Tag: nfl hype rankings

NFL Hype Rankings, Week 7: The end of Russell Wilson and the beginning of Zach Wilson

Is Russell Wilson irreparably broken? Is Matt Ryan a playoff quarterback again? Do we need to have a frank discussion about Mitch Trubisky?

Week 6 saw the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills stake their claims as the top teams in their respective divisions with important wins over rivals they’ll likely see again in the postseason. The other dozen games, however, offered little clarity.

The Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers each raised cause for alarm as they slipped to .500 in upset losses. Fringe playoff teams like the New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks each boosted their resumes with double-digit wins. Joe Burrow outdueled Andy Dalton in a battle between the Cincinnati Bengals’ past and its present.

Another week of games provides another data point to define the trends what will dictate how 2022 unfolds. And since we’ve already talked about all the NFC’s troubling veteran quarterbacks and how Aaron Rodgers should be really, truly concerned, let’s take on five other emerging storylines and figure out whether or not they’ve got the steam to persist for the final 12 weeks of the regular season.

NFL Hype Rankings, Week 5: Is Jared Goff good again? Is Cooper Rush the Cowboys’ latest QB find?

Is there a QB battle brewing in Texas? Are the Packers are mirage? How much should we worry about the post-Sean Payton Saints?

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.

NFL Hype Rankings headed into Week 4: The Eagles are indestructible

Is it time to believe in the Eagles? Have the Rams recalibrated? And what should we think about the Jaguars?

Through three weeks of the 2022 NFL season, the Miami Dolphins are the top team in the AFC. If the playoffs began today, the Jacksonville Jaguars would hold down the second seed. The Cincinnati Bengals, Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders wouldn’t even crack the conference’s top 10.

This is all thanks to a tremendously small sample size, but it does suggest the league’s ever-changing landscape of contenders continues to shift. While things in the NFC are a bit more predictable, the action in the AFC suggests a wide open, unpredictable race to seven playoff spots.

Of course, this could all be overreaction. Three weeks isn’t enough time to jump to conclusions, especially when the Chicago Bears are on pace for an 11-6 season. But those games also provide a few data points that might help parse out the future.

Let’s use them to address this week’s rising trends.

NFL Hype Rankings heading into Week 3: The worst Super Bowl hangover ever? Tua MVP talk?

Is Tua Tagovailoa a real MVP candidate? Is Lamar Jackson gonna get his guaranteed contract? And what to make of these Detroit Lions…

The 2022 NFL season has not gone off as planned. Unless you’re the Buffalo Bills.

Josh Allen’s team has spent the first two weeks of the season dismantling squads that made the playoffs last winter, torching them through the air and brutalizing them on defense. Other than that, however, things have been … a little weird.

Tua Tagovailoa and Carson Wentz currently make up half the players tied for the league lead in touchdown passes. The Cincinnati Bengals are 0-2. The New York Giants are 2-0. The best quarterback the Dallas Cowboys have inserted in their lineup is Cooper Rush.

That’s set several paths in motion that will reach their terminus over the next five months. Some will end at the top of the 2023 NFL Draft. Two will lead to the Super Bowl. What can we believe in and what’s just an early season smokescreen?