There is no flawless team in this NFL season. The Rams are undefeated, of course, but Sunday was the first game of the season in which their defense delivered the sort of dominant game we might have expected heading into the year. Before this week, no team ranked in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive DVOA. Last year, five teams -- the Saints, Rams, Steelers, Vikings and Super Bowl champion Eagles -- pulled off that feat.

All of those teams are in the postseason discussion this season, but none has been as consistently effective on both sides of the ball as they were in 2017. Every team has some sort of notable flaw or a position that has been weighing it down over the first seven weeks. In some cases, there's an obvious fix. In others, those teams are just going to have to find a way to overcome an issue that isn't likely to go away.

Let's run through anchors holding back many of the league's competitive teams from dominating in more (or all) facets of the game. And let's begin with a problem we might have seen looming before the season even began ...

Jump to a team's flaw:

JAX | PHI | PIT | KC | LAR

WSH | LAC | NE | HOU | MIN

The anchor: Blake Bortles

For the second time in 14 months, the Jaguars seem fed up with their starting quarterback. In August 2017, the Jags briefly benched Bortles during the preseason, only for then-backup Chad Henne to struggle during a Week 3 audition. The team went back to Bortles, who proceeded to have his best season as a pro and played well enough in the second and third round of the postseason to nearly help push the Jags into Super Bowl LII.

After throwing for 376 yards and four touchdowns in Jacksonville's Week 2 win over New England this season, it seemed like Bortles had finally put the doubts to rest. Five games later, however, Bortles was benched for backup Cody Kessler in the middle of a dismal loss to the Texans. Over that time frame, Bortles posted a Total QBR of just 31, the lowest mark in the league among starters. He was 30th out of 34 signal-callers in passer rating, ahead of three rookies. The former third overall pick threw four touchdowns against six picks, took 13 sacks and fumbled four times, losing three. The Jags wanted someone who wouldn't turn the ball over. Bortles has been in The Bad Place.

Blake Bortles was benched after two fumbles in Sunday's loss to the Texans. Scott Halleran/Getty Images

The offense doesn't look any better on tape. The Jaguars seemed to strike on something by throwing the ball on early downs against the Patriots, but opposing defenses have adjusted. Bortles was 13-of-19 for 203 yards and three touchdowns against the Patriots on first down, but since then, he's 37-of-61 for 384 yards with a touchdown, four picks, eight sacks and a league-low passer rating of 57.0. The average passer rating on first downs over that span is 96.8.

You can't really blame Bortles' receivers, either. The NFL's Next Gen Stats platform suggests that Bortles has open weapons. Over the dismal stretch, a full 50.3 percent of Bortles' passes have been to open targets, the seventh-highest rate in the league. (The NFL defines open receivers as players with 3-5 yards of space between them and any defenders.) When he has had open receivers, though, Bortles is posting a passer rating of just 78.7. Only Bortles and Marcus Mariota have posted a passer rating to open receivers below 105.3.

Even saying that, though, it would be naive to pretend that Bortles is the only issue with the Jacksonville offense, which has been ripped to shreds by injuries. Starting wideout Marqise Lee went down with a season-ending knee injury in the preseason. Former fourth overall pick Leonard Fournette was already out with a hamstring injury during the Patriots game, and since then he has managed only an 11-carry cameo during Jacksonville's win over the Jets. Receiving back Corey Grant, who earned a larger role in the offense in Fournette's absence, hit injured reserve with a foot injury, leading the Jaguars to trade for Carlos Hyde last week. The Jags were also somehow down their top four tight ends on Sunday, which led them to start undrafted free agent David Grinnage. He had only made his NFL debut in Week 6.

The biggest problem, though, is that Jacksonville's offensive line has fallen apart. Starting left tackle Cam Robinson tore his ACL against the Patriots, and while there was a drop-off to backup Josh Wells, the problem got even worse once Wells went on injured reserve. Journeyman Josh Walker has been desperately thrust into mix at left tackle, and he might soon be replaced by Giants castoff Ereck Flowers, who was signed last week. A.J. Cann is the only other lineman to miss a game, but every one of Jacksonville's linemen have either missed time or are playing through injuries.

