Taking The L: What We’ve Been The Most Wrong About Through 1st Quarter Of NFL Season

The first four weeks of the 2026 NFL season were far from predictable. A sliver of teams with playoff (and even championship) hopes are winless. The Minnesota Vikings are one of the final three undefeated teams left. Kenneth Walker III looks like the favorite to win Offensive Player of the Year, and the Los Angeles Rams haven’t been as invincible as we thought they might be. We technically aren’t at the exact quarter mark of the 2026 NFL season, but we’re just about there. So, as we prepare for Week 5, we’re taking a look back on some of our preseason predictions and eating a slice of humble pie as we share what we were wrong about the most. Ralph Vacchiano: I have been high on Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert since 2019, when the New York Giants desperately hoped he’d come out for the draft, one year before he actually did. I thought he had everything I’d want in an NFL quarterback, and I blamed his teammates, coaches and his dysfunctional franchise for why he hasn’t already won multiple Super Bowl trophies and MVPs. This year, though, I thought everything was set up for him. I believed Jim Harbaugh made a brilliant move to bring in Mike McDaniel to work his wizardry at offensive coordinator. I thought they fixed their line, too. By the end of this season, I was sure Herbert and the Chargers would emerge as a sleeper Super Bowl threat. Um, about that … They’re obviously 0-4, possibly headed towards 0-9 if you look at their schedule, and McDaniel and Herbert look like they’re reading the same book in different languages. There is no cohesion on offense, no answers from the coaches, and all seems lost. Just a month ago, 10 wins and the playoffs seemed like the floor for this team. I believed that Herbert, who has been floundering the last three seasons, would finally be back on his Hall of Fame track. Now, all I can do is accept that Herbert might be the most overrated quarterback of this generation. I still think the talent is there. But his potential may forever go unfulfilled. Ben Arthur: The Texans were an easy Super Bowl pick for me ahead of the season. Their all-world defense from a year ago lost no significant contributors over the offseason; they arguably got even better (added free-agent safety Reed Blakenship, second-round rookie defensive tackle Kayden McDonald). And I couldn’t imagine quarterback C.J. Stroud playing worse than he did in the playoffs last season, when he had seven turnovers in two games. If Stroud could keep Houston’s offense on schedule and the defense kept doing its thing, the Texans had a championship formula. So it’s been bizarre to see Stroud and the Texans’ defense essentially switch places in their stunning 0-4 start: the quarterback play has been fine — great at times — but the defense has regressed dramatically. Houston ranks 20th in yards allowed and 26th in points allowed through four games. The team has been particularly bad defending the pass, ranking 28th with 260.0 passing yards allowed per game. Stroud has shown very real signs of growth, and I think the defense will be fine after head coach DeMeco Ryans took back defensive play-calling responsibilities this week. But I think the hole they’ve dug for themselves is too big to overcome. The Jaguars are positioned to run away with the AFC South, and there will be some very good teams fighting for the three wild-card spots in the AFC. Eric D. Williams: I thought the unusual pairing between the old-school approach of veteran head coach Jim Harbaugh and the new-school approach of quirky offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel would work, despite their differing personalities. Instead, through the first four weeks, it’s been an ineffective combo, with Harbaugh having to answer questions about firing his offensive coordinator. The uber-talented Justin Herbert is playing his worst football in his seven-year NFL career. L.A.’s offense looks disjointed, riddled with miscues and sloppy penalties. The Chargers are hampered by injuries again, with four of the team’s projected starting five along the offensive line already suffering injuries that forced them to miss time. The Chargers have one of the worst scoring offenses in the league, and there’s no sign that things will turn around soon, with one of the best defenses in the league traveling to SoFi Stadium to face the Bolts in the Denver Broncos. Once again, the Chargers appear to be facing another lost season led by one of the most talented quarterbacks in the league, and at the center of that struggle is the strained relationship between Harbaugh, McDaniel and Herbert. Greg Auman: I took the Chargers to win the Super Bowl and thought highly of the Texans, so it would be easy