The Silver Fern

Woody Johnson is possibly the worst owner in the league. Just has no idea and constantly flails around for a quick fix.

Sliding doors moment: someone else buys the jets in 99 and Belichick doesn't resign at his introductory HC press conference to jump to the pats.

Firing Saleh is fine. He's had 3 seasons to work it out and consistently failed. Massive success with the defence (first in EPA during his tenure I believe), but he's a HC not a DC. Even if he's delegating most of the offence to the OC he's responsible for setting the tone and philosophy and hiring a completent staff. He's done none of that. But none of that has changed through 5 games. It's the same team as last year, it's just an incompetent owner flailing about.

Ulbrich has a hell of a job on his hands, if he can't hold everything together I can see a mid season retirement coming for Rodgers.

Monday night/Tuesday afternoon going to be a fun game (although probably pretty rubbish quality football, bills have been struggling lately too).

I think it was Johnson. He's leading the charge, and the reporters closest to the jets are supporting that. He's a tinkerer with minimal m football sense but a real desire to be popular., and a belief that solutionss are only a change or two away. Apart from his previous reluctance to fire guys mid season it's classic woody Johnson behaviour.

Exactly why I think we'll see more staff changes. Hackett probably gets a demotion to Rodgers Golf Buddy and someone else takes over as oc but it's complicated because owner Woody Johnson is an idiot in thrall to Rodgers so a lot depends on whether the interim HC feels free to change what they want.

Assuming no staff changes, the biggest difference on offence would be a more aggressive mindset. Saleh was super conservative (infamously describing a game vs the raiders last year as a race to twenty), so if Ulbrich pushes to open up the playbook more and get more creative and aggressive things might improve. But not sure how much more Hackett has in his playbook.

And out first HC casualty of the year. Saleh out. First time in about 50 years that the jets have an in season HC replacement, which given some of the previous jets seasons is kind of incredible. I suspect that this isn't over yet and there will be more staff changes to follow. Current DC has already been appointed as interim HC for the rest of the year.

@mariner4life

Yeah I can see that. Brady's metronomic consistency was freakish. I'm sure I saw a Bruce Arians quote when Brady was at the bucs saying something like he's the only QB he's ever worked with that never got tired throwing 7 yard slants. I've never found it again though so might not be true, but it made me respect that consistency.

Not a big fan of the game winning drives stat. There are so many other influences on that kind of scenario.

Yeah ultimately it's basically impossible to design a perfect defensive scheme - I think there's a stat somewhere about completions vs perfect coverage or similar. So a good enough QB can always beat the coverage. Defences schemes are really just tradeoffs. Cover 2 sacrifices some strength against the run and yards underneath to take away deeper threats.

On paper the Chiefs and Vikings are the best teams in the AFC/NFC. Neither of them look it though. I can buy the Chiefs are a great team moving through the gears, but the vikings still have to prove it. Their results seem a bit too dependent on early turnovers and Justin Jefferson being a freak. But the NFL is a very momentum based league, so a good (not great) team getting hot and gelling as o unit can go really deep. It's not like they other US sports where the seasons are 90 games and hot streaks blow out.

Crazy to think that next week we'll be 1/3 of the way through the (regular) season.

Jets are a total shambles, as always. Rodgers is the most talented qb I've ever seen on the field. If you needed someone to play for your life, he's the guy. But off the field he has no idea, and is too happy with yes men. Now that he's regressed to around QB 10-15 that really hurts. He needs an OC than can do creative, surprising things to take some of the load off, instead he's got Hackett who has two plays: run up the middle and give it to Aaron. It's not even like they needed a great OC. Manning's two great years with the Broncos had Gase as the OC and be all accounts, he'd basically draw up a big pile of plays and let Manning work out which one would work best.

Totally off topic now, but I've always thought if you could get a QB with Rodgers ability on the field and Brady's mentality off it, you'd probably have to stop playing football, because that guy would never lose a game.

NFL fans are perennially complaining about how the game isn't as good as it used to be. Recent example is the current cover 2 nonsense. Mel Kiper was suggesting it be banned to get back to the NFL of Terry Bradshaw's day, neglecting to mention that that same Steelers team was famous for playing cover 2 defence.

So part of it is just that fans have different things to complain about. I think the stop/start, TV timeout stuff has just been there for so long that people are used to it.

Having the same Sunday afternoon timeslot forever helps too - I think a lot of people have traditions around getting together with friends/family to watch the game, and so the constant ads just allow for more banter/food etc.

I've only been to one NFL game live, and I didn't really notice the pace at the stadium - there's so much going on that the break is over before you realise.

@nzzp

The windows for throws are insane! If you pause the video when you throw the ball, the receiver generally won't have made his break yet, so you're literally targeting a random space on the field. Being 'open' in the NFL is just having a slight leverage advantage so the QB can put the ball on a spot the defender can't reach.

I'd agree with you that it's the hardest position to play in any sport, because the US produces literally thousands of players that are draft eligible every year and most years you might find one or two that good (not great) at the position. It's crazy to think that before they had helmet radios the QB was also responsible for make the play call!

It's also the favourite scope goat - fans love to blame qbs and play callers when things go bad, but there's a lot more too it. A bad oline in particular can destroy a team no matter who else is there.

Yeah Dan Campbell is great.

The hook and ladder has been around a while, but definitely getting more common as a way to break up defensive patterns.

