They can’t all be winners, you know—that’s just the brutally honest and scientific truth of the NFL.
If your team’s running back has crushed it in the first half of the season, chances are, there are a few linebackers and safeties from other teams who have endured nightmares about all the air they’ve been wrapping their arms around. Great quarterbacks are the nemesis of struggling cornerbacks. It’s a harsh NFL reality that creates strange contradictions in the football cosmos—where Mimi’s Dolphins and Cindy and Addy’s Bengals are first in the Fantasy Football league, while the Miami Dolphins and the Cincinnati Bengals share a room at the NFL’s Winless Motel.
Yes, the struggle is real.
But, that’s just how the game goes, even for the stars of the NFL—the ones most responsible for putting points on the board and smiles on the fans’ faces. And none understand that better from the first half of this season than these 11.
Darnold | Rosen | Fitzpatrick | Mariota | Flacco | Beckham Jr. | Dalton | Gordon | Winston | Bell | Mayfield
11. Sam Darnold
There were practically more Sam Darnold memes on the internet than there were Sam Darnold completions in the first half. It’s been a rough go for the Jets’ quarterback, with some of the struggle directly related to the mononucleosis/spleen issues he dealt with for a few weeks—but still: Seeing ghosts?
Guess so. He’s 1-3 since returning, with five touchdowns and eight interceptions—which is also spooky.
10. Josh Rosen
Where do we even begin? Josh Rosen has endured a rough start to his NFL career. A top 10 pick and the apparent “next quarterback” of the Arizona Cardinals, Rosen was shipped off to Miami after one season in the desert, losing out because of a new regime and a guy who was thinking about playing baseball instead.
And things haven’t improved at Miami, unfortunately.
Rosen, who was possibly looking to get some payback this season, using the chip-on-the-shoulder fuel, has stalled. He is 0-3 as a starter, has one touchdown and five interceptions, and has completed just above 50 percent of his passes. Now, 2019 has been more of a clipboard-in-the-hand glaze for Rosen, who plays backup to Ryan Fitzpatrick on a winless team.
9. Ryan Fitzpatrick
It would be silly and irresponsible to put Josh Rosen on this list and omit Ryan Fitzpatrick. After all, it’s a collective effort down in Miami, sort of a “We’re all captains here and this ship is-a sinking!”
Fitzpatrick hasn’t done much with his opportunities at quarterback. He’s totaled only five touchdowns, and his seven picks rank 12th-worst in the league. He’s down near the basement in completion percentage, with a 59.7 mark (29th), and is 0-4 as the team’s starter.
At some pint, the Dolphins need to ask: What kind of magic is this?
8. Marcus Mariota
Marcus Mariota hasn’t been able to get things moving in the right direction this season. Entering Mariota’s fifth season with the Titans, the former-No. 2 pick started the season with a convincing win—that happened to be against what we now know to be an overrated Browns team. Since then, the offense has been mayonnaise, at best, and it was only an issue with backup Ryan Tannehill’s helmet and hearing the plays that (allegedly) kept the ex-Oregon Duck on the field.
Tannehill’s helmet was eventually fixed, however, leaving Mariota on the sidelines as the backup following his two-interception shutout against the Broncos in Week 6.
7. Joe Flacco
Flacco was another quarterback who, after being traded by the Ravens, was set to make an impact with a new squad in 2019. He was brought to Denver by John Elway to be the next Peyton Manning, the fix-it for a team that has struggled to find a franchise play-caller who can get them back to AFC West supremacy.
Unfortunately, none of those things have happened so far for Flacco. His six touchdowns are tied with Baker Mayfield for 29th, and his five interceptions put him in the wrong top half of the league. At times, Flacco looks like the Super Bowl-winning QB of yesteryear; other times, he makes the game look like someone fell asleep in the production truck and accidentally spilled coffee on the controls, causing the speed to drop by about 50 percent (maybe 60, it’s hard to tell).
Update: Flacco has been ruled out 4-6 weeks with a neck injury, per reports.
6. Odell Beckham Jr.
Odell Beckham Jr. was a massive acquisition for the Browns this past offseason. Surely, with Beckham’s talent level and Baker Mayfield’s understanding of new coach Freddie Kitchens’ offense, this would be a match made in AFC North Heaven. Right?
Well..
Think about this: In 2017, the season Odell fractured his ankle, limiting him to just four games, he caught 25 passes for 302 yards and three touchdowns. In 2019, seven games into a healthy and new-team energized season, he has caught 34 passes for 488 yards and one touchdown.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me do an “Eli Face” when I read it.
5. Andy Dalton
Poor Andy Dalton. The 12th-year quarterback out of TCU has endured a rough first half (career?) with Cincy—along with the rest of the organization and fan base.
Even though he is ranked fourth in passing yards, with 2252, Dalton’s struggled, with nine touchdowns and eight interceptions. And now, he’s been benched in favor of Ryan Finley—a move so close to the trade deadline, it didn’t give Dalton a chance to explore getting out of dodge. A move that also just happened to be on his birthday, too. Yikes!
Now, he’s stuck in an even worse situation: having to watch a terrible Bengals team.
4. Melvin Gordon
Melvin Gordon’s first half of the season hasn’t been great.
First, the Chargers’ running back held out—to which the Chargers’ brass sort of replied: “Uh, OK. We’ll…we’ll see you around, hopefully. Good luck with your, uh, endeavors.”
Second (as stories like this normally go), was the impressive fill-in effort from Austin Ekeler. He has been a decent mix out of the backfield, totaling eight touchdowns.
Finally, after missing the first four games and losing out on what could be nearly three million bucks, Gordon returned—and he hasn’t shined, either. His 2.5 yard-per-carry average and one touchdown aren’t precisely what you’d expect out of a “top-tier” back.
3. Jameis Winston
Jameis Winston has a new head coach (Bruce Arians) and a new offensive coordinator (Byron Leftwich). And that goes to show you: sometimes, it’s you, not them.
Winston has continued to struggle, tied for a league-leading 12 interceptions (with Mayfield) while completing 58.2 percent of his passes. He does have 14 touchdowns on the year, which is decent, but his inability to consistently move the offense negates a lot of the positives.
2. Le’Veon Bell
Le’Veon Bell, the big signing after sitting out the entire 2018 season with the Steelers, was brought to Manhattan with plenty to prove—and, he hasn’t.
After the first seven games, Bell has gained 349 yards on 109 carries (3.2 average) with one touchdown. Coach Adam Gase has made the expected sleight-of-hand, blaming himself while throwing out half-sentences blaming other facets of the game.
Like most defenses around the leagues, I’m on to you, Coach Gase.
Of course, if the Jets’ passing game is ineffective, the running game will struggle—however, as top-of-the-line running backs go, Bell needs to take some of the blame, which escalated this past week when he was part of the trade rumor mill.
1. Baker Mayfield
With big expectations come…well, bigger expectations.
Baker Mayfield came into the 2019 season so commercially hyped that you’d have thought he was 6G or something. But, he hasn’t lived up to much of the media saturation and has struggled to continue his 2018 heroics.
Funny “Field Maintenance” commercials aside, his struggles to stay in the pocket—which is incorrectly finger-pointed at the offensive line—and inconsistency has made for a disastrous start. The team is 2-5, and Mayfield’s tied for First-of-the-Worst with 12 interceptions (Jameis Winston). His six touchdown passes put him at 29th, tied with Joe Flacco.
