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September’s early headlines have gone to the mainstay quarterbacks. Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson are all performing at extraordinary levels, with their teams going a combined 8–1 and scoring 24 total touchdowns against five interceptions.
But two other quarterbacks, stationed 2,725 miles apart, are playing as well as anybody: Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence and San Francisco’s Brock Purdy.
Purdy has the 49ers playing arguably the league’s best football, with San Francisco 3–0, including a 27–7 shallacking of the Rams in Week 1. Then there’s Lawrence, who leads the AFC South–leading Jaguars, tied for fifth with seven touchdown passes alongside Mahomes among others.
Elsewhere, the Jets are 1–2 but starting to show the future may not be as bleak as it typically looks, while the Panthers are getting better quarterback play than they’ve had since the halcyon days of Cam Newton.
So, what does an unbeaten or winless start mean through three weeks? Historically, it means plenty.
But we start in Jacksonville, where the Jaguars are showing their 13–4 mark a year ago was no fluke.
Trevor Lawrence is an ascending superstar
If you want to know how well Lawrence is playing within the offense, go back to the second quarter of Sunday’s 35–6 win over the Patriots.
On second-and-goal from the 10-yard line, the Jaguars came out in a condensed, two-by-two formation. On the snap, Lawrence dropped back and looked at his two front-side progressions. Nothing. He then snapped his head to the left and saw Jakobi Meyers running a deep in-cut toward the middle of the end zone. The only place for the ball was a tiny window over zone corner Marcus Jones and between safeties Kevin Byard and Jaylen Reed. Touchdown.
Speaking to a team source, the play illustrated everything that’s going right for Lawrence and the offense. The sixth-year quarterback is seeing the field and reading the defense faster and better than ever before. In his second season under coach Liam Coen, everything continued to come together after a scorching end to 2025, when Lawrence had 18 touchdown passes over the final seven regular-season games. Since last year, Jacksonville is now 10–1 in its last 11 games.
Through three weeks, Jacksonville ranks 10th in points and eighth in EPA/play (0.096) when adjusted for garbage time, per RBSDM.com. The offense has chewed up the Browns and the Patriots for 69 points, giving the Jaguars an early lead in the AFC South.
Of course, Lawrence is also benefiting from help around him. The Jaguars are thrilled with rookie sixth-round pick Josh Cameron, who has been a red-zone weapon with two touchdowns. The run game is also thriving without Travis Etienne Jr., who signed with the Saints in free agency. Bhayshul Tuten leads Jacksonville in rushing with 204 yards on 4.7 yards per carry. The ground game was at its early-season best against New England, churning out 137 yards on 4.6 YPC with two scores.
After going 13–4 and winning the AFC South last year, Jacksonville got little national respect this offseason. But if Lawrence continues progressing in Coen’s scheme, the Jaguars won’t be overlooked for long.
Jets’ offensive youth is forming a nice nucleus
In all likelihood, the Jets are still a year away from being a serious playoff threat. At 1–2, they’re tied for second place in the AFC East, two games behind the Bills.
Yet this team feels a little different than past editions. In each of its three games so far, New York has had chances to win, but has only done so in Week 1 against the 0–3 Titans on the road. In their two losses, the Jets were either tied or winning in the fourth quarter, only to see the result go the other way.
Part of the reason for New York’s grittiness? All of its early picks are starting to pay off, including tackles Armand Membou and Olu Fashanu, rookie tight end Kenyon Sadiq and others. Combined with running back Breece Hall and receiver Garrett Wilson, New York has a quality foundation that should be ideal for a rookie quarterback to step into next year, when the Jets have three first-round picks.
Speaking to a New York assistant coach, the performances from these players on rookie deals aren’t just about talent, but also about the work being put in behind the scenes. He cites their collective football IQ as a major plus, while also highlighting the explosiveness and athleticism of Sadiq and receiver Omar Cooper Jr.
In Sadiq’s case, he missed almost all of the offseason program with a sports hernia, but has rebounded to play a crucial role in the offense. Against the Lions on Sunday, Sadiq had seven catches for 105 yards and a touchdown in the 31–24 defeat. With fellow tight end Mason Taylor sidelined with a thumb injury, Sadiq will be increasingly featured in the offense as the Jets travel to take on the high-octane Bears this weekend.
The present remains a challenge at times for the Jets, but their young talent is leading the way toward a brighter future.
Rams are 1–2, but the offense and coach provide reasons to relax
Going into the season, the Rams were deemed a dream team. Three weeks in, they’re 1–2 and looking up at the Seahawks and 49ers in the NFC West.
Still, despite coming off a 30–26 loss to the Broncos, many metrics suggest Los Angeles is the top team we all expected. Thus far, the Rams rank first in total yards, fourth in yards per drive, fifth in yards per play, seventh in rushing yardage and 10th in third-down conversion rate. In short, the offense is humming, but ranks only 20th in points—all this despite star wideout Puka Nacua missing the past two weeks.
Part of the reason yardage hasn’t translated to points is a red-zone offense tied for 21st. Additionally, the Rams had four drives end in San Francisco territory without points in Week 1. On Sunday, Los Angeles did the same twice, including a game-changing pick-six to safety Talanoa Hufanga.