For those reasons, I'm skeptical Kessler would be a clear upgrade on Bortles. The USC product posted competent numbers in eight games as a rookie starter with the Browns in 2016, but he also was sacked on 9.7 percent of his dropbacks, and that was with a future Hall of Famer, Joe Thomas, at left tackle. Kessler did protect the football, turning the ball over just six times in eight games, and you might figure that the Jaguars would settle for a limited quarterback if he could just avoid giving the ball away.

play 1:22 Clark and Saturday think Redskins can win division Ryan Clark and Jeff Saturday discuss the Redskins' win over the Cowboys and how Washington can string a few victories together and extend its division advantage.

If the Jaguars had a better backup, the case for benching Bortles would be compelling. As is, they aren't likely to encounter many significant upgrades in the trade market. They have about $6 million in cap room after trading for Hyde last week, and while they could create more room by restructuring A.J. Bouye's contract, who are the Jaguars going to acquire? Competitive teams won't want to trade away backups like Nick Foles and Teddy Bridgewater. Eli Manning has been a disaster. The Raiders might be too embarrassed to trade Derek Carr, and it would be too much for a one-year rental given that Jacksonville won't want to pay Carr $20 million in 2019.

The two trade candidates who stand out are Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor, both of whom flamed out spectacularly in their new digs. Neither would cost very much, but it would take time to learn a new playbook, and they were each playing worse than Bortles has so far this season. If Bortles were injured, trading for Bradford or Taylor would make more sense.

The reality is that there might not be anything wrong with Bortles at all. He just seems to go through stretches like this. From Weeks 2-6 last season, Bortles posted a QBR of 40.1, a stretch that saw him average 6.3 yards per attempt and throw five interceptions on 149 attempts. Over the next three games, Bortles' 90.6 QBR was the best in the league. He posted a league-high passer rating of 128.6 from Weeks 13-15 in 2017, then settled in at less than half that mark -- 62.3 -- over the final two weeks of the regular season and the narrow playoff victory over the Bills. Bortles is like your cat who disappears for two weeks at a time every few months but always somehow finds his way home. Good Blake and Bad Blake are going to show up for different stretches during a typical Jags season.

You might understand why the Jaguars would be sick of that experience, but they're the ones who signed up for a repeat performance. Remember that Bortles was originally in his fifth-year option this season, only for Jacksonville to re-sign him to a three-year, $54 million extension this offseason. The Jags pretended to make the argument that it was to clear out cap space, but they could have cleared out room just as easily by restructuring Bouye's deal.

The Jags don't have to play out that entire deal, but they did it make it difficult to move on from Bortles if he continues to struggle. Before the extension, Jacksonville could have either franchised Bortles after the season, signed him to a new deal or let him leave without any dead money on their cap. Now, the Jaguars would owe a minimum of $10 million in dead money and as much as $16.5 million on their cap if they cut their starter after the season, depending on how much he gets from another team. I think the Jaguars will go back to Bortles for next Sunday's game with the Eagles, but if they're wishing they had a better quarterback, Tom Coughlin & Co. have nobody to blame but themselves.

Eagles cornerback Ronald Darby has struggled in 2018. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

The anchor: Cornerbacks

If you had needed to identify a weak point on the Philadelphia roster before the 2017 season began, the easy spot would have been at corner, where the Eagles were planning on getting by with a bunch of draft picks, low-salary trade acquisitions and one lone free agent, Patrick Robinson, who was making $775,000. The Eagles lost starter Ronald Darby to an ankle injury in Week 1, but the corners came together, aided by excellent work at safety and a superb pass rush. Robinson had a career year in the slot. Rasul Douglas and Jalen Mills held the fort until Darby returned. By the time the postseason rolled around, the Eagles were quite happy with their cornerback play.

Things have not been the same in 2018. Robinson left for the Saints in free agency, and while replacement Sidney Jones has arguably been the team's top corner for most of the season, he was out injured on Sunday and replaced by Dexter McDougle, who was signed off the street last week and immediately inserted into the starting lineup against the Panthers. He wasn't even the problem in the loss!

Darby and Mills are a mess. In the fourth quarter on Sunday, Darby gave a 10-yard cushion and was still badly beaten on a sluggo route for a touchdown by Devin Funchess. On the critical fourth-and-10 conversion that extended the game, Mills wasn't able to sustain coverage on Torrey Smith and then failed to tackle him, turning a 12-yard completion into a 35-yard catch-and-run.

