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Football 301 Playbook: Can these surprising 2-0 NFL teams sustain their success?

The Steelers, Seahawks, Chargers, Saints and Vikings are off to somewhat unexpected strong starts

nate tice
Staff writer
·20-min read

Nine NFL teams are 2-0 as we enter Week 3. A mix of favorites (Chiefs, Bills), returning division winners (Buccaneers) and trendy preseason picks (Texans) have stormed and clawed their way to grabbing that coveted 2-0 playoff graphic on Sunday.

I wanted to take a look at five of the other 2-0 teams. From everything feeling weirdly right in Pittsburgh to the Seahawks' new play-callers revamping both sides of the ball, and whether these teams' trajectory through two weeks is sustainable for the near term.

All data and statistics from Next Gen Stats unless otherwise noted.

This defense is HITTING. From the stars like T.J. Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick, to grizzled veteran Cam Heyward, to second-year player Keeanu Benton, to new additions like Donte Jackson, everyone seems to be taking turns at impacting any given play.

This defense is looking like a strong unit because of its physicality, speed and ability to rush the passer, especially Watt, who still is at the top of his game and getting the respect as a game-wrecker who can take over if not properly accounted for. In Week 1, the Falcons ran the ball 12 times (two-thirds of their total rush attempts) to the outside left, i.e. opposite of Watt’s typical alignment on the offense’s right, and finished with 55 yards and a 50% success rate on those runs. They ran the ball three times to the outside right and gained a scorching 2 total yards on those excursions.

The offensive line seems to have really found themselves in Week 2, with rookie first-round selection Troy Fautanu starting at right tackle (the plan was to rotate with 2023 first-round selection Broderick Jones, but Jones was penalized several times during his stint at the beginning of the second quarter and was swapped for Fautanu for the rest of the game). Rookie center Zach Frazier is already playing like one of the best centers in the NFL. He has a calming presence on the rest of the offensive line and quarterback Justin Fields with his intelligence and ability to quickly diagnose defensive looks. And Frazier is a good athlete who gets on linebackers in a hurry in the run game. He is playing like one of the best rookies in the NFL through two weeks.

Dan Moore Jr. has played solid at left tackle and the Steelers have gotten adequate guard play from Spencer Anderson and James Daniels. The blocking also gets a boost from second-year tight end Darnell Washington, who is holding up one-on-one against real edge rushers like Matthew Judon and even caught a red-zone touchdown by boxing out and out-sizing a Broncos defensive back.

And while the passing game still has its limitations, Fields has made some excellent throws while on the move, which is a major component of this offense. He is giving George Pickens more chances at 50/50 go balls than Pickens could dream of.

This is Mike Tomlin we’re talking about here. To doubt his ability to pull out a winning season is borderline blasphemous in football. And the Steelers' defense is feeling very Steelers-y right now. Throw in an improving offense with a true run game to lean on, and it’s easy to become more bullish about the Steelers the rest of season.

That’s not to say this is all rosy. The offense has scored one touchdown and has 31 total points through two weeks. And while I’m optimistic about this run game, the underlying numbers are sitting more bottom-10 than top-10 through two weeks.

That run game and the play-action passes off of them started to feel like it had more of a rhythm and purpose in Week 2 against the Broncos, but there are still kinks to be ironed out. Fields bobbled the first snap of the season from Frazier and the offense was dinged with six penalties against the Broncos. The passing game is also going to have its limitations because of the Steelers' dearth of pass-catchers and Fields’ own strengths (deep ball, throwing on the run, scrambling) and weaknesses (quick game, timing on throws over the middle). The passing game will still take time to find the concepts that appropriately fit the Steelers' uniquely bulky personnel, and I don’t see it being more of a complementary aspect of this offense, sitting in the bottom 10 overall, but with some explosive plays here and there. This run game is going to get only better as the weeks go along, which the Steelers can quickly prove in a sneaky Week 3 hoss fight coming up against the Chargers before they attempt to impose their will on the Colts' woeful run defense.

