Vikings, Packers coaches make the NFC North the NFL’s best division: Sando’s Pick Six

The Minnesota Vikings look like the best team in the NFL’s best division, unless Sam Darnold’s MRI says otherwise. There’s a sentence no one saw coming.

We aren’t crowning anybody after Week 3. Former Vikings coach Dennis Green (RIP) would not allow it. But the first three weeks of this season have been a revelation for the NFC North.

The Pick Six column leads by appreciating elite coaching in Minnesota and Green Bay, while counting the reasons why the Chicago Bears have struggled to join the conversation. We aren’t overlooking the Detroit Lions, who still might be the best team in the end. But there’s a lot to sort through here. The full Pick Six menu:

• The NFL’s most interesting division
• David Tepper, Andy Dalton and Carolina
• What you need to know about Dallas D
• Takeaways from wild Rams–49ers battle
• Rodgers ends Jets’ 24-game drought
• 2-minute drill: Nabers and company

1. Week 4 delivers Vikings-Packers at Lambeau Field. Bud Grant and Vince Lombardi will be looking down approvingly.

Before we run through the North team by team, here’s how a former head coach and general manager size up the division, which has seen the Vikings start 3-0 with Darnold and a dominant defense, while the Packers have won two straight with backup quarterback Malik Willis filling in for Jordan Love.

Head coach: “Right now, it is Minnesota first, then Detroit/Green Bay, then Chicago. You know why I put Minnesota at the top? The defense.”

GM: “I would rank them by the head-coaching jobs. I think Kevin O’Connell has done the best job. Matt LaFleur is second. He has done great with Malik Willis, who I don’t think can play. Dan Campbell, pretty good win at Arizona, where I thought they might lose. I think Chicago is in trouble. That coach (Matt Eberflus) is embattled. I don’t blame the quarterback (Caleb Williams) at all. He is running for his life, just like he was at USC last year.”

• Vikings: This time last season, the Vikings were coming off a loss in which the opposing quarterback, Justin Herbert, completed 40 of 47 passes for 405 yards and three touchdowns. That doesn’t seem possible, the way this Brian Flores-coordinated defense is playing now.

This is the Vikings’ best three-game start on defense since at least 2000 for points allowed (10.0 per game), expected points added (44.7) and success rate (66 percent), per TruMedia. Defensive statistics can be a function of the opponent, but the Vikings have held heavyweights San Francisco and Houston (which Minnesota beat 34-7 on Sunday) to their lowest regular-season point totals since the start of last season.

“They overload, but it ends up being a four-man rush, and they roll up on the receivers on the outside,” an offensive coach said. “They don’t let the quarterback have quick throws. They will bring (pressure) enough to get your attention. Your tendency is to want to get rid of the ball fast. You have to have your protections structured so you can hold the ball a little longer and get the ball down the field, but it’s tough.”

The defensive dominance has allowed Darnold to play stress free, attempting only two passes all season when trailing. But that is not all. Darnold leads the league with eight touchdown passes after tossing four Sunday. He ranks first in percentage of passes gaining more than 15 yards among QBs with three starts. And he wasn’t even assured of the starting job entering the season.

“They get the ball upfield as well as anyone, they do it by design and they make good use of their personnel to make explosive plays,” the coach said. “The combination of what Minnesota is doing defensively and what they are doing in the passing game … s—, they’re for real.”

Darnold also started 3-0 with Carolina in 2021, when he had 21 explosive pass completions, seven more than he’s had this season. That season unraveled, with Darnold tossing six touchdown passes with 12 interceptions the rest of the way. So, there’s still much to prove.

His tone in this clip really concerns me ☹️

Praying for no swelling tonight and good eval’s tomorrow 🙏 pic.twitter.com/3swEwiY5Nu

— cdott (@jjmccaurathy) September 23, 2024

And if Darnold’s knee injury is serious, the Vikings presumably would be in the market to acquire a replacement.

“If something happens there, I think they are f—-d,” an exec said. “You can’t win with Nick Mullens. Kevin O’Connell proved last year he can do better than expected with some of those guys, but when you are down to quarterback three, you are in trouble.”

• Packers: Green Bay acquired Willis less than one month ago. With him in the lineup the past two weeks, the Packers rank first in rushing yards (449), rushes gaining 12-plus yards (12) and percentage of pass plays gaining more than 15 yards (26 percent). They have led on the scoreboard for a league-high 90 percent of plays, never trailing.