These are not isolated examples. Mills was the primary defender in coverage on three completions of 50 yards or more from Weeks 2-5. Darby missed a tackle on what became a 75-yard O.J. Howard touchdown and has been isolated for two touchdowns inside the 5-yard line.

The numbers are not pretty. When opposing teams threw to their wide receivers last season, the Eagles allowed a Total QBR of 54.7 and a passer rating of 71.2, which respectively ranked third and fourth in the NFL. This season, those same wideouts are generating a QBR of 79.8 and a passer rating of 99.4, which rank 15th and 16th. When the Eagles got pressure in 2017, their defensive backs held up and allowed a passer rating of just 35.1, which was second best in the NFL. That number is all the way up to 64.9 this season, which ranks 20th.

This is the way the Eagles have chosen to build their team. Improvement in the secondary might not be coming. Rodney McLeod is on injured reserve. Malcolm Jenkins has been inconsistent. Corey Graham, 33, already has been benched for converted corner Avonte Maddox. The team restructured Fletcher Cox's contract to create cap space, but the market isn't exactly teeming with star corners unless the Cardinals can be mind-controlled into trading Patrick Peterson. More likely, the Eagles would have to take a flier on an out-of-favor prospect like Oakland's Gareon Conley, which might not solve anything. The Eagles figured this out last season, and they very well might figure it out again. It's also fair to wonder whether last season's work at cornerback set expectations too high for 2018 and beyond.

The anchor: Artie Burns

After years of struggling to move on from the Ike Taylor/Troy Polamalu era and running out players like William Gay and Antwon Blake in the playoffs, the Steelers were supposed to have their secondary figured out by now. They used their top two picks in 2016 on Burns and Sean Davis, spent some of the first cap space they had seen in years on Joe Haden, and topped off the bunch by adding Morgan Burnett in free agency and using their first-round pick on Terrell Edmunds. On paper this year, the Steelers were going to have Burns and Haden starring at corner, Davis moving to free safety, Burnett playing as a strong safety/hybrid linebacker, and Edmunds playing everything from slot corner to safety to linebacker.

Things have not gone as planned. Burns has taken a significant step backward in his third year and lost his job to Coty Sensabaugh, with the two eventually falling into a rotation. Cameron Sutton has filled in for an injured Haden. Burnett, who has a groin injury, has barely played. Edmunds has been inconsistent at best; the most notable play of his career has been getting trucked by Kareem Hunt on a touchdown pass in Week 2. Davis has been the best member of the secondary besides Haden, but even he's still figuring out his angles playing center field.

Burns is the biggest disappointment on the team, and it isn't even particularly close. It's asking a lot of him to cover players like Mike Evans and Tyreek Hill, both of whom have torched Burns for big plays this season, but the 23-year-old Burns is a former first-round pick. He is the first cornerback the Steelers had used a first-round pick to nab since Chad Scott in 1997, nearly 20 years prior. The cornerbacks chosen before and after Burns in 2016 -- William Jackson of the Bengals and Xavien Howard of the Dolphins -- are Pro Bowl-caliber corners. The Steelers are counting on Burns to get back on the path to becoming one, too.

Pro Bowl safety Eric Berry hasn't played a snap since Week 1 of the 2017 season. Photo by Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports

The anchor: Eric Berry

Of course, Berry is weighing down the Chiefs by his absence. Kansas City's star safety hasn't played since tearing his Achilles in Week 1 last season, with a Haglund's deformity in his heel keeping Berry off the field for the first seven games of the 2018 season. There's no timetable for Berry's return, and the Chiefs have struggled to keep replacements such as Daniel Sorensen, Eric Murray and Armani Watts on the field in his absence.

In most games, the Chiefs' offense is going to be so good that missing Berry simply won't matter. The Chiefs could have run out Matthew Berry at safety and still handily beaten the Bengals on Sunday night. Against top-level competition, though, the Chiefs are going to miss the five-time Pro Bowler. I mentioned it in breaking down their only loss of the season, when Kansas City ended up with reserve defensive back Josh Shaw matched up against Rob Gronkowski during the critical final drive for the Patriots last week.

