If the National Football League first two weeks was a police incident, you would find one of the officers waving onlookers by with the words, “Move along, nothing to see here.”
That is pretty much the line they use whenever there is a lot to see.
The biggest attention getters are those things that happen out of the norm. Well, how about this, the Pittsburgh Steelers are leading the AFC North Division with a perfect record and neither the Baltimore Ravens or Cincinnati Bengals have yet won a game. The Houston Texans are following-up their breakout campaign of 2023 with a pair of wins and yet they haven’t beaten a point spread while no other team in the AFC South, namely the Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans, have notched a win.
Nothing to see here.
The only four NFC teams that have notched back-to-back victories to open this season are the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints.
What? How about the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions? They all have losses while the Los Angeles Rams join the more likely two game losers New York Giants and Carolina Panthers in the NFC winless column.
The defending champion Kansas City Chiefs have opened with a pair of wins but have only outscored their opponents by a combined eight points and on defense have allowed 45 points. That is not the kind of defensive play that we would expect from a team poised to repeat as champion. In Los Angeles, new Chargers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh has his team perfect on the season, tied with the Chiefs in the AFC West, and holding their first two opponents to a combined 13 points, the best defensive mark in football.
Move along people, nothing to see here.
Right.
There is a lot to see … and a lot to evaluate.
Nothing is more revealing to a team’s true strength or weakness than actual results. I always smile when I see, hear or read analysts in the electronic and print media build up teams with losing records as only a blip on their actual projections or downgrade winning teams with the same lame arguments.
Real is real.
Results are the real indicator of who is good and who is not.
It appears the failure of the Carolina Panthers to replace Cam Newton as a franchise quarterback with first pick in the 2023 draft, Bryce Young, has been surrendered in defeat. After a miserable rookie season, Carolina added offensive weapons and a new quarterback friendly head coach, Dave Canales, with the same dire results.
The Panthers have opened Canales coaching career with a pair of lopsided losses while being outscored 73-13. For those of you keeping score at home, that is the most points allowed by a team and the fewest points scored.
The Panthers are still in trouble, and the insertion of Andy Dalton this week as their starting quarterback is akin to you or I suffering a flat on the road and having to replace the tire with one of those subpar spares that you are not supposed to challenge over 50 miles an hour.
Just how long it will take for the Panthers to recover from their horrible decision to trade away their future in draft choices to the Chicago Bears for the first pick in the 2023 draft and then leave C.J. Stroud on the board while taking Young is yet to be seen. But a review of the 58 Super Bowl winners consistently shows that those teams were built through the draft. Organizations that knew what they were looking for and not treating early round draft choices like candy to be given away on Halloween.
The Panthers flunk on both those counts, and while I’m always looking for a team off a loss to be inspired to a big effort, the Panthers simply don’t have the horses to get much done.
Still, the Panthers are handed the sweetest spot on the board this week when they get a shot at the Las Vegas Raiders the week after Mark Davis’s team upset the Ravens on the road. Bettors think the Raiders are going to roll snake eyes on Sunday in Vegas after their huge road win. The Raiders opened as a seven-point home favorite, a line based on early action that has been trimmed to the Raiders by 5½ points.
Yes, it is a horrible spot for the home team to cover a favorite roll, but does that mean betting on the Panthers is the right call?
Nothing to see here.