5 NFL teams we grossly overrated in the preseason

We’re currently working through the first quarter of the 2024 NFL season. As we start to get a better sense of who’s good, who’s bad, and who’s downright ugly, there’s a chance that maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a handful of teams grossly overrated from the start. Some of these teams were painfully obvious, while others came as a complete surprise. Everyone was frustrating.

The good news about the NFL is that it is a long season full of ups and downs. Coaches, players and teams are allowed to improve over the course of the season. The bad news is that the way teams start in the first quarter of the season often indicates how a campaign will go. Simply put: If you start slowly, you often end up behind the eight ball. These few teams are certainly feeling this now.

So today I’m going to profile five teams that I think have been huge disappointments in the first four games of the season. Some looked better than others today, while Sunday saw a referendum on a season that was quickly slipping away from them. All of these teams have the opportunity to get better as the year goes on, but we have to wonder if 2024 is their year.

Let’s start with a team that got its first win of the season this weekend against NFC cannon fodder.

I didn’t want to put the Cincinnati Bengals on this list today, especially after their two-point win over the Carolina Panthers, now led by Andy Dalton. However, I can’t overlook the Bengals’ poor 0-3 start. Admittedly, all of the losses were by one point, but I assumed this was a team that would win the AFC North. The Bengals missed the postseason a year ago. I just wonder if this team is as good as it once was.

Had the Bengals not taken care of business against Carolina on Sunday in Charlotte, they would have been No. 1 on this list with a ball. To be honest, Carolina isn’t as bad as we thought when Bryce Young was their starting quarterback. They can’t go back to him, especially considering how well Dalton has played the last few weeks. Can Cincinnati take a big leap?

I’m sure this team will be battle-tested by the end of the season, but I have a hard time imagining them being the Kansas City Chiefs’ toughest opponent in the AFC this year. While I might be proven wrong in a few months, this team might be lucky to even make the playoffs. The good news for them is that the AFC North appears to be completely wide open. They need to take advantage in division play.

While it was nice to see Joe Burrow and Co. finally get a win on Sunday, it wasn’t to be No. 1.

I may be biased, but I will never be the one to prematurely crown the New York Jets. This team is better on paper, but where are the wins? On Sunday, they lost at home to the Denver Broncos, the other team that hasn’t been to the postseason in the AFC for about a decade. I know Gang Green has Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, but his arrival on the team doesn’t do anything for me.

Frankly, I think they are massively under-educated. Is Robert Saleh good at what he does? He may have been a great defensive coordinator in San Francisco back in the day, but being an NFL head coach is a whole different ball game. Again, this team appears to be in good shape on paper, but they’re just not producing the results they need for me to consider them a serious playoff team in the deep AFC.

One thing the Jets really have going on is that the New England Patriots could be truly terrible in the league. Considering that the Miami Dolphins are uncertain at quarterback, this could give them a good chance to catch up with the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East race. Right now, the Jets are exactly what I thought they were: a 7-10 team posing as a 10-7 team. This small difference makes a big difference.

The Jets need to beat the Broncos on Sunday to build some momentum, and they completely blew it.

Something is wrong in Philadelphia, and it could be their football team. The Philadelphia Eagles have been on a downward spiral since losing to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl two years ago. Yes, they were one of the best teams in football until halftime last year, but training counts! They fell to 2-2 on the year after being defeated by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 4.

Even worse, the Eagles lost to the Atlanta Falcons in a manner that is often associated with how the Falcons let games fall to the bitter end. Perhaps over time the additions of Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore will make up the difference that Nick Sirianni desperately needs. From a distance, something seems unclear in the Eagles’ locker room. Like Carson Wentz, it’s starting to reach a boiling point.

Considering how bad the NFC East is overall, it would be foolish to label the Eagles as a serious playoff team. They have the most talent of anyone in the division. While New York isn’t going anywhere, Washington is on the rise and you can always count on the Cowboys to save their best football for the regular season and never for the postseason. What should we think of “The Birds”?

This could end up being a division winner, but Philadelphia doesn’t look like a Super Bowl team at all.

I would argue that the Jacksonville Jaguars might be the most disappointing team in the NFL. At 0-4, they’re looking more and more like a team that needs to sign Trevor Lawrence’s replacement than a playoff contender in the AFC. Admittedly, they kept it close with the division rival Houston Texans on Sunday, but a loss is a loss is a loss. This thing is going to become toxic once again in Duval.

I’m starting to wonder if Doug Pederson is the first head coach to be fired this season. We know that eccentric billionaire owner Shahid Khan has a quick instinct for such things. As much as I praised the hiring of Ryan Nielsen as defensive coordinator, what is offensive coordinator Press Taylor doing besides costing this team games? He’s not his older brother at all!

To put it simply, I had Jacksonville as a fringe contender for the playoffs in the AFC at the start of the year. Now I feel they are destined to be in the top eight. Why are the Jaguars so sluggish on the field despite the amount of talent Trent Baalke has accumulated? It’s clear that Lawrence will likely never make the move we all wanted him to make with the No. 1 overall pick ahead of Clemson.

We’ll be writing books about the 2021 NFL quarterback draft class, and those books will be sad…

It’s time to hit the reset button, folks. No, that doesn’t mean Sean McVay needs to be fired. However, I’m starting to wonder if general manager Les Snead’s f**k-them-picks draft strategy has come back to bite this team in the ass. Matthew Stafford is another year older. Aaron Donald has retired. Cooper Kupp is broken. Half of last year’s employees now work for Raheem Morris in Atlanta.

The last thing a team needs in the highly competitive NFC West is a lack of direction, and I think we’re getting that in spades as the Los Angeles Rams are now 1-3 in 2024. I think they need to find a replacement for Stafford next spring. This could be a decent quarterback class, but you have to wonder if any of them are exactly the type of playmakers McVay will enjoy working with.

Overall, last postseason, when the Rams went head-to-head with the Detroit Lions, I felt like it was a real passing of the torch in the NFC. Not to say that the best team moves on to the next best team, but to say that the Lions’ Super Bowl window is now firmly open, while the Rams have been slammed shut. At this point, I’m not even sure they’ll hit .500 and make the playoffs.

This organization used to be the gold standard for big wins. Now it is just a shell of what it once was.