It’s time to check in on the teams that can’t get out of their own way. We’re nearing the halfway point of the 2022 NFL season and it’s been unpredictable, but there are always a few teams we expect to disappoint their fan base. Now let’s get into the powerless ranking for Week 7.
Teams on the doorstep: Las Vegas Raiders (2-4), Arizona Cardinals (3-4), Cleveland Browns (2-5)
These Denver Broncos are not supposed to be three games under .500 before the halfway point of the season. That clearly was not the expectation after acquiring Russell Wilson in the offseason. But here we are seven weeks in, and they’re 2-5, Wilson is out with a bad hamstring, the offense could barely run or pass the ball with him on the field, and the defense is left to pick up the pieces.
Denver’s rookie head coach Nathaniel Hackett looks more bewildered each week and less like the guru some proclaimed when he was hired away from Green Bay. Calling this first year of Hackett and Wilson a disaster does it no justice. The Broncos’ offense has been the drizzling shits all year. The best defense can only do so much when the offense leaves them to pick up the pieces repeatedly. Losing to the Jets 16-9 on Sunday seems fitting, as most people would’ve had them swapping records. The Jets are 5-2, and there aren’t many who can say they saw either coming.
The Panthers got their second win of the season over Tom Brady and the Buccaneers of all teams. Carolina beat up Tampa Bay, 21-3. Panthers quarterback P.J. Walker — a former XFL signal-caller — played magnificently, throwing two touchdowns and completing 72 percent of his passes. He only threw for 177 yards, but when you’re a team like Carolina, you’ll take a win any way you can get it. The Panthers’ defense kept Brady and the Bucs’ offense out of the end zone all day. Brady passed 290 empty yards, which meant nothing in the grand scheme of this game.
Houston dropped another game, this time to Las Vegas, 38-20. Davis Mills had a decent game, but ultimately the defense gets the brunt of the blame for the Texans this week. Lovie Smith’s defense allowed Josh Jacobs of the Raiders to run for 143 yards and three TDs. He averaged 7.2 yards per carry as the Texans basically parted the red sea to let Jacobs run by them all game. The only hope left for Houston is getting the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft.
What can we say? Pittsburgh is Pittsburgh. We knew it would be a tough year, but I’m not sure anyone thought it would start out this rough. With that offense, the Steelers are lucky to have two wins. Their 16-10 defeat at the hands of the Dolphins wasn’t filled with excitement. If you’re going to be bad, you can do it entertainingly, like the Raiders.
All the scoring in this game was done in the first half. These teams shut each other out in the second half. Kenny Pickett threw three INTs and passed 257 yards and a TD. Najee Harris rushed for a meager 65 yards and caught three passes. There doesn’t seem to be much creativity with this Pittsburgh offense, as they can’t even get the running game going, which was once a staple of Steelers football. Harris rushed for 1,200 yards in his rookie year while he’s on pace to rush for under 800 in his second season. But he shouldn’t get all the blame. It’s been the entire offensive unit that looks out of sorts.
Finally, the Lions have come back…to the Powerless Rankings. For a team that spent almost all last season on this list, it’s taken a little longer to get them here this year, but here they are. Early on, it felt like Detroit was turning a corner as they played hard and looked more competitive than they had in quite some time.
Detroit’s first three losses of the season were all by four points or less, and they got their first and only win in Week 2 over Washington by nine points. But over the last two games, they’ve lost by a combined score of 53-6. Week 7 was a loss to the Cowboys, and the previous week was a shut-out loss to the Patriots. Forget great; Detroit hasn’t done anything good over the past two weeks. It looks like they’re back on this list to stay.