These are the biggest flops of the 2023 NFL season

The NFL is a small-sample league. Before you can even blink, 18 games have flown by and we’re left trying to make sense of everything that happened. It means that luck can play a massive part in whether a team succeeds or fails, with a few bounces of the ball defining the entire story for an entire season.

That being said, that doesn’t mean all NFL moves are immune to scrutiny. There are absolutely some bone-headed, moronic decisions that can derail a season from the beginning. Single moves can be so bad that they squander seasons, change legacies, and cost people their jobs. Brace yourself, as we get through the biggest blunders of the 2023 NFL season.

This somewhat falls between the last two years, but hear us out. While the fully guaranteed, $230 million contract was issued in 2022, it’s what transpired in 2023 that puts it on this list.

Signing an alleged sex pest that hadn’t played football in over a year was bad. But after taking the field, Watson really showed he wasn’t worth the money, posting career lows in success rate, yards per attempt, yards, per completion, and touchdown rate. His 5-1 record was fraudulent: two of those wins came while Cleveland’s defense was playing at a historic pace, and another came in a Colts game that saw Watson throw five passes and complete as many passes to his own team (one) as the other.

The Browns have an elite defense and some legit skill-position weapons. The fact that a nearly 39-year-old Joe Flacco could walk in and take over this team shows how badly Cleveland is missing out on a real quarterback.

Don’t worry, it gets worse: Watson is a $63.98 million cap hit in each of the next three years, according to OverTheCap.

On its face, the decision to make Aaron Rodgers a quarterback is defensible. Injuries are freak incidents (more likely in older players like Rodgers) and you can’t fault the Jets for losing him four plays into the year. What you can blame the Jets for, though, is letting Rodgers’ presence dictate how they built their roster. The Green Bay-adjacent talent that came to New York was useless. Allen Lazard signed a four-year, $44 million contract with the Jets before the Rodgers trade was finalized; he started getting healthy scratches midway through the year. Randall Cobb caught all of five passes in a backup role.

Even when injured, the four-time MVP’s presence dictated their in-season quarterback decisions. Rodgers’ quiet hints at a potential comeback (that never happened) prevented the Jets from pursuing an interim signal-caller. While quarterbacks like Josh Dobbs, Gardner Minshew, and Jacoby Brissett all picked up wins in backup roles, the Jets trotted out Rodgers’ buddy Tim Boyle. He lasted all of two games, throwing one touchdown and four interceptions before getting cut in favor of Trevor Siemian.

The Jaguars’ season was an abject failure. Dropping the division in Week 18 to the lowly Titans while a rookie quarterback (C.J. Stroud) and a backup (Gardner Minshew) duked it out for the AFC South title is an appalling showing. The Jaguars fired defensive coordinator Mike Campbell despite his relatively unknown defense finishing 10th in DVOA. Instead, the axe should have come squarely for Press Taylor, the offensive coordinator who took over play-calling the same time Jacksonville fell from 10th to 18th in offensive DVOA year-over-year.

Doug Pederson has long been touted as a strong mentor. He’s tried to pay back the same kindness Andy Reid paid to him, bolstering a potential head coaching resume by allowing Pederson to call plays for the Chiefs. The only problem is it’s failed twice now. Pederson passed off play-calling duties in Philadelphia in 2020, resulting in his worst (and last) season as Eagles head coach. He handed the reins to Taylor, and the Jaguars offense collapsed down the stretch despite arguably getting better from a roster perspective.

The New England Patriots offense had too many problems to properly list. Mac Jones looked broken despite pairing him with Alabama OC Bill O’Brien. The offensive line was a revolving door, both from a personnel standpoint and an “allowing sacks” standpoint. The receiver room, though, was by far New England’s most glaring issue.

The Patriots let their biggest receiving success story – former UDFA Jakobi Meyers – walk in free agency in favor of JuJu Smith-Schuster. Meyers put up a career-high eight receiving touchdowns in Las Vegas (plus two rushing touchdowns and a passing touchdown), while Smith-Schuster put up a career-low 23.6 yards per game and one touchdown. One-year tight end rental Mike Gesicki put up the fewest targets and yards since his 2018 rookie season. Once Kendrick Bourne went down for the season with a torn ACL, New England’s best offensive weapon was sixth-round rookie DeMario Douglas out of Liberty.

The writing was on the wall for Staley as early as early as Week 2, when the Los Angeles Chargers head coach started snarling at reporters who asked about the team’s poor performance. At that point, though, the Bolts were already in too deep on the Staley-GM Tom Telesco partnership because they had already let it lapse another season. Los Angeles should have cut bait with the one-time analytics darling the moment they blew the third-largest lead in playoff history.

The Chargers were never good at defense under Staley. The unit finished 26th in defensive DVOA in his first year, and acquiring big-name talent like Khalil Mack and J.C. Jackson only bumped them up to 21st in 2022. In the year they fired Staley, Los Angeles fell right back down to 26th where they started despite having the seventh-most expensive defense by full roster cap. Bringing in Kellen Moore to fix the offense was a half-measure to see if Staley could finally live up to his first-year hype. Instead, the Chargers are picking fifth overall, and Staley and Telesco are out of jobs.

