Four Teams Won Games Their Own Stats Say They Should Have Lost

Every game from Week 3 — Sunday's full slate plus Monday night — is in the books, and we ran all 15 of this weekend's games back through the actual play-by-play, the stuff that doesn't care what the final score says. Four different teams won this weekend while getting outplayed on a per-snap basis. Four. Let's get into it.

The Minnesota Vikings are 3-0 and their offense has not had a good week yet. Not one. Week 1 and 2 it was Carson Wentz stinking up the building. Sunday it was Kyler Murray, who posted the single worst quarterback game of the entire weekend — worse than every backup, every blowout loser, everybody — on an offense that hit "on schedule" a miserable 21.6% of the time, the worst offensive success rate by any team in the league this week. And Minnesota won by 7. This is a defense-and-special-teams team wearing a 3-0 record like a costume, and at some point that costume has to come off. Or maybe it doesn't. Three weeks in, nobody's proven it has to.

Washington, Indianapolis, Denver and Pittsburgh all won this weekend with a negative net EPA grade. Translation for the people in the back: cover up the score of those four games and just watch the film, and you'd think all four of these teams lost. Washington beat Seattle 33-31 despite getting outgained by 177 yards — Seattle turned it over three times and that's the whole ballgame. Indianapolis beat Houston 19-17 on fewer yards, a worse per-play grade, and three turnovers of their own — Houston forced every single one and still lost. Denver beat the Rams despite the Rams running for 482 yards, the most of any team in football this week, without their WR1. And Pittsburgh beat Cincinnati 30-27 despite the Bengals posting a better success rate AND more offensive EPA than the Steelers managed. Four winning teams this weekend who got out-played by their own numbers. Enjoy the week, Colts and Broncos and Commanders and Steelers fans — you'll take it.

Houston Texans, you got robbed and there's no nice way to say it. Better net EPA than Indianapolis. Forced three turnovers and committed zero of your own. Twenty fewer offensive plays needed to do it. And you still lost by two. This is as clean a "won the turnover battle, lost the game" result as exists in this league, and it happened to the team that lost.

Cleveland Browns, congratulations on winning by 3 when the tape says it should've been a laugher. Plus-12.1 net EPA is the best number of any winning team not named Jacksonville, Chicago or Kansas City, and Cleveland still needed the fourth quarter to hold off Carolina. San Francisco and Las Vegas have the same complaint — both deserved bigger margins than they got, San Francisco because Arizona hung 30 anyway and Las Vegas because New Orleans turned the ball over four separate times and still out-gained them.

Joe Burrow just had one of the best quarterback games in the entire league this week, and he lost. Plus-14.65 EPA on 38 dropbacks, an 8.89 CPOE that says he was legitimately accurate on top of it — and Pittsburgh still walks away 30-27 winners because their defense let Cincinnati's best offensive showing of the season happen and Aaron Rodgers still somehow outscored it. Rodgers had a real game of his own, for what it's worth — this isn't a "Pittsburgh backed into a win" story, it's a "both quarterbacks were good and only one defense showed up" story.

Brock Purdy's stat line is the best of the week and also the one with an asterisk on it. Plus-18.28 EPA, tops in the league this weekend — on a negative CPOE, which is the accuracy metric. Translation: a lot of that value came from yards after the catch and explosive plays doing the work, not pinpoint accuracy on the throw itself. Patrick Mahomes, by contrast, was elite on both ends — plus-12.92 EPA AND a plus-18.68 CPOE, the highest accuracy number in the league this week, no daylight between "he created value" and "he was accurate doing it." One of those two performances is more likely to show up again next week. We'll let you guess which.

Buffalo threw the ball away five times Sunday — two picks, three lost fumbles — and still won. That's the stat of the week. The Chargers had every chance to bury them, forcing all five of those turnovers, and Los Angeles's offense still couldn't turn the gifts into anything better than a one-score loss. Buffalo's 3-0 despite playing like a team that should be 1-2. The Chargers are 0-3 and now the team that couldn't even cash in when the other guy handed them the game five separate times — that's a different, uglier problem than turnovers.

Case Keenum walked into Soldier Field for his first start of the season and torched Philadelphia. Zero turnovers, plus-8.4 EPA, and the Chicago defense turned Jalen Hurts into a lost tourist — three giveaways, 248 total yards, one of the worst offensive nights by any team all week. Philly was missing Dallas Goedert, Marquise Brown and a starting tackle, so there's real injury context here — but the tape says Chicago was exactly as dominant Monday night as the 27-7 final says they were.

Where everybody stands, going forward

Full 32-team power rankings after three weeks, garbage time excluded, schedule strength factored in for every team now that everybody has three games in the books.

Top 5, adjusted: 49ers, Jaguars, Bears, Seahawks, Bills. San Francisco is #1 whichever way you slice it — best raw number in the league, and their schedule wasn't soft enough to knock them off the top. Chicago's Monday-night beatdown, with a backup quarterback making his first start, vaults them into the top 3 — small sample, but a real one. Kansas City and Las Vegas, on the other hand, both slide once you account for who they've played — both have been beating up on one of the softer three-game schedules in the league.

Bottom 5: Dolphins, Steelers, Titans, Chargers, and dead-last Colts. Miami actually gets some credit here for playing the toughest schedule of any team in the league so far — doesn't matter, their defense has still been the worst unit in football through three weeks by a wide margin.

The bottom line

Four teams won this weekend with worse tape than the team they beat. A fifth (Jacksonville) won by 29 in a game that was really more like a 17-point game once you strip out New England's three gift-wrapped turnovers. Houston and Cincinnati both played well enough to win and didn't. And Minnesota remains the most confusing 3-0 team in recent memory — three weeks, zero good offensive performances, zero losses. If you're picking games off the final score alone, Week 3 just handed you five separate reasons not to. On to Week 4.