Five weeks won’t define the 2022 NFL season. It will give you a pretty good idea of how things are going to shake out, however.
That’s not enough time to do anything but point a franchise toward a playoff spot, but it is enough time to fire a head coach after multiple years of fielding the league’s worst passing offense. Poor Matt Rhule was asked to rehabilitate Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold and somehow made them worse. He was a flamethrower brought to clean up an oil spill, and after 38 games and 11 wins the Carolina Panthers were sick of burning.
That’s the biggest development from the first 28 percent of the regular season, but it’s not the only one. Several trends have popped up early in 2022. Some will last and affect the postseason race. Others are bottle rockets, loudly screeching into the night before exploding and leaving little trace but the smell of charred gunpowder.
So whose hype are we buying after five games?