’d also be working on that run defense, which is a big part of the reason the Bengals lost to the Chiefs and are 0-2 on the season.)

49: That’s how many called run plays the Packers had against the Colts in Week 2. That’s just one short of the record in the NGS database (set by the Bears against the Ravens in 2017). The 74% designed run rate is also second, to only the super windy game the Patriots played against the Bills a few years back.

I cannot believe what Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur pulled off against Gus Bradley and the Colts’ defense on Sunday. The Colts sat there in four-down fronts and let the Packers run every run game design under the sun: read options, reverses, single wing foolishness. What LaFleur did to Bradley on Sunday was the equivalent of beating your little brother in pickup while only dribbling with your left hand — and there’s a sick, twisted joy that comes from that level of disrespectful punking.

The Packers totaled 164 rushing yards in the first quarter and 237 in the first half before the Colts circled the wagons. By then, the damage was done. What a win for the Packers’ coaching staff and offensive line.

Monday Night Kirk

Each week, we will pick out one or two of the biggest storylines from “Monday Night Football” and break down what it means for the rest of the season.

How many of you started getting ready for bed when the Eagles went up 21-15? I sure did. I had a whole “Monday Night Football” blurb written for an Eagles win and the Falcons’ 0-2 start.

Turns out Primetime Kirk Cousins had other plans.

With no timeouts and 1:39 on the clock, Cousins chunked out gains of 11, 21 and 26 yards in less than a minute. His touchdown pass to Drake London with 34 seconds left gave the Falcons their first game-winning touchdown with under two minutes left since the 2016 season, per ESPN Research. It looked unbelievably easy, too. He showed chemistry and timing with Darnell Mooney, with whom he’d largely struggled to connect with for seven quarters of football before that point. You couldn’t have watched that drive and reconciled it with every drive previous for Cousins.

After the game, Cousins himself said to Lisa Salters: “I’m still not sharp. I’m still not sharp enough, accurate enough. Hopefully that last drive will give us a boost.”

I’m not sure we ever should have gotten that last drive. The Eagles had the game in their hands on a third-and-3 deep in Falcons territory, and a third-and-3 is really a third-and-2 when you have the tush push in your back pocket. A surprise passing play call worked great on the chalkboard — Saquon Barkley was wide open for a game-sealing first down. But that’s the thing about passing plays. A lot can go wrong … like a backbreaking drop on a routine catch.

It’s tough to be too harsh on the call, but man — I’m always running the football there with how that offensive line had been winning all game long. But that’s pro football for you; it’s a game of inches.

Moving forward for the Eagles, the question isn’t about future third-and-3 playcalls. The question is about a pass rush that only pressured Cousins nine times on 30 dropbacks and only once in the fourth quarter — never on the final drive.