Good defense, offensive adjustments as the game goes along and a lot of Geno Smith.

As the Seahawks' offensive line finds itself, Smith is still standing strong in the pocket and pushing the ball as much as he can, showing a real comfort in an offense that is being tailored to what he prefers: vertical routes and empty formations that give Smith options. The Seahawks rank third this season in empty formation rate and Smith is consistently making the right decision.

The last clip in the embedded tweet above, Smith is sitting in an empty formation and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb calls a four vertical concept, an aggressive call that requires the quarterback to get rid of the football promptly because of the limited pass protection. Smith makes a correct decision on one of the switch vertical routes, but the ball is dropped by his receiver.

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Grubb and the Seahawks' offensive coaching staff have also been making some nice halftime adjustments, especially in the run game. The Seahawks' success rate on running back runs jumps from 25% (which ranks 29th) in the first half to 42.3% (14th) in the second half and overtime. Smith’s statistics also take a similar jump from half to half, going from a 47.2% dropback success rate (which still ranks ninth in the NFL this year) to 55% in the second (fifth).

Having several talented pass catchers also helps this offense have some teeth. DK Metcalf still must be accounted for and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, despite the drop above, is playing fast in his second year and seems to have Smith’s full trust.

On defense, head coach Mike Macdonald still varies the defensive looks to make life hard on quarterbacks and offensive lines. So far, this defense has been tough sledding for opponents, sitting in the top five in success rate allowed and surrendering the second-fewest yards per play (3.8). This is a reflection of the tough front that Seattle has created, featuring several beefy pluggers like Leonard Williams and Johnathan Hankins, but also explosive rookie Byron Murphy II and Boye Mafe, who has flashed quite a bit in his third season but suffered a knee contusion in Week 2. Before that, he was helping the Seahawks rank sixth overall in team pressure rate.

It’s not exactly a one-to-one copy and paste from what he did in Baltimore. The Seahawks run a good chunk of Cover 1 (34.6% of their dropbacks faced so far, fourth-highest in the NFL) and single-high overall. That's a stark contrast from the 2023 Ravens who played Cover 1 at nearly half that rate (19.3%) and favored more split-safety looks (48.1% in comparison to this year’s Seahawks 38.3% rate). This could be because of the lack of fear in the passing games of their first two opponents, but also to highlight the strengths of the Seahawks' defensive backs (while mitigating the dropoff in linebacker quality from Roquan Smith to what Seattle currently deploys).

I think so! The Seahawks' defense hasn’t exactly played the most dynamic offenses in the world over the first two weeks of the season in the Bo Nix-led Broncos and the “party like it’s 1776” run-first attack of the Patriots (although the Patriots' offense is going to be an annoying unit to stop for a lot of teams not on their best games). Macdonald has proven he can adapt the defense to highlight the better players at his disposal, and I’m really curious to see how it looks against some of the more elite offenses in the NFL (I have Week 4 against the Lions circled, no offense to Skylar Thompson's Dolphins this weekend).

Smith has already proven to me in the past that he can be a QB in a productive offense, mostly because of his own play, mind you. And he already shows a great amount of comfort in this year’s offense with Grubb dialing up plays. As the offensive line gels (with Charles Cross already off to a huge redemption season), the run game should become even better and Smith should have even more time to attack vertically with the Seahawks' talented group of pass catchers.

Bully ball! Do you expect anything else from Jim Harbaugh and this Chargers offense?

The Chargers have already used 24 snaps of 22 personnel (2 running backs, 2 tight ends, 1 wide receiver) this season. The rest of the NFL has used that grouping a combined 59 snaps. It's a whopping 20% rate that will come down (a tiny bit) as the Chargers don’t get to face the Panthers every week.

This isn’t a gimmick to add big players on the field; the Chargers currently average a whopping 5.4 yards per play when they have that group on the field.