Berry is also going to help out a run defense that has struggled. Teams haven't really been in games with the Chiefs to test them on the ground, but Kansas City ranks 30th in the league in yards per rushing attempt allowed and dead last in first-down percentage at 34.4 percent. They rank 25th in win probability added by run defense. Berry is not going to fix that by himself, but he's going to free up resources for coordinator Bob Sutton to focus on stopping the run and make more tackles in the open field.

The Chiefs obviously can't manufacture another Berry, who is occupying $13 million of their cap. They were rumored to be in the market for Earl Thomas, only for Thomas to suffer a season-ending leg injury. There aren't any game-changing safeties looming on the market. They have to hope their offense can carry them long enough for Berry to return, and that he looks like his former self when he does make it back onto the field.

The anchor: Troy Hill/Sam Shields

The Rams are quite clearly the strongest team in the league, so even their weak point is coming off an impressive game. Hill, starting for the injured Aqib Talib at cornerback, had an impressive interception of C.J. Beathard before leaving with a possible concussion in Sunday's win against the 49ers. He was replaced by Shields, who has mostly been playing special teams in his first action since suffering a concussion of his own in Week 1 of the 2016 season with the Packers.

Whether it's Hill, Shields or Dominique Hatfield, teams are going to try to avoid Marcus Peters and Nickell Robey-Coleman by throwing at Talib's replacement. The Vikings spent much of their day throwing at Shields in Week 4, and the Broncos followed up by attacking Hill in Week 6. Outside of the injury to kicker Greg Zuerlein, the Rams simply haven't dealt with much adversity this season. It's a good problem to have.

The anchor: Alex Smith

Let's go to a totally different position. Smith isn't playing well for Washington, and while it hasn't stopped Jay Gruden's team from getting out to a 4-2 start, it nearly cost them a win against the Cowboys on Sunday. His numbers were modest -- 14-of-25 passing for 178 yards, 16 yards rushing, one touchdown pass and a fumble -- but they mask what was a very frustrating game from a quarterback who was playing at a far higher level under Andy Reid at this time last season.

Perhaps it's unfair to make the comparisons to 2017, given that Smith exhibited a mastery of deep throws he had never shown before and was unlikely to show again. Indeed, despite the presence of Paul Richardson and Josh Doctson on the roster, Smith has been a middling downfield thrower. On throws 16 or more yards downfield last season, Smith posted the league-best passer rating of 133.5. He averaged nearly six deep attempts per game and 18.5 yards per attempt. This season, while he's averaging an identical number of deep throws, Smith has posted a passer rating of 90.4 on 11.5 yards per attempt, both of which are below league average.

Alex Smith's 47.6 Total QBR this season ranks 24th in the league, just behind Blake Bortles. Will Newton/Getty Images

What's more concerning is that Smith hasn't been able to pick apart teams with intermediate throws. On passes 6 to 15 yards downfield over his last three years in Kansas City, Smith was 11th in the league in passer rating at 93.7. This season, his 78.9 rating on those same throws is 24th. He's completing 60 percent of those passes and either hitting too many receivers out of stride or flat-out missing throws.

Smith whiffed on what should have been easy touchdown passes on each of his two red zone trips in the second half Sunday, with Washington settling for field goals. When Washington tried to run out the clock on its final drive and sent out a pass play on third down, Smith scrambled toward the first-down marker but inexplicably allowed himself to be tackled out of bounds, stopping the clock and handing the ball back to the Cowboys with one timeout and 1:18 to go.

Fortunately for Washington, Jason Garrett decided to make a very Jason Garrett set of mistakes. After Dak Prescott drove the Cowboys to the Washington 46-yard line with 52 seconds left, he hit Cole Beasley for a 9-yard completion to get on the edge of field goal range. Garrett didn't use his timeout. The clock ran to 28 seconds, at which point Prescott hit Beasley for another first down. The league confirmed the call via replay with 12 seconds left, giving the Cowboys a chance to call timeout and set up for one more pass to get closer to field goal range. Instead, the Cowboys chose to hand the ball to Ezekiel Elliott, who gained 2 yards and set up a 47-yard field goal try. Garrett took his timeout, Dallas long-snapper L.P. Ladouceur was called for a questionable snap infraction, and Brett Maher missed the ensuing 52-yarder.