NFL Panic Index: Which teams (and a college player) should worry after Week 6?
Posted: 2020-10-19

But here we are now, two games shy of finishing Week 6, and two teams have already fired their head coaches and two others have benched their swapped starting quarterbacks. Injuries have swept through the league like a tidal wave, taking down All-Pros and even quarterbacks (we miss you already, Dak).

Six weeks is more than enough time to decide it’s time to panic.

That’s why we decided to resurrect The Athletic’s NFL Panic Index, for a not-quite-to-halfway season check-in.

Which teams that struggled in Week 6 are merely in a slump? Which teams, coaches and quarterbacks should view this week’s performance (on top of what’s happened before) as a red flag? Read on:


Panic level: Just a speed bump

Green Bay Packers

There isn’t any way to get around this: Sunday afternoon was ugly for the Packers. It was an uncharacteristically bad day for Aaron Rodgers that first-quarter pick-six was just the third he’s thrown, ever and an even worse day for the Green Bay defense.

If the Packers cruised through their bye week in Week 5 looking around the NFC and thinking they might just have an easy path to the No. 1 seed, well, this was quite the reality check.

The Packers on Sunday in Tampa looked almost nothing like they looked in their first four games: Rodgers was pressured, almost constantly; the running backs were swallowed up, and the defense was helpless to stop the Bucs’ passing and rushing attacks.

There were times Sunday afternoon that felt like last January’s NFC Championship Game, where the game just snowballed and the Packers defense was helpless to stop the offensive onslaught, and Rodgers and the offense were incapable of playing from behind.

It should be concerning that this is how the Packers played after their bye week because it won’t get easier from here, not with the 5-1 Bears taking over first place in the division and not with the Bucs providing a blueprint for stopping what had been, to this point, a seemingly unstoppable version of Rodgers.

What Green Bay must hope for now is that Rodgers’ postgame comments will come true, that the Packers really did need to come down to earth, diagnose their flaws and fix them before it’s too late.


Panic level: Identity crisis

Los Angeles Rams

The jokes were so easy heading into Week 6: The Rams were the de facto champions of the NFC East, having swept the NFL’s worst division over the first five weeks of the season.

Turns out those four wins mattered little once NFC West play started for the Rams, and now Sean McVay’s team must be wondering who it really is and whether its strong early record was too good to be true.

Little worked Sunday night against the 49ers; even typical things the Rams can usually count on Aaron Donald getting pressure, Jared Goff finding Cooper Kupp weren’t working.

Per Next Gen Stats, Donald had just two pressures (and no sacks) against the 49ers, and no other Ram even generated a pressure. That’s a tribute to Kyle Shanahan’s game plan that enabled Jimmy Garoppolo to get rid of the ball quickly early in the game, that meant a lot of short passes behind the line of scrimmage as the 49ers made the Rams defense unrecognizable.

If Donald can’t take over a game, and if Kupp drops passes or Goff overthrows his favorite receiver, who are the Rams, really?

Goff, at least, believes the identity is the same, that Sunday night was just off.

“Just some uncharacteristic stuff,” Goff said. “Some things I’ve never done in my life and don’t expect to ever repeat.”

He and the rest of us are about to find out. Each of the Rams’ next four opponents is currently at least .500, starting with the 5-1 Bears next Monday night.


Panic level: Pray it won’t get worse

New England Patriots

The way the Tennessee Titans played against Buffalo on Tuesday night prompted plenty of discussion about just how important practice really is in 2020. Did it really matter? The way the Patriots played Sunday against Denver, in a game that was rescheduled three times because of positive COVID-19 tests within the Patriots locker room, was a reminder that, yes, practice does matter.

The Patriots were sloppy and sluggish in their 18-12 loss to Denver, and it’s fair to connect the lack of offense to losing three starters to the reserve/COVID-19 list this week (two offensive linemen and running back Sony Michel). Quarterback Cam Newton was back after he was sidelined by a positive COVID-19 test two weeks ago, but the offense barely resembled what it looked like in late September, before COVID-19 disrupted the Patriots’ season.

And now the Patriots find themselves in unfamiliar territory, at 2-3 for the first time in 18 years.

This Patriots roster isn’t deep enough to account for the shuffling the positive COVID-19 tests forced recently, and with a lack of preseason practice time, it’s hard to imagine a team with a new quarterback being able to survive a lack of on-field time together.

