Sometimes, you can win the battle but lose the war, and sometimes, the reverse is true. The NFL is often a war of attrition, where a win can be costly due to injuries. A loss can sometimes produce a singular great performance that gives hope for future weeks.
This week, there are many of these cases…here are a dozen winners and losers from week one:
Even though it was in a losing effort, Likely was special on Thursday Night, carrying over from his solid 2023 season. He caught nine passes for 111 YDs and a TD (and missed his 10th catch and second TD by a toe). This is looking like a breakout season for the young TE.
Just like the Patriots drew it up on the chalkboard, a heavy dose of running the ball. On 25 carries, Stevenson had 120 rushing yards and a TD. Let’s not forget that he did have a 1,000-yard season in 2022. This is shaping up to be a breakout season for the young RB, who received a 3-year extension in the offseason.
Talk about a reclamation project…it wasn’t that long ago that Darnold famously proclaimed he was seeing ghosts in a game against the Patriots defense. After bouncing around the last couple of seasons, Darnold finds himself in Minnesota. He wasn’t even the guaranteed QB1 heading into the season, and he only found himself getting the starting nod when rookie JJ McCarthy went down. In his first test against the Giants, he passed with flying colors. He completed 79% of his passes, going 19-24 for 208 YDs and two TDs. Hopefully, he’ll be able to keep it up.
I said in a prior article that no team in the league is as dependent on their QB as Buffalo is with Allen. The team found themselves down early against Arizona, and all Allen did was score four TDs: two passing and two rushing. On one of the TD runs, he made a patented leap and banged up his non-throwing left hand. It shouldn’t affect him going forward, but he cannot continue to play with reckless abandon…he means too much to the Bills.
Mayfield has really settled into Tampa Bay. He has a solid RB in Rachaad White and one of the best 1-2 tandem WR combos in the league with Mike Eans and Chris Godwin. On Sunday, he threw four TD passes and went 24-30 for 289 YDs…and he didn’t throw a pick.
I can’t imagine kickers will be on this list too often, but when you go 6-6 in field goal attempts and literally single-handedly (“single-footedly”) win the game for your team and individually score more than nine other teams on Sunday, you deserve to be on this list. I’m sure he’ll be one of the more added players this week.
The Cowboys have won 12 games each of the last three seasons. They are a great regular-season team, so winning a regular-season game isn’t necessarily that big a deal. But it was a road game to start the season, in a tough place to play (Cleveland), against a very good defensive team. They absolutely annihilated the Browns, beating them 33-17…and it wasn’t nearly that close. The Browns scored 14 pts and piled up the majority of their yards in the second half when the game was already out of reach.
The Saints only beat the Carolina Panthers, but they destroyed them 47-10. Derek Carr was solid and efficient, going 19-23, with 200 YDs and three TD passes. Next Sunday’s matchup in Dallas against the Cowboys will be much more of a test. It will be a matchup of the two teams who had the most convincing wins in week one. It will be interesting to see if either of them turns into a pumpkin.
Winning in the NFL is hard. Winning on the road is harder. Winning on the road in a divisional matchup on week one is the hardest. That’s what the Texans did on Sunday. This is the team I predicted to win it all in February, and if this opening week was any indication, I like my prediction. Second-year QB CJ Stroud started just as he finished last season. He was 24 of 32 passing, with 234 YDs and two TD passes. Nico Collins had 117 receiving YDs. And newly acquired RB Joe Mixon had a monster day, rushing for 159 YDs on 30 carries, scoring a TD.
When they were down by 17 points early, it looked like the same old Bears. But then they turned into the Monsters of the Midway, roaring back to win 24-17 with 14 points in the fourth quarter. And although rookie QB Caleb Williams was pedestrian at best, it’s always good to begin the season 1-0 in front of a home crowd, just itching for a good season.
This Lions team was hovering between being on this list in the winner column and the loser column at least five times. But in the end, they convincingly prevailed, beating the Rams 26-20 and scoring a touchdown on their opening possession in OT. Jared Goff wasn’t great, but he was serviceable. The team won on the ground, with their dynamic RBs, Jaymir Gibbs and David Montgomery (who scored the game-winning TD). And WR Jameson Williams had a breakout game. His speed is a real threat and will cause big problems for secondaries in the league, along with Amon Ra St. Brown. Williams had five catches for 121 YDs and a TD.
The Bill Belichick era is officially over in New England. In a game nobody thought they would win (survivor pools around the country are destroyed), they prevailed in Cincinnati. Going into week one. Las Vegas listed the Pats with the longest shot at winning the Superbowl…and although one win does not make them a contender for that, with Seattle on the schedule next week, coming to Foxboro, they could start the year 2-0 and nobody saw that coming. Mayo said he wanted a hard-nosed, disciplined team with a tough ground attack and solid defense. The D held Joe Burrow and the team to only 10pts, and they rushed for 170 yards.
Once again, Jackson has proven he can’t win…In crunch time. With all the money on the table against the Super Bowl champs, he came short. Granted, it was literally only by an inch, but the reality is that the game should never have come down to that final play. As Detroit proved last season, the best time to get Kansas City is early in the season, when they went into Arrowhead stadium in last year’s inaugural game and left with a win. And Jackson couldn’t do it. He missed Isiah Likely badly in the corner of the endzone two plays earlier and then missed WR Zay Flowers deep in the endzone over the middle. Maybe Flowers should have planted himself and stopped drifting, but he could not have been more open. Until Jackson can somehow become a more accurate passer and stay in the pocket more frequently, as opposed to running at the first sign of pressure, he’ll never win it all.
