Who Said Offense Was Dead?

That’s the question to ask after a wild week of NFL games. Three weeks ago, ESPN NFL Draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. said, “The NFL is being ruined by these two high safeties”.

This past week the NFL saw a league-wide jump in scoring as nine teams scored more than 30 points as a team and seven games went over their projected points total. 

We did not have to wait long to see our first 500-yard passer of the season too. Kirk Cousins threw for 509 yards and four touchdowns as the Atlanta Falcons beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in overtime, 36-30. 

Following Cousins in passing yards was Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals and Trevor Lawrence of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Burrow finished the day with 392 yards and five touchdowns against a usually stout Baltimore Ravens defense, while Lawrence’s performance came seemingly out of nowhere, as he finished with 371 yards and two touchdowns against the Indianapolis Colts.

Teams pounded the rock, too. Three of the four 100-yard rushers this week – Tyrone Tracey Jr, Kareem Hunt, and Tank Bigsby were crucial to their teams’ wins on Sunday. Will this trend continue? Have NFL offenses caught up to what NFL defenses are doing? One thing is for certain: offense isn’t dead in the National Football League,

Upsets 

Two major upsets happened in the NFL this week. The New York Giants took down the Seahawks in Seattle and the Arizona Cardinals eked out a win against the 49ers in San Francisco.

Those two losses left fans with more questions than answers. Seattle and San Francisco were the most heavily favored to win last week, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI), which gave the Seahawks a 65% chance of winning and the 49ers a 69% chance of winning. 

The Giants looked impressive against Seattle, putting up 23 points on offense. It very well could’ve been 30 if but for a goal-line forced fumble by the Seahawks’ defense. New York ran the ball effectively, putting up 175 rushing yards and converting seven of 16 third downs. The Giants did this without rookie sensation wide receiver Malik Nabers, who was sidelined with a concussion. 

The Cardinals’ defense wasn’t exactly lights out, with the 49ers out-gaining Arizona with 384 yards of total offense. San Francisco also went six for 11 on third down, outperforming Arizona, which went just three for 10 on third down. But paired with a ground game featuring quarterback Kyler Murray and running back James Conner, the Cardinals led an epic fourth-quarter comeback to upset the reigning NFC champs.  

Robert Saleh

After a 2-3 start to the season, the New York Jets fired their head coach Tuesday morning. This was stunning in itself because Robert Saleh had created one of the better defenses over the past three seasons. The former San Francisco defensive coordinator led the Jets to being the 12th-best defensive unit over the last three seasons and the fifth-best over the past two seasons. 

What makes this so surprising is that Saleh was reportedly “escorted out of the building by the team’s director of security,” Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk reported.

This came as a shock as it was also reported that Jets owner Woody Johnson didn’t tell the players or the staff of Saleh’s abrupt departure. Filling in for Saleh is defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who debuts as interim head coach Monday night against the Buffalo Bills. 

This move comes as such a bombshell because the Jets have had struggles on the offensive side of the ball with myriad quarterbacks rotating through before Aaron Rodgers. Despite Rodgers’ arrival in New York, the Jets offense is in the bottom half of the league in passing yards. But firing Saleh spares offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, who worked with Rodgers in Green Bay.

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