Jets crash, Travis Kelce breaks out, Steelers hit a wall

The fourth week of the NFL season provided more than its fair share of shock and entertainment. This has been a decidedly great season, with several projected contenders coming out of the gate while a few supposedly mediocre teams run the league.

We’re only in week 4, as the saying goes, so we can’t take too much away from the noisy results. That said, we’re starting to get a solid read on most teams. It’s probably safe to start dividing the league into four categories: Elite, NOT Elite, SolidAnd The Fools of Gold. Which group does your team belong to? I leave that to you.

As we look back at a wild Week 4, which included game-winning field goals, near-dazzling comebacks, and some truly stunning results, here are the individual winners and losers.

I’m old enough to remember the days when the Carolina Panthers were persona non grata in fantasy circles. Well, yours truly has started Andy Dalton in several leagues and he’s sitting pretty well. Those who drafted Diontae Johnson early and felt stupid watching Bryce Young take hit after hit for two weeks and are now looking puuuurty clever.

Lo and behold, a competent quarterback has completely revived the Panthers’ offense. It wasn’t enough to edge out a desperate Bengals team on Sunday, but Dalton continues to look better day and night than his predecessor, with Johnson quickly becoming the No. 1 target we’ve all been waiting for to begin the season. Johnson had seven receptions on 12 healthy targets for 83 yards and a score.

Folks, we have a truly fantastic star on our hands – not to mention a happy camper, finally deployed effectively after years of ups and downs under Matt Canada’s regime in Pittsburgh.

We’re back to calling Jerry Jones cheap. After spending the offseason sitting idly waiting until the last possible second to extend CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott, Jones is once again letting finances get in the way of progress. The Dallas Cowboys are supposed to be contenders — that’s why Prescott and Lamb got all that money — but it’s hard to win if Jones doesn’t invest in the margins.

Now the Cowboys owner/general manager’s low price is starting to catch up with him. Dallas picked up a 20-15 win over the Giants on TNF, but it’s not a victory that inspires confidence. The RB room continues to stagnate on a weekly basis and now Micah Parsons is injured with no suitable replacement on the roster and no reason to believe Jones will adequately continue depth via trade.

It’s not often that coordinators get the game ball, but that’s precisely what happened Sunday after the Washington Commanders’ 42-14 blowout victory over Arizona. Kingsbury signed a three-year contract to run the communications offense this summer. A former head coach at Arizona, Kingsbury’s abilities were on full display during Sunday’s offensive masterclass. Through four weeks, Jayden Daniels leads the NFL in completion percentage and the Commanders are 3-1, good enough to own first place in the NFC East alone.

Nobody saw this coming.

On the other hand, Nick Siranni and the Philadelphia Eagles (who turned down Kingsbury for the OC job this summer) have yet to completely eliminate the stench of last season’s collapse. A blowout loss to the Bucs on Sunday, in what should have been a revenge game, drops Philadelphia to 2-2 on the season. It’s easy to point to the absences of AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith, which is valid, but the Eagles’ problems clearly run deeper than personnel shortages.

Jalen Hurts was extremely inconsistent once again, continuing his up-and-down trend early in the 2024 campaign. Brian Johnson, the Eagles’ 2023 OC, currently happens to be the passing game coordinator for the aforementioned Commanders. In his place, Kellen Moore and Nick Sirianni, whatever happy marriage of ideas they have entered into, don’t seem to have any answers.

After the game, Hurts was asked about sharing leadership responsibilities with Sirianni and how they might approach team motivation ahead of Week One. His response was… far from ideal.

Many Eagles fans already thought Sirianni should have been fired at the end of last season. Now he’s losing the fan base again, and quite possibly his quarterback too. If that relationship dissolves further, after a summer spent trying to rebuild trust between head coach and signal-caller, the Eagles could be in for a long and unceremonious season.

How can you not claim victory?

Younghoe Koo unleashed a 58-yard missile in the final seconds of Sunday’s win over the Saints, propelling the Atlanta Falcons to 2-2 on the season.

A loss would have propelled New Orleans to the top of the division and put Atlanta in a 1-3 hole. Instead, the Falcons are 2-2 in the most brutal part of their schedule with a chance to take the division lead next Thursday against Tampa Bay.

Kirk Cousins ​​​​is slowly but surely figuring it out and Atlanta’s defense looks pretty solid. This team is still the favorite to emerge from a winnable NFC South.

Is Justin Fields the loser or is Russell Wilson the winner? Week 4 was a humbling experience for the previously undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers, who ended up falling short to Joe Flacco and the injury-plagued and not-very-good Colts. The offense has been better than it has been in recent weeks, at least on paper, but that’s more of an indictment of Justin Fields than an absolution. When the Steelers defense isn’t as razor sharp, Fields’ flaws suddenly become much more apparent.

Not all of Pittsburgh’s offensive miscues can be blamed on Fields, who completed 22 of 34 passes for a game-high 312 yards and a touchdown. He also ran for 55 yards and two more touchdowns. But Fields took four sacks and committed a horrible fumble, victim of the Steelers’ makeshift offensive line and a definitely not crazy Broderick Jones.

The real shame of it all is that Fields was excellent by Pittsburgh QB standards in the second half, almost leading a comeback, but he couldn’t get the win. The defense finally failed, the offensive line’s woes showed, and suddenly the door is ajar for Russell WIlson if he ever returns, as obvious as it is that Fields should be the starter moving forward.

Travis Kelce totaled eight receptions for 69 yards through the first three weeks of the season, leading to plenty of rumors about his age and future at the NFL level. Kelce is, deservedly, the highest-paid tight end in the league and his relationship with Patrick Mahomes is the stuff of legend. It was a little strange to see him so little involved in the offense from the start.

On Sunday, Kelce shut down all the noise. For now, at least. He caught seven of nine targets for 89 yards in a Kansas City Chiefs victory. With Rashee Rice and Hollywood Brown both expected to miss the remainder of the season, the Chiefs will need more dominant performances from Kelce moving forward.

After improving in each successive game over the first three weeks of the season, Aaron Rodgers took his first notable step back in Week 4. The New York Jets lost 10-9 to the modest Broncos, led by Bo Nix and his enormous 60 meters of passing offense. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better defensive performance than New York put up on Sunday, but Rodgers wasn’t able to lead a single touchdown to push the Jets over the top.

Better days and maybe even NFL history lie ahead for Rodgers, but it’s clear the Jets aren’t the heavyweights some expected at the start of the season. The Jets don’t completely stink either – there’s a middle ground somewhere that Rodgers needs to dislodge them from, elevating New York from its perpetual mediocrity to a semblance of discord.