What’s hot and what’s KnotT in football - Week 4

By Rhys Knott

I told you last week it’s been an odd start to the football season and it continued in that fashion. Sam Darnold has found a home, Andy Dalton made the Panthers look like an actual football team and Malik Willis is a starting QB. 2024 is certainly bringing some surprises. But what’s hot and what’s Knott in Week 4?  

Well, we have to begin the Week 4 run down with a new rule – nobody who beats the Patriots can be considered “hot, or even tepid.  

What’s Hot in Football – Week 3

This week, underdogs were hotter than Mike McCarthy’s seat, well, not the Patriots. Any football team averaging a measly 200 yards and just 12 points per game will be major underdogs all season and won’t reproduce their success in Cincinnati anytime soon.

Robert Kraft’s homemade shambles are too terrible to make the Week 4 “Knott” list. Now let’s never speak of them again.  

Let’s speak about the Jets stud running back instead. No, not that one, their OTHER stud running back. Braelon Allen is absolutely hot.   

The 20-year-old is the youngest football player in the league in 2024 and he’s sitting down fully grown adults. The Wisconsin product is benefitting from strong run blocking and his partnership with Breece Hall, but he’s already averaging 5.1 yards per attempt.   

After the first two games of the National Football League season three running backs also averaged 5.1 yards. Jahmyr Gibbs, Kenneth Walker III, and Bijan Robinson, that’s some company. The future’s bright, the future’s Braelon. 

Allen was drafted in the fourth round, so his success isn’t a huge surprise although few expected it would be this immediate. The huge surprise about Braelon is that he isn’t related to Marcus Allen.  

Sam Darnold isn’t 20 anymore, but he’s been hot under Kevin McConnell’s stewardship. Part of Darnold’s success has come because, unlike his time in New York (and his 17 starts in Carolina) he isn’t being asked to do too much. Having a competent offensive line helps too. And playing with someone who can catch a football like Justin Jefferson does makes a quarterback’s job easier too.  

Darnold only threw for 181 yards in Week 4. But with four touchdowns and no interceptions he ended the win over the Texans with a passer rating of 119.2. That’s his highest of the season.

The Vikings have a tricky road trip to Green Bay next week. Then they arrive in London to take on a Jets team who will be woefully under-cooked. Playing the Titans, Patriots, and Broncos in consecutive weeks won’t prepare them for a Brian Flores defense.

While we’re talking about Green Bay, Matt LaFleur’s football team has recovered from losing Jordan Love during their ill-fated trip to Brazil. Malik Willis has stepped up confidently and led the team to two wins. Willis played second fiddle to Josh Jacobs against the Titans, but the former Titan took the reins this week. He led the team in both passing yards and running the football. But he wasn’t even the “Malik of the Week”.

The Vikings’ defense gave the Texans all sorts of problems. Without Mixon and Pierce, the Texans could’t run the football, they only averaged 2.7 yards per run.

Beating Brian Flores’s defense is going to take a village not a Batman, to quote Barbara Gordon from the Lego Batman film (you know you loved it).  

On the subject of defenses that smother all before them, Flores’ old team Pittsburgh did it again. The Steelers held the Chargers to just 10 points. They’re conceding an average of 8.6 points per game in 2024. The Chargers had relied on running the football to get the job done so far in 2024. But Pittsburgh held them to just 61 yards on the ground. To compound Jim Harbaugh’s misery both Rashawn Slater and Justin Herbert left the game with injuries.

Somehow the Titans were favoured to beat the Packers in Tennessee making Green Bay 2.5-point underdogs, that was just the beginning of a rough Sunday for bookmakers. The Eagles were also underdogs on the road in New Orleans but Saquon Barkley had other ideas.  

Saquon (or SaQuads according to Pro Football Reference) recorded his second 100-yard game of the season and bagged another two rushing touchdowns in the French quarter. The man who the Giants let leave in free agency already has 351 rushing yards this season, that’s 36 more than the Giants in 2024!  