Will Levis had a crack at an offload and it was a disaster.

One of the issues with creativity in the NFL is that if you lose doing a 'conventional' thing you generally get forgotten and the league moves on. If you try something and it goes wrong then it ends up being repeated for weeks and the media dine out and owners hate a loser, but hate looking foolish even more (as a general rule). Takes a combination of a creative, aggressive coach in a situation where they feel their job is safe to really go for it.

Not a single punt in the Bengals-Commanders game! Prime time viewing.

Bengals now have a massive hill to climb. I'd say they're good enough to do it but they've dropped two games that should have been easy wins, so I don't see how you can have any confidence that they'll get things done in any other game an their schedule.

Next up they're off to play the Panthers, and their old friend Andy Dalton. Again, should be an easy win, so I wonder how they'll stuff this one up.

It's only the jags, but the bills have possibly got better without Diggs. I thought Allen was a very good QB but would struggle once the quality around him went down as his cap hits went up, but I was wrong.

@mariner4life

The bucs were 2-0 and looking like a surprise package there too.

0-2 rams tip up the 49ers with a slightly absurd come back as well.

Vikings now 3-0 looking like a handful.

Wow a rest day, very old school! The Sri Lankan players are apparently going back to their homes to vote, which must be a weird experience, and maybe an opportunity for a momentum swing? Although they're well on top now so might not be enough, and as full-time pros they should be able to handle switching off and on.

Oooh, this is a great factoid! Rodgers pass to Garrett Wilson for a TD was his 480th TD pass... and his first to a WR drafted in the first round!

Rodgers rolling back the years, throwing lasers on the move. I was expecting him to be good, but thought he'd be almost purely a packet posser given his age, and throw the first two weeks that's all he'd been, so dunno whether this is just about the opposition or whether he's getting more confident in his body over the season.

Patriots are putrid though - lacking talent to start and down both starting tackles from last week. Hence the 7 sacks. Some backbreaking penalties too. A few garbage time snaps from Maye - managed to get sacked twice, almost get picked off on his first attempt and a couple of wayward passes. About what you'd expect from a rookie who's developing, but definitely not ready to start yet.

Bengals are going to regret that loss at end of the season I suspect, will be important for seeding even if they still make the playoffs.

Perfect start - all out, only added an extra 3 runs, another 5fer for O'Rourke. Sri Lanka are ahead, but some good focused application can get us on top here.

And Tua goes to IR. Minimum 4 weeks on the sideline. They have a pretty soft schedule over those 4 weeks, so I think 3-1 is possible, putting them at 4-2 for the season, which will put a but of pressure on Tua to come back. I'm not a dolphins fan, and I am a jets fan (for my sins) so I guess this is easy to say, but I genuinely think the best thing for Tua is a 0-4 run, leaving them 1-5 with the playoffs out of reach, totally removing the temptation for him to rush back.

Under the current CBA holdouts like that are impossible - the salaries are locked in and holding out means the contract doesn't toll so the contract doesn't tick down.

Peyton is the better comparison here - went back to school rather than declaring in 98 to avoid the jets. But it's a gamble because you don't know who will get the first overall pick.

The Packers have shown a different model - first Rodgers then Luck were drafted late in the first and given years to develop (although Rodgers was a massive talent that was a suprise drop and Luck a bit of a surprise whose overall talent level is hard to judge).

The difference between college and the NFL is huge too. NFL schemes (offence and defence) are massively more complex and the reads vastly more difficult, the inelegible receiver rules make running screen plays, play action and RPO less effective than in college and the athletic differences are huge - an elite QB from a big school will generally have receivers who are better that their opponents most week so consistently get wide open, and when they don't will generally win a contested ball so you can just chuck it up. The routine of having to diagnose a complex shell from a single key, then work through 2-3 reads to find the open guy, then fit the ball into a tight window is just not something that they have to do regularly, if at all. Mahomes said he couldn't reliably read a defence until his third year.

Early success for a QB tends to be about having a scheme that figures out the bits they can already do and letting them do that while minimising the stuff they haven't figured out yet.

The biggest disasters are generally when you do the opposite. Zach Wilson probably a good example of this. His skill set in college was rolling out, throwing on the move and extending plays. The jets tried to install a precision timing based west coast style scheme that he was utterly incapable of executing. He probably wouldn't have been that successful even in a different scheme, but that choice just ruined it.

Wow, the falcons bounce back to beat the eagles. NFC South might be less of a dumpster fire this year.

Bengals and Ravens both have a massive game next weekend. In the last 20 years 103 teams have started 0-3 and only once have they recovered to make the playoffs. (There's also 1 instance where a team would have made the current 14 team playoffs).

Bengals have what shapes up to be a classic get right game against the Commanders. But the Ravens have a tougher match up against the cowboys. If the Bengals lose to the Commanders the season is over - they're obviously not good enough this year. The cowboys are better than the commanders, but the Ravens should be good enough, but if they drop that game I wouldn't completely rule out a run at the playoffs, but they would probably need to finish something like 11-3 to get across the line.

Rams are also in the 0-2 hole and ravaged by injury, looks like a long way back for them, with the 49ers coming to town.

The Panthers have benched Young for Dalton. Given how many picks they gave up, that will hurt. But what hurts even more is that CJ Stroud was taken at 2 and landed in a Texas team that was about as bad as the Panthers were and has thrived. Oops. At least one team in the NFC South will be a dumpster fire.