Either the Baltimore Ravens or the Kansas City Chiefs were going to wake up Monday with a 1-3 record. The Ravens became that team, but they lost more than their Week 3 matchup against the Chiefs. They also lost more key players to injury, including two-time MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson.
Just 24 days ago, eight NFL team executives voted the Ravens as the class of the AFC, just ahead of the Buffalo Bills and Chiefs.
What do those execs think now? I called four of them Sunday night to see how much they were wavering on Baltimore. The Pick Six column for Week 4 leads with their thoughts and my own research on the Ravens, who last missed the playoffs in 2021, when Jackson missed five late-season games and nearly all of a sixth.
The full Pick Six menu this week:
• Ravens’ ominous 1-3 start
• Concerns for Jaxson Dart
• 3-1 Jags steal more than signs
• Seattle’s double move at QB
• The real Wilson HOF discussion
• Two-minute drill: Packers D!
1. Oddsmakers still favor the Ravens to win the AFC North, which might tell us more about the AFC North.
The Ravens this season have blown a 40-25 lead at Buffalo in the final 4:05 to lose 41-40. They failed to hold a 21-14 third-quarter lead against Detroit, falling 38-30. Then came Sunday, when the Chiefs went for it four times on fourth down, succeeding every time, and punted just once — after a 10-play drive that netted only 14 yards but drained 6:43 off the fourth-quarter game clock.
Discouraging stuff for Baltimore.
“Look at the schedule they’ve played,” an exec who ranked Kansas City first and Baltimore second entering the season said. “I mean, that’s just what it is. They’re going to play some lesser teams, and they’re going to win those games. I think they’ll be fine.”
Jackson’s hamstring is an outsized variable. Were the Ravens holding him out late in the game as a precaution while trailing by double digits on the scoreboard? Or was this something more serious?
“I mean, level of concern to make the playoffs? I think they’ll make the playoffs,” said an exec who had the Ravens first and the Chiefs second heading into the season. “Level of concern to reach preseason expectations of a Super Bowl-contending team? I am worried.”
This exec wondered how much the Ravens missed defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, who has transformed Seattle’s defense into a top-10 unit. He wondered whether Jackson’s hamstring injury might linger. And he thought the way Detroit spied Jackson while dropping seven into coverage might be copied effectively.
“But are they gonna play the Lions, Chiefs and Bills every week, and is Derrick Henry going to fumble in the fourth quarter every week?” this exec added. “Probably not.”
The other two executives raised concerns about Baltimore’s ability to win with its defense.
“They don’t feel as explosive on offense as they’ve been in the past,” one said. “That’s a scary proposition with all of those veteran players getting dinged up. I do think it’s a reason for concern.”
By the end of Sunday, the Ravens were playing without their five highest-paid players by average salary: Jackson ($52 million), defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike ($24.5 million), left tackle Ronnie Stanley ($20 million), linebacker Roquan Smith ($20 million) and cornerback Marlon Humphrey ($19.5 million). Imagine the Chiefs missing their top five: Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones, Trey Smith, Jawaan Taylor and Creed Humphrey. It wouldn’t be pretty.
The Ravens’ percentage of plays gaining 16-plus yards through the air and 12-plus yards on the ground has actually climbed since last season. Though the team has only one play gaining 50-plus yards this season after producing 10 in 2024.
The Ravens rank 30th in defensive EPA per play during their 1-3 start, their worst ranking through Week 4 since 2019. That 2019 Baltimore defense ranked second from Week 5 through the rest of the regular season. As the table below shows, the Ravens have, in recent years, turned slow starts on defense into hot finishes.
That type of turnaround can happen again this season if Madubuike and fellow starting D-linemen Travis Jones and Broderick Washington return from injury, if starting pass rusher Kyle Van Noy returns and if new injuries to Smith, Humphrey and 2024 first-round cornerback Nate Wiggins (who was carted off with an elbow injury Sunday) turn out to be minor. (Update: Coach John Harbaugh announced Monday afternoon that Madubuike is out for the season with a neck injury.)
The 2022 Ravens defense made a huge jump after adding Smith at the trade deadline. The 2024 defense got increased late-season production from Ar’Darius Washington, Wiggins and others.
Those defenses (2022, 2024) also had new coordinators, so there might have been a natural break-in period. That is not the case now.
When the defense and special teams faltered early last season, Jackson and the offense frequently supplied enough production to win anyway. That hasn’t happened to the same extent this season, and will not if Cooper Rush is the quarterback.
Worse for the Ravens, Kansas City is getting healthier. Chiefs receiver Xavier Worthy returned to the lineup Sunday and caught five passes, including gains of 37 and 28 yards, and added a run of 35 yards. Worthy now has his three highest single-game yardage totals in his last three full games: 101 (85 receiving) against Buffalo in the AFC title game, 157 against Philadelphia in the Super Bowl and 121 (83 receiving) against the Ravens on Sunday. If that trend continues and Worthy can stay healthy, advantage Chiefs — especially with fellow receiver Rashee Rice eligible to return from suspension in Week 7.
