After one month, the 2022 NFL regular season is going roughly the way we expected in some respects.
The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs look like the cream of the AFC again. The Philadelphia Eagles, buoyed by offseason additions, have produced the kind of improvements to transform from an easy Wild Card out to a bonafide Super Bowl contender. Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs and Cooper Kupp are catching a ton of passes.
This doesn’t mean things have been predictable. The league is loaded with surprises that could either be early season outliers or a harbinger of things to come. A four-game sample size provides just enough data to tantalize, even if there’s no guarantee these trends will prove to be more than September/October ephemera.
Let’s take a look at some of Week 4’s most interesting trends and see if they’re built to last, starting with the Green Bay Packers’ mirage of a 3-1 start all the way down to a budding quarterback non-controversy in Dallas.