An 0-2 start doesn’t bury an NFL season, but it can put a team in a nasty spot fast. And for a few clubs that already stumbled in Week 1, the margin for error is about to disappear.
The New England Patriots are one of the teams that can least afford another loss. They’re staring at a season-long battle with the Buffalo Bills for the top of the AFC East, and the AFC is deep enough that every early stumble matters.
The timing makes it worse, too. They are without wide receiver A.J.
Brown for at least three more weeks, and the schedule is brutal right out of the gate.
After Sunday’s home game against Pittsburgh, the Patriots go on the road for back-to-back tests against the Jacksonville Jaguars and Bills. If they lose this weekend, they’d be looking at an 0-2 start with two road games against 2025 playoff teams next.
That’s how a season turns from manageable to messy in a hurry, with 1-3 or even 0-4 suddenly in play. Sunday is the most winnable of those games on paper, and they can not miss that opportunity.
They also need to prove they can beat top teams consistently after getting every possible scheduling break a year ago.
The Los Angeles Chargers are in a different kind of danger. Their Week 1 loss was the ugliest of the bunch, a home embarrassment against a Cardinals team that’s supposed to be one of the worst in the league this season. That’s the kind of defeat that sticks.
It was another reminder of how hard the Chargers have been to trust, and how quickly the “perpetual disappointment” label comes back. An 0-2 start would be especially damaging because they’re playing in one of the NFL’s strongest divisions, the AFC West, and because it would mean dropping games to two of the league’s weakest teams.
If they can not beat the Cardinals and Raiders, both at home in back-to-back weeks to open the season, it’s fair to wonder what that says about the other 15 games left on the schedule. Nothing promising, that is for sure.
The Los Angeles Rams are in a similar bind, though the details are a little different. The issue here is the division and what’s still coming. They already have a loss in the NFC West, and that makes another early stumble much harder to absorb.
The Rams came into the year as one of the NFL’s top Super Bowl contenders, especially after acquiring Myles Garrett and bringing Aaron Donald out of retirement. But the first week brought a sloppy loss, Garrett went down with an injury that will keep him out for a few weeks, and there’s some uncertainty about how much Donald still has left. That leaves some cracks showing in what was supposed to look like a loaded roster.
This team still has talent, and coming back from 0-2 would not be impossible. But in a competitive NFC West, it could become a real problem quickly.
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Elams stay in Los Angeles was brief, even by practice-squad standards, after the former first-round pick landed there following the 2026 preseason. He had already bounced around multiple NFL stops before arriving with the Chargers, and this latest change leaves the club using that roster spot on a veteran receiver instead of continuing the experiment on the back end of the defense. [Read more 🡒]
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Keenan Allens Latest Off-Field Trouble Could Decide How This Ends
Keenan Allens offseason arrest has now turned into a legal matter, with the former Chargers standout and current Colts wide receiver formally charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated and operating a vehicle with an alcohol concentration of .15 or more. The case stems from the Aug. 30 incident in which police said Allen showed slurred speech and registered a high breath alcohol level, turning what began as a troubling off-field episode into something with real consequences still ahead.
Allen has already been on the field for Indianapolis in its season opener, but the bigger questions remain unresolved. His legal process is still moving forward, and the NFL has yet to weigh in with any discipline, leaving one of the leagues more familiar veteran receivers waiting to see how this ultimately gets sorted out. [Read more 🡒]