Week 3 of the NFL regular season is off and running. As we’ve been doing all season, we’ll publish the takeaways Sunday and update them live through Monday morning. So come back again if not all 10 are here yet …
Philadelphia Eagles
We don’t quite know who the Philadelphia Eagles are yet. They have Vic Fangio running the defense and Kellen Moore running the offense, and that’s a lot of change for a team with an incumbent head coach. They’ve had injuries, too (we’ll get to those), and a funky schedule to start the season (Brazil, then a short week coming out of Week 2).
One thing I think we can say, though, is that they’re a pretty resilient bunch.
You can also call them 2–1 after gutting out a 15–12 win over a red-hot Saints team in New Orleans, and coming off a heartbreaker of a loss at home to the Atlanta Falcons.
“It was tough to lose that game on Monday night,” tight end Dallas Goedert told me over the phone from the postgame locker room. “We just talked about how we got to focus on the details. We can’t hurt ourselves. We got to stay ahead of the sticks. We talk a lot about ball security. We still need to do a better job of that. I don’t think we won the turnover battle today. That’s something we continue to focus on and we have to clean up. Anytime we get to the red zone, we got to score more touchdowns, because that’s what really wins.”
Then, realizing a lot of those things didn’t happen Sunday, Goedert adds, “It was just making sure we all stayed true to each other, stayed true to what we believed in. Good things happen when we do.”
What the Eagles did have Sunday was enough, and Fangio and Moore played a big role in the end, as the players hung in there like a boxer in the 12th round.
Perhaps the game’s biggest play rode on simple stuff—Moore and the Philly coaches knowing that the Saints were heavy on man coverage in critical spots. It paid off big-time with the Eagles on their last legs, in third-and-16 with 11:16 left and the ball at their own 36. The offensive coordinator called for a mesh route, with crossing routes from opposite sides designed to pick defenders.
“Got to give credit to my guy Jahan Dotson,” Goedert says. “He did a great job setting the pick. A couple of the defenders ran into each other. When I caught the ball, I turned and saw green grass and said, I got to get on my horse.”
He rode that horse for 61 yards, after the pick cleared out three Saints, and down to the Saints’ 4-yard line. Saquon Barkley—another one of the afternoon’s heroes with a 65-yard touchdown run—did the rest, covering the remaining four yards on the next step, then running through the guts of the Saints’ defense for the two-pointer and the octopus (shout out to MMQB editor Mitch Goldich).
“He’s a special player, one of the best running backs I’ve ever seen,” Goedert says. “His breakaway speed, he’s got that. He’s got the toughness to run through and get the extra couple yards. He’s got the quickness to make somebody miss at the line and still have positive plays. But the coolest thing about him is just the person he is. He’s a great locker room guy.”
And that’s without even getting to a defense that held a Saints offense that scored 91 points in its first two games to two field goals and a touchdown, just six days after yielding a game-winning drive in the final moments of the loss to Atlanta. Or mentioning that the fourth quarter transpired without A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith in there with the offense.
All the way around, the Eagles are positioned now to get going. After a trip to Tampa next week to try to avenge its playoff ouster, Philly gets its bye, then a much more normal stretch of five consecutive Sunday games. So while the game against the Buccaneers won’t be easy after Tampa lost Sunday to the Denver Broncos, it does give the Eagles an opportunity to build off this win, reset a little bit, and continue to get used to their offensive and defensive systems.
“I think the defense figured it out today,” Goedert says. “They played great against a team that was averaging 40-plus a game. They were able to hold them, which was incredible by them. It seems like they’re figuring it out. Same thing for the offense. We got to figure out how Kellen’s going to call the game. That’s just something that we’re going to continue to develop and he’s going to continue to develop.”
Which is to say the Eagles will continue to develop, with the hope that some of the most significant bumps are behind them. After the way the past three weeks set up, they certainly have a right to feel that way.
Los Angeles Rams
That was a program win for the Los Angeles Rams. We’ll get to why in a minute. But, first, it’s worth mentioning what the team’s own cameras caught coach Sean McVay saying to Matthew Stafford in the wake of a 27–24 win over the archrival San Francisco 49ers.
“Matthew!” McVay yelled, in the postgame chaos. “You’re such a f---ing stud!”
