There's just one month left in the regular season and when a season has no dominant team, it means a lot of questions are left to be answered. As with most things with the NFL, many of those questions revolve around the quarterbacks. We're not just curious about which quarterbacks may get their teams to the playoffs -- looking at you, Trevor Lawrence and Bryce Young. We're also wondering about quarterbacks who are struggling just to hang on to a job, or who are auditioning for their next one. Or who have just been a mystery this season.
We may not get all the answers by the time the regular season wraps on Jan. 4, but these last five weeks will tell us plenty about what we'll see in the postseason and beyond.
1) Can Jalen Hurts smooth over the Eagles' offensive issues in time to save their season? Despite their record, the Eagles offense has been in a season-long funk -- a largely absent running game, a failure to consistently involve their top playmakers, general lack of execution -- but the listless loss to the Bears on Black Friday, coming on the heels of blowing a 21-point lead to the Cowboys just five days earlier, had the feel of a developing emergency. The offense went three-and-out four times, another drive ended after two plays on an interception, another after four plays on a fumble. Hurts wasn't great Sunday -- he had a fumble on a tush push attempt, and the interception -- and he completed just eight of 16 pass attempts at the start of the fourth quarter. It's probably too late to hope that everything that has hampered the offense will be figured out this season, so it's going to be up to Hurts to play well enough to make up for all the other ills. If he does, the Eagles will be able to hold off the charging Cowboys. If he doesn't, the Eagles are going to hear more and more comparisons to their 2023 collapse and crash out of the playoffs.
2) Is Lamar Jackson healthy enough to get the Ravens to the playoffs? Jackson missed games with a hamstring injury earlier in the season, but since he has returned, he has missed a day of practice in each of the least three weeks with three different lower body injuries. And he simply hasn't looked right, his mobility understandably impaired, and his accuracy nosediving. In the last four games, Jackson's completion percentage has been in the mid 50s. In the last three, he has not thrown a touchdown pass, and has been intercepted three times. The Ravens can beat quarterback-struggling teams like Minneapolis, Cleveland and the Jets without the best of Lamar. But they got blown out in Joe Burrow's return to the Bengals. The Ravens have a difficult schedule the rest of the way -- they face the Steelers twice, the Bengals, the Patriots and the Packers -- and they'll need something closer to normal Lamar-level play to get to the postseason.
3) Can Shedeur Sanders show enough in his tryout to convince the Browns not to draft a quarterback in the spring? Sanders will get a third start this week, and there's an obvious path for him to keep the job the rest of the season. Sanders was fine Sunday in the Browns' loss to the 49ers -- he was 16-of-25 for 149 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions in windy conditions -- but the offense couldn't convert third-down opportunities and never got into the red zone. The Browns have two first-round draft picks in April, so they'll have the ability to get into position to draft a top quarterback if they want to. Sanders has these next few weeks to make it a difficult decision. Then there is the latest twist in the team's QB saga, with the team designating Deshaun Watson, whose disastrous play after being acquired at a massive cost helped sink Cleveland to the AFC cellar, to return from practice, though head coach Kevin Stefanski said Wednesday that getting Watson into games again is "really not my focus" at this time.
4) Is any quarterback safe from Myles Garrett? Maybe only Sanders, since he's on Garrett's team. Everybody else is at risk from the league's best defensive player, who is in pursuit of the single-season sack record. Garrett has 19 sacks -- 15 in the last six games -- with five games to go. The record is 22.5, shared by Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt. Up next: Cam Ward, who has already been sacked a league-high 48 times this season.
5) What becomes of Geno Smith in Las Vegas? This two-win season has been a debacle, already costing two Raiders coordinators their jobs and placing Pete Carroll on the hot seat. Smith was Carroll's handpicked quarterback, and the Seahawks gave him an extension that, theoretically, ties Smith to the Raiders through 2027, although the dead money would be manageable if the Raiders release Smith at the start of the next league year. Smith has thrown a league-leading 14 interceptions and been sacked 46 times. The Raiders have the second-worst scoring offense and in nine of their games have scored 20 or fewer points. At age 35, Smith was never going to be long-term solution, but he could be even more short-term than expected.
