It’s not even October and we’re already into the Andy Dalton portion of the season. The NFL never fails to keep everyone on their toes.
Dalton is the surprise star of the show, but there’s a whole lot more to get to this week in Quick Outs, from one historically bad run game to an out-of-nowhere All-Pro defensive lineman candidate to pumping the brakes on panic over the No. 1 pick.
Let’s jump right into it.
QB charting: Andy Dalton
Dalton giving the Carolina Panthers a spark of life was not a surprise. The Bryce Young experiment had taken a turn for the worse in the first two weeks. Any modicum of competent quarterback play was bound to lift this offense right away.
But Dalton becoming the first NFL quarterback this season to throw for 300 yards and three touchdowns in one game? Yeah, I didn’t have that one on my bingo card.
Dalton’s overall charting numbers aren’t as fabulous as the raw stat line. He was accurate on 73 percent of his passes, with almost one-third of his attempts coming behind the line of scrimmage. A majority of those were checkdowns rather than screens — so, points for actually playing quarterback but still worth noting.
The difference between Dalton and Young is that Dalton made all those simple and efficient completions while also adding some more difficult NFL throws to the Panthers’ passing menu.
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) September 22, 2024
Dalton was accurate on 6 of 11 passes into tight windows. Some of those throws hadn’t been seen in Carolina for years. The seam ball he fired to Tommy Tremble to split safeties in Cover 2 and the deep dig route to Diontae Johnson on third-and-long were real-deal NFL throws — throws that require a veteran-like sense of timing and confidence to complete.
Dalton also threw an absolute beauty to Adam Thielen deep down the seam for a touchdown. That’s the exact kind of throw that was off the table beforehand for the Panthers. Per TruMedia, Young has completed only one pass between the numbers and beyond 20 yards in his NFL career. Dalton had two in this game alone: the Thielen touchdown and the previously mentioned throw to Johnson.
What a throw by @andydalton14! What a catch by @athielen19!
📺: #CARvsLV on CBS/Paramount
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/9kJOeUA22e— NFL (@NFL) September 22, 2024
Dalton isn’t suddenly going to turn the Panthers into a scoring machine. He put some throws in danger this game, as evidenced by the five pass breakups the Las Vegas Raiders had. Dalton’s arm is better than Young’s, but it still leaves something to be desired at times. Dalton also was mediocre under pressure, though he did make a sweet touchdown toss to Johnson in the red zone while under duress.
| Comp. | Att. | TDs | WR Adj. | PD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total
|
27 (1 drop)
|
37
|
3
|
1
|
5
|
|
Under pressure
|
3
|
7
|
1
|
0
|
2
|
|
Out of pocket
|
1
|
3
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
|
5-plus pass rushers
|
13 (1 drop)
|
19
|
0
|
1
|
2
|
|
Man coverage
|
13
|
17
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
|
Zone coverage
|
8
|
13
|
1
|
0
|
2
|
|
Tight-window throws
|
6 (1 drop)
|
11
|
2
|
0
|
4
|
|
Open-window throws
|
15
|
19
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
The takeaway with Dalton’s performance isn’t that he’ll be able to play like this every week or anything. We all know he won’t finish the year as one of the league’s most productive passers.
The lesson is that going from overtly limiting quarterback play to something resembling competence can go a long way with the right play caller, quality performances from the offensive line and a couple of decent pass catchers. That’s all we should hope to see out of the Panthers offense.
Stat check: The Raiders’ (terrible) run game
Never in my life as a conscious human being has there been a run game as ineffective as Las Vegas’ this year.
Three weeks into the season, the Raiders hold a putrid 20 percent rushing success rate, meaning one out of every five runs gets them enough yards to stay on schedule with the sticks; the other four are meaningless or downright harmful. TruMedia’s database for rushing success rate only goes back to 2000, but the Raiders’ mark is the lowest over that span.
The next-worst team is the 2013 Baltimore Ravens, a squad battling a gnarly Super Bowl hangover, at 24.6 percent. It’s worth remembering, too, that 2013 was a different era of football — six of the 15 worst rushing success rates since 2000 happened in 2013, in part because teams started loading the box with eight bodies and selling out to stop the run around that time. We don’t live in that world defensively anymore.
A couple of recent teams give a better measure of what’s going on with this Raiders team. Remember the 2021 Houston Texans? Davis Mills was their quarterback, and David Culley was their head coach. That team finished at 27.5 percent. Or what about last year’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Everyone and their mother knew that team couldn’t run the ball, and it finished the season with a 28.3 percent success rate, well above the Raiders’ current clip.
Playing the Panthers in Week 3 was supposed to be a “get right” game for Las Vegas, too. The Panthers entered that matchup having allowed successful runs on 46.2 percent of the opposition’s attempts, the fifth worst in the league, and they were missing their best player (defensive tackle Derrick Brown).
Despite the stars aligning, the Raiders still managed only a 26.7 percent success rate in Week 3 — better than the first two weeks but still god-awful.
