National Football League

10 biggest surprises through 10 weeks of the 2021 NFL season

Updated Nov. 15, 2021 11:03 a.m. ET

By Geoff Schwartz
FOX Sports NFL Analyst

Ten NFL Sundays have been completed, and based on those 10 weeks, this is shaping up to be a season quite unlike what most of us expected.

Here are my 10 biggest surprises through the first two-and-a-half months of the 2021 NFL season.

1. There are no elite teams.

At the halfway point of the previous NFL season, we had three elite teams. The Kansas City Chiefs had a single loss in the AFC, and the Packers and Saints looked like formidable contenders in the NFC. If you had wagered on those three teams, you’d have felt good about it.

After 10 weeks of the 2021 season, who are you wagering on to win the Super Bowl? The defending champions just lost in Washington off a bye, and their secondary is injured. The Chiefs' offense might or might not show up each week. The Bills' offense is hit-or-miss and lost in Jacksonville while scoring six points two weeks ago. The Titans lost Derrick Henry, and while they're winning, they don’t seem dominant. The Ravens are beat up. The Patriots are young. The Chargers are the Chargers.

The Cowboys deserve hype, but do we trust them in the postseason? What about the Packers, who’ve lost in the NFC Championship Game two years in a row? The Rams seemed like a good option until they no-showed against the Titans. The Cardinals are a well-rounded team, but they're coached by someone who has struggled in the second half of every season he has coached.

You tell me: Who are you wagering on to make and/or win the Super Bowl?

2. Kansas City's offense isn't unstoppable.

Through the first four weeks of the season, the Chiefs' offense was humming along: No. 1 in the NFL in efficiency, points per drive, third-down conversions and more. However, they kept turning the ball over at an alarming rate, committing seven in the first four games. We all figured it would stop and the offense would get back on track.

Nope. The Chiefs recorded 11 more turnovers in the next four weeks as the offense failed to score more than 20 points in four of five games heading into Sunday. Granted, this week against the Raiders, the Chiefs looked pretty dominant, putting up a cool 41 points in an easy win. That might've been the offense getting back on track, but can we trust it?

Several factors have contributed to Kansas City's offensive slowdown, including Travis Kelce looking a step slower than usual, some mistakes upfront and Patrick Mahomes not looking like himself at times over the past month. He has missed open receivers. He has tried for home runs instead of taking singles. He hasn't seemed to trust the pocket.

Now, with this team at 6-4, all is not lost. Kansas City's defense has improved, and if the offense can get anywhere near its previous norm, the Chiefs are still alive to win the AFC.

3. The Cowboys are better than we expected.

The Dallas Cowboys appear to be worth the hype this season. After a poor showing two weekends ago against the Broncos, they bounced back to embarrass the Atlanta Falcons 43-3, and that score was closer than it felt. That's what upper-tier teams do when they play inferior opponents.

The Cowboys' offense was always going to be excellent this season if Dak Prescott were healthy, which he is. The offensive line moves the line and protects the QB, which allows him to target his deep receiving core.

But the offense alone isn't what makes this team formidable. The defense went from one of the worst units last season to being ranked seventh in DVOA by Football Outsiders. The Cowboys are now better on the defensive side than they need to be to win the NFC, and I would expect that as the younger plays get more reps, this unit should only improve. This Cowboys defense is a pleasant surprise.

4. The Cleveland Browns are worse.

I will admit I got suckered into believing that the Browns were contenders. Many of us did. I thought they’d win the AFC North and challenge for the conference title.

I was wrong, and I now demand the Browns return all the preseason praise I gave them. They have blown double-digit leads to the Chiefs and Chargers, they were demolished by the Cardinals and Patriots, and they couldn’t muster any offense in a loss to the Steelers.

Baker Mayfield, whom I’ve never bought as a franchise quarterback, has looked average at best. When things are schemed up, he’s good. But try anything outside the structure of a play-action pass or a bootleg, and he’s not good. This week, the Patriots' defense made him look like a rookie.

The Browns' offensive line and rushing attack are the best in the league, so this offense should be better. On defense, the Browns upgraded their secondary but haven’t played to the level of their upgrades. I’m surprised by how wrong I was about this team.

