Four weeks of NFL games are in the books, but we have not hit the quarter pole of the 2017 season.
We have reached the quarter mark. The quarter pole is a horse racing term meaning a quarter-mile from the finish line.
So let’s take a look at the biggest non-Patriots developments after four of 16 games:
■ Raise your hand if you had Alex Smith and the Chiefs as the NFL’s last undefeated team. Now stop lying.
The Chiefs are no fluke, of course, after compiling a 12-4 record last year. But Smith started out hot against the Patriots and has kept it going, throwing for 1,067 yards and eight touchdowns and emerging as an early MVP candidate. He is thriving in the Chiefs’ running back-heavy offense, which has incorporated many college-level schemes including run-pass options, zone reads, and shovel passes to Travis Kelce. And the Chiefs have the most dynamic duo in the NFL with Tyreek Hill and rookie Kareem Hunt, who leads the league with 659 total yards and has added six touchdowns. Hunt is averaging 7.4 yards on 68 carries, which is so good it’s hard to fathom.
Neither Smith nor coach Andy Reid have the best résumés in January, but the Chiefs look like they’re built for the long haul this year. And if the Chiefs get the No. 1 seed, they’ll be tough to beat at home.
■ To help his team move past its devastating loss in the Super Bowl, Falcons coach Dan Quinn came up with some interesting motivational sayings. During the offseason program, he gave his players wristbands that read, “Embrace the suck.’’ And he implored his players to “Eat a crap sandwich with a smile.’’
“It’s like, ‘I know this run is going to be long, and it’s going to be really hard. But here I go again,’ ’’ Quinn said in May.
Well, the Falcons gladly ate the “crap sandwich,’’ and they’re back for seconds. They enter their bye week with a 3-1 record, with a tough road win against the Lions and a good home win against the Packers. The Falcons’ offense is still flying high, ranked fourth in yards and sixth in points, while the defense is No. 13 overall. It’s been an impressive start for a team that could easily have suffered a Super Bowl hangover.
■ The jury is still out on the Rams, who are one of the biggest surprises with a 3-1 record. Let’s see how the team is playing in December, when the rest of the NFL finally has a read on new coach Sean McVay. But there’s no doubt that McVay, the NFL’s youngest coach at 31, can coach.
The Rams were an utter disaster on offense last year under coach Jeff Fisher, averaging just 14.0 points per game, last in the league. Jared Goff looked like a bust of a No. 1 overall pick.
But Goff and the Rams lead the NFL in points per game (35.5) and their 3-1 record includes an impressive road win over the Cowboys last week. Goff has seven touchdowns against one interception, is averaging an eye-popping 9.2 yards per attempt, and Todd Gurley is an early MVP candidate with 596 total yards and seven touchdowns. Credit McVay for using Gurley to take the pressure off Goff, whose 117 pass attempts are fewer than every QB who has started all four games except for Tyrod Taylor, Jameis Winston, and Cam Newton.
■ The Bills have also been one of the league’s biggest surprises, starting 3-1 under new coach Sean McDermott. They still struggle to put points on the board, and will for as long as Taylor is their quarterback. But McDermott has been everything that Rex Ryan wasn’t, bringing a smart, disciplined approach to Buffalo.
The Bills are allowing the fewest points in the NFL (13.5 points per game), and have prized ball control over all else. After committing a turnover in Week 1 against the Jets, the Bills haven’t turned the ball over in the three weeks since, scoring impressive wins over the Broncos and Falcons.
This probably isn’t sustainable, and the Bills should regress back to a 7-9 team, but they may have finally gotten the coach right in Buffalo.
■ What has happened to the Ravens? Once perennial Super Bowl contenders with John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco, the Ravens are a mess and have regressed on offense under coordinator Marty Mornhinweg. They’re 30th in total offense and scoring (15 points per game), while Flacco leads the 32nd–ranked pass offense with a putrid 150 yards per game and 5.1 yards per attempt. The Ravens have suffered blowout losses at the hands of the Jaguars and Steelers in recent weeks, and look like a team that will miss the playoffs for the third straight year.