There were lots of reasons for the coach to say it after this one.
There was the 16-play, 87-yard drive he led at the end of the first half, which gave the Rams hope, and a spark, going into the break. There was the 50-yard bomb to Tutu Atwell that changed everything in this one, with less than three minutes left. There was the awareness to see De’Vondre Campbell Sr. matched up on tight end Colby Parkinson, and throw at that matchup downfield, a pass that drew a 25-yard interference call and set up the 37-yard game-winning field goal for rookie kicker Joshua Karty.
But my sense is that it really wasn’t any of that to cause McVay to let his emotion boil over and deliver the superlatives to his quarterback—he once called him a “bad motherf----r” in a conversation he and I had—that he’s been known to foist on Stafford every now and then.
This time, as I see it, it was more about a gutsy effort delivered without receivers Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua (his two most trusted targets), or starting linemen Joe Noteboom, Steve Avila and Jonah Jackson (his left tackle, center, and high-paid bodyguard). And it was about instilling belief in the rest of the guys that it could be done, with a similarly banged-up, but still highly formidable Niners team coming to town.
So this is where GM Les Snead and the personnel department join the party, and how this, again, was a real program win for the Rams.
• Kyren Williams, a fifth-rounder in 2022 and 1,000-yard rusher (in just 12 games) last year, absolutely carried the torch, scoring all three touchdowns, while running up 116 scrimmage yards on 26 touches. His first touchdown was spectacular—coming on a full front flip at the end of the first half. His second was easy. Speaking of that …
• Alaric Jackson started at left tackle, Logan Bruss got the nod at left guard, and Beaux Limmer went at center. All three are homegrown—undrafted, a third-rounder and a sixth-rounder, respectively. It wasn’t perfect. But it was hardly the tire fire it is for most teams when line injuries hit that hard.
• Atwell, a 2021 second-round pick, was very clearly ready for his moment, leading the team in catches and yards, and even delivering a downfield dime to Demarcus Robinson on a trick play that wound up being overturned (Robinson bobbled it while falling out of bounds). He, like Bruss, hasn’t quite lived up to his draft position, but is still more than serviceable in a spot such as this one.
• There was also, on special teams, undrafted free agent Xavier Smith’s 38-yard punt return on his first NFL touch. The Rams kept Smith, who was undrafted in 2023, on the practice squad the past two years, and called him up to the active roster Saturday for his first NFL game.
And then, there’s the way the young defensive front, Byron Young, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske and Jared Verse came up big in the big moments (Young, in particular, was a menace), and in a year when they’re reckoning with the loss of Aaron Donald, here the Rams are.
They’ll get healthier in time. The schedule ahead is manageable. They, clearly, have a lot of guys they can count on. And like McVay said, having that stud at quarterback doesn’t hurt.
Pittsburgh Steelers
It’s time for the Pittsburgh Steelers to roll with Justin Fields. Maybe that’s not fair to Russell Wilson, who’s been sidelined by a calf injury. But that doesn’t really matter—Pittsburgh is 3–0, and the former Chicago Bears first-rounder is a pretty important piece of the puzzle.
And there’s a little piece of evidence of his progress from Sunday’s impressive 20–10 win over the Chargers within the 55-yard touchdown pass he threw to Calvin Austin III.
Look closely at it, and as Tony Romo pointed out on the CBS broadcast, Fields threw that ball with anticipation, as his receiver was breaking into a small window. It’s what, if we’re being honest, he struggled with in Chicago, and it shows the relationship between Fields and new Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith beginning to really sing.
The other underlying reality to that throw is that it’s proof positive of his improvement, week over week, and his fit in Smith’s offense, the one that once resurrected Ryan Tannehill’s career. Fields’s efficiency numbers are good—his completion percentage is up, his sack ratio is down and he’s getting the ball out on time—and he’s playing smart football with a real understanding of what the Steelers need from him. Plus, his game fits with what the Steelers are trying to accomplish across all three phases of the game.
The other thing he’s shown the staff is he’s really smart, and he wants to be coached, which is part of why he’s getting the results he has through three weeks. Even the pick he threw Sunday wasn’t really his fault (it was tipped at the line).