Knowing Green Bay beat the Will Levis-led Tennessee Titans and the Anthony Richardson-led Indianapolis Colts provides context without diminishing the accomplishment by too much.

“Everybody expected them to do what Miami did today, just bottom out,” a veteran coach said, referencing the Dolphins’ 24-3 defeat at Seattle without Tua Tagovailoa. “They adjusted to the quarterback and ran the hell out of the ball. You gotta give them credit for what they are doing. Can you sustain that long term? They don’t have to!”

Love could return from his knee injury for the Minnesota game this week.

“I’ll give LaFleur and his offensive staff a lot of credit,” the coach said. “That is the biggest test, when you have to adjust on the fly. You’ve planned it a certain way, and then all of a sudden, you have a whole different set of circumstances.”

• Lions: One potential concern for the Lions, as voiced by an exec before the season, held that opponents would be better prepared for Detroit’s offense after studying it more closely.

If that becomes the case, Detroit should fare worse on offense in rematches. That proved true against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a Week 2 rematch of their playoff meeting, but it wasn’t the case against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 1, another rematch from the playoffs.

Week 4 could be interesting with Seattle coming to Ford Field. The Seahawks’ new coach, Mike Macdonald, was Baltimore’s defensive coordinator last season, when the Ravens handed the Lions their worst loss of the season, 38-6. The Seahawks are 3-0 and leading the league in defensive EPA per play after handling three limited offenses to start the season (Denver, New England, Miami without Tagovailoa). If the Seahawks shut down the Lions’ offense, that will be something.

The Lions ground out a 20-13 road victory over Arizona on Sunday without scoring in the second half, losing tight end Sam LaPorta to a sprained ankle. They rank first in offensive success rate for the season, but 20th in EPA per play and 14th in offensive points per game. They have finished their past two games with negative EPA on offense, a first for them in consecutive weeks since early in the 2022 season.

It’s early to have much of a feel. Detroit remains the team to beat in the division.

• Bears: What a strange mix of timelines and expectations.

Williams and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron are new to the team. Just starting out.

Eberflus is 37 games into his tenure, with only 11 victories to show for it. He needs to win right now.

The Bears did not exactly resist leaning into expectations after using the first pick in the draft on Williams and surrounding him with what some called the best supporting cast for a top-five pick in league history.

“The media gets excited, the personnel people get excited and people expect that guy to come in and just tear it up,” a former head coach said. “They did a good job putting people around him. I do not think the offensive line is very good.”

And that is the No. 1 issue, but in a division featuring LaFleur, O’Connell and the Lions’ Ben Johnson at the offensive play-calling controls, the Bears are the obvious outlier.

“The Bears’ problems, in my opinion, start with the offensive line and the construction of it,” an evaluator said. “Then it’s Waldron, especially when you look at the other coordinators in the division. He is clearly fourth. The head coach is fourth. Right now, the quarterback is surviving on his own.”

2. Andy Dalton showed out. Here’s why I’m not buying the idea that Panthers owner David Tepper forced a quarterback change in Carolina.

Andy Dalton passing for 319 yards and three touchdowns in a 36-22 road victory over the Las Vegas Raiders showed emphatically why the Panthers benched Bryce Young after their 0-2 start.

People really thought Carolina acted prematurely when they sent Young to the sideline?

Team owner David Tepper has earned his reputation by driving ill-fated decision after ill-fated decision. But I’m not buying the widely circulated assumption that he — and not head coach Dave Canales — drove the decision to bench Young. It doesn’t make sense for the two most important reasons:

• Young’s tape through two games was so bad that it should have taken intervention from ownership to keep him in the lineup. An opposing coach who has studied the Panthers called Young’s play “depressing for the franchise” while echoing anonymous player comments suggesting Young has not improved.

• Tepper drove the decision to select Young, amid rumblings that then-coach Frank Reich preferred C.J. Stroud. Why would Young’s top advocate, Tepper, lead the charge to bench his hand-picked QB? Tepper’s history suggests he would be more inclined to ask tough questions of the coaches and team builders.

“I think this was the football guys saying, ‘What else can we do? At least we can run an offense with Andy Dalton,'” an exec from another team said.

Assuming the decision was indeed Canales’, he clearly made the right one.

3. The Cowboys’ defense is in trouble. Dan Quinn got out at just the right time. Here’s the challenge facing new defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer.

