The Biggest Surprises and Letdowns from the 2022 NFL Season
The 2022 NFL Season, like every season that has preceded it, has come and gone in the blink of an eye. At the end of the trail we find that the Kansas City Chiefs reign supreme once again as the NFL’s champion, first time since 2019. However, this was not an outcome that was written in stone before the season started. Far from it, actually. Hell, I was one of the people who believed that due to losing Tyreek Hill and the other three teams in the AFC West improving substantially through free agency and the draft that the Chiefs would fall to last place in the division...Whoops.
That said, the Chiefs winning it all isn’t terribly surprising. Apparently having Patrick Mahomes as your QB and Andy Reid as your head coach guarantees a division title these days regardless of improvements to other teams in the division. That said, there were plenty of other teams out there that didn’t have the seasons that I or anyone else expected. Oh sure there were the predictable contenders and pretenders but some teams completely whiffed on their pre-season potential and some skyrocketed above any and all expectations anyone had for them going into week one. Without further adieu, the letdowns and surprises of the 2022 season:
THE LETDOWNS
1. The failed Russel Wilson/Nathaniel Hackett experience in Denver
When the Broncos swung for the fences with their blockbuster trade with the Seahawks to acquire Russell Wilson I genuinely believed that this was the move that would finally get the Broncos out of their six season post-season drought and back into Super Bowl contender status. What a fucking WHIFF. Anyone and everyone who boldly predicted that Nathaniel Hackett would be a good head coach based off his time in Green Bay as Aaron Rodgers’ “offensive coordinator” got humbled by week 1 when he elected to have his kicker attempt a 64 yard field goal TWICE on the road in Seattle of all places instead of having Wilson try to pick up a 1st down on 4th and 5 in front of a national audience on ESPN. That alone was a fireable offense, but Hackett made sure to provide Broncos fans with plenty more embarrassing moments and outcomes as the season wore on. Russell Wilson isn’t blameless in this debacle either. His stats were the worst of his career and at times it looked like he had lost the team around him on both sides of the ball. The result? A disastrous 5-12 season that made Broncos fans yearn for the days of Vance Joseph. The good news? Denver fired Hackett before the season even finished and hired the white whale of the coaching market in proven offensive
mastermind Sean Payton. If Payton can’t get Wilson back to his former glory then no one will. At the very least the offense will be watchable and produce points. That alone is a vast improvement over the 2022 season.
2. The Josh McDaniels Raiders
In 2021 the Raiders went through about as much adversity as a professional sports team can go through: they had their famous/infamous head coach resign after emails he sent from a decade ago were leaked to the public that contained racist, homophobic and misogynist language in them as well as losing one of their top offensive weapons in receiver Henry Ruggs after he saw fit to drive while being absurdly drunk and kill a woman and her dog while he as behind the wheel of a car. Despite this adversity the Raiders, under interim head coach Rich Bisaccia, somehow made it to the playoffs with a winning record. Sure they lost in the wild card round, but the fact that they made the playoffs despite all the off-field noise and their numerous injuries is nothing short of a miracle. Rather than stick with the man that got them to that point owner Mark Davis elected to let Bisaccia go and bring in Bill Belichick’s right hand man in New England, Josh McDaniels. Not only did they get McDaniels but they also acquired Davante Adams from the Packers in a shocking trade and then added Chandler Jones to the defensive line. These weren’t minor improvements, these were big swings that indicated the Raiders were going all-in on a deep playoff push...then their 2022 campaign started and they proceeded to blow the most double point leads in NFL history in a single season. Not since 1930 has there been that level of choking from an NFL team, according to CBS Sports. McDaniels might be a solid offensive coordinator...or he could have just been the benefactor of having Tom Brady as his QB for the better part of a decade. Either way, what we know for certain is that he is a sub- par head coach, ask Broncos Country if you need an opinion other than mine to verify that claim. This team had so much potential on paper and they went down the tubes faster than the brass on the Titanic. Then, in typical McDaniels fashion, he decides to oust Derek Carr from the organization with a couple weeks left in favor of playing Jarrett Stidham down the stretch. Carr, who has given so much to the organization since he was drafted in 2014, was made the scapegoat for the team’s massive underachieving in 2022. He may not be a top ten quarterback in the league but his integrity, loyalty and commitment to the Raiders organization was never in question. Now Carr will be able to sign with a team that will appreciate his services and the Raiders are pushing their chips to the middle of the table hoping to land either Aaron Rodgers or Jimmy Garoppolo to lead them in 2023. Regardless of who is the QB for this team going forward they still have a Josh McDaniels problem and until they cut ties with him
the Raiders will continue to be mediocre and underperform just as they have for the last two decades.
3. The Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury era goes nuclear in Arizona
You guys ever see Requiem for a Dream? Remember when everything goes tits up for the characters around 45 minutes into the movie and gets progressively worse and worse until the highly disturbing but predictable ending? That’s what it was like watching the Cardinals this season. In 2021 the Cardinals had the best record in football up until a Thursday night bout with the Packers around halloween. Then they did their typical second half season collapse under Kingsbury and suffered one of the most embarrassing playoff losses in recent memory. Shortly after that massive implosion Michael Bidwill, the Cardinals owner, decided to reward Kyler Murray, head coach Kliff Kingsbury and GM Steve Keim with lengthy and lucrative contract extensions. Best part of all this incompetence is that they decided to leak the study clause in Kyler’s contract that required him to watch game film several hours a day during the week. Once that got leaked to the media it pretty much sealed the fate of the 2022 Cardinals despite having a roster that indicated they were ready to take the next step. The second half of the season was covered by HBO’s second go at an in-season Hard Knocks and some of the episodes were painful to watch as you could see the team unravel week by week and Kingsbury lose his team at an alarming rate. Not only did he lose his team as the weeks wore on but you could clearly see that Murray had mentally checked out on the head coach the organization hired based strictly off of his history of coaching him in college. There were plenty of reasons the Cardinals season went the way of Nagasaki and Hiroshima but none more so than having a petulant, entitled brat as their “franchise” QB and having a know-nothing underachiever as their head coach. The season was already lost by the time Kyler tore his ACL on Monday Night Football against the Patriots in December, but that was merely the football gods rubbing salt in the wound at that point. The aftermath of 2022? Kingsbury was fired, Steve Keim resigned due to health issues and the Cards finished with a 4-13 record...with one of those wins coming at home...one. The Chiefs won more games in Glendale than the Cardinals did...let that sink in.
