Undefeated teams will get a lot of attention during NFL Week 4. The more interesting stories, however, may be among teams running out of room for another bad Sunday.
Can the Chargers prevent time from getting away from them?
The Los Angeles Chargers shouldn’t be here.
Three games into the season, they are 0-3 and already staring at the prospect of spending October trying to dig themselves out of a hole. Week of travel to Seattle doesn’t offer much relief.
The Seahawks are 2-1 and only put up 31 points on Washington. For Los Angeles, it goes beyond simply needing to play better football.
At some point, a talented roster has to start winning games.
A 0-4 record doesn’t mathematically end anything. However, it will make each game that follows more desperate.
What exactly are those Packers?
Green Bay might be one of the hardest teams in the NFL to figure out.
The Packers are 1-2 heading into Sunday’s game Tampa Bay. Another loss would leave them two games below .500 before the season is even a month old.
That’s particularly troubling because the NFC North isn’t waiting around. Minnesota is 3-0, while Detroit and Chicago are both 2-1.
Green Bay has spent the last few years as a team capable of making a postseason run. Eventually, the potential needs to be something more than just another period of explaining what went wrong.
Week 4 would be a good place to start.
The ones Cowboys in trouble?
No quiet week in Dallas, but a 1-2 start certainly doesn’t help.
The Cowboys lost a 34-31 game in Baltimore last week and now travel to Houston for a match between two teams in desperate need of a win.
Houston enters Week 0-3.
That makes it attractive for reasons that have nothing to do with either team’s preseason expectations. There’s going to be another loss that’s getting harder to explain as an early season stumble.
For Dallas, falling to 1-3 will also create immediate problems within the NFC East, where Philadelphia and New York both enter the week at 2-1.
Can the Dolphins find anything to build around?
Miami is another team sitting at 0-3, and its reward is a trip to Minnesota.
Wonderful.
The Vikings are 3-0 and have already established themselves as one of the biggest stories of September. Miami, meanwhile, is reaching the point where simply looking competitive isn’t enough.
There are 14 games left after this weekend. Nobody’s season officially ends in early October.
But 0-4 has a different feel than 1-3.
Miami needs something positive before the hole becomes the story of its season.
Which team is the first to change its season?
That’s the real question hanging over NFL Week 4.
The league will spend Sunday talking about undefeated teams trying to stay perfect. Kansas City and Las Vegas will answer that question against each other.
Teams sitting at 0-3 and 1-2 face something more urgent.
September provides an excuse. There are new systems, injuries, tough schedules and teams figuring out exactly what they are.
October is when those explanations start to get old.
Week 4 won’t decide the playoff field, but for some teams, it could determine whether the next three months are spent chasing a postseason berth or wondering how things unraveled so quickly.