Upon Further Review: Just How Off We Were On Rams, Chargers; Ashton Jeanty A Bust?

I might as well own this one: I was badly wrong. Predicting is not my favorite part of the job, but we were asked for a bold prediction in January, so I called for the Los Angeles Chargers to win the Super Bowl on their home field this season. Days before the season started, they asked for a Super Bowl prediction, and I doubled down, picking the Chargers to beat the Los Angeles Rams in an all-Los-Angeles Super Bowl. So the Chargers are 0-6. The Rams are 2-4. At this point, I’m just hoping the game isn’t moved from SoFi Stadium. Everybody loved the Rams, as oddsmakers’ favorites to win it all, even before they brought Aaron Donald out of retirement. With the Chargers, the addition of Mike McDaniel and a healthy offensive line seemed like a recipe for Justin Herbert getting over the hump. Instead, they’re a combined 2-10, and one city has two of the NFL’s biggest disappointments. The Rams’ first three losses were to the San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos and Buffalo Bills — three of the 10 best teams in the league — that’s understandable, but Sunday’s loss was at home to the Arizona Cardinals, who were 1-4 and 30th in our weekly power rankings. Arizona is 2-0 at SoFi this season, somehow with more wins there than the Rams (1-2) and Chargers (0-3) combined. The Rams are third in the NFL in total offense, third in total defense, and somehow 2-4, with special teams and four missed field goals playing a role in that. The Chargers are even more astounding. To be winless and losing close games is one thing, but their point differential is minus-61, only one point better than the lowly Dolphins. The defense has missed former defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, off to the Ravens, and the offense has regressed under McDaniel. Six games in, no Chargers player has caught more than one touchdown pass. By comparison, the Raiders have four such players. Two years ago, Herbert threw three interceptions in the entire season. This year, he has at least one in all six losses. Back to the Rams, they were the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the Super Bowl entering the season — in the last 20 years, they’re just the second preseason Super Bowl favorite to have a losing record after six games, following the 2015 Seahawks, who rallied from a 2-4 start to finish 10-6, but lost to the 15-1 Panthers in the divisional round. Only four Super Bowl favorites in the last 50 years had losing records at this stage, and none of them made a conference championship game. Now the Rams and Chargers will be meeting up at SoFi, but not in February. They play a week from Sunday, and in theory, one of those teams should escape with a victory. The Chargers, now that the Texans have won two straight, are easily the league’s most glaring underachievers. The Rams lost two key players to injuries on Sunday: receiver Davante Adams and defensive lineman Kobie Turner. They still have enough talent to salvage a wild-card spot even from 2-4, but that turnaround needs to start now. The NFC East and NFC South could both have division winners close to .500, so you could see two wild cards as favorites on the road to open the playoffs. Regardless, the only playoff game that will be held at SoFi will be on Valentine’s Day. It’s not even a season and a half, but with the Las Vegas Raiders losing three straight, we can revisit how underwhelming running back Ashton Jeanty has been since Las Vegas took him with the No. 6 overall pick last year. Jeanty has played 23 games now, and in just four of those games he has averaged even 4.0 yards per carry, a very pedestrian measure of rushing success. In the Week 5 loss to the New England Patriots, he had 10 carries for 27 yards, and in Sunday’s loss to the Bills, he had 10 carries for 22. Consider it this way: There have been 91 players who got 350 or more carries in their first 23 games — that’s more than 15 carries a game — and of those 91, Jeanty ranks 85th with just 3.54 yards per carry. The six worse than him? Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Rashaan Salaam, Leonard Russell, Trent Richardson, Errict Rhett and Curtis Enis. That’s rough company, and the common thread is high draft picks who earned a heavy workload and the benefit of the doubt early, then were quickly discarded. Richardson went third overall and was out of the league after three years. Same for Enis, who went fifth. Two spots above Jeanty is Leonard Fournette, a No. 4 overall pick who was cut by the Jaguars after three years. Few backs have come into the league with more promise and excitement than Jeanty, who rushed for 2,601 yards and 29 touchdowns in his last year at Boise State. You can blame some of his rookie-year struggles on an offensive line decimated by injuries, but the Raiders spent big to bring in center Tyler Linderbaum, and Jeanty’s numbers got worse, going from 3.7 yards per carry last year to 3.2 in 2026. Of 28 backs with 60-plus carries, Jeanty has the second-worst average, ahead of only Cleveland Browns standout Quinshon Judkins. This past Sunday, Jeanty was outperformed by Mike Washington, a fourth-round rookie from Arkansas who’s averaging 4.9 yards per carry and making a case to chip into Jeanty’s workload each week. The Raiders had the makings of a strong young core in rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza, Jeanty and third-year tight end Brock Bowers, but you wonder if Jeanty will still be the offensive focus by the time Mendoza takes over. The Steelers have pulled out back-to-back wins for a share of the AFC North lead, and a surprising part has been rookie receiver Germie Bernard, who has stepped up amid injuries to Michael Pittman Jr., Roman Wilson and Ben Skowronek. Bernard, a second-round pick from Alabama, totaled seven catches for 60 yards in his first four NFL games, but has exploded in the last two weeks, first with six for 80 in the win against the Colts, then a true breakout game Sunday in Tampa. Bernard finished with 11 catches for 87 yards, including the winning touchdown in overtime for his first NFL score. “I just love everything he’s doing,” Steelers coach Mike McCarthy said. “I mean, he’s accepted the challenge. We have a lot on his plate and he’s handling it … he’s playing really good football for us.” Pittsburgh trailed 13-0 with 1:28 left in the first half, but Aaron Rodgers found Bernard twice for gains of 12 and 14 yards to set up a field goal at the end of the half. He’s made an impact in volume as well. In the last 50 years, only three Steelers rookies have gotten 80 receiving yards in back-to-back games: George Pickens in 2022, Santonio Holmes in 2006 and Louis Lipps in 1984. “I always say you have to make the most of your opportunities,” Bernard said of his overtime touchdown, reaching the ball out over the goal line. “I got the ball in my hands and I saw DK [Metcalf] had the block, so I knew I had to make it count. … I did what I could for the team to have success.” Bernard is still learning. Pittsburgh missed a fourth-down conversion when he caught a pass at the line to gain and backed up briefly, allowing himself to be tackled short of the stick. On the whole, the Steelers are thrilled with his progress. If Bernard can continue at his recent pace, the Steelers’ rookie receiving records are within reach — JuJu Smith-Schuster has the yards record at 917 in 2017, and running back Najee Harris has the receptions record at 74 in 2021. “You need to ease expectations, but there comes a time when the confidence starts to match the potential, and I think we’re reaching that time with Germie,” Rodgers said after the game. “Very proud of him. Obviously, the fourth down, probably should just catch it and (not) back up. But he made a lot of nice plays today, a lot of smart plays, a lot of good catches. Obviously, super smart there. Catch, kind of broke a tackle, reach out for the game-winning touchdown. We had to have it.”