Over the first two months of the NFL season, no coach has gotten ripped more than Nathaniel Hackett of the Denver Broncos. Not even Matt Rhule, and the Carolina Panthers already fired him.
Well, let’s take a look at the bottom of the AFC West standings after Week 8, shall we?
Hackett’s Denver Broncos: 3-5
Josh McDaniels’ Las Vegas Raiders: 2-5
Maybe we need to shift at least some of the Hackett jokes and slander to McDaniels, who is having a bad time of it so far in his second go-around as a head coach. If we go by record, Hackett has been better than McDaniels this season. You just haven’t heard as much about how bad McDaniels has been.
The Raiders were listless on Sunday in a 24-0 loss against a New Orleans Saints team that came in with a 2-5 record and was without receivers Michael Thomas and Jarvis Landry and standout cornerback Marshon Lattimore. The Raiders trailed 17-0 at halftime and showed no signs of life. Derek Carr had 43 yards passing in the first half against a Saints defense that has struggled most of the season. Just to show the first half was no fluke, the Raiders came out flat in the second half and immediately gave up a long touchdown to Alvin Kamara. Carr took a ton of punishment and was replaced in the fourth quarter. It’s not like it was a competitive game.
The Raiders shouldn’t be 2-5. They were a 10-win playoff team last season, and then added Davante Adams in the offseason. Maybe the Raiders should have just kept Rich Bisaccia. Bisaccia had five losses in 12 games as the Raiders’ interim coach last season. McDaniels has five in his first seven. The Raiders were a bit lucky last season and a bit unlucky this season. But some of the Raiders’ bad luck this season is their record in close games, and some of that is coaching.
NFL owners just couldn’t give up the idea of McDaniels being a great head coach. They didn’t quit on him after he absolutely bombed with the Broncos many years ago. They didn’t cross him off the list after he told the Indianapolis Colts he’d take their job but backed out before he got on the plane for his introductory news conference. Everyone ignored that practically all Bill Belichick assistants have failed as head coaches, and McDaniels had already failed once.
Raiders owner Mark Davis wanted him, and along with new GM Dave Ziegler he turned the Raiders into Patriots West. It could work out. McDaniels is a smart offensive mind, even if Carr is having a much worse season than last year despite the addition of Adams. It takes any new regime some time to find the right pieces to fit exactly what they want to do. But so far, it looks no better than McDaniels’ time in Denver. The Raiders have been one of the NFL’s most disappointing teams, and Sunday’s fiasco in New Orleans should bring attention to that fact.
McDaniels won his first six games as a head coach back in 2009 with Denver. He is 7-22 as a head coach since.
Carr was supposed to be better with McDaniels, the offensive mastermind. He is not. The Raiders had a chance to build off of last season’s playoff berth. They have not. Las Vegas should have a lot of hope going forward with a new coach who was hailed as a genius for so many years.
They should not. Not yet anyway.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 8 of the NFL season:
WINNERS
Bill Belichick: Everyone who wrote off Belichick this week had to know they were just setting up the punchline for Sunday, right?
The Patriots looked bad in a Monday night loss to the Chicago Bears, but it really isn’t like Belichick forgot how to coach. He was going to eat Zach Wilson’s lunch in Week 8. Everyone knew that, or should have.
The Patriots beat the Jets 22-17 on Sunday. Belichick passed George Halas with his 325th win, counting playoffs, and is now alone in second place on the all-time list. Wilson got a lot of empty calorie yards but he also threw three interceptions that turned the game. The Patriots offense still isn’t fixed, and might not be this season, but New England is more than capable of winning games.
It’s an annual event in the NFL when the Patriots lose a game or two and everyone piles on Belichick. Then the next game he puts on a clinic. It’s predictable by now.
A.J. Brown and Howie Roseman: Again now, why did the Tennessee Titans trade Brown away?
The simple answer is that they completely misread the exploding receiver market, but the other answer is they screwed up. Brown is having a great season and had another big day on Sunday. He had three touchdowns and the Philadelphia Eagles improved to 7-0 with a 35-13 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Brown had 156 yards in the win. He has helped transform the Eagles from a good team to the best in the NFC. The Titans are doing pretty well this season too. But they’d be a lot better with Brown in the lineup. Ask Philadelphia.
The 6-1 Minnesota Vikings: The Vikings don’t always look pretty doing it, but they’re winning.
The Vikings put another win on the board and a little more space between them and the Green Bay Packers with a 34-28 victory over the Arizona Cardinals. They held on for three different drives in the final eight minutes with an eight-point lead, getting an interception, a fourth-down stop and a couple sacks that led to the clock running out.
Is Minnesota really one of the five best teams in the NFL? Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter all that much. They’re winning, which is something most of the rest of the NFC can’t say. They’re now comfortably ahead of the Packers, who were 3-4 coming into Week 8, and that’s more than enough good news for the first half of the season.
LOSERS
Dan Campbell: It just keeps getting worse for the 2022 Detroit Lions, and at some point Campbell’s job security is going to come into question.
The Lions twice had a 14-point lead against the Miami Dolphins, and didn’t even hold that lead into the fourth quarter. The Dolphins, who are 5-0 in games in which Tua Tagovailoa starts and finishes, came back to beat the Lions 31-27. The Lions had a shot to take the lead late, but a fourth-and-one pass was incomplete and that was it.
The Lions seem to be the type of team that folds quickly when there’s any adversity. It has happened a few times this season. Campbell’s rah-rah persona should help prevent that, but it hasn’t yet. The Lions just keep losing, and a season that had some promise before it started has been a nightmare. The Lions went 3-13-1 last season. They’re 1-6 this season. We’ll have to start asking how many wins Campbell needs to collect to feel safe for 2023.
Dallas Cowboys deniers: A popular conversation recently has centered on who is the fourth-best team in the NFL after the Bills, Eagles and Chiefs, or the second-best team in the NFC.
It’s amazing how many people don’t want to say the Cowboys.
Dallas is 6-2 and by now, you need to let go its poor offseason or ugly Week 1 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Cowboys are good. Really good.
Dallas demolished the Chicago Bears on Sunday, 49-29. Tony Pollard had a massive game in place of injured Ezekiel Elliott. He had 147 total yards and three touchdowns. Micah Parsons scored a touchdown after he recovered a fumble and Bears quarterback Justin Fields did the high hurdles over him to avoid touching him down. Maybe the defense could have been better Sunday but that’s overthinking it. The Cowboys had another dominant win.
People might want to claim the Giants, Bengals or some other random team is the fourth-best in the NFL, but that means they haven’t paid enough attention to the Cowboys.
Trevor Lawrence: At some point, Urban Meyer doesn’t fit in the conversation about Lawrence anymore.
Yes, Meyer was a disaster last season and it didn’t help Lawrence in his rookie season. But Meyer didn’t throw an inexcusable goal-line interception to Justin Simmons on Sunday in London. It wasn’t Meyer who, with the game on the line with 1:43 left against the Denver Broncos, immediately threw an inaccurate pass that was picked off to practically end a 21-17 loss to the Broncos.
Lawrence was supposed to be a star for the Jaguars (2-6). Yet, 25 starts into his career, he’s used as a high-end game manager. He had 133 yards passing in Sunday’s loss. The Broncos’ defense is very good. But Lawrence was supposed to be too. And he just isn’t, at least not yet. We have to quit blaming Meyer for that.