Not that the Ravens can be too concerned about the Chiefs. They have their own issues, and plenty of them.
2. If Jaxson Dart’s Hollywood stuntman debut was any indication, Russell Wilson will play again for the Giants.
The Giants were, shall we say, interesting with Dart taking over for Wilson as the starting quarterback. They won, holding off the favored Los Angeles Chargers, 21-18, even after losing top receiver Malik Nabers to injury. Though it was clear the Giants and Dart must change the way he plays to remain available each week.
Dart, limping through the second half after straining a hamstring, finished his first start with seven designed rushes, three scrambles, five sacks, two hits on incomplete passes and one spotter-initiated concussion check on a play negated by penalty. He did not slide or step out of bounds on any of those plays, going untouched only on his 15-yard touchdown run.
That’s a lot of physical stress on the body for a team that led the whole way and averaged 3.6 yards per play, second-lowest in 198 Giants victories since 2000, per TruMedia.
“That’s how he played college ball, too,” an executive from another team said. “And now, teams have film on him.”
Dart had 16 total designed rushes, scrambles, sacks and additional QB hits in 34 plays where those outcomes were possible. That’s 47.1 percent of plays, the second-highest mark for a Giants starting quarterback in the team’s last 419 games (2000-present).
Like the Colts’ Anthony Richardson during preseason, Dart absorbed a hard hit to his front side after failing to see an unblocked rusher. He also wielded his throwing hand as if demonstrating a Deacon Jones head-slap at the end of a penalty-negated 39-yard scramble (imagine if Dart had broken his hand in that manner). The Giants sent Dart on inside runs in short-yardage and goal-line situations as if he were Cam Newton or Tim Tebow.
There were good plays as well. Dart all but finished the Chargers by completing a 10-yard pass to Theo Johnson on third-and-5 with 2:38 remaining. He’ll just need to learn self-preservation to maximize his chances of staying in the lineup. As coach Brian Daboll — who once coached another precocious young quarterback in Josh Allen — said to him on the sideline after Dart unnecessarily took a hard hit in the preseason finale against New England, prompting another spotter-initiated concussion check: “Slide!”
3. The Jaguars are 3-1 under new coach Liam Coen after holding off San Francisco in Week 4. The team’s turnover luck isn’t all luck. As for those sign-stealing comments …
There is no column for “signal stealing” in the official NFL gamebook from the Jaguars’ 26-21 victory over the 49ers. If there were, it might be empty, despite what 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said this week.
“Jacksonville, this is a very young but talented group. Liam and his staff, a couple of guys coming from Minnesota, they’ve got, legally, a really advanced signal-stealing type system where they always find a way to put themselves in an advantageous situation,” Saleh said Thursday. He emphasized that the Jaguars were not breaking any rules.
The comments generated buzz among coaches in the league, with some acknowledging they’ve been asked about it by just about everyone they’ve encountered. Some thought Saleh was playing mind games, hoping to affect the Jaguars’ operation. Others thought he was paying a compliment. One said he thought Coen was probably upset because the comment would alert other Jacksonville opponents to do more to disguise their signals.
“Keep my name out of your mouth,” Coen shouted toward Saleh on the field after the game.
A veteran coach suggested this was not a battle worth fighting for Coen, a first-year head coach in his second season as an NFL play-caller.
“I would just say there’s plenty of crises that are coming that are not under your control to be creating a little bit of a news item for something that is under your control,” this coach said.
The Jaguars are 3-1 mostly because they’ve collected 13 turnovers, a total that did not surprise at least one person.
The voter highest on Jacksonville in my preseason poll of eight NFL executives noted before the season that the Jaguars “will have some turnover luck this year” because “the defensive scheme that (Anthony) Campanile runs emphasizes turnovers.” Every team emphasizes turnovers, but in this case, the voter thought the Jaguars would be especially good at it.
The 13 takeaways are the most by the Jaguars through four games since at least 2000. Their +45.2 EPA off those turnovers ranks second to Pittsburgh (+45.4) this season, per TruMedia.
Coen’s ability to jump-start the Jaguars’ ground game was a key factor raised by another executive entering the season.
“I have a ton of respect how he turned around Tampa’s run game from 32nd to top-five,” this exec said entering the season. “It comes down to how quickly can they get production out of Trevor (Lawrence), who did look better in the preseason.”
The Jaguars are averaging 5.0 yards per carry this season, which ranks sixth. That is up from 4.2 (17th) last season. Their rushing success rate (percentage of runs producing positive EPA) has increased slightly. Their rate of runs gaining at least 12 yards has fallen.
