The 2022 NFL season has had its fair share of surprises as well as disappointments.
On the one hand, you have teams like the Eagles, Vikings, Dolphins, and Jets who have put on a show in their respective ways and started making believers even out of their worst critics.
And what about players? Guys like Geno Smith, Tayoer Heinicke, Tua Tagovailoa, and Nick Chubb have taken to this season as the perfect opportunity to show their worth.
On the other hand though, there are those teams and players that haven’t managed to put one and one together and have caused more distress than anything else. From Russell Wilson’s lackluster tenure with the Broncos to the Packers plummeting after being touted as NFC favorites, the list goes on and on when talking about disappointments.
But which have been the biggest disappointments so far? Let’s break down three of the biggest letdowns in the 2022 NFL season.
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Russell Wilson
Whether it’s the lack of congealment with his team or the fact that the Broncos can’t seem to piece an offensive run to save their lives, at the end of the day, all of Denver’s struggles in the season can be pinpointed to one specific character, Wilson, with an honorary nod to head coach Nathaniel Hackett.
Every time Wilson ushers out the “Broncos Country Let’s Ride” saying, it feels as if he is asking Denver fans to pick him up from the stadium and drive him out of town. And it’s not hard to see why the disenchantment between the QB and his team’s fan base is so apparent.
After taking the Seahawks to two Super Bowls and winning one, Denver took an enormous risk when it gave Seattle a bounty of draft picks and players to get Wilson. Maybe the Broncos thought they would have another Peyton Manning-style era coming their way. Let’s face it. Wilson has good numbers to back up his career, but he is not, nor will he ever be anything close to Manning.
With Wilson manning the offense, Denver has looked like a group of amateurs playing the wrong sport. Even with talents like Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton to back him up, Wilson still hasn’t found a way to sync with his offense. If it wasn’t for Denver’s defense stepping up and trying to salvage any kind of dignity, we could perfectly be looking at a team with a “0” in its win column.
If there was a personification of what buyer’s remorse looks like, just tune into a Broncos game, watch Wilson struggle, and then picture being Denver’s GM and thinking, “man, I thought this was going to work out differently.”
Rams and Their Super Bowl Hangover Syndrome
Do you remember Uncle Rico in “Napoleon Dynamite”? Or any other movie or TV character that lives in a perennial state of success hangover. That’s the Los Angeles Rams this season, and I dare anybody to prove me wrong.
How do you go from winning a Super Bowl last season to being 3-8? Ask Sean McVay and the LA Rams. After trading their livelihood away to Detroit to get QB Matthew Stafford, the message in LA was clear, “We want the Super Bowl and we want it NOW!”.
Now, with Stafford looking more likely to be sidelined for the rest of the season after battling with a strained neck, Cooper Kupp on the team’s IR because of an ankle injury, and the team going anywhere, how much was that title worth in the long run?
Did McVay lose his magic touch? What about the defense? How could you go from having one of the best defensive units in the game, with players like Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey as its leaders, to having eight losses and holding the last place in the NFC West?
I will never be one to speak ill of a player like Donald. The man is a machine, a generational talent when it comes to defending, but he can’t do it all by himself, and even with the help of Bobby Wagner, that still leaves a lot to desire from the rest of LA’s defense.
The Raiders’ Lost Gamble
I know I’m not the only one who even while not a fan of the Raiders specifically felt hope after Las Vegas brought in Davante Adams to play alongside his longtime best friend Derek Carr.
Adams and Carr look like a match made in football heaven when they connect down the field. The problem is, that doesn’t happen as often because of how bad the Raiders have played all year long.
Before the beginning of the season, hitching a ride on Las Vegas’ hype bus was a no-brainer. They have enough players both on offense and defense to make anybody a believer. With the addition of former Patriots OC Josh McDaniels as coach, all signs pointed toward this being the start of a whole new era of football for the silver and black. But who are we kidding?
If it wasn’t for the fact that the Broncos struck out immensely with the addition of Wilson, we would be talking about the Raiders being the worst team not only in the AFC West but in the AFC conference as a whole. And yes, I’m considering the Texans when saying this. Why? Because nobody was expecting anything from Houston, so the room for disappointment is minuscule.
While this was supposed to be a team that would go on to challenge the Chiefs and Chargers for divisional supremacy, nowadays the Raiders just look like the shell of what could’ve been a contender this season.