It goes without saying, but the Raiders will not be a stable offense living this way. Overwhelming pass-catching talent and the occasional flashes of Gardner Minshew magic go only so far. An offense needs some real substance to be consistent. We knew going into the year that Minshew wasn’t going to provide that, and now we know the run game won’t either.
Needle-mover: Broncos DL Zach Allen
The Denver Broncos’ deep group of edge rushers was the reason to be interested in this defense going into the season. Baron Browning, Jonathon Cooper and Nik Bonitto are all 245 pounds (give or take) of pure explosive speed, and free-agent addition John Franklin-Myers was brought in to be their big beefy counterpart.
Three games in, though, an interior defensive lineman is stealing the show.
Allen has been one of the best pass rushers in the league, regardless of position. His raw power and 90th-percentile arm length give him a clear way to win, but that’s not all he has. Allen’s lateral agility is nasty for a big man, especially when paired with some of the violent hand usage he flashes — surely, something he learned from playing alongside J.J. Watt in Arizona to start his career.
The numbers back up the film. According to Next Gen Stats via NFL Pro, Allen has the seventh-best pressure rate (19.1 percent) in the league. The two guys directly ahead of him are perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidates Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons.
None of the other players ahead of Allen are interior players, either. They’re all guys who get to rush off the edge.
The schedule plays into this a little, of course. Allen has gotten a game each against the Seattle Seahawks and the Buccaneers, neither of which has acceptable guard play at the moment. Still, Allen has dominated those units exactly like a great player would be expected to. And he’s been a menace versus the run, as well. Once or twice a game he’ll lose the leverage battle on a double-team and get blown off the ball, but otherwise he has lived in the backfield.
Allen’s dominance was obvious on one particular drive against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 2. Allen started the set of downs by sneaking backdoor on a block to hit the runner in the backfield and allow his teammates to rally for a no-gain play. On the next snap, Allen swiped his way past guard James Daniels to force Justin Fields to throw the ball away and put the Steelers at third-and-10.
That’s the kind of force Allen has been all year. He’s been the engine for a defense that’s playing above expectations in the early goings of the season. So long as Allen plays at this level, Denver’s front will wreak havoc every week.
Scramble drill: Caleb Williams is not the problem
I don’t have faith that the Chicago Bears’ offense will turn things around, and I don’t want to repeat myself all year, so let’s get this out of the way: Williams is not the problem.
Access denied. 🚫
📺 CBS pic.twitter.com/JVzddH6p0F
— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) September 22, 2024
Some fraction of the Bears’ struggles come down to rookie growing pains for Williams. He was uncharacteristically inaccurate in Week 1. A few typical rookie mistakes here and there have cropped up, most notably the interception he threw late to the flat against the Indianapolis Colts. That’s going to happen with supremely young quarterbacks thrown into the fire.
The bulk of the Bears’ near-unwatchable offense is about the offensive ecosystem and run game. Williams has been playing NFL football on Hard Mode through three weeks.
Let’s start with the run game. Chicago’s rushing offense is about as bad as it gets. The Bears are 30th in rushing success rate (25.5 percent) and dead last in yards per carry (2.7) on early downs, according to TruMedia. They are fifth worst in yards before contact and second worst in yards after contact.
The film is littered with clips of linemen, particularly along the interior, climbing to the wrong guy on double-teams, being slow off the ball or generally being outmatched by the guy across from them. It’s bad, from coaching and talent perspectives, which is exactly how it felt with Shane Waldron’s Seahawks offense a year ago. The backs in Chicago aren’t making up for it, either.
Williams, predictably, has the third-most dropbacks on third-and-6 or longer (25) this season, behind Deshaun Watson and C.J. Stroud. That’s a tough way to live as it is, let alone behind an offensive line that is constantly cratering.
The burden was all on Williams in Week 3, too. Williams registered 56 dropbacks against Indianapolis, a wild number for a rookie in their first month of play.
There have been 47 instances of a rookie taking at least 50 dropbacks in a game since 2012, per TruMedia. The only five wins in that bunch came from three Andrew Luck games, a Justin Herbert win over the New York Jets and (by some miracle from above) a Nick Foles victory over the Bucs.
Despite it all, Williams showed the stuff that got him drafted with the No. 1 pick. You could see him throwing away from a defender’s leverage in the quick game and sliding around the pocket with a firm base under him to get to a checkdown. Veteran stuff.
Williams also finally got Rome Odunze activated with a couple of huge throws on over routes (one of which was taken off the board by a penalty) and a go ball. To open the second half, Williams made Laiatu Latu miss in the open field on a bootleg before finding Cole Kmet on the move. The details and flash were on display.
None of this is to say Williams is secretly playing like peak Patrick Mahomes. He’s still missing on rhythm deep throws more than he should, and his aggressive nature boils over into outright stupidity from time to time. Nothing out of the ordinary for a talented rookie quarterback, but growing pains that hurt the offense nonetheless.
The point is I’m not convinced there’s any reason to panic about Williams, or even to blame him for the lion’s share of Chicago’s problems. The No. 1 pick is going to be fine.
(Lead illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Top photo of Bryce Young and Andy Dalton: Ian Maule / Getty Images; Andy Dalton chart illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)