The broader public commentary surrounding Coen’s hiring focused on what he might be able to do for Trevor Lawrence. The QB is on pace to challenge career worsts in completion rate (58.3 percent), yards per attempt (5.9), passer rating (75.9), interception rate (2.8 percent) and EPA per pass attempt (-0.01).
This would be concerning if the Jaguars were 1-3. With the defense collecting so many turnovers, however, Lawrence is living a stress-free life. Jacksonville has trailed on 2.8 percent of its pass attempts, down from 62 percent for Lawrence’s career previously (65 percent last season). That part will not be sustainable, so the time is coming when Lawrence must play better. He nearly cost the Jaguars on Sunday when he stepped out of bounds to stop the clock while Jacksonville was running its four-minute offense.
4. Teams have a hard time moving on from winning quarterbacks. The Seahawks have done it twice and lived to tell about it. What’s the key?
Geno Smith’s run as Seattle’s starting quarterback from 2022-24 proved the team was correct in trading franchise icon Russell Wilson, whose career subsequently unraveled.
The first four weeks of this season suggest the Seahawks might have picked the right time to trade Smith and sign Sam Darnold.
These were high-stakes moves driven by general manager John Schneider in an era when many teams paid upper-tier money for mid-tier quarterbacks, for fear of the unknown.
If Smith had bombed and Wilson had flourished in Denver, the stakes could have been high for Schneider. However, in correctly evaluating Wilson’s career trajectory and what Smith could offer as a replacement (Pete Carroll also deserves credit here), Schneider earned the opportunity to make the call on Smith three years later.
“Most of the league makes fear-based decisions,” another exec said. “They think, ‘I have to draft a high-round quarterback or I have to have a placeholder, and the placeholder I know is better than the one I don’t.’”
One key is making the right evaluations. Having the conviction to spearhead trades unloading two starting quarterbacks is another. That second part carries risk that not all GMs are willing to assume.
“The thing about Seattle is, they have survived the rebuild multiple times,” a third exec from another team said. “There is something to that. Because they won games in the midst of all that, they don’t fear the same things that other guys fear.”
Smith’s production, like Wilson’s, had plateaued. Some of that was beyond Smith’s control. The offensive system Seattle implemented in 2024 put undue stress on the quarterback. A case could be made that Smith carried the offense disproportionately. Smith, though, was also approaching his 35th birthday in October. Darnold won’t be that old until 2032.
Darnold has been efficient (No. 2 in yards per attempt) and explosive (No. 1 in explosive pass rate) despite the Seahawks’ run game struggling to jell so far. Smith’s aggressive style has hurt the Raiders more than it has helped to this point, as he leads the league with seven interceptions, including three Sunday.
Wilson and Smith wanted out of Seattle, which made the Seahawks’ decisions easier. But it’s also true to some extent that those QBs wanted out because the organization had reservations about committing to them. Wilson wanted the offense built around his passing. Smith wanted a better contract one year ago. Seattle resisted both.
“The contrast is, you are seeing other teams double down on guys like Tua (Tagovailoa) and Trevor Lawrence,” the first exec said.
5. Richard Sherman will not be leading the Russell Wilson Hall of Fame campaign. How much should the last few years affect Wilson’s case for Canton now that he’s been benched?
Testimonials from former teammates tend to carry less weight with Hall of Fame selectors than testimonials from rivals, based on the thinking that ex-teammates feel obligated to endorse their friends. What else is a former teammate going to say, right?
Well …
Sherman’s comments about Wilson, his longtime former teammate in Seattle, slammed into the recently benched QB’s candidacy with the force of laser-guided missiles.
“You gotta judge his career off when the Legion of Boom was there, he had a legendary defense, an all-time defense, and how much success he had, and then without that legendary defense, the success he had,” Sherman said during the Amazon Prime Video pregame show Thursday night.
Sherman then moved in for the kill.
“Without that legendary defense, he’s been 4-11, 7-8, 0-3 to start with the Giants,” he said. “He was a winning football player, and people said, ‘Hey, winningest football player,’ all this good stuff, all these accolades. Now, you get to go on your own and you get to prove, ‘Hey, I’m this great quarterback, I’m this guy who is going to be dominant,’ and it just hasn’t worked out that way.”
As a Hall of Fame selector, I think Wilson’s candidacy will benefit from the five-year waiting period after retirement before players can be considered for enshrinement. His inability to succeed outside Pete Carroll’s framework in Seattle is part of the calculus, but so is the 2012-21 run he had with the Seahawks.
The table below compares Wilson’s Seattle tenures to the most illustrious runs made by other dual-threat quarterbacks before enshrinement.
