Rams Are Great, Patriots Are Not and More NFL Oddities ‘Nobody Saw Coming’ After Four Weeks

At the quarter mark of the season, the L.A. offense is humming, the New England defense is bleeding, a Houston rookie is dominating, players are kneeling and fans are booing

BALTIMORE — We’re almost 25 percent of the way through the 2017 season (28 of 32 teams have played four of their 16 games as of this morning), and this is what blows me away about the NFL through the first quarter:

• The Rams are the story of the year, with the coach of the first quarter in 31-year-old Sean McVay (nudging Andy Reid) bizarrely turning a moribund offense into the best in the NFL in the first month.

• If you had the Rams, Texans and Jags as three of the four highest-scoring offenses in the league after a quarter of the season, you’re officially very smart about football.

• The President Donald Trump-spawned kneel/sit/stand/fist-raise anthem hullaballoo is the football news story of the first quarter, to be sure. It reached peak hilarity Sunday in Baltimore, when the PA announcer asked the crowd to pray for “kindness, unity, equality and justice” in America, and the Ravens dropped to one knee and bowed their heads in prayer, and this is what happened: “BOOOOOOOOOO!”

Todd Gurley’s resurgence continues as he compiled a career-best 215 yards from scrimmage against the Cowboys :: Michael Ainsworth/AP

• The guru of defensive gurus, Bill Belichick, who might go down as the best defensive coach in history, has the worst D in football.

• Deshaun Watson had led the Texans to 90 points in the past two games, his second and third NFL starts. That’s more points than 16 teams have scored this season.

• The Bills are 3-1. Coach Sean McDermott has made a very big deal (some inside the team would say an obnoxiously big deal) about not turning the ball over. The Bills turned it over on their first possession of the season, a tipped interception. In their 43 possessions since: zero turnovers ... including another clean game in Sunday’s 23-17 upset of Atlanta.

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• The 86th pick in the draft, Kareem Hunt, leads the NFL in rushing with 401 yards—and he’s the only back among the top 20 rushers to have played in just three games so far, not four.

• The Giants, one of the logical NFC Super Bowl picks in August, are 0-4. They’ve lost two straight games on walkoff field goals.

• Sunday: Buffalo (on the road) 23, Atlanta 17 … Rams (on the road) 35, Dallas 20 … Carolina (on the road) 33, New England 30. In the outlier game: Houston (at home) 57, Tennessee 14. Fifty-seven on a Dick LeBeau team, with a rookie quarterback doing the damage.

“Nobody saw a lot of these coming,” McVay said over the phone from Texas on Sunday afternoon. “But that’s the NFL every year, isn’t it?”

Andy Benoit and Gary Gramling wrap up the Sunday action each Monday morning on “The MMQB: Ten Things” podcast. Subscribe on iTunes.

McVay is scary precocious. It showed in his post-game scrum with the team Sunday, after the Rams walked into Jerry World and beat the Cowboys 35-30. He sounded like a veteran head coach, not one who 11 years ago this week was walking across the Miami campus in Oxford, Ohio, scurrying to class as a senior.

“Love the way you guys continue to compete from first snap to last snap!” he barked, all eyes on him. “Great win! Three-and-one—we accomplished our goal of finishing the first quarter that way. Enjoy it! Love you guys. Love where we’re going.” Then he handed out game balls to kicker Greg Zuerlein (seven of seven on field goal attempts) and defensive coordinator Wade Phillips (for beating the team he used to head-coach) … and told Phillips to break the team down, and then snuck out of the way so Phillips could be the center of attention for a few moments.

Break it down, @sonofbum 😂

Heading back to LA with the W! pic.twitter.com/mjkYSiPBOI

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) October 1, 2017

Not only did it look like McVay had been there before at the ripe old age of 31, but he let Phillips have the moment. Smart move. McVay’s made a lot of those. Like running some involved pass plays for Jared Goff on first downs, when foes are gearing for the run and again-brilliant back Todd Gurley, and when Goff can take advantage of play-action to get some route combinations when he knows he’ll have someone open. “What I like about the offense is I know I’ll always have a receiver open,” Goff told me in training camp. What’s also helped: picking up Sammy Watkins in trade, Robert Woods in free agency and Cooper Kupp in the draft. Along with speedy but heretofore underachieving Tavon Austin, that’s a very good top-four receiver group. McVay’s route combinations create the kind of traffic that ensures Goff will keep seeing open receivers.

“What I’ve appreciated about Jared,” McVay said Sunday, “is that no pressure gets to him. No moment’s felt too big for him, not even today on a stage like this, in this stadium against the Dallas Cowboys. He’s very even-keel.”

Add two veteran linemen—left tackle Andrew Whitworth and center John Sullivan—and Gurley’s impact (596 total yards, seven touchdowns), and you’ve got the kind of difference-making on the ground that the 2016 Rams just didn’t have. Gurley couldn’t breathe last season. “This guy is a hell of a versatile back,” McVay said. “Maybe he’s not [Darren] Sproles as a receiver out of the backfield, but I think he’s excellent in the open field, which is one of the reasons you really want him to catch balls in space.”

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Also: GM Les Snead was on a cold streak at the end of last season, when he barely survived the ax that got Jeff Fisher. But Whitworth was a superior signing. Sullivan and Woods have become major additions. Snead’s architecture and McVay’s could have the Rams in contention in December, and who’d have thought that would happen with a coach who gets carded in L.A.

Said McVay: “We’re growing. We’re going in the right direction.” To put it mildly.

Think of Houston’s long streak of quarterback futility through two weeks this season: 21 straight games of never scoring 30 points, despite spending $72 million on Brock Osweiler last year, despite trading two first-round picks to acquire Watson this year. But then Watson dueled Tom Brady and put up 33 points in a loss to the Patriots last week, and this week put up a franchise-record 57 in front of a disbelieving home crowd Sunday.

The disbelieving crowd included a disbelieving owner.

“We’ve never had this kind of offense before,” said Bob McNair, who founded the team in 2002. “What was the final—57 points? We’ve never scored 57 points before. That’s sounding more like a basketball game.”

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The expectation about Watson was probably unfair to begin. When he was drafted, he was transitioning from a wide-open spread scheme at Clemson to a fairly conservative, balanced Bill O’Brien offensive scheme. It was expected that Watson might play at some point this year, but not the majority of the year as long as Tom Savage stayed healthy. But in the summer, during the time the Texans were off before training camp, O’Brien would throw Watson the occasional text with a quiz, to see how far along he was, and how much he’d studied in the spring and early summer. O’Brien marveled at never being able to stump Watson. Maybe we should have expected this. After all, there’s one quarterback in history who’s twice thrown for more than 400 yards against a Nick Saban-coached defense. Only one. Watson.

“He’s seeing a lot of different things—third-down blitzes for the first time, red-area things for the first time,” O’Brien said. “I think he’s made some really good decisions. That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s a very calm guy. He’s a very thoughtful guy.”

So far for Watson, he’s started against Cincinnati on a short-week Thursday (win), started against Tom Brady in a Foxboro duel (loss) and at home for the first time against rising Tennessee (43-point win). Next week: The last unbeaten team (at least until Monday night) in the NFL, Kansas City, is at Houston. Every week’s a test with Alabama-like pressure.

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