■ The best story on the defensive side of the ball is Cowboys pass rusher Demarcus Lawrence, who leads the NFL with 7½ sacks after registering just one all of last season. Lawrence, a free agent after the season with a season high of eight sacks, picked a good time to have a career year.
■ 2017 has been the year of impatience. The Texans replaced quarterback Tom Savage with Deshaun Watson after just two quarters (and the way Watson has played, what took them so long?). Bears quarterback Mike Glennon, signed for $15 million this year, lasted just four games before getting the hook for Mitchell Trubisky this weekend. And the Bengals fired offensive coordinator Ken Zampese after two games
■ Elsewhere across the league: Dolphins fans have grown a newfound appreciation for Ryan Tannehill, who is out for the year with a torn ACL. They have the league’s worst offense under Jay Cutler (8.3 points per game), and they scored just 6 points the last two weeks in losses to the Jets and Saints.
The Steelers, despite a 3-1 record, look like they’re experiencing a little trouble in paradise. Le’Veon Bell, who reported to the team on Sept. 1 after holding out for all of training camp, is averaging just 3.7 yards per carry and admitted he hasn’t been in the best game shape. And Antonio Brown threw a temper tantrum on the sideline last weekend.
The holdout for Texans left tackle Duane Brown has lasted five weeks, with neither side budging. Brown can still show up after the eighth week and get credit for a full year’s work, but this is the ugliest contract holdout the NFL has seen in awhile.
And in Indianapolis, Jacoby Brissett has gotten a golden opportunity to start while Andrew Luck remains out, but he hasn’t exactly been lighting it up. Brissett is averaging 170.8 passing yards per game with two touchdowns, two interceptions, and a 1-2 record. Brissett has the athleticism and calm demeanor to secure a spot in the league for a long time, but it might just be as a backup.
HOME OFFICE
Updating some league matters
■ We’ve already grown weary of the weekly obsession surrounding the NFL’s TV ratings.
The numbers are easily spun by both pro-NFL factions claiming that the ratings are still strong, and anti-NFL factions looking for evidence that the league’s popularity is slipping. For example:
Anti: “The Week 4 national games were down 8 percent from last year’s Week 4.’’
Pro: “But the Fox game was up 9 percent, and the overall ratings for all of the windows on Sunday were up 3 percent.’’
Anti: “CBS’s Sunday ratings have dropped 11 percent from last year.’’
Pro: “But the ratings are up 6 percent from Weeks 2-4, which we think was an effect of Hurricane Irma in Week 1.’’
And on it goes. Much of the variation can likely be attributed to the schedule — the Patriots, Cowboys, and Packers draw eyeballs, and the Jaguars, Browns, and Panthers do not. There’s also no question that more fans are cutting cable cords and not watching football in a traditional fashion.
But “Sunday Night Football’’ has been the No. 1-rated show on TV for six years running, and NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart said it is currently the only show averaging more than 20 million viewers. “Thursday Night Football’’ is a top-five show. Those are the most telling facts about the NFL’s popularity.
“Still the most valuable content and most watched content on network television,’’ he said last week. “We feel like we’re in a very solid position.’’
■ The Chargers are a mess in Los Angeles. They reduced capacity from 30,000 to 27,000 at the StubHub Center because they had trouble selling seats, the team’s two home games have been overrun by visiting fans, and the Chargers did worse in the local TV ratings last week than four other games, including the Dolphins-Saints game that kicked off at 6:30 a.m. in LA.
There has been Internet chatter about the team moving back to San Diego, but that’s all it is. Lockhart was clear last week that “there is no discussions of returning to San Diego from the league or at the club,’’ and reiterated that the Chargers knew that winning fans in LA would be a “process.’’
The sad reality is that while the move from San Diego was a public relations black eye for the team and the league, it’s a glaring illustration that regular fans don’t mean too much for an NFL team’s bottom line.
The Chargers will continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in “national revenue’’ ($244 million last year, mostly from TV deals), and while attendance could suffer, they will be able to sell luxury suites, corporate signage, and other high-priced inventory when they move into Stan Kroenke’s new mega football palace in 2020, never again having to worry about getting a new stadium.
