One reason to still watch each of the NFL’s worst teams in 2019

There has been a lot of good in the NFL to begin the 2019 season. Patrick Mahomes has continued his battle against physics by launching footballs with the kind of strength and accuracy typically limited to video games. Dalvin Cook is healthy again and barreling toward his destiny as one of the league’s best running backs. The Bills, 49ers, and Lions don’t have a loss between them through three weeks.

There’s been more than enough bad as well. Seven teams have started their 2019 Super Bowl quests with little more than heartache to show for it. The Dolphins have been just as sad as predicted, losing their three games by a combined score of 133-16. The Jets and Steelers each lost starting quarterbacks. The Bengals, Broncos, and Washington have all had to deal with defensive deficiencies that have them lost in the wilderness. The Cardinals, thanks to a Week 1 tie against the Lions, are the one-eyed king of this land of the blind.

These seven teams have sunk to the bottom of the NFL’s food chain, but there’s still plenty of time for these teams to climb back into contention (not you, Miami) or make worthwhile progress in a rebuilding year. Here’s one major reason to keep watching each of the league’s winless teams this season, listed in order of how entertaining each franchise looks for the rest of 2019.

Because there’s too much talent for this team to be this bad

On paper, the Steelers don’t look like a hopeless team — even with Ben Roethlisberger out for the season. 2018 Pro Bowlers JuJu Smith-Schuster and James Conner still serve starring roles on offense. The defense can throw eight different first-round picks onto the field at any given time, including game-changers like T.J. Watt, Cameron Heyward, and the newly acquired Minkah Fitzpatrick.

Yet despite very, very different rosters, Pittsburgh and Miami started the season with identical 0-3 records.

Of all the league’s winless teams, the Steelers have the greatest hope of digging toward daylight. Although Mason Rudolph was awful in stretches during his first NFL start, he still helped Pittsburgh take a (temporary) fourth quarter lead on the road against the 3-0 49ers. Conner has rushed for just 2.9 yards per carry, but is just 24 years old and is unlikely to have fallen off such a massive production cliff so early in his career. And Fitzpatrick’s slot coverage and ability to add another layer of defense could help replace the versatility the Steelers have searched for since losing Ryan Shazier in the middle of their lineup.

With the Bengals and Browns each struggling, and the Ravens’ legitimacy still up in the air, a resurgent Pittsburgh team could still compete in the AFC North.

Because this air raid thing might actually work out

The Cardinals took the biggest risk of anyone searching for a head coach this offseason, pulling Kliff Kingsbury from the USC coaching staff only weeks after he’d been fired at Texas Tech. This gave Kingsbury the chance to back up his own hype and add reigning Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray to his advanced spread offense — an opportunity the former Big 12 standby jumped on with the top pick of the draft.

The results so far have been mixed. Murray has thrown more passes than anyone else in the league through the first three weeks, but his 5.7 adjusted yards per attempt is 30th-best in the league — right above Eli Manning in the standings. The plus is that this pass-happy approach has revitalized Larry Fitzgerald, who is currently on pace for a 96-catch, 1,349-yard campaign in his 16th season as a pro.

This is no surprise to Fitzgerald:

The bad news is the Cardinals are still 0-2-1 on the year.

Murray still has enormous amounts of room to grow as a passer, but NFL defenses will adjust to his freewheeling style with every snap he plays. So what’s going to give: will the league catch wise to Kingsbury’s air raid and keep the Cardinals out of contention? Or can Arizona be the agent of change that sparks the next phase of the NFL’s offensive evolution?

Because A.J. Green will be back soon ... right?

The Bengals can’t run the ball, so they’re willing to throw it until Andy Dalton’s arm falls off. Dalton has thrown more passes than any quarterback in the league except Kyler Murray, who got an extra 10 minutes in a Week 1 tie to league the league in dropbacks. Cincinnati has turned its veteran quarterback into late-stage Ryan Fitzpatrick for two reasons:

Fortunately for the Red Rifle, help is on the way — we just don’t quite know when. Seven-time Pro Bowler A.J. Green hasn’t practiced with the Bengals since the preseason due to an ankle injury, but he’s due to return at some point this season.

Exactly when isn’t certain, but there’s a good chance he’ll be back by November for a passing offense that’s gotten better-than-expected returns from players like John Ross and Auden Tate behind last year’s breakout star Tyler Boyd. While the Bengals aren’t bound for the playoffs in the first year of the Zac Taylor era, they’re a hell of a lot more fun to watch when 20 of Dalton’s 50 targets each game are going to an All-Pro talent like Green.

Because Terry McLaurin and Dwayne Haskins could eventually be magic

Washington’s dysfunction has kept Pro Bowl left tackle Trent Williams out of the lineup while he holds out, and it could soon claim Jay Gruden as the first head coach fired this fall. That threatens to throw 2019 first-round pick Dwayne Haskins into a tumultuous situation; it could also make Washington eminently more watchable.