Take a look below at the Cowboys’ five worst statistical performances on defense since 2021, a span of 54 regular-season games.

Two of the three worst games were recent. Very recent. As in, the last two weeks.

The Ravens’ 274-yard rushing performance in their 28-25 victory at Dallas on Sunday followed New Orleans’ 190-yard rushing game versus Dallas in the Saints’ 44-19 victory last week.

Hiring Zimmer seemed like a strong move because he has a long track record of fielding strong defenses. But with Dallas losing depth up front in the offseason, and with Zimmer’s scheme and personality differing so completely from those of Quinn, there was risk, too.

“Here is the problem for Zimmer,” an opposing coach said. “Everything was positive all the time with Quinn. Now, it feels like everything is negative. He is coming into a place that has been so successful on defense that the last coordinator got a head-coaching job. The new guy comes in and tries to change things, and the players sometimes say, ‘Wait a minute, we won 12 games last year.’ This can become a tailspin.”

Zimmer’s old-school, sometimes combative approach can, at its best, create a unity that gets more from a group than the sum of its parts. Is that going to work for this team?

“If I were Dallas, I’d be worried,” an evaluator from another team said. “I don’t know how they stop anybody. They lost their best run defenders. They have a bunch of front-seven players that can’t get off blocks and get knocked back.”

4. One of the most remarkable Rams victories during the Sean McVay era came at the 49ers’ expense. Here’s where my mind went.

The injury-depleted 49ers were 6.5-point road favorites against the even-more-injury-depleted Rams, who had lost nine of the previous 11 meetings (including the meaningless 2023 regular-season finale) between the teams.

“McVay has no chance without his whole offensive line, without Puka Nacua, without Cooper Kupp,” an exec from another team said shortly before kickoff.

Down 24-14 with 11:57 remaining, the Rams scored on their final three drives, helped by a 38-yard punt return in the final minute to set up the winning field goal.

"I saw a team respond after a really humbling week last week." pic.twitter.com/XuQ1XioUpw

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) September 23, 2024

The Rams need to keep buying time so they can get healthy.

What about the 49ers?

Their defense faltered badly against the Rams, as did their special teams.

I went into the season wondering if 2024 would be when their star players on offense failed to stay on the field enough for the team to keep its elite edge. That’s still a concern, but if the defense and special teams also falter, we’ll have every chance to determine whether quarterback Brock Purdy can carry more of the burden.

Purdy carried plenty of it Sunday but couldn’t quite overcome the collapse around him. He connected 11 times for 175 yards and three touchdowns with receiver Jauan Jennings, whose 276 yards for the season are 11 more than his total in 13 games a year ago.

It’ll be interesting to see how much Purdy’s supporting cast plays this season.

San Francisco’s big four skill players — tight end George Kittle, running back Christian McCaffrey, receiver Brandon Aiyuk and receiver Deebo Samuel — combined to start 61 games (of a possible 64) last season before the team rested some starters in Week 18. They’ve already missed more starts this season (five).

McCaffrey, sidelined by a calf injury, has yet to play this season. Kittle missed a start to a hamstring injury Sunday. Samuel missed Sunday with a calf strain and could miss additional time.

Perhaps McCaffrey’s absence early in the season will leave him fresher for a stretch run. But with the 49ers making so many playoff runs in recent years, and with their offensive players exposed to increased punishment through their physical play style, there’s the potential for cumulative fatigue.

Over the last three seasons, counting playoffs, Aiyuk leads all NFL receivers with 42 starts (Samuel ranks 19th with 35). McCaffrey leads all running backs with 38 starts (teammate Kyle Juszczyk ranks third with 37). Kittle’s 39 starts rank second among tight ends.

5. Led by Aaron Rodgers, the Jets ended a 24-game streak of futility

Aaron Rodgers looked and sounded more like his former self in the New York Jets’ 24-3 domination of the New England Patriots on Thursday night. More on that momentarily.

First, we must note that the Jets over the past two weeks snapped a 24-game streak of offensive futility. That’s how many consecutive games the team had gone without producing positive EPA on offense even once, until barely getting into the positive against Tennessee in Week 2, and then adding a huge exclamation point against the Patriots.

