This article is part of our NFL Reactions series.
This season is already dizzying. A first-year starter at quarterback has 10 passing touchdowns after two games, both of them on the road against playoff contenders. That would easily be the biggest story to this point of any other year, but the spotlight threatens to instead tilt toward a 14th-year quarterback elsewhere, one long written off as a backup and who's only playing because the contemptibly oafish incumbent earned himself a three-game suspension. Nine touchdowns and two huge upsets later, and Ryan Fitzpatrick might not be the backup anymore.
Patrick Mahomes' career is off to a historic start, but he was a great prospect and one who a lot of very smart people held high expectations for. Believe it or not, there are people who aren't surprised about what Mahomes has done. These results are within the range of hypothesized outcomes. You can't say the same about Fitzpatrick, whose play is fully without precedent and mostly feels like a glitch with the simulation we inhabit.
Fitzpatrick stunned the Saints at the Superdome in Week 1, and today the Eagles fell. Those two defenses combined to allow 6.7 yards per pass last year at a 60 percent completion rate, conceding just 46 passing touchdowns compared to 39 interceptions. Fitzpatrick heads into Week 3 the owner of a 13.4 YPA with eight touchdowns and one interception, also featuring a staggering completion percentage of 78.7. Particularly when adjusting for context, Fitzpatrick's dominance to this point is of a magnitude that seems to
This season is already dizzying. A first-year starter at quarterback has 10 passing touchdowns after two games, both of them on the road against playoff contenders. That would easily be the biggest story to this point of any other year, but the spotlight threatens to instead tilt toward a 14th-year quarterback elsewhere, one long written off as a backup and who's only playing because the contemptibly oafish incumbent earned himself a three-game suspension. Nine touchdowns and two huge upsets later, and Ryan Fitzpatrick might not be the backup anymore.
Patrick Mahomes' career is off to a historic start, but he was a great prospect and one who a lot of very smart people held high expectations for. Believe it or not, there are people who aren't surprised about what Mahomes has done. These results are within the range of hypothesized outcomes. You can't say the same about Fitzpatrick, whose play is fully without precedent and mostly feels like a glitch with the simulation we inhabit.
Fitzpatrick stunned the Saints at the Superdome in Week 1, and today the Eagles fell. Those two defenses combined to allow 6.7 yards per pass last year at a 60 percent completion rate, conceding just 46 passing touchdowns compared to 39 interceptions. Fitzpatrick heads into Week 3 the owner of a 13.4 YPA with eight touchdowns and one interception, also featuring a staggering completion percentage of 78.7. Particularly when adjusting for context, Fitzpatrick's dominance to this point is of a magnitude that seems to imply a paradigm shift of some sort rather than a fluke. Fitzpatrick reached considerable heights in one NFL season, when he threw for 3,900 yards and 31 touchdowns in 2015, but this seems distinct from that. Unless he implodes in Week 3, I can't imagine how Tampa could go back to Jameis Winston.
Never change, Ryan Fitzpatrick. 😂 pic.twitter.com/lMJ6HoXgMM
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 16, 2018
In an offseason where all of Jon Gruden, Matt Nagy, Todd Haley, Mike Vrabel, Matt Patricia, Steve Wilks, and Matt LaFleur made big moves, the most significant coaching development actually occurred to Fitzpatrick's benefit in Tampa, where offensive coordinator Todd Monken was given the playcalling duties after previously deferring to Dirk Koetter. Koetter was bad in this capacity, compounding his poor talent evaluations with tepid, ineffective scheming. Monken has flipped it all upside down. Defenses will make adjustments, but there is a lot of pass-catching talent to work with in this offense, and the scale of Fitzpatrick's dominance at this point makes it reasonable to assume Monken is capable of effective counter-adjustments. We all knew Mike Evans, DeSean Jackson, and Chris Godwin could light up a defense with good quarterback play, and they finally have it. If Monken isn't Tampa Bay's head coach in 2019 there's a good chance he has the job elsewhere.