Now, I don’t know what’ll happen when Wilson is cleared. But based on the above, I sure wouldn’t be surprised if the baton is officially passed to Fields soon. The Steelers are 3–0. The run game, which Fields is a part of, is rolling, closing out the Los Angeles Chargers in an emphatic way Sunday. Pittsburgh’s defense might be the best in football, too. And Fields is captaining all of that, again, just the way the Steelers need him to.
So in my humble opinion, it’s time to hand Fields the keys.
Cleveland Browns
It’s fair to be worried about Deshaun Watson right now. The game plan from New York Giants defensive coordinator Shane Bowen was logical. New York wanted to cage-rush Watson, and keep him from extending plays, while continuing to change the picture on him.
The numbers—Watson was 21-of-37 for 196 yards, two scores and a 27.2 QBR—don’t tell the complete story.
Watson took eight sacks, and on a good number of them, he wasn’t feeling the rush or moving in the pocket. He fumbled once when the Cleveland Browns were down just 14–7, when Brian Burns beat Dawand Jones clean off the edge and Watson didn’t step up in the pocket, giving the star pass rusher an easy path to stripping the ball. Watson fumbled again on a botched exchange with Jerome Ford, with the Browns down 21–15 midway through the fourth quarter.
Now, if we’re being fair, things haven’t been perfect around him. He’s working with a new coordinator in Ken Dorsey. He’s gotten only one start from his two starting tackles through three weeks (Jedrick Wills Jr. on Sunday), and things should improve when Wills and Jack Conklin (who also returned to practice this week) are together again. Nick Chubb is working his way back from a catastrophic knee injury.
But you move that treasure chest of picks and guarantee a guy $230 million to fix these sorts of issues, not to become a victim to them. And if we’re being honest, the last time we saw the Watson who starred for four seasons in Houston was when he was actually still donning the Texans’ colors. So the question, then, is whether the Browns can get him back to that—and it’s not like they just started asking it.
In fact, the past two offseasons were dedicated to better working the scheme to fit Watson’s strengths. In 2023, they tried to adjust the offense Kevin Stefanski and OC Alex Van Pelt built, adding elements from Houston and Clemson. Any progress with that was short-circuited by the quarterback’s shoulder injury. This year, they brought in Dorsey to add concepts out of the shotgun and with tempo, and stuff that Bill O’Brien did with Watson in Houston (Dorsey worked in a New England Patriots–centric scheme under Brian Daboll in Buffalo).
The results haven’t been there yet. In talking with Cleveland’s opponents, they concede that, yes, protection is an issue. An inconsistent run game has been, too. That said, his accuracy and footwork have been messy, and, at least to others, there seems to be a confidence issue now, too.
The reality, as I see it, is that Watson’s work ethic—at his best, in Houston, he’d been a constant early in/late out guy—and relationships with coaches will be key here. He needs to hear the truth from the people around him and put the truth to work.
Because the truth of his performance hasn’t been good enough, given the investment.
New York Jets
Now the New York Jets can move on with their season. The three-games-in-11-days thing has been hanging over them since the schedule was released in May. It definitely wasn’t fair. But it also wasn’t going to some football appeals court. So Robert Saleh’s group was going to have to attack the schedule, and they have.
Could it have gone better? Sure. They could be 3–0. But considering the circumstances and the trajectory of the team, the Jets think going 2–1 should serve as a foundation, with a ton of challenges still ahead.
“It’s gonna be every week, to be honest,” Saleh told me from his office Friday morning. “But the messaging has been the same—at the end of the day, we can complain about the schedule or we can attack the schedule. Because the reality is nobody really cares about how you got to game day, they don’t care about what you got going on in your personal life, they don’t care about your body, they don’t care about what’s hurting. They don’t care. Nobody cares.
“All that people care about is how you show up on Sunday, how you perform. So the focus has been, attack every single day to help yourself be your best on Sunday. And I think going through this and understanding the extra that needs to take place to get yourself ready to play, especially on short weeks and traveling back-to-back, and all things that we went through over the first few weeks, I think it’ll help later.”
We’ll get to what’s later—because that’s a doozy, too—but first, we can dive into a little more about how the Jets prepared themselves for this unprecedented start.
