The Biggest Surprises of the 2018 NFL Season

The 2018 NFL season has been a wild ride. There's just one week remaining, and there is still quite a bit to be determined. Only one first-round bye has been settled, and this is largely because we've had one of the most surprising playoff races in recent memory.

Heck, the Cleveland Browns weren't even eliminated until Week 16.

Not every big surprise has been positive or playoff-related, though. We've had shockers at both ends of the spectrum, and we're here to examine the biggest ones.

We'll be basing our choices on factors like preseason expectations, past performances and recent trends. In other words, these are the developments you most likely would have dismissed if someone had predicted them back in August.

Patrick Mahomes May Already Be the Best QB in Football

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

Raise your hand if you thought Patrick Mahomes would step in as a first-year starter and do what he's doing. Now put your hand down because you're probably lying.

Some believed Mahomes could succeed as the Kansas City Chiefs starter. To think that he would immediately become a front-runner for NFL MVP? That just isn't something that unproven young quarterbacks do.

Mahomes has done just that. He's thrown left-handed passes, no-look passes, passes with unconventional arm angles and passes on the run—and he's passed Aaron Rodgers as the league's most physically talented signal-caller.

Through 15 games, he's passed for 4,816 yards with 48 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He was even recently named the top quarterback in the NFL by the Associated Press. It's taken him all of 16 games to get to this point.

This is only unsurprising because we've seen him play over the last four months.

Aaron Rodgers May Have Found the Cliff, and Mike McCarthy Is Unemployed

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

If Mahomes is the new Aaron Rodgers, does that make Rodgers the new...Peyton Manning? While Rodgers hasn't fallen off quite the way Manning did in 2015, he hasn't played up to the level we've become accustomed to.

Statistically, Rodgers is having a great season (4,416 yards, 25 touchdowns, two interceptions), but he's frequently missed open receivers, stalled drives and failed to deliver in the clutch. As a result, the Packers were handed an early exit from playoff contention, cannot even reach .500 and have fired longtime head coach Mike McCarthy.

Rodgers can bounce back next season, but he'll be trying to do so with a new head coach. This has to have come as a shock for folks—like ESPN analysts Rex Ryan and Jason Witten—who predicted Green Bay would win the Super Bowl.

OddsShark had the preseason over/under for Packers wins set at 10.

Adrian Peterson Is a 1,000-Yard Back in Washington

Mark Zaleski/Associated Press

A couple parts of this one are surprising. The first is in early August, the Washington Redskins were set to lean on rookie second-round pick Derrius Guice. Adrian Peterson wasn't even on the team yet.

Of course, Guice tore his ACL in his preseason opener, and the Redskins eventually added Peterson. Even then, though, it was nearly impossible to envision the 33-year-old returning to prime form and rushing for 1,000 yards.

This is exactly what Peterson has done, though. He topped 1,000 yards for the season in Week 16, becoming the oldest player to do so in more than 30 years.

"Hopefully I'll be able to appreciate it after Christmas or something," Peterson said Saturday, per John Keim of ESPN.com. "But for the time being, I play this game to win and to have the opportunity to win a championship."

Peterson won't be taking Washington to the playoffs, but that's because of the loss of quarterback Alex Smith for the season. Peterson has been one of the best backs in the NFL, which is quite surprising.

Chris Boswell Is Barely Holding onto a Job

Don Wright/Associated Press

Last season, Pittsburgh Steelers kicker was a Pro Bowler and an honorary member of the "Killer B's" alongside Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell. Because of this, the Steelers gave Boswell a shiny new four-year, $16.8 million deal with $7.3 million guaranteed.

So we'd forgive you for laughing off the idea that he'd be wildly unreliable and barely hanging onto a job in Pittsburgh with a game left to play. That's where we're at, though.

"That's the nature of this business," Boswell said, per Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We're judged on stats and wins and losses. If you don't do your job, they look elsewhere."

Boswell has missed seven of 20 field-goal attempts and five point-after tries. The Steelers have worked out other kickers, including Kai Forbath, but they appear to be riding Boswell into the final week of the season.

Le'Veon Bell Skipped the Season and That's Not Even Why Pittsburgh Is Struggling

Michael Wyke/Associated Press

This is another two-part surprise. It's pretty shocking that running back Le'Veon Bell gave up $14.5 million to skip the 2018 season.

Missing a few games? Sure, that's not too surprising because Bell made it clear he didn't want to play an entire season under the franchise tag. But $14.5 million—and a whole season—is a ton of guaranteed money to give up just because you want to be healthy for your next contract.

It could end up costing Bell big time because, surprise, the Steelers' issues are not because of him.