Saquon wasn’t the hottest running back in football this week though, that honour fell to Derrick Henry. The former Titan carried the football for 151 yards and scored two rushing touchdowns as the Ravens finally won a game.   

Back to those underdogs though, the Giants and Broncos were both 6.5-point underdogs but that didn’t stop them both winning on the road. The hottest Giant was rookie receiver Malik Nabers. The 21-year-old only had 78 receiving yards in Week 3 (he had 127 last week), but he caught two touchdowns and had four rushing yards too. The sixth overall pick in the 2023 draft is quite good at this football thing. He’s the “Malik of the Week”.

The Giants’ defense did their best impression of The Big Blue Wrecking Crew off of the 80’s too. Shane Bowen’s unit ended their trip to Ohio with eight sacks! They also made five tackles for a loss and turned the football over twice. More importantly, they hit Deshaun Watson 17 times, and that sort of thing is to be very much encouraged.  

But that’s not the end of the underdog story in football this week. The ginger Tom Brady, or Andy Dalton as his parents call him, led the Panthers to a victory over the Raiders (how he made the Panthers defense better is anyone’s guess). Then the Rams, who had six players on their Week 4 injury report to go with the 12 players who were out long-term beat the 49ers.  

The Broncos took advantage of a Buccaneers defense missing Vita Vea and Antoine Winfield Jr. Four Broncos’ players combined for 136 yards on the ground at 4.9 yards per carry. And the success of the run game gave Bo Nix the oppourtunity to complete 25/36 passes and run in a touchdown. Some of us have been on the Bo train since December you know. 

But as much as Bo knows, the hottest Bronco this week s Tyler Badie. The Bronco’s running back began his professional football career on the Ravens practice squad, but he’s been a Bronco since 2022 (he missed the entire 2023 season though).

5-foot-8 Badie averaged 7.8 yards per attempt as he racked up 70 yards on just nine attempts.

What’s Knott in Football – Week 3

Well, favourites obviously. But beyond that, the Christian McCaffrey-less 49ers have forgotten how to do a football. Obviously CMC was a mainstay of their offense in 2023, but Kyle Shanahan has a star-studded offense. If he’s really the best play designer in the NFL the 49ers one absence shouldn’t be a problem.  

The Cowboys’ home form is very much Knott too. They’ve lost their last three football games in Arlington. After comfortably beating the Browns on the road in Week 1 Mike McCarthy’s boys seemed good. But they have been outscored 44 to 72 in the last two weeks. After going behind early to the Ravens in Week 3 they had no time to establish the run. The Cowboys finished the game with just 51 yards on the ground from their 16 attempts.  

Two second-year quarterbacks in the AFC South fall squarely into the “Knott” category too. Will Levis has thrown four touchdowns this season, but he’s also thrown five interceptions and fumbled the ball three times. In fairness to the 25-year-old Brian Callahan’s Titans have opted to throw the football on 54% of their snaps. That’s fine if Joe Burrow is at quarterback, but it’s odd in Nashville. Even more so when the Titans have Tony Pollard and Tyjae Spears to run it.  

Anthony Richardson’s Colts on the other hand have run the football 49% of the time this season. Against the Bears, who will be a better football team once they fire Matt Eberflus, Indianapolis looked like they might be getting the hang of this football thing.

But Richardson has already thrown six interceptions to just three touchdowns this season. They ran the ball for 150 yards in Week 3 and scored three touchdowns on the ground. That’s how they’ll find success this season.

They’ve got a tough matchup in Week 4 as they host the Steelers.  

Oh, and Gardner Minshew Minshew’d so much against the Panthers that he was replaced by Aidan O’Connell. Minshew went 18/28, threw a pick to Michael Jackson (well, he never could keep his hands to himself), and finished with a passer rating of 41.7, that’s the definition of Knott. 

RHYS KNOTT

NFL/FANTASY FOOTBALL ANALYST

Rhys has been watching the NFL for 30 something years and still hasn’t managed to pick a team to support. When he’s not fixatED on pass rushers you can find him blithering on about most sports on Twitter @wrhys_writes

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