4. The Rams Come Crashing Down
The 2021 Rams went all in on winning Super Bowl LVI by sending away every valuable pick they had to build one of the most talented, and top-heavy, NFL rosters in recent memory. They accomplished their goal of winning it all, in their own stadium no less. Well done, Rams. Then
they lost elite left tackleAndrew Whitworth to retirement, Von Miller to the Bills and OBJ sat out the entire season due to his ACL recovery, amongst other notable players leaving in free agency. No biggie, right? McVay is still the boy wonder and the team still has Stafford, Kupp, Donald and Ramsey. They’ll be fine...NOPE. 2022 started with an ugly home loss to the Bills and they regressed into the Jeff Fisher Rams of old shortly thereafter. Injuries to key players definitely had an impact on the season but they were doomed before the injuries began to settle in. Their lack of draft picks and salary cap space prevented them from addressing the most important area on an NFL team: the offensive line. Stafford took more physical punishment in the first half of the season than some boxers take in an entire year. The result? The Rams finished the season with the worst record for a defending Super Bowl champion in NFL history. Oh, and guess what? Their situation isn’t getting better anytime soon. But I’m sure looking at their Super Bowl rings at night eases the suffering that they and their fanbase are currently going through.
THE SURPRISES
1. Pete Carroll’s Seahawks Shock The League
How many of you saw the Seahawks making the playoffs with Geno Smith under center? How many of you saw Geno Smith winning comeback player of the year? If you did then go buy a lottery ticket right now because you’re the only one who did. The moment the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson to the Broncos everyone and their mother wrote them off as contenders for the worst record in the league. Turns out we got Denver and Seattle’s season record reversed. What the Seahawks managed to pull off this season is nothing short of inspiring considering their competition and the lack of elite talent on the defensive side of the ball. Goes to show what a good draft can do for your team when you manage to select under the radar gems like Kenneth Walker and Tariq Woolen. Pete Carroll has been one of the best coaches in the league for over a decade now but the 2022 season might go down as his greatest regular season accomplishment since taking over the franchise in 2010. It would have been much easier to just tank the season and rebuild for the future but Carroll galvanized his team to rally around Smith and outperform every single expectation going into the season. Bravo.
2. Dan Campbell’s Lions Were Roaring
When Dan Campbell took over the Detroit Lions in 2021 there were plenty of skeptics around the league, mostly due to Campbell’s infamous introductory press conference where there was
talk of “biting knee caps off” of opponents during games. Campbell inherited one of the worst rosters in the league but, despite their 3-13-1 record in 2021, they competed their asses off regardless of who they played and that was a good sign heading into the 2022 campaign. Then they were featured on HBO’s 2022 season of Hard Knocks. If skeptics weren’t sold on Dan Campbell’s leadership before then they must’ve been after that show premiered. You wanna talk about a player’s coach? That’s Campbell. Someone who will give his players tough love but will never push them too far. While the season didn’t start off great with a dismal 1-6 record things turned for the better against the Green Bay Packers at home and the culture Campbell and his staff were cultivating began to show up in the following weeks. The Lions finished the year with a 9-8 record, and while they missed the playoffs by one game they also prevented their arch-nemesis Packers from making the playoffs as well when they had nothing else to play for in the final week of the season. The Lions and Seahawks both overachieved and also will be picking in the top 6 thanks to their blockbuster QB trades they made with the Rams and Broncos respectively. 2023 could be a big year in motor city.
3. The New York Giants Are Back?
I’ll admit it, I was one of the Joe Judge believers out there when he was hired to be the Giants’ head coach in 2020. I truly thought having coaching experience under both Nick Saban and Bill Belichick would pay dividends for the Giants organization in due time...Fuck me, right? Judge proved to be inept and out of his league and was shown mercifully shown the door at the end of the disastrous and cancerous 2021 campaign. The Giants’ ownership group needed to hit their next head coaching hire out of the gate because things in East Rutherford, New Jersey had reached Chernobyl levels of toxic after the consecutive hirings of Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur and then Judge. Needless to say, they absolutely crushed it with the hiring of Brian Daboll. Daboll, who made his reputation as Josh Allen’s offensive coordinator, turned around the culture of the Giants in one season and not only did he take them to the playoffs in his first year after the same team went 4-13 the previous season, he actually won a playoff game on the road against the Minnesota Vikings. He was awarded coach of the year for his efforts and it was well deserved. Anyone that can make Daniel Jones look like a capable NFL quarterback deserves all the praise they get. The question is how much of what the Giants pulled off is sustainable and how much of it was the team playing a tissue soft schedule? True, teams can only play the opponents that are in front of them, but the question will remain if this season was a fluke or if the Giants truly have returned to the upper echelon of NFL franchises until 2023 begins. As of this writing their QB situation is still up in the air thanks to Daniel Jones not backing down from his $45 million dollar a year salary demands. Regardless of what happens going forward, 2022 was a triumph for the G-Men and the city of New York and it was a pleasant surprise watching them defy all odds and make it as far as they did in the first year under Daboll.