While Mahomes and Fitzpatrick have taken a stunned league by the windpipe after two games, their ascent eerily occurred in concert with confusing struggles for Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees, and not just in the sense of the losses the former pair issued respectively to the latter duo. The home splits for Roethlisberger and Brees were one of the few things we were supposed to be able to take for granted with this game, yet Brees struggled as he barely escaped with a win against Cleveland today, and Roethlisberger was a bit on-and-off against a bad Chiefs defense, leaving him unable to match the pace set by Mahomes. Not only did the home field advantage fail to materialize for Brees and Roethlisberger, but it did so against two of the worst pass defenses of last year. In fact, if not for the wacky failure-themed antics of the Browns, both the Saints and Steelers would be 0-2 right now. The symmetry of this all is bizarre. Brees and Roethlisberger will be just fine while Mahomes and Fitzpatrick will almost certainly cool off, but it feels like the structure of the league may have shifted on us in a momentous way.
But anyway,
•After a dud Week 1, Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins shredded the Pittsburgh defense Sunday, combining for 240 yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage (the touchdowns both Kelce's). One lingering criticism of Mahomes following last week's dismemberment of the Chargers was his dependence on Tyreek Hill, but that's over now. Even in what was a relatively modest showing for Hill, he still finished with 90 yards and a touchdown. If this offense stays healthy, nothing but precipitation and wind can tame it.
•The degree to which the Browns managed to turn a promising trajectory into a disgusting mess in the past two weeks is incredible. I'm not gonna talk about the Gordon thing. Everything else is wrong, too. The handling of Tyrod Taylor and Baker Mayfield already makes no sense, and the handling of running back personnel is even more confusing. How do you extend Duke Johnson's contract and then toss him on the shelf? Why pick Nick Chubb just outside of the first round when what would really please you is 2.8 yards per carry from Carlos Hyde? I have no idea whether John Dorsey, Hue Jackson, and Todd Haley are at all in sync, and I don't feel confident in attributing any of this team's tendencies to any of the three given the weird political dynamics. The Dorsey front office has dominated the NFL as far as stirring up drama goes. Antonio Callaway should be owned in 12-team leagues, in any case. He's far more talented than Higgins.
•I don't know which legs suffered which pulls, but Dalvin Cook dealing with a hamstring elicited a groan from me. While he was still incredibly productive, Cook was in and out of games all year with hamstring troubles in his sophomore year at Florida State.
•The Bills couldn't pose much resistance to the Chargers, but I think Josh Allen has been encouraging to this point, particularly given the problematic circumstances. The offense around him will be stupid bad if LeSean McCoy misses time with his rib issue.
•Sam Bradford has to be over now. The situation is a rotten one for Arizona because, bad as Bradford might be, there's no way his failures through two weeks are proportionate to his limitations. Steve Wilks could not have botched his first two weeks much worse than this. It's discouraging to the point that I'm worried for Josh Rosen's chances of success. I hope they don't ruin him, but Bradford can't keep playing.
•Adrian Peterson burned hot in his first start for Arizona last year and fizzled out almost immediately afterward. Hopefully that's not happening again with his dud against Indianapolis today. Chris Thompson has been just incredible since last year. I thought his per-touch and per-target production had to decline to pre-2017 levels, but maybe not. With Jamison Crowder looking like a bust through two weeks as the specter of decline looms again over Peterson, Thompson should get all the work he can handle.
•Jay Ajayi will never get a bigger workload in Philadelphia. Maybe it's because he's not quite good enough to emphatically differentiate himself from players like Corey Clement and Darren Sproles, or maybe the split is predetermined by the structure of Doug Pederson's offense. But it's at least one of those two.
•Derek Carr isn't going anywhere so it's no solace to Amari Cooper's owners, but clearly the wideout is not the issue here. He's one of the best receivers in the league and he's probably not done improving.
•Keelan Cole reasserted himself as Jacksonville's WR1 today, while Donte Moncrief functioned as the WR2 with nine targets. I was low on Dede Westbrook as a prospect, but he might force Moncrief into a WR3 role if he maintains the level of play he's shown in the first two weeks.
•Like Brandin Cooks, Cooper Kupp, and Robert Woods with the Rams, the Lions appear to have such a narrow channeling of usage between Golden Tate, Kenny Golladay, and Marvin Jones that owners of all six receivers might go through the year fully content with their production.
•Quincy Enunwa has 21 targets heading into Week 3 and is two years removed from posting 857 yards on 105 targets. He should be one of the top receivers in PPR this year, and quite plausibly in standard scoring also.
•The Cowboys are still bad, the Giants are just also dumb and bad. If Carson Wentz and Alshon Jeffery can return to their accustomed level of play, the Eagles should grind that division into dust soon, an arrangement that will likely endure for years due to the oafish ownership of the other three teams.