As part of our NFL preview, I profiled Sean McVay and spoke with several coaches about his abilities to keep teams on task. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell reminded me that when he was Los Angeles’s offensive coordinator in 2021, the Rams went through a three-game losing streak. Including the bye week, they didn’t win for a month. McVay held the team together, and it went on to win the Super Bowl.
One of McVay’s admirers is Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who fell short in Super Bowl LVI while in the same role with the Bengals.
“There’s a lot of bright people in our business, and there’s a lot of good coaches,” Anarumo said. “But I think what separates the good from great is the in-game management of calling the game. And he is one of those Andy Reid types where you’re always going to feel like they’re a step ahead of you, whether they are or they’re not. And how he calls the game, the flow of the game, the in-game prep. … He morphs into whatever his team is. You throw in the elite game management, game-calling part of it, where he’s calling the plays. He has a great feel for it.”
Los Angeles has the Eagles coming up, a team that has beaten the Rams in three of their last four matchups, including most recently in the 2024 divisional round.
But if McVay’s group can go to Philadelphia and even its record, the Rams will be in good shape. After a Monday night affair in Week 5 at SoFi Stadium with the Bills, Los Angeles will face the Cardinals, Raiders, Chargers, Commanders, Cardinals again and the Packers, teams that are a combined 7–11, with only Las Vegas having a winning record. Not a dire spot to be in.
We’re seeing a change in how teams play offense
We saw the clues during free agency in March and the draft in April. After the Rams started a new trend by playing more than 30% of their snaps in 13-personnel (one running back, three tight ends), teams across the league began loading up on block-first tight ends to help disguise their intentions.
In free agency, the Chargers gave Charlie Kolar three years and $24.3 million despite logging only 30 catches and four touchdowns in four years with the Ravens. In the draft, the Jaguars spent a second-round pick on Texas A&M’s Nate Boerkircher, a tight end who caught 38 passes over five seasons. The trend continued with the Texans (Merlin Klein), Saints (Oscar Delp) and others looking for versatile, in-line pieces who can present run fronts that can also throw.
As a result, 13 teams have lined up with three tight ends at least 9% of the time. Last year, only four did so. Thirteen teams also are playing three-receiver sets at least 60% of their snaps. Just five years ago, 19 teams were doing so.
“Defenses are now attacking, in many ways, how offenses have traditionally attacked defenses where they’re trying to limit inventory and take away certain aspects of what offenses do by some of the problems that they present,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell told me this summer. “And it’s not just a third-down proposition anymore. It’s now an all-down thing. It’s an every-down thing. It’s a get-back-on-track, second-and-long thing. It’s a first-and-10 thing. It’s a two-minute thing.
“The level at which this game is being played right now, in my opinion, requires a pretty unique way of being willing to do things differently based upon what will help you have the most success that week. It’s such a week-to-week league, with the different challenges that either certain team’s personnel present or the X’s and O’s of certain teams and some teams might present different problems than others. … Teams are much more inclined nowadays to play non-normal match defense. And they want to play different groupings to 11 personnel just because you’ve got three receivers on the field. It kind of equals a world where you can allow somebody to maybe dictate how they want to play that to you.”
To O’Connell’s point, defenses have been getting lighter and faster for years to deal with spread concepts and quick-game attacks, but with offenses loading up with bigger bodies, defenses are blitzing more. Last year, eight teams blitzed more than 30% of the snaps. Over three weeks, a dozen teams have done it. It’s a cat-and-mouse game that is ever-evolving.
Undefeated teams, and winless ones, and the odds ahead
Six years ago, the NFL expanded the playoff field to 14 teams, seven in each conference. Before that, the league had 12 teams since 1990, but how much did the change impact fast- and slow-starting teams?
If you’re a fan of an 0–3 team, look away. Over the past six seasons, 28 teams have gone winless over their first three games. Only last year’s Texans made it to the postseason, giving those teams a 3.5% chance of rebounding. Conversely, teams that ran out to a 3–0 start were almost locks to play beyond the regular season. Of those 28 teams, all but four got into the playoffs (85.7%).
Entering Week 4, the Bills, Chiefs, Raiders, Vikings and 49ers are all unbeaten. Based on recent history, four of them will likely be going to the postseason. As for the Dolphins, Titans, Texans, Chargers and Buccaneers, it’s far more likely that none play an 18th game than any of them getting that far.
If one of the winless squads finds its way back, Tampa Bay might be the best bet, considering its path. The NFC South is predictably dreadful once again, a year after the Panthers took the divisional crown with an 8–9 mark. With the Saints, Falcons and Carolina all at 1–2, the Buccaneers are only a game out of not only reaching the playoffs, but actually hosting a game in the wild-card round. Of course, Baker Mayfield’s dislocated thumb makes their fight back all the steeper, with undrafted quarterback Jalon Daniels set to start Sunday against the Packers.
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MATT VERDERAME
Matt Verderame is a national NFL staff writer for Sports Illustrated, writing features, columns and more. Before joining Sports Illustrated in March 2023, Verderame wrote for FanSided and SB Nation. He’s a proud husband to Stephanie and father of two girls, Maisy and Genevieve. In his spare time, Verderame is an avid collector of vintage baseball cards.
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