to echo the shock of those two teams opening to 0-4 records. I’ll pivot to the other side of surprise, and three current playoff teams I didn’t see coming: the Giants, Raiders and Browns, all off to promising 3-1 starts. You never know how quickly a new coach can imprint on a team that has struggled, and Klint Kubiak has certainly impressed in his first month in Las Vegas. Kubiak had bounced to five teams in five years before winning a Super Bowl last year, from the Vikings to Broncos to 49ers to Chiefs to Seahawks. He looks like someone who has learned from every stop and knows how to build a winning culture. General manager John Spytek spent big in free agency, but Tyler Linderbaum looks like a game-changer, and Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker are a great young linebacker duo. It may not translate to the playoffs this year, but the trajectory is undeniably upward. There’s so much less standing between the Giants and a division title in John Harbaugh’s first season there. The Eagles are now down three solid offensive linemen, and the Cowboys show little sign that their defense isn’t the limiting factor it was last year. Can Jameis Winston play a full season without falling back to old turnover habits? That may be the biggest question, but New York’s defensive front and rookie linebacker Arvell Reese should only improve as the year progresses. And Cleveland, off to a 3-1 start with their only loss at Jacksonville? Todd Monken is the old man in this first-year head coach class, and he’s managed to win with Deshaun Watson, a wrinkle nobody saw coming. Rookie receivers Denzel Boston and KC Concepcion are playmakers, and second-year defensive tackle Mason Graham had four sacks in his first three games before falling to injury. Their schedule is loaded with winnable games, and while they’re unlikely to catch Baltimore, they could stick around in an AFC North where all four teams are at .500 or better right now. Steven Ruiz: I’ll go with the idea that the Cowboys’ defense can be “average.” I really bought into it and picked Dallas to win the NFC East. My optimism was based on new defensive coordinator Christian Parker, but I’m already selling my stock. It’s early, so Parker could develop into a great play-caller someday, but Dallas’s defense isn’t playing like a well-coached unit right now. There have been coverage busts, missed tackles, and blown assignments all over the field. So, it feels an awful lot like the 2025 version of the defense. I’m sure some of that will get resolved over the next few months, but it’s going to be difficult to fix all of it. Beyond the coaching issues, there’s still a concerning lack of talent. I’d hoped the safeties would improve with the addition of first-round pick Caleb Downs, but the rookie has mostly been used as a nickel back, leaving Markquese Bell and Malik Hooker to cover the deep parts of the field. They’ve been a disaster, and it’s tanked the entire pass unit. Cornerback Joey Porter Jr.’s arrival could push Downs back to safety, patching one of the biggest holes on that unit. But as the defense is currently constructed, this is far from a playoff-level unit. With Philadelphia’s season in peril and New York rolling with Jameis Winston for the foreseeable future, the bar for this defense to win the division is much lower than I expected in the offseason. So my take on the defense may have been irredeemably wrong, but I’m still feeling good about my NFC East pick. Henry McKenna: I thought the Chiefs would miss the playoffs, and that was because I thought Patrick Mahomes would need some time before getting on the field — let alone looking like a top-three quarterback. I also thought Kenneth Walker III wouldn’t magically transform the Chiefs’ offensive identity. I was skeptical of whether bringing back OC Eric Bieniemy was the right move — when the team needed fresh ideas. I was beginning to think that maybe there wasn’t enough talent on defense, even with Steve Spagnuolo pulling the strings. So, yeah, I got all that wrong. Every single element. After just four games, the Chiefs have an 89% chance at making the playoffs, tied for the highest in the NFL. They have the highest odds to get the AFC’s No. 1 seed. That’s because Mahomes is playing the best football he’s played in the last five years. Walker looks like he’s on the same play-making plane as the likes of Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs. Bieniemy and Andy Reid have used Walker to bring new life to a dud of an offense. And Spags looks just fine working with the guys he’s got, including high-impact rookies Mansoor Delane, the team’s new CB1, and R Mason Thomas, the team’s rotational edge rusher. The Chiefs took a number of calculated risks. Every single one has paid off. The dynasty is alive and well.