Haskins was electric at Ohio State, and Case Keenum’s five-turnover performance in Week 3 (it would have been six if not for a soft hands to the face penalty) could signal a changing of the guard at quarterback in the near future. Developing the rookie passer into a franchise cornerstone may be the only way for Gruden to keep his job at this point. Fortunately for him, he’s got an ace in the hole.

Third-round wideout Terry McLaurin has been one of the league’s top wide receivers this season. He’s had at least five catches and a touchdown in each of his team’s first three games — something no other rookie has ever done in NFL history.

He has the chops to make life easier for any quarterback. He’ll be especially valuable for one with whom he’s got history/ McLaurin was Haskins’ top big-play threat with the Buckeyes in 2018; Haskins had a 153.8 passer rating when targeting him.

McLaurin totaled 35 catches and 701 yards — a blistering 20 yards per catch — while scoring 11 touchdowns for the Big Ten champions last season. Eventually, we’ll get the chance to see what they can do together at the next level, even if when is still up in the air.

Because the football gods will find new and exciting ways to ruin this team

The Jets had some hope coming into 2019. High-priced free agent C.J. Mosley and top-three draft pick Quinnen Williams joined a defense that featured promising young players like Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye. Le’Veon Bell had been freed from his Steelers-imposed purgatory to give second-year quarterback Sam Darnold a much-needed weapon out of the backfield.

And then the season began. Mosley and Williams both got hurt in Week 1. Darnold came down with mononucleosis before Week 2 and watched from his quarantined apartment as his backup Trevor Siemian suffered a season-ending ankle injury before halftime of his first start. Adams lost his mind about a bad penalty call in the midst of an innocuous start to his third season.

Bell is averaging 3.7 yards per touch, which includes 56 carries and 20 receptions. The offense has scored one touchdown in three games.

Darnold will return at some point. So will Mosley and Williams. And it will not matter because a sinkhole will form under MetLife Stadium, or a pink eye outbreak will rip through the locker room, or the New York secondary will tip three straight interceptions into the hands of outstretched opponents who turn them into 99-yard touchdowns.

It will not be predictable, but it will be bad.

Because John Elway’s infatuation with Joe Flacco can’t last ... can it?

The Broncos pried Flacco from the middle of the Ravens’ depth chart for a Day 3 pick, handing him the reins of a franchise that had been redeemed by a Super Bowl MVP once before. Yet Flacco has been more 2015 Peyton Manning than the 2012 version. He’s upped his accuracy and efficiency in his first season in Denver but still ranks just 25th among starting quarterbacks in adjusted yards per pass.

That’s dampened what should be a breakout season for second-year wideout Courtland Sutton and held the Broncos’ offense to just 46 total points through three weeks. Help could be on the way, though it won’t be able to take the field until Week 9 at the earliest. A thumb sprain pushed GM John Elway to place rookie quarterback Drew Lock on injured reserve, and that means he’s been unable to practice with the team since the start of the regular season.

Lock, a second-round pick, has the big arm Elway covets but looked entirely overwhelmed in the preseason. Flacco has been a low-ceiling caretaker in his stead, but has two more years remaining on his contract after 2019 — and a dead cap hit of $13.6 million next spring, per Spotrac. Will Denver give its shaky first-year quarterback a chance to stand on his own this fall? Will Flacco finish out the season and head into 2020 as the Broncos’ QB1? Does it even make sense to throw a young passer to the wolves behind an offensive line that allowed six sacks against Green Bay?

Because Josh Rosen doesn’t want to get left in the NFL’s “take a QB, leave a QB” change tray

Poor Josh Rosen. He was thrown into a no-win situation with the Cardinals as a rookie, left to fend for himself behind one of the league’s worst offensive lines and a woefully shallow WR/TE depth chart. Then he got traded to Miami, where all those things have been somehow worse.

Rosen’s seen his sack rate rise from an awful 10.3 percent to 10.4 through three games on a roster where not a single wide receiver has a catch rate higher than 50 percent. His team has scored one touchdown in three games while giving up 18. The Dolphins are bottoming out in 2019, and they’re taking the second-year player’s pro prospects with it

Miami’s race to the bottom has been predicated on building up as many draft assets as possible, whether by losing games in laughable fashion or selling off veteran pieces to the highest bidder (Laremy Tunsil, Minkah Fitzpatrick). That sets the stage for the club to select a highly touted quarterback prospect in the 2020 draft — perhaps Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert — in a move that would kick Rosen to the curb for a second straight year.

The former No. 10 overall pick has 13 games left to prove he’s the kind of player around which a hollowed-out franchise can build. The problem is he’s already fighting off injury — he missed chunks of his Week 3 start with a battered thumb — and surrounded by the league’s least talented roster. If he can’t turn things around, he could be headed for his third NFL destination in as many years.