Steve Young’s 1991-99 starting run with the 49ers, Fran Tarkenton’s second run with the Vikings (1972-78) and Roger Staubach’s starting run with the Cowboys (1971-79) came to mind because, like Wilson, all three were highly efficient winners on teams with elite coaches and/or elite defenses.
As for Sherman’s pointed comments, there were well-documented hard feelings between some Legion of Boom-era Seahawks defenders regarding how much credit Wilson got for the team’s success, and how much credit Wilson was happy to accept. It’s still a remarkable departure from established etiquette. Has an all-time great defensive player ever torpedoed his own quarterback’s Hall case in such a manner? Worse for Wilson, Sherman’s Hall of Fame broadcast teammate, Tony Gonzalez, bordered on flippant in dismissing Wilson’s candidacy.
Have we seen the last of Wilson?
“Honestly, I hope we have,” Gonzalez said on the broadcast. “And I say that, just looking at him in his career, his legacy, if ever there was somebody who played himself out of a Hall of Fame, it’s Russell Wilson.”
6. Two-minute drill: Worried about Packers’ defense?
The Packers, coming off a brutal day for their offense in a Week 3 upset loss at Cleveland, suffered through a brutal night on defense in their 40-40 tie at Dallas on Sunday night.
The -22.4 EPA showing on defense was the Packers’ worst since a 34-31 loss at Minnesota in Week 11 of the 2021 season (-22.7 EPA). That was 75 total games ago. It was their third-worst in 152 games over the past 10 seasons.
Yes, the Packers’ special teams were also complicit Sunday night, turning a routine extra point into two points for the Cowboys when Dallas blocked the try and returned it to the end zone.
That was bad, but the Packers did not trade away two first-round picks and more for a better PAT operation. They traded that haul to Dallas before the season because they thought pass rusher Micah Parsons would put their defense, and their team, over the top. That appeared plausible in the first three games and still could happen, but when Dak Prescott passes for 319 yards and three touchdowns without injured No. 1 receiver CeeDee Lamb and two starting offensive linemen, as he did against Green Bay, there’s some cause for concern.
How much? Maybe not too much. As Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said, who is playing better than Prescott this season? Not many.
Just as the Green Bay offense struggled on the road against a tough Cleveland defense, the Packers’ defense struggled against a very capable Dallas offense.
In Week 1, the Cowboys’ offense handed Philadelphia its fourth-worst defensive EPA game in 25 games with Vic Fangio coordinating Philly’s defense. In Week 2, Dallas’ offense accounted for the Giants’ second-worst defensive EPA game since the start of last season, a span of 21 games.
The Cowboys rank second to Buffalo in offensive EPA per play despite an off game at Chicago in Week 3.
• Colts gotta finish: Can’t say I feel much worse about the Colts after their 27-20 road defeat to the Rams. They weren’t going to avoid turnovers in every game all season. Even with Daniel Jones tossing two interceptions, they had a slight edge in average score differential per play.
But if a Colts player loses possession of the ball unnecessarily before reaching the end zone for a third time under the current coaching staff, everyone at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center should have to run gassers for an entire day. From Jonathan Taylor against Denver last season to receiver Adonai Mitchell on Sunday, enough is enough.
• Carolina’s fall: The Panthers started last season 1-3, with their three defeats by a combined 70 points.
Their 1-3 start this season includes a minus-50 differential in the three losses.
If only that were progress.
The idea that Carolina started to build a foundation late last season as quarterback Bryce Young improved took a hit Sunday when New England hung a 42-13 beating on Carolina in Week 4.
What is the Panthers’ identity? What do they do well? How high is their ceiling with Bryce Young? And how in the world did they beat the Falcons 30-0 last week?
• Over-the-Hill Gang: That’s what the long-ago Washington Redskins were known as when then-coach George Allen stocked his roster with aging veterans in the 1970s. The current Washington team ranks first in snap-weighted average age this season, and it showed at times during a 34-27 defeat at Atlanta.
Perhaps all will be well once second-year quarterback Jayden Daniels returns from injury. The age on this roster, though, could become concerning. The Commanders have generally refrained from committing to older players for the long term, so the age could drop significantly in a short period of time if the team decides to go in that direction.
• Bears’ math worked out: Chicago held on for a 25-24 victory over the Raiders after blocking Las Vegas’ 54-yard field goal attempt in the final minute. The ending was interesting because the Bears opted to kick an extra point instead of going for two after taking a 15-14 lead with 11:44 left in the third quarter.
Here’s how teams have handled that decision when leading by one over the last five-plus seasons:
• 67 percent kicked (4 of 6) when the third-quarter game clock was above 7:30
• 90 percent two-point tries (9 of 10) when the third-quarter game clock was 7:30 or below
• 100 percent two-point tries (50 of 50) at any point in the fourth quarter
(Photo of Lamar Jackson: Amy Kontras / Getty Images)
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