And the owners won’t speak up, because starting in 2019 they will each receive about $22 million from the Chargers’ $650 million relocation fee.
■ For Weeks 5 and 6, the NFL is holding its “Crucial Catch’’ campaign again for cancer detection, but the players and field won’t be awash in pink, as in years past.
After raising about $18 million over nine years for the American Cancer Society, the NFL is expanding the program beyond breast cancer to now include several forms of cancer in which early detection is crucial.
Some teams have decided to focus on a specific form of cancer, while players can wear shoelaces, cleats, and wristbands of any color that represents a cancer they choose to support. It doesn’t have to be the same form of cancer that the team is supporting.
ETC.
Patriots’ kicking is on an uptick
■ Stephen Gostkowski has had an impressive start. He’s 12 for 12 on field goals, including a franchise-record 58-yarder, and his only blemish is a missed extra point in Week 2. Equally impressive is his ability to pop the ball up high and short on kickoffs.
Through four weeks, Gostkowski had the lowest touchback percentage in the NFL, at just 36 percent (nine touchbacks on 25 kickoffs). The league average is 65.7 percent, with only four teams under 50 percent. It hasn’t seemed to directly translate into field position though, as the Patriots are 18th in average starting field position (24.5-yard line).
■ The Patriots don’t like quarterback Taylor Heinicke quite enough to put him on the 53-man roster, but they like him enough to pay him $15,000 per week, or more than double the regular practice squad pay of $7,200. An athletic, 6-foot-1-inch quarterback out of Old Dominion, Heinicke spent two years as a third-stringer in Minnesota before being released at the end of training camp and signing in New England on Sept. 23.
■ Looking far too early at the 2018 schedule, there has been some thought about the Patriots making a return trip to London since they are scheduled to play at Jacksonville, which plays a home game in London every year.
But don’t discount the Eagles, Titans or Texans heading across the pond. They are three of the six teams that have not yet played in London since the international series began in 2007, and all three are on the Jaguars’ 2018 home schedule. The Eagles, especially, seem like they could be a big hit in London. The Raiders, Panthers, and Packers are the others who have not yet played over there.
The Patriots certainly make sense, but they have already been to London twice, most recently in 2012. They also will play a game in Mexico City later this year.
Extra points
In an ESPN piece last Sunday, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith accused commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL of an “end run’’ around union leadership when it invited a few players to speak with Goodell and owners about kneeling and social issues without going through the NFLPA (the NFL again spoke with players at headquarters this past Tuesday). Smith made clear the distrust the NFLPA felt about the league’s overtures, and accused the NFL of trying to buy the players’ silence. Responded NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart on Tuesday: “Mr. Smith can speak for himself. He seemed to have a good amount of time to spend with ESPN over the last week, and he’ll decide the best use of his time. We haven’t trumpeted many of these conversations, but the commissioner has talked to dozens and dozens of players, over the last 6-8 weeks, and it has intensified over the last two or three weeks. I don’t put too much stock in the idea that there’s growing mistrust, I think it’s just the opposite.’’ . . . Between his stubborn and unrepentant act on the podium at Super Bowl 50, to the way he regularly makes reporters sit around for an hour after a game for a news conference (also delaying his team’s ability to get on a flight and head home), to his sexist comments to a female beat reporter last week, Cam Newton continues to project an immature, egotistical, and flat unlikable persona . . . Scanning through the NFL’s extensive statistical database last week, here is our favorite: Vikings punter Ryan Quigley has punted 16 times this year, and has allowed minus-1 return yard . . . Some notable running backs are struggling to get going on first and 10. Per the researchers at ESPN’s “NFL Matchup,’’ LeSean McCoy is averaging just 2.4 yards per carry on first and 10, Le’Veon Bell and Ezekiel Elliott are averaging 3.0, and Marshawn Lynch is at 3.1. Lynch has been fun for the fans in Oakland, but he is averaging just 3.4 yards per carry with a long of 14 this season.
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin. Material from interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.
