5 questions for Week 3 in the NFL

Hard to understand what

Kam Chancellor was thinking?

For 54 days he dug in on the principle that he had sacrificed and performed enough to warrant more than the $4.55 million the Seattle Seahawks are paying him this season. He was so steadfast he flushed more than a half-million dollars by missing two game checks, thinking the team would cave. It didn’t. Then Wednesday he reported without getting what he held out for. He will play Sunday for a team he thought would take care of him, as it did last year for Marshawn Lynch. But unlike Chancellor, Lynch didn’t have three years remaining on his deal.

Jimmy Graham must be ticked, right?

Not necessarily. That was an inference made by the NFL Network’s Mike Silver last week after he was in the visiting locker room after Graham had just one catch in Seattle’s loss at Lambeau Field and found the Seahawks’ new tight end unavailable to talk. I found the same thing. And I didn’t see Graham available to talk in the visiting locker room in St. Louis after catching six passes with a touchdown, either. Graham said Friday when asked about that: “I mean I was in there, you know, for the time I needed to be. And then I went to the shower.” This is not the locker-room cancer story some are making it out to be. When Seattle establishes a running game, then Russell Wilson will have the time let Graham run down the field and do what the Seahawks traded for him to do. And all will be — if not well — better.

Were those the real 49ers?

The Pacific Northwest would sure like to think so. Six days after looking noticeably rugged in a win over Minnesota, San Francisco got ransacked by Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers in Pittsburgh. The defense was run over. The offense was inept. It was 29-3 Steelers at halftime. It looked like all of Washington state hoped it would look for the Niners after all their retirements, arrests and defections this past offseason. The truth of how bad or good San Francisco is right now lies in the middle of beating Minnesota and getting walloped by the Steelers.

How bad is the NFC East?

Bad enough that the only 2-0 team has won both games inside the division despite not having their franchise quarterback and top wide receiver, due to injuries. Bad enough that Washington can’t even find a reason or care enough to make its (now former) franchise quarterback and No. 2 overall draft choice just three years ago merely active for a game. Bad enough that Philadelphia (0-2) and the New York Giants (1-2) just need to be semi-passable for the next few weeks and they could be in first place.

Wait, the Raiders could be 2-1?

It might be the ghosts of Al Davis and Ken Stabler, but Oakland could have a winning record entering October if the Raiders win Sunday at Cleveland. Don’t laugh — it might happen. The Raiders sent Baltimore into a 0-2 tizzy when Derek Carr led an upset win last week. Carr continues to wow in his second season out of Fresno State. He completed 30 of 46 passes for 351 yards and three TDs against the supposedly stout Ravens defense. And he can thank the Seahawks for this opportunity. Until he lit up Seattle’s starting defense in the 2014 exhibition finale, throwing for 143 yards and three TDs in the first quarter, Oakland was going to make Matt Schaub its No. 1 QB.

This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 8:37 AM with the headline "5 questions for Week 3 in the NFL."