6) Is there any way this isn't it for Aaron Rodgers? Earlier this season, when the Steelers were rolling, it was suggested Rodgers might decide not to retire after this season and the Steelers would want to keep him. Things have changed dramatically. The Steelers have lost five of their last seven games, have dropped out of first place in the AFC North, are currently outside of the AFC playoff field and on Sunday, could barely move the ball against the Bills. Rodgers' own performance has gone downhill in recent weeks -- his completion percentage in the last five weeks is under 60 percent -- has multiple fractures in his left wrist and is clearly frustrated with his pass catchers. And on Tuesday, he turned 42. Because every other AFC North team has its own issues, because the Steelers have also beaten teams like the Colts and Patriots and they still have both games against the Ravens ahead of them, they still have a very realistic shot to get into the playoffs. Even then, would Rodgers want to play on? And even if he does, would the Steelers consider running it back in 2026? Only a very dramatic turnaround on the field would seem to be enough to extend what was originally forged as a one-year experiment.
7) Can Bo Nix be steady enough to make us confident the Broncos can go on a deep playoff run? The Broncos have so much going for them -- a Super Bowl-caliber defense, an experienced, winning head coach, and a belief in their ability to come from behind to win tight games. On Sunday night, they engineered their sixth game-winning drive in the fourth quarter or overtime of the season. Nix's inconsistency has been an issue throughout the season -- Sean Payton said a few weeks ago that his clock gets quick -- and it's probably something the Broncos would like to smooth out before they get into the playoffs. Nix has made wildly athletic plays -- check out some plays he kept alive Sunday night -- but he can also be inconsistent. He was not good in the fourth quarter against Washington as the Broncos tried to sustain drives to keep the Commanders from their own comeback attempt. On the other hand, Nix is cool in crunch time, and that is part of what has powered the Broncos into a race for the AFC’s No. 1 seed. On Sunday night, Payton said Nix is getting better and better, and the Broncos are operating better as a result. A bit more of that progress would go a long way to helping the Broncos go a long, long way in the postseason.
8) Will Caleb Williams' completion percentage eventually be a problem? The Bears are 9-3 and currently the NFC’s top seed. And, weirdly, Williams' completion percentage is 58.1 percent, which is 40th in the league. Part of that is drops -- the Bears have dropped 18 of his passes already this season, compared to 20 in all of last season -- although according to Pro Football Reference, Williams' on-target throw percentage has also dropped from 72.4 to 67.3. Still, Williams is pushing the ball down the field more (his air yards per completed pass are up from 4.6 yards to 5.7 yards, per Next Gen Stats). And, perhaps most importantly, he is not getting sacked anywhere near as much as he was last season -- 68 sacks to 19. Friday's victory over the Eagles came in wind and the Bears have the second-best rushing attack in the league. Still, Ben Johnson offered a blunt assessment of the passing game. "We're winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it. None of us are pleased with that right now." The Bears face a series of stout defenses in the next few weeks -- the Packers, Browns and Packers again -- and they will surely try to make Williams pass the Bears to victory.
9) Can C.J. Stroud get back to form to push the Texans into the playoffs? We haven't yet seen the kind of explosiveness Stroud generated in 2023, but his return from a three-game absence with a concussion was promising for what it was. He was 22-of-35 passes for 276 yards and an interception, which came on a pass he sailed. Stroud said he was a little rusty. But he did what the Texans needed -- he mostly kept the chains moving, allowing the Texans to dominate the time of possession and being especially efficient on short passes (16-of-19 for 162 yards on short passes), generating a huge road win over the Colts. The Texans defense is so good, they might not need the deeper passes that Stroud excelled at in his rookie season. If Stroud can knock off the rust while the Texans keep playing effective ball control games, the Texans could prevail in the AFC South.
10) Can Jaxson Dart learn to protect himself? The Giants quarterback took a big hit and went flying near the sideline in the first quarter of Monday night's game. He was in bounds and trying to eke out an extra yard before he went out. It was an entirely legal hit -- the league has made clear it a quarterback is still in bounds and running, he will not be afforded special protection -- as was one earlier in the game by Harold Landry when Dart was forced to scramble as his pocket collapsed. Dart has already missed two games with a concussion and even if the Giants limit how often they call designed runs for Dart, he has to take steps to limit the contact he takes. Dart's running ability adds a dimension to the offense that it hasn't had before -- in five of his starts, he has rushed for at least 50 yards -- and it undoubtedly energizes the Giants offense. But like others before him -- Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen to name two -- Dart has to figure out the line between aggressive and reckless so he can stay on the field. After the game Monday night, Dart indicated he wouldn't have done anything different.
