5 Things to Know After Week 10: The Challenge of Building a Superteam In-Season

Plus, sky judge can do more, the Patriots hit their stride in November (again), what happens when backup QB magic fades, and Jared Goff on the brink.

If you are sitting here after Week 10, as you have done through most of the NFL season, wondering which teams are actually good, then boy, does Gary Gramling have a treat for you: His midseason ranking mitigating “luck” factors like fumble-recovery rate and fourth-down conversions. If you can get past Gary closely guarding the secrets of his math, it’s a really fascinating—and useful—answer to the question that’s been perplexing us all season. Now, onto five things to know about Week 10 that don’t have to do with Gary’s ingenuity.

1. It’s hard to build a superteam. It’s even harder to do it during the season. The Rams’ humbling loss to the 49ers on Monday night (following a humbling primetime loss to the Titans one week earlier) was a reminder that team-building is harder than “just add players.” This was the Rams’ first game with Von Miller and Odell Beckham Jr., and they will no doubt grow into bigger roles. But the interception that ended the first drive, on which Matthew Stafford forced a deep pass to Beckham but he and his new receiver appeared not to be on the same page, was a cautionary example of how a team can get off-kilter when trying to cobble together talented players on the fly. (Beckham also went from a luxury to more of a necessity after Robert Woods tore his ACL in practice Friday.) It’s a good time for a bye week for the Rams, and not just because it will give the new players time to assimilate. In each of the back-to-back losses, Stafford got off to a rough start, throwing a pair of picks that seemed to send him and the team into a spiral. Early in the season, the Rams impressed by immediately playing up to their sky-high expectations, but a week off will give them the time to self-scout their offense and for Stafford to more fully recover from back and ankle injuries.

2. Don’t forget about the sky judge. John Harbaugh and the Ravens have been leading the charge for years now for the implementation of a sky judge, a member of the officiating crew who sits in the booth and uses their access to extensive video footage to correct or call penalties on the field. What passed this past spring was a half-measure giving replay officials greater authority in advising the on-field referees on “specific, objective aspects of a play” or game administration issues, without having to go to a full-fledged replay. This has certainly helped crews make the right decision faster in some cases this year, such as determining the spot of a ball or whether a player is down by contact. But there have also been a number of high-profile errors, including a phantom roughing-the-passer call against the Saints this week that took a Ryan Tannehill end-zone interception off the board. The week prior, an incorrect low-block call erased a Justin Fields TD pass, one of multiple officiating errors in that game that the NFL apparently “privately acknowledged” (as a side note, it’s pretty crummy that the NFL only addressed these errors publicly by leaking to its in-house reporters). These obvious and embarrassing officiating errors this season should generate added momentum for the sky judge this offseason. There’s no reason for the NFL not to have a measure that was easily (and helpfully) implemented by the now-defunct AAF, especially at a time when the NFL’s embrace of legalized sports betting has created even more scrutiny of game-changing calls.

3. The Patriots often start slow and hit their stride in November. I should have had the courage to say this back in September (though, for the record, I did pick the Patriots to win the AFC East). But the Patriots’ 1–3 start this year wasn’t that far off the slow starts common during the team’s Brady-Belichick years. Four times during the final decade of the Brady-Belichick era, the Patriots started 2–2 (and in two cases, they also started 1–2). Two of these .500 starts ended up being Super Bowl seasons. We are not going so far as to say that the 2021 Patriots are Super Bowl-bound, but Bill Belichick’s teams have not been afraid to tinker through the first month of the regular season in search of the team’s strongest identity. In New England, September is more like the second month of the preseason. This season, of course, circumstances were different than at any point during the Brady-Belichick years, as the team was breaking in and steadily bringing along rookie QB Mac Jones. But we have also seen the team’s identity coalesce around Jones through the first 10 weeks of the season, with the development of a strong ground game (helped on Sunday by the return of right tackle Trent Brown) and a defense that’s been rebuilt with new faces along with veteran mainstays.

4. Back-up quarterback magic is hard to sustain. We have seen tremendous performances by back-up QBs in spot duty this season, but there’s a big leap between an effective one-off when the opponent has little game film on the back-up vs. a second appearance when the opposing defense has spent time specifically preparing for him. Week 10 served as a reminder of that, as Colt McCoy turned the ball over twice in a dud of a loss to the Panthers, one week after he led the team to a win against the 49ers with Kyler Murray out. And Mike White’s stint as the toast of the NY tabloids was short-lived as he followed up his impressive performance in the Jets’ upset win over the Bengals (and an injury-shortened start in Indy) with a four-interception outing in a blowout loss to the Bills. (For now, though, the shine on Cooper Rush from his lone primetime start against the Vikings has not been dulled!)

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5. Are we nearing the end for Jared Goff? Dan Campbell made clear this week that the Lions are sticking with Goff, the player they received as a throw-in for their deal to send Matthew Stafford to the Rams. Campbell seems to be exhausting every avenue he can to get something out of Goff: Earlier this season he called him out, saying he needed to step up, but this week attributed Goff’s struggles against Pittsburgh (he threw for 54 yards in regulation) to poor pass protection. Campbell also took over play-calling duties from Anthony Lynn this past week, though play-calling did not seem to be near the top of the list of the team’s many woes. The team’s restructure of Goff’s contract after the trade made it more likely he’ll be with the team through 2022, so there are financial reasons to try to make it work with Goff. Back-up Tim Boyle was also on IR during the first half of the season with a fractured right throwing thumb, limiting the team’s options, but recently was designated by the team to return. Whatever the team decides to do at QB for the rest of their hopeless '21 season, this has been a stark fall for Goff after playing in the Super Bowl just three seasons ago.

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