This one’s got layers. Let’s start with the actual decision to move up: Not the worst one! 2023 was a strong quarterback draft, with (what looks like) two really solid options at the options at the top of the draft. Carolina just happened to go with the third option, the 5-foot-10 quarterback who did well on a standardized test.

Everything was a domino effect from there. Bryce Young had no weapons to throw to because Carolina included D.J. Moore in the trade. Moore thrived in Chicago. Young waited for 33-year-old Adam Thielen to get open, leading to a 10.5 percent sack rate ( fourth-highest) despite his 2.9 seconds to throw ( 14th-longest). Young’s inability to develop (and the success of C.J. Stroud) led to the early termination of head coach Frank Reich, a man previously touted exclusively for his quarterback development skills. Now the Panthers are at rock-bottom, without the No. 1 overall pick, and openings at general manager and head coach with contingencies on both to make Young work out.

It’s tough not to think anything will work when Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are at the helm. Kansas City even managed to win a Super Bowl with JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling as the leading receivers. Everything has its limits, though. By letting Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman walk this offseason, Kansas City put all their chips on Travis Kelce and a young, unproven group of receivers. The results went about as well as anyone should have expected. The Chiefs led the league with 44 dropped passes. Among 26 Chiefs receivers with at least 30 targets since 2018, Kadarius Toney (4.4) and Skyy Moore (6.4) have the lowest and second-lowest yards per target in a single season. Their best receiving target not named Travis Kelce was second-round rookie Rashee Rice, who didn’t earn a legitimate workload until the second half of the season.

Even with all the shortcomings, Kansas City still managed to finish eighth in offensive DVOA. With the Chiefs also boasting their best defense of the Mahomes-Reid era, getting anybody at receiver would have been an upgrade. In an offseason where big names like DeAndre Hopkins and Odell Beckham were available for cheap, Kansas City stayed pat. It may cost them a chance at a title in a year with no real AFC contenders.

The 2022 and 2023 Philadelphia Eagles might as well be two different teams when it comes to defense. The Super Bowl-caliber D was built mostly on one-year contracts and expiring deals. So not only did the Eagles lose defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon to a head coaching gig in Arizona, but they also had to rebuild after over 7,000 total defensive snaps hit the open market. The Eagles were able to retain a few pieces, but watching defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, linebackers T.J. Edwards and Kyzir White, and defensive back C.J. Gardner-Johnson all walk in free agency is a tough pill to swallow.

Despite the Eagles’ best attempt to refill holes internally with youngsters, Philadelphia fell from third-best to fourth-worst in defensive DVOA year-over-year. It got so bad at one point that head coach Nick Sirianni stripped play-calling duties from Sean Desai and gave them to Matt Patricia of all people. It hasn’t worked. The Eagles are 1-3 since the switch, allowing an average of 26.75 points over that stretch.

The Green Bay Packers should get all the credit in the world for being the youngest roster in the league and making the playoffs with a first-year starter at quarterback. Jordan Love has looked like the heir apparent to the Green Bay quarterback dynasty, and he’s making it work with a bunch of first- and second-year receiving talent.

If the defense was at the same level as the offense, though, this group could rival the Detroit Lions for a division title. Green Bay has had one top-10 defense by DVOA since 2010 – a 10th-best placement in 2020, Mike Pettine’s final year as defensive coordinator. It’s been downhill ever since under replacement Joe Barry. Barry was able to keep the defense somewhat afloat in 2021, but fell to a 25th-ranked defense in 2022 and a 27th-ranked defense in 2023 despite investing premium draft capital in the defense both years. The Packers finished the 2023 regular season tied for seventh-fewest turnovers, 10th-highest yards per play, and the eighth-highest rate of scoring drives allowed. Four of the Packers’ eight losses came in games where the offense scored at least 20 points. This was a fun season for Green Bay, but it could have been a special one with a better defense.

The NFC South was begging to be had. Nobody wanted it, with Tampa Bay begrudgingly locking it up in Week 18. It really should have been Atlanta’s for the taking, though. The Falcons had one of the easiest schedules in the league. They completely overhauled their roster, spending a combined $218.4 million ( third-most) across 31 free agents (second-most) last offseason. They boasted three different top-ten picks at running back, wide receiver, and tight end. The defense, while not great, saw a massive improvement over last year.

The only thing missing: A quarterback. In the same year the Falcons actively rejected a bid for Lamar Jackson, ignored free-agent bids for veteran starters, and passed on moving up for a sliding Will Levis. Instead, they went with a combination of second-year third-rounder Desmond Ridder and perennial Commanders backup Taylor Heinicke. Neither worked. Off the heels of a rookie season that didn’t show much to begin with, Ridder was up-and-down all year, undergoing multiple short-term benchings. He was an unremarkable quarterback with some fun plays in him, but nothing that could actually win Atlanta any games. Now, the Falcons are in no-man’s-land, looking for both a new head coach and a new quarterback.