Are the Steelers dominating on the ground? No, they're actually ranked 31st in rushing with an average of 92.0 yards per game. However, James Conner (909 rushing yards, 12 touchdowns, 4.5 yards per carry) kept the ground attack going just fine when he was healthy. With 52 receptions and 467 yards, he also took over Bell's role as a third receiver.

Jaylen Samuels has since taken over the job, and he's averaging 4.7 yards per carry. He has 254 yards rushing, 159 yards receiving and three touchdowns. He's made a mere three starts.

Would Pittsburgh be better with Bell? Perhaps. However, it is likely to miss the playoffs because of inconsistent defense and the aforementioned kicking issues more than running back problems.

Blake Bortles Has Been Bad, but That's Not Why Jaguars Have Missed Postseason

Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles has not been good this season. That's not a major shock because he's been an up-and-down player throughout his career. What is surprising is just how far the Jaguars have fallen as a team.

They came within a few plays of beating the New England Patriots and reaching the Super Bowl last year. They have won just five games this year.

The Jaguars defense has still been statistically sound—it's allowed 19.7 points per game—but it's been weak against the run (115.7 yards per game allowed) and hasn't racked up sacks (55 in 2017, 31 in 2018) and turnovers (33 in 2017, 16 in 2018) like it did last season.

Jacksonville has struggled to run the ball, and it has turned the ball over at an alarming rate. The Jaguars were plus-10 in turnover differential last season, and they're minus-11 in 2018.

All of this has led to a massively disappointing season and has seen Bortles go from getting a new $54 million deal to fighting for his job with Cody Kessler. 

Jon Gruden Dismanted the Raiders

Frank Victores/Associated Press

Over the summer, the two biggest stories surrounding the Oakland Raiders were the return of Jon Gruden and the contract holdout of Khalil Mack. Who would have guessed then that these two men would never so much as meet each other while with the same franchise?

The Raiders got two first-round picks from the Chicago Bears in return, so it isn't all that surprising that Gruden was willing to pull the trigger. However, his public reasoning has always seemed a bit disingenuous.

"Obviously, Khalil Mack didn't want to play here," Gruden told Lisa Salters of ESPN.

Just before the trade deadline, Oakland traded away No. 1 receiver Amari Cooper. With that move, it became clear that Gruden had no intention of engineering a quick turnaround. He wanted to acquire future first-round picks—he got another for Cooper—to forge a long-term game plan to take into Las Vegas.

We always knew Gruden would build his own Raiders roster, but he's done so shockingly fast.

Lamar Jackson Has the Ravens Rushing to the Playoffs

Kelvin Kuo/Associated Press

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson has been a surprise for a variety of reasons. He's led the team to five wins in their last six games and the verge of an AFC North title. He's done so by leading a rushing attack that is averaging 143.0 yards per game, and he's done it both by running and passing the football.

Jackson has thrown for 1,022 yards, rushed for 605 yards and accounted for nine touchdowns. He's playing the quarterback position in a way we haven't quite seen in the NFL before, and he's having a ton of success.

While this cannot shock everyone, the fact he's having such immediate success is a bit surprising.

Remember, many teams wanted to try him out at receiver heading into the draft, per Peter Schrager of NFL Network's Good Morning Football. He wasn't supposed to be this NFL-ready, and few thought he'd even get into the starting lineup as a rookie.

According to OddsShark, the early over/under on rookie starts for Jackson was just 0.5 games. Jackson has clearly already topped that number, and if he can beat the Cleveland Browns in Week 17, he'll top that number in the postseason too.

The Cleveland Browns Are Dangerous...Thanks to Gregg Williams, Freddie Kitchens

Ron Schwane/Associated Press

The current trend in the NFL is to hire the hot up-and-coming offensive mind like Sean McVay or Matt Nagy to help your young signal-caller. Who knew the Browns had one hiding on their coaching staff since Week 1?

The fact that the Browns are having success with No. 1 overall pick Baker Mayfield isn't too surprising. He went that high for a reason. What's been shocking is just how good the five-time Pepsi Rookie of the Week has been with interim head coach Gregg Williams and interim offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens in charge.

Williams has brought a new energy to the entire team, while Kitchens, 44, has been exactly the kind of offensive innovator franchises dream of.

"Freddie might be the Sean Payton of 13 years ago when he got hired by New Orleans," former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky said, per Peter King of Pro Football Talk.

Cleveland is one win away from having a winning record for the first time since 2007. For a team that went 1-31 over the last two seasons combined, that's surprising. If you told someone that it got to this point only after head coach Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley were fired and the Browns went 5-2 with an interim staff, you'd probably be getting laughed at up until it actually happened.