J.K. Dobbins is rejuvenated. Joe Alt looks like a superstar. Rashawn Slater looks healthy again. Quentin Johnston had his best game as a professional player in Week 2. Justin Herbert looks comfortable in the (somewhat limited) passing game, while being used on designed runs and developing rapport with rookie receiver Ladd McConkey, who has already shown off his speed, route running, balance and feel against zone and looks like he’s going to have a breakout game soon.

The defense has played against Gardner Minshew II and Bryce Young, so my feelings have to come with a grain of salt. But the Chargers are playing sound and a key player like Derwin James is looking closer to his normal self than his 2023 version. It’s definitely not a bad thing to stifle offenses they should be stifling, especially since that unit was going to be a work in progress under new defense coordinator Jesse Minter. I’ve been impressed with how confident and fast the defense as a collective unit has played so far, and will be interested to see them against better competition (Steelers and Chiefs is a nice ramp-up the next two weeks).

Yes and no.

The defense is already punching above its weight, which is fun to see. It will have its issues against the better offenses in the league. Which is fine! Considering where this unit was at less than a year ago, they’re already ahead of schedule.

Greg Roman’s passing game is still uninspiring. But the brutalist designs in the passing game actually work because of the run-first attitude of this team and shallow pass-catching core (I am loving Simi Fehoko as the dirty work guy).

They played a good Raiders defense and a very-not-so-good Panthers defense and their pass protection had some real rough moments against Maxx Crosby, Christian Wilkins and the rest of the Raiders' front. This team truly matches the identity of their head coach; they can force equal or lesser teams into submission and try to scratch and claw themselves into a stalemate against the better teams. They can then hopefully unleash their franchise quarterback when those more unfavorable game scripts surely come in future games.

I’m going to focus on the offense for the Saints section. Not that the defense isn’t interesting or hasn’t been playing well, but more that the offense has been one of the more pleasant surprises of the NFL season through two weeks.

With new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak at the helm, the Saints are running a very Kubiakian offense: lots of zone runs, lots of play-action, lots of over routes, and a bomb to a really fast player every once in a while.

The Saints are tied for second in zone runs this season and second in efficiency on those runs with a ridiculous 60% success rate on those 45 runs, according to SportsInfoSolutions. The Saints had no qualms trotting Adam Prentice or Taysom Hill out there at fullback and daring the Panthers and Cowboys linebackers to fit their gaps properly.

The passing game and game plan overall showed detail and purposeful design to it, especially against Micah Parsons and the Cowboys. All of their outside hitting runs were away from Parsons’ side or when Parsons was off the field.

Even the play-action passes weren’t extended. Carr didn’t have a single pass attempt take longer than 4 seconds the entire game for the first time since Week 4 of 2022. Instead, Carr got rid of the ball quickly, even when pushing it downfield to Rashid Shaheed on his long touchdown or on a dig route to Chris Olave. Even some of the designs were more quick-hitting so the pass rush could never get home.

Carr is playing quickly and aggressively, not just taking shorter throws in what has become the meme about his style. Instead Carr has been looking to push the ball and take his chances through two weeks and has reaped the benefits of the touchdown-to-checkdown style of the play-action concepts in this offense.

The offensive line has not only looked playable, but downright good at times. Erik McCoy looks excellent at the pivot spot, Cesar Ruiz broke 17 mph on Alvin Kamara’s long screen touchdown, Trevor Penning hasn't stood out in a good or bad way, which is actually a compliment, and first-round selection Taliese Fuaga already looks like a weapon in the run game.

This offense sits at or near the top of every underlying metric that football nerds like to use.

This offense, which I thought would be hampered by offensive line question marks, has a higher baseline and ceiling than I expected coming into the season. Kubiak has done an excellent job in game-planning through two weeks, but now will have to see how the Saints maintain those game plans as the season goes along and away from the benefits of preseason planning and very favorable situations.

