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\u2019d come out for the draft, one year before he actually did. I thought he had everything I\u2019d want in an NFL quarterback, and I blamed his teammates, coaches and his dysfunctional franchise for why he hasn\u2019t 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 \u2026 They\u2019re obviously 0-4, possibly headed towards 0-9 if you look at their schedule, and McDaniel and Herbert look like they\u2019re 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\u2019t 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\u2019s offense on schedule and the defense kept doing its thing, the Texans had a championship formula. So it\u2019s been bizarre to see Stroud and the Texans\u2019 defense essentially switch places in their stunning 0-4 start: the quarterback play has been fine \u2014 great at times \u2014 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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.\u2019s offense looks disjointed, riddled with miscues and sloppy penalties. The Chargers are hampered by injuries again, with four of the team\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll pivot to the other side of surprise, and three current playoff teams I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s so much less standing between the Giants and a division title in John Harbaugh\u2019s first season there. The Eagles are now down three solid offensive linemen, and the Cowboys show little sign that their defense isn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019ll 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\u2019m already selling my stock. It\u2019s 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\u2019m sure some of that will get resolved over the next few months, but it\u2019s going to be difficult to fix\u00a0all\u00a0of it. Beyond the coaching issues, there\u2019s still a concerning lack of talent. I\u2019d 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\u2019ve been a disaster, and it\u2019s tanked the entire pass unit. Cornerback Joey Porter Jr.’s arrival\u00a0could 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\u2019s 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\u2019m 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 \u2014 let alone looking like a top-three quarterback. I also thought Kenneth Walker III wouldn\u2019t magically transform the Chiefs\u2019 offensive identity. I was skeptical of whether bringing back OC Eric Bieniemy was the right move \u2014 when the team needed fresh ideas. I was beginning to think that maybe there wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s No. 1 seed. That\u2019s because Mahomes is playing the best football he\u2019s played in the last five years. Walker looks like he\u2019s 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\u2019s got, including high-impact rookies Mansoor Delane, the team\u2019s new CB1, and R Mason Thomas, the team\u2019s rotational edge rusher. The Chiefs took a number of calculated risks. Every single one has paid off.\u00a0The dynasty is alive and well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}