Now the Patriots must hope that the worst of their COVID-19 concerns are over, that the players who landed on the reserve list late this week can return soon, that the NFL’s protocols and their own adherence to them will allow for sustained periods of practice starting this week.


Panic level: Existential crisis

Cleveland Browns

What’s the point of this all, really, if not to be increasingly competitive within your own division? How do you actually measure progress if the first goal any NFL team sets still feels so unattainable?

For all of the reasons to be excited about the Browns in recent weeks, the sobering reality is that against the teams that matter most, the Ravens and the Steelers, the Browns still don’t compare.

The Browns were blown out in Week 1 by Baltimore, spent a month looking increasingly competent, only to get blown out by the Steelers on Sunday. Playoffs? Sure, it could happen, especially with an expanded playoff field starting this season, but the long-term outlook for 2020 suddenly looks much darker in Cleveland.

The building blocks are in place for the Browns, as the franchise appears to be trying to finally do what has proved to work in the NFL and fortify the offensive and defensive lines.

But the offense is still too erratic, and quarterback Baker Mayfield, who was sacked four times by the Steelers, is still too prone to mistakes (he threw two interceptions Sunday in Pittsburgh and for just 119 yards before being replaced by Case Keenum).

There is no doubt things are starting to improve in Cleveland, finally, but ultimately does it even matter if the AFC North is still so far out of reach?


Panic level: Is there even a plan?

Washington Football Team and Ron Rivera

Few expected anything to be easy for the Washington Football Team in Year 1 of what could be a long, franchise-wide rebuilding process.

But the way Washington has lost in recent weeks, particularly Sunday to the previously winless Giants, raises serious questions about what exactly Washington’s plan is for the rest of the year.

Here’s what is clear: The plan can’t be Kyle Allen. He might have more history in offensive coordinator Scott Turner’s system, but the Washington offense isn’t getting any better, and unless head coach Ron Rivera has already given up on 2019 first-round pick Dwayne Haskins and his actions show he might have, even if Rivera won’t say it what’s the point of losing with Allen, rather than (a) giving Haskins a chance to improve or (b) letting Alex Smith strengthen his grasp on the Comeback Player of the Year award?

It’s unclear whether Rivera is ready to fully commit to the rebuild, but after Week 6, while sitting at the bottom of the worst division in the NFL, every decision made for the rest of the year must be about getting better in 2021.


Panic level: Everything is awful

Mike Zimmer and the Minnesota Vikings

Is this the low point for the Mike Zimmer era in Minnesota? If not, it has to be close, and the thought that it could get worse after the Vikings’ 1-5 start is just too depressing to handle.

There are worse teams in the NFL than the Vikings (looking at you, NFC East), but the Vikings’ rapid descent toward the bottom of the league has still been startling.

This is a team that actually believed it could make a playoff run this year; a team that believed it had the right quarterback (and even quietly extended Kirk Cousins’ contract this offseason) and was confident enough in its infrastructure that it thought it could overhaul the pass rush and the secondary all at once.

Last week’s performance in Seattle gave the Vikings false hope that maybe, by leading the Seahawks through the final minutes, Minnesota could hang with the best teams in the NFC. That was a mirage.

“It’s hard for me to figure out how we can continue to get better and play like we did a week ago and then play as poorly as we did this week,” Zimmer said Sunday after his team’s 40-23 loss to Atlanta.

To be clear, Sunday’s loss was a blowout, and not as close as the 17-point final deficit looked, against a team that was previously winless and just fired its head coach and general manager. What progress is Zimmer actually seeing? Are the Vikings any better now, after getting embarrassed by a desperate Falcons team, than they were in Week 1, when they got beat handily by the Packers? Perhaps that first game should have been the sign to start panicking in Minnesota, because now, Zimmer is out of answers.


Panic level: Consider changing your name and leaving the country

Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence

The New York Jets are the NFL’s lone winless team now, and according to Football Outsiders, the Jets have a 38.5 percent chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft.

Thoughts and prayers, Trevor. It might be time to start thinking through some John Elway- or Eli Manning-style plans to manipulate the top of the draft to stay the heck away from the Jets.

The Jets are in football purgatory right now, with no signs of improvement in sight. The roster is barren, the coaching staff is a mess. The Jets were shut out Sunday by the Dolphins a team that was torn down and rebuilt the right way, unlike whatever this is the Jets are doing and poor Trevor is the one who could ultimately suffer.

Can you stay in school? Take a year’s sabbatical to study in New Zealand? Do something, anything, to stay away from the Jets.