The offense has benefitted from playing the Panthers and storming out to a lead against the Cowboys with a few early scores. Both of those things are positives about the Saints and what this offense can achieve, but how this operation, especially the offensive tackles, performs in more true passing situations and more neutral game scripts is what has me more curious than anything. The Saints have used only three wide receivers on 22% of their snaps, a reflection of their preferred base personnel attack but also the fact that they haven’t had to get into pass-heavy personnel groups this season, facing only 13 third downs with 3 or more yards to go this year (tied for fewest in the league). The Saints have also used play-action on 46.5% of their dropbacks, easily highest in the league and over double the league average. They're going to be one of the more keen users of play-action because of the whole Kubiak thing, but that is a cartoonishly high rate.

It’s been working, and Carr has been great off play-action, but not every game is going to go how early September has gone for the Saints. Eventually, teams can anticipate more straight dropback passes. Play-action makes life easier on offensive linemen and streamlines progressions for the quarterback. Again, how this whole operation looks in more neutral situations is what I’m very curious to see. Having said that, it sure has been fun to watch!

A knuckleball defense, an explosive run game and Sam Darnold having a couple of “wow” throws without being punished for his Sam Darnold moments (yet).

This Vikings' offense with Justin Jefferson, a solid offensive line and Kevin O’Connell as the play-caller has built enough bumpers to keep Darnold from ever bowling the whole operation off the lane. With Darnold’s ability to scramble and willingness to chuck the ball wherever, opening up big-play possibilities from any situation. Like say backed-up at your own 3-yard line.

The red-zone and third-down designs are still great. The Jalen Nailor touchdown in Week 2 featured a nifty play-action design to take advantage of the 49ers' run fits.

The run game with Aaron Jones and Ty Chandler has been the most efficient run game in the NFL through two weeks. The Vikings currently have a 54.8% rushing success rate on their RB runs. It’s not that this run game has finally become reliable to attack all of the soft coverage the Vikings face with Jefferson on the field. Jones and Chandler have added real speed to the attack. It’s not just theory as Jones and Chandler have already recorded 13 runs in which they have reached a max speed of 15 mph or more. (Primarily on toss zone concepts that maximize Jones' vision and speed.) The Vikings had 30 such runs total in all of 2023. It’s one thing to face an offense that annoyingly jabs you with its run game, the Vikings have now added an uppercut and right cross.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's defense is one of the most fun watches in the NFL. Coordinator Brian Flores is constantly blitzing or faking blitz looks like an older brother fake punching his younger sibling.

With the defense returning a large portion of its snaps from last year and dropping in a few new faces, this unit has added more mirrors to Flores’ funhouse. The Cover 0 blitzes and drop eight coverages are constantly keeping quarterbacks, play-callers and offensive lines on their toes and limiting the menu that other teams can get to because of that nagging fear of “what if he sends another blitz?” Play-action heavy teams like the 49ers can’t get to that because the moving protection might get overwhelmed. The Vikings also see the least amount of pullers in the run game because their ever-shifting defense will too often make the risk of a blown up play not worth the potential reward of blocking it up. Instead, they simplify offenses to call just zone runs and wad everything up.

Darnold hasn’t been punished yet. At least in ways that end up in a loss, because he has already thrown two interceptions. He has given the defenses plenty of chances at the football through two weeks in between a couple of his more notable throws, and tosses over teammates in the backfield. And while this Vikings team can withstand those negative blows much better than the teams he was previously on as a starter, playing quarterback in this type of offense is to truly be more of a steady hand than a volatile gambler. Darnold’s style will lead to some big highs and he is playing better-than-average football right now, but there will surely be a frustrating sequence to come soon.

The run game looks very sustainable, even if Jones were to ever miss time. The runs are sound and have controllers off of them to keep defenses from teeing off. Having Jefferson always helps any passing game, Nailor had some nice moments in extended run in Week 2 and the weapons should continue to be supplemented with the return of Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockenson. It’s looking like a balanced attack that will have viable answers every week.

The defense has an identity and is going to be a headache for every team it plays this year. Better quarterbacks who can operate in straight dropback situations have the best chance against Flores and his defense, but it’s going to be fun to see every offense try and solve the Riddler who is calling plays in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. This is a team that’s finding answers and playing overall winning football right now.