Every week in the NFL season brings a host of new questions … and answers some old ones, too. Let’s run down what we learned in Week 3 … and what we’ll be wondering about in Week 4 and beyond.
ASKED: Is Malik Nabers the NFL’s next great wide receiver?
Sure, quarterbacks get all the money, and linebackers are the toughest cats on the field, but when it comes to glory, there’s no position in football that compares to the cinematic, big-money wide receiver. From Jerry Rice to Randy Moss to Julio Jones to Tyreek Hill, the guy who can go up and pull majesty out of the air is a rare commodity. And lo and behold, the Giants — the Giants! — might have ended up with one in Malik Nabers.
Drafted sixth overall earlier this year out of LSU, Nabers is already setting records in just his third game in the league. Just 21, he’s now the youngest wide receiver to score two touchdowns in a game, and if that stat is slicing the numbers a little thin for you, just enjoy his catches:
True, three games isn’t much of a body of work, but Nabers is on a hell of a trajectory so far.
ANSWERED: Whether Bryce Young will see the field again any time soon
Look, nobody needs to feel too bad for Bryce Young. He’s turned his football skills into a highly lucrative contract, he won the Heisman Trophy, and he reached the NFL. Sure, he’s been humiliated on the big stage for the entire country to see, but that’s part of the deal. Benched after just two ultra-lackluster games, Young had to watch Sunday as ageless Andy Dalton, playing for his 47th franchise, stepped into the breach and turned Carolina into a points-scoring machine. We’re not saying Young couldn’t make throws like this:
… we’re just saying he hasn’t. And if Dalton keeps the Panthers humming against the Bengals, Bears and Falcons, Young won’t get the chance again before Halloween.
ASKED: Has there ever been a career rebirth quite like Sam Darnold?
The Vikings have appeared in all three editions of Asked & Answered so far this season, and it’s because we have so many questions about this team — which, in Minnesota’s case, is a very good thing. Quite frankly, we don’t believe what we’re seeing out of the Vikings to date. Their absolute decimation of the Texans is another data point in the increasing certainty that this is a very solid, perhaps even approaching great, football team. The lockdown defense of Brian Flores deserves the most credit, but Sam Darnold — used and discarded over and over again, all over the league — is doing something we’ve never seen.
Plenty of quarterbacks have found renewed success with a change in scenery — Derek Carr and Baker Mayfield are doing it right now in New Orleans and Tampa Bay, respectively — but nobody has bounced from team to team to team before getting their first real taste of that success. The usual A&A caveats apply — opinions are only good for one week, no refunds — but so far, Darnold appears to have found the perfect situation. So what if it’s in his seventh year and fourth team?
ANSWERED: Whether the entire city of Green Bay has made a deal with the devil
We’re sure that the people of Green Bay are good and decent folk, but we fear for whatever bargain that they’ve made to get an unbroken string of quality quarterback play dating back more than 30 years. From Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love to, now, Malik Willis, everything seems to come up heads for the Packers while literally every other franchise in the league has struggled for quarterback consistency.
Willis, subbing in for the still-injured Love, threw for 202 yards and a touchdown Sunday against Tennessee — the team that just traded him away in August for a seventh rounder. Granted, his counterpart on the other sideline was handing out interceptions like Halloween candy, but still — it ain’t fair, what the Packers keep getting away with. And there will be a price to be paid … probably in a century or so.
ASKED: Did we rush to judgment on the Saints?
Everybody loves a good out-of-nowhere story, and after mollywhopping the Dallas Cowboys, the new-look New Orleans Saints seemed like they’d be a fit. But we already have the Vikings, so the Saints needed to settle back to earth … and they did this week at home against Philadelphia, managing only 12 points after throwing down 44-plus in each of their first two games. Klint Kubiak, last week’s changing-the-game offensive coordinator, couldn’t quite get Carr et. al. out of second gear this week. But New Orleans has two get-right games against division foes the next three weeks, with a date with the Chiefs in between. That’ll tell us a lot.
ANSWERED: The NFC’s Chosen Ones are no longer choice
Coming into the season, conventional wisdom was that the NFC could very well look like the early ‘90s, with San Francisco and Dallas battling for supremacy. Three weeks in, they’re a combined 2-4 and a long way from looking like favorites. San Francisco has been ravaged by injury; you don’t lose Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuels without stumbling. Still, the 49ers had a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead Sunday against the Rams that they let slip away.
Dallas is a whole lot more problematic. A late rally made Sunday’s 28-24 loss to Baltimore look a lot prettier than it was, but the result was the same — the first time Dallas has lost back-to-back games at home since 2017. Answers are few and mistakes are many in Big D. Only one player hit double digits in rushing yardage, and Rico Dowdle had only 32. Dak Prescott threw for 379 yards, but the real Cowboy highlight is kicker Brandon Aubrey, who nailed a 65-yarder Sunday. A field goal on every possession won’t win you every game, but it’ll get you closer than Dallas is right now.
ASKED: Did Justin Fields bench Russell Wilson?
If you try to claim you knew the Steelers would be the first team to reach 3-0 on the season, you’re lying and you should be ashamed of yourself. Nobody knew that Pittsburgh would manage to cobble together three wins to start 2024 with a suspect couple of castoff quarterbacks at their core. But lo and behold, here’s Pittsburgh, slapping together a janky three straight, the most recent a win over the 2-0 Chargers on Sunday.
Justin Fields wasn’t spectacular on Sunday — 25 of 32 for 245 with a TD and an INT — but he did enough to bring the Steelers back from two early deficits. Wilson won the starting job out of camp, but … dance with the date that brung ya, don’t switch horses in mid-stream, or employ whatever other old-timey cliche you want, Pittsburgh probably shouldn’t mess with a good thing.
Ahead: the Colts, Cowboys and Raiders. Pittsburgh could be 3-3 or 6-0 after that and neither result would surprise us. To fire up one more cliche: Fields may not be Pittsburgh’s Mr. Right, but he’s damn sure Mr. Right Now.
ANSWERED: Cleveland should be relegated to the Big Ten
They deceived us for a second, those Browns. The Giants fumbled on the opening kickoff, and then Deshaun Watson hit Amari Cooper for one of the best touchdowns of the year to date. And then … nothing. The Browns reverted to room-temperature garbage, punting six times, fumbling twice and generally giving the game away to the barely-above-competent Giants. Regardless of what you think of the Browns continuing to pay and play Watson, it’s indisputable that they’re not getting their money’s worth. One highlight a game isn’t going to cut it.