It’s only game one of season two for Young, but patience has to be running thin in Carolina. Young only completed an abysmal 13 passes in 30 attempts and threw two interceptions. He did score the only TD in the game for Carolina, running one in on his four rushes. He is starting to feel like a bust. At this stage of the game, he’s, at best, a poor man’s Kyler Murray.
And speaking of busts…What an awful performance for Jones and the Giants. They lost 28-6 to the Vikings, and Jones did nothing. He barely completed 50% of his passes and threw two interceptions. The team could only muster two field goals, and RB Saquon Barkley’s replacement, Devin Singletary, only gained 37 yards (while Barkley scored three TDs in Philadelphia). HC Brian Daboll clearly said he was calling the offense. He could be the first neck on the chopping block this season.
Even after he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon, the Falcons signed free agent Cousins to a 4-year/$180M contract, with a $50M signing bonus and $100M guaranteed. After one game, it seems like a huge mistake. He only completed 16 out of 26 passes, throwing one touchdown and two interceptions. The team was held scoreless in the second half and ultimately lost to a team that didn’t score a touchdown.
Nix was one of the rookie QBs to have an awful inaugural game. It’s almost impossible to complete 26 passes for only 138 YDs, which is what Nix “accomplished”. He also threw two interceptions in a winnable game. I wonder if the approach that the Patriots have taken with Drake Maye was the way to go. They signed journeyman veteran Jacoby Brissett, who beat the Bengals on the road. The Broncos lost 26-20 in Seattle, and it would have been interesting to see what a veteran QB would have done at the helm for Denver.
Speaking of busts…this experiment with Watson in Cleveland is proving to be a failure. And a costly experiment at that, not just financially. Also seen in New England, it’s impossible to sustain success with poor drafting or losing draft picks. Aside from giving him 5yr/$230M guaranteed money, they also traded away their future by giving up multiple first-round draft picks. None of the stats mattered in Sunday’s game because they all came in garbage time when Dallas already had the game well in hand. He completed just over 50% of his passes and threw two interceptions.
Watson led the way in this humiliating home loss, but for a team that boasted the no.1 ranked defense, the Cowboys made them look like Swiss cheese. All-Pro Defensive end Miles Garrett was completely ineffective, regardless of what Tom Brady said during the broadcast. The Cowboys accumulated a total of 428 total yards and won 33-17. They were up 20-3 at halftime when the game was effectively over.
The Packers played well enough to beat the Eagles on Friday night but lost to a resilient team who didn’t even play that well. Jalen Hurts was responsible for three turnovers but was able to prevail. This could prove to be a costly loss in more ways than one. It showed they might not be ready for prime time versus a team that was in the Super Bowl just a couple of years ago. But it is even more costly due to the last-minute injury to QB Jordan Love. He has an MCL sprain and will miss at least a month, but realistically, he will miss 6-8 games. They are already behind the entire NFC North, with Minnesota, Chicago, and Detroit all winning.
Tyler Boyd is in Tennessee, Tee Higgins is hurt, and Ja’Marr Chase is pouting without a new contract. Joe Mixon is also in Tennessee, and Joe Burrow was massaging his wrist on the sidelines on Sunday. But losing to New England 16-10 is inexcusable. They fumbled the ball on the 1-yard line. They bobbled a TD pass in the corner of the endzone. They decided to punt on 4th and 5 on their own 15-yard line with a little over two minutes left in the game and never saw the ball again. And they gave up 170 rushing yards. They play Kansas City this week and will realistically begin the season 0-2.
Tennessee went on the road and had a 17-point lead over the Chicago Bears. They gave up 24 consecutive points and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Mr Simone Biles scored a TD on a blocked punt, and with 7:35 left in the game, Tyrique Stevenson scored on a pick-six to snag the lead. There wasn’t much expected this season in Tennessee but losing a game like this can take a team from winning seven or eight games to only winning four or five. This can be demoralizing in the short term.
This loss is on HC Doug Pederson. For such a creative offensive mind, he is ultra-conservative with QB Trevor Lawrence. Not that Lawrence was great with the passes he did throw, only completing 12-21 for 162 YDs. Overall, their offense was lackluster. The team only converted two out of 10 3rd downs and had 267 in total YDs. They should right the ship this week, facing off at home against the Browns.
Like the Lions, the Rams were in and out of this list at least five times. Ultimately, they are here for losing in OT to the Lions. Aside from losing the game, WR Puka Nacua left with a knee injury, which was the same knee that hindered him during the preseason. The only bright spot for the team was the Matthew Stafford to Cooper Kupp connection. Kupp caught 14 of Stafford’s 34 completions for 110 of Stafford’s 317 YDs. And he caught Stafford’s only TD pass. In a way, such a magnificent performance seems like a waste. This was a game the Rams needed to win. Losing will hinder their playoff chances. It’s only week one, but they probably won’t win the NFC West, which will put them in that second tier of NFC teams vying for three wildcard spots.