5. The Cardinals look legit.

The Arizona Cardinals entered this weekend as the No. 1 seed in the NFC after starting the season 8-1, though they lost Sunday with their best offensive players out because of injury. This wasn’t a fluke start by the Cardinals. On offense, head coach Kliff Kingsbury has been able to attack opposing defenses in new ways. An Air Raid offense uses every blade of grass from sideline to sideline. Traditionally, there isn’t a vertical passing game in this offense. However, this season, Kingsbury has been able to make that part of Arizona's scheme.

The Cardinals can attack the field in multiple ways. Kyler Murray has improved and is making throws this season that he didn't in the past. The defense has been equally impressive, entering Week 10 fourth in DVOA. Now, many of us are waiting for the Kingsbury second-half swoon, but at the moment, the Cardinals are a surprise.

6. Kyle Shanahan does not.

Sticking in the NFC West, is Shanahan a good head coach? Aside from their 2019 run to the Super Bowl, the 49ers have been awful. Shanahan’s record is 19-37 in all other seasons. That is not good and is actually rather shocking, given all the praise he gets for being an offensive guru.

At some point, that guru needs to create some wins. At this point, it’s fair to question whether Shanahan the general manager has failed Shanahan the coach. There have been plenty of poor drafts with odd scheme fits and failed free-agency signings. But whatever the reason for the Niners' failings, it’s time to question Shanahan.

7. Mac Jones in New England is working.

The Patriots led by Mac Jones are a playoff team. I found it misguided how people used Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl last season as an indictment of his old coach, Bill Belichick. Belichick took a bum roster to 7-9 last season, and though he’s not free of blame for his roster's construction, he can still coach.

And what do you know? The Patriots are 6-4 with a point differential of plus-100 in their past four games. Jones has improved each week and has been the best rookie quarterback so far this season. New England's defense has changed its identity, moving away from man coverage to more zone looks to accommodate the personnel, but that hasn’t changed how feisty the group can be. The Patriots are for real and might give Buffalo a run for the division, and Jones playing this well this early in his career has been a surprise.

8. So are the league's COVID protocols.

The lack of COVID issues in the first half of the season is the result of outstanding work by the NFL and its employees. Strict protocols for unvaccinated individuals, along with teams' viewing vaccination as a competitive advantage, have helped push a high vaccinated rate in the league, and very few high-profile players have missed time through 10 weeks.

Of course, the COVID quiet ended abruptly two weeks ago, with the news that unvaccinated Aaron Rodgers had tested positive and would miss his team's game against the Chiefs, and his interview on "The Pat McAfee Show" created an NFL media frenzy for a week. Then, 24 hours before the Steelers were to host the Lions, it was announced that Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger had tested positive, and he missed the Steelers' riveting tie with the Lions.

I’m sure those two quarterbacks won’t be the last to test positive, but overall, it surprised me that the NFL went two months with almost no COVID-related issues.

9. The officiating has been shockingly bad.

The officiating has been poor so far this season, and it appears to be getting worse. The NFL admitted that multiple calls went against the Bears in their close loss to the Steelers. The NFL’s enforcement of taunting penalties is something not a single person watching this game was asking for. The league has gotten even softer with roughing the passer penalties, and one of those might have cost the Saints a win yesterday.

It seems to me that officials are guessing far too often and not calling what they see. Changes need to be made because officiating should never be the main story after a weekend of football. This season, I've been surprised by just how poor the officiating has been and by the league's failure to address the taunting calls.

10. There are no first-round QBs for 2022.

This is NFL-adjacent but also important as fans of losing teams turn their attention to the 2022 NFL Draft. At the moment, there is no quarterback worthy of a top-15 pick, and it’s highly unlikely that will change before April.

At least two quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round of every NFL Draft since 2013, but this season hasn’t been kind to the college QBs we expected to be great. Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler was benched. Sam Howell at North Carolina isn’t special. Malik Willis from Liberty has shown flashes, but that team plays no one. It's possible the first QB drafted will be Kenny Pickett from Pittsburgh or Carson Strong out of Nevada.

None of the names available will inspire a fan base hoping to rebuild around a new signal-caller. After so many years of excellent quarterback options, it’s surprising that there appears to be none this season.

Geoff Schwartz played eight seasons in the NFL for five different teams. He started at right tackle for the University of Oregon for three seasons and was a second-team All-Pac-12 selection his senior year. He is an NFL analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @GeoffSchwartz.