For the coaches, attacking it really started in earnest during training camp. The staff would always work ahead on early-season opponents. But this circumstance, plus the fact that two of the three teams they would face through it have entirely new coaching staffs, including defensive coordinators, led the Jets’ staff to go the extra mile. So on every players day off during camp, they’d chip away on planning for the San Francisco 49ers, Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots. They supplemented it by doing Titans work on the Niners trip, and Patriots work on the Titans trip.
From there, there were subtle adjustments. After arriving back from the West Coast at 7 a.m. ET Tuesday Sept. 10—after the 32–19 loss to the Niners—the players had the rest of the day off, then returned Wednesday for Titans week, with what normally would be a padded practice Thursday switched to a no-pads workout. The coaches also paced the players through the week, knowing a trip to the humidity of the South was ahead.
Then, after grinding out a 24–17 win over the Titans, the Jets sequenced Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday meeting-walkthrough work in four-hour blocks: 8 a.m. to noon, noon to 4 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. They had Monday walkthrough at dusk, giving players a little extra recovery time, and had another quick walkthrough at 10 a.m. Thursday to simulate what they’d get Saturday. All week, it was blocked off in a way that players could get extra regeneration time with massage therapists and acupuncturists provided by the team.
“The thought was how to do the best and still reach all the meeting time that they would traditionally get in a week, without the wear and tear on their bodies,” says Saleh, who credited chief of staff Kevin Anderson, coaching operations coordinator Maddie Johnson, strength coach Mike Nicolini and head trainer Dave Zuffelato for their work in planning all of it. “When we tried to check all those boxes, we tried to come up with a schedule that was best for us.
“And it’s been different than what we’ve done in the past.”
Which is also good, since Saleh came into this week 0–3 on Thursdays as Jets coach, having lost those games by a combined score of 101–53. Of course, having a better team helps, too.
And it’s hard to argue the Jets don’t, seeing how they looked against the Patriots.
The scheduling challenges aren’t done, by the way. They have a road Sunday night game in Pittsburgh after a Monday night showdown with the Buffalo Bills. They’ve also got Sunday night games after another Thursday nighter, and a trip to London. And all of that’s before Thanksgiving. But, as Saleh says, the Jets aren’t going to get anyone’s sympathy. So it’s up to them to keep handling these things as they did the past two weeks.
“I felt like we did what was best for the players,” Saleh says. “It just happened to work out.”
New England Patriots
Drake Maye’s time is coming. The Patriots’ rookie quarterback saw his first game action Thursday night, and it was, well, not all that telling. The third pick in the 2024 NFL draft played 16 snaps, and the only possession he got accounted for four of New England’s 11 first downs. He finished 4-of-8 for 22 yards, and took two sacks, so it was a mixed bag for Maye personally. But he certainly didn’t look overwhelmed.
I also believe it is another step toward Maye becoming the starter.
My understanding is that the plan is for that to happen at some point in 2024—this won’t be a full-on redshirt year. They’ll be patient. But Maye’s progress has gotten to the point where the expectation is he’ll earn his way on to the field relatively soon, with the one caveat being that the Patriots’ offense will have to show (as it did against the Cincinnati Bengals, then didn’t against the Jets) that it can play the way it needs to in order to support a rookie quarterback.
As for where the progress has come, it’s really shown up across the board. The area where he’s made his biggest jump is with his footwork, since Maye hadn’t had much training with his feet previously, making that the place where he had the most room to grow. He’s also played better in rhythm, quickened the pace getting through progressions, and was getting rid of the ball faster as the summer transitioned to the regular season.
So to get him ready, the Patriots have been creative in giving him practice work. Jerod Mayo told reporters that Maye is taking about 30% of the first-team reps in practice, and that’s a result of the coaches giving him snaps on plays they know Jacoby Brissett doesn’t need work on (an advantage of Brissett having played for offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt in Cleveland in 2022). They’ve also split scout-team reps between Maye and fellow rookie Joe Milton, so Maye can work against a real NFL defense, and get some time to work to the side with QBs coach T.C. McCartney.
Bottom line: Maye’s time is coming. We’ll get to know a lot more about him, and how he fits into the NFL game, soon.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Week 3 NFL Takeaways: Eagles Learning Who They Are.