Rodgers cannot possibly appreciate just how bad the team has been on offense, or for how long. It shouldn’t matter to him, either. But for those who have seen this team’s offense struggle like almost no other, the chart below offers some perspective. It lays out the 24-game streak, bookended by better performances, including the last two with Rodgers in the lineup.
Since 2000, only the 2017-19 Arizona Cardinals have put together a longer streak of negative EPA games in the regular season, according to TruMedia.

Beyond the numbers, which included Rodgers producing more pass EPA (17.9) than he had in all but five of his 134 starts over the past decade, this game showcased some of the flair that has long distinguished his game.

There were fall-away passes delivered with unset feet. There was the flipped throwing wrist befitting an NBA sharpshooter. There was even the familiar Rodgers eye roll and pursed lips when the play-call arrived late, leading to a timeout. Afterward, Rodgers delivered a statement that seemed laughable coming from a Jets quarterback, but not from Rodgers.

“If the expectation is winning, then we are going to celebrate it, but we should expect to win,” Rodgers said. “The next step is expecting to dominate.”

How about beating teams better than the Titans and Patriots? The Jets have Denver, Minnesota and Buffalo next on their schedule.

6. Two-minute drill: Nabers and the first-round rookies

Malik Nabers’ numbers Sunday — eight catches for 78 yards and two touchdowns — do not adequately capture his contributions to the New York Giants’ 21-15 victory at Cleveland.

Snatching the ball from the Browns’ Martin Emerson Jr.? No problem.

This Nabers catch 😲

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/dlgfJSdBbr

— New York Giants (@Giants) September 22, 2024

Laying out in the end zone for a touchdown? Easy.

YOU ALREADY KNOW!

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/Vg7lXDfYqp

— New York Giants (@Giants) September 22, 2024

While rookie quarterbacks have struggled, seven first-round rookie pass catchers are flourishing. Led by Nabers, and with Jacksonville’s Brian Thomas Jr. (Nabers’ teammate at LSU) not playing until Monday night, wide receivers and tight ends from the 2024 first round have combined for more than 1,100 yards receiving. That’s the most for a rookie first-round class in a season’s first three weeks since at least 2000, per TruMedia.

• Raiders coach Antonio Pierce suggesting some of his players made “business decisions” and that the team would do the same in response was … interesting.

Raiders coach Antonio Pierce after Sunday's loss.

"I think as the game went on — I don't think it was the team — I think there was definitely some individuals that made business decisions. And we'll make business decisions going forward, as well."pic.twitter.com/CPTinIi49J

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 23, 2024

Even if Pierce is correct and some players avoided contact out of self-preservation, the Panthers jumped on the Raiders from the beginning, long before any business decisions would have been made. Were the Raiders ready to play?

• Two more disaster plays for Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis — one a pick six, the other a sack fumble — did not anger coach Brian Callahan as much as previous game-changing miscues angered him. That was because the Titans’ 30-14 home loss to Green Bay was about much more than their second-year quarterback. The Packers dominated across the board.

Still, the negative swing plays are adding up through three weeks. Levis has had a hand in five plays losing at least 4.0 EPA — outcomes so bad that they account for about 1.2 percent of offensive plays across the league over the past five seasons, per TruMedia.

The table below stacks these plays chronologically. It also shows how much EPA was lost, a total of 31.23 in games Tennessee lost by a combined 30 points. That includes 12.5 EPA lost in a seven-point defeat to Chicago, 4.6 in a seven-point setback to the Jets and 14.2 in the 16-point loss to the Packers.

• The Denver Broncos had to enjoy seeing rookie quarterback Bo Nix play a turnover-free game for the first time in three starts, while completing nearly 70 percent of his passes and rushing effectively, including for a touchdown. The 26-7 victory at Tampa Bay was among the upsets Sunday.

Coach Sean Payton picked up his 18th victory since Drew Brees’ retirement. This victory, like most of the previous 17, fit a pattern: outsized contributions on defense/special teams, to help offset less productive play from the offense.

The EPA breakdown for the Broncos fell this way: +0.2 on offense, +17.4 on defense and +1.4 on special teams. It adds up to a 19-point victory, with the defense and special teams combining for 18.8 of the differential.

•The Athletic’s Austin Mock has his latest playoff projections for all 32 teams. The four 3-0 teams’ postseason make rates: 95 percent for Kansas City, 71 percent for Seattle, 69 percent for Pittsburgh and 65 percent for Minnesota. The 49ers are at only 59 percent. That seems low.

(Photo of Kevin O’Connell, right, and Justin Jefferson: Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)