Week 1 came with the usual NFL whiplash: a couple of teams looked like they’d been building toward this moment for months, and a few others played like they missed the memo that the season had started.
The cleanest statement wins came from Buffalo and Baltimore, where first-time head coaches Joe Brady and Jesse Minter both left their debuts with road victories and plenty to like under center. Brady’s Bills walked into Houston and beat the Texans 36-31 behind a huge day from Josh Allen, while Minter’s Ravens rolled into Indianapolis and thumped the Colts 41-23.
Allen did just about everything in Buffalo’s win. He piled up four touchdowns and 357 total yards, and the Bills offense kept humming all afternoon against last year’s top-ranked defense.
Houston corner Kamari Lassiter briefly had a chance to swing the game when he dropped an easy interception on an ill-advised throw, but Allen answered on the next snap with the 34-yard winner to Joshua Palmer. Buffalo finished with 409 yards, and DJ Moore and Dalton Kincaid both topped 100 yards.
Baltimore was even more ruthless in its own way. The Ravens jumped out to a 28-6 second-quarter lead and never let Indianapolis breathe, finishing with a 41-23 win and a 506-251 advantage in total yards. Daniel Jones was held to 166 yards on 5.4 yards per attempt with an interception, and Tyler Warren was quiet all day, catching three passes for 13 yards on five targets.
There were concerns, too. Buffalo’s defense has work to do, and Baltimore will have to navigate injuries to receivers Zay Flowers and Ja’Kobi Lane. But for two teams with Super Bowl aspirations, the opening returns were strong.
Not every contender got that kind of start. The Rams entered the week with a lot of the league’s hype behind them, but now they’re 0-1 after getting blown out by the 49ers in what was technically a home game. The bigger blow is the loss of All-Pro edge rusher Myles Garrett, who had arthroscopic knee surgery and is now on injured reserve for at least four weeks.
That absence could ripple fast. Without Garrett, the Rams may need future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald to come back immediately and take on more than planned after two years away from football, and the burden on Braden Fiske and Byron Young just got a lot heavier over the next month against the Giants, Broncos, Eagles and Bills. Los Angeles can still lean on a loaded offense - Matthew Stafford, Kyren Williams, Blake Corum, Puka Nacua and Davante Adams all give it plenty of firepower - but the margin for error looks thinner than it did a week ago.
The same can’t be said for Cleveland, which opened with a 34-10 loss to the Jaguars and never looked remotely settled. The Browns were down 24-0 at halftime, and while a Week 1 road trip to Jacksonville isn’t a scandal on its own, this was a demolition. Todd Monken’s first game in the top job turned into a nightmare after he chose to start Deshaun Watson over second-year man Shedeur Sanders.
Watson was rough from the jump. He threw an interception on Cleveland’s first drive and never really recovered, with the Browns failing to put together a single march longer than 50 yards after their opening possession until the game was already out of hand.
Jacksonville, meanwhile, moved the ball almost at will. Before garbage time, the Jaguars scored on six of their first seven drives, and four of those ended in Trevor Lawrence touchdown passes to Parker Washington, Jakobi Meyers, Brenton Strange and Josh Cameron.
Cleveland now heads to Tampa Bay next Sunday, and Monken can go back to Watson if he wants to see whether the performance improves. But if it doesn’t, and the Browns come home for their Week 3 opener against the Panthers sitting at 0-2 with the quarterback play still stuck in neutral, Sanders looks like the obvious next move.
In Other News...
Rams Suddenly Face A Brutal Wait For Myles Garrett
The Rams have already had to adjust their plans around Myles Garrett in training camp, where lower-leg pain limited his participation before the situation pushed him toward arthroscopic knee surgery and injured reserve. For a team trying to get its footing early, losing a player of Garretts caliber for at least four games is a real setback, especially with the regular season opening stretch offering little time to ease into the absence.
Garrett cannot return until Week 6 at the earliest, when the Rams host the Arizona Cardinals, which leaves the team waiting longer than it would like for clarity on his recovery. In the meantime, Los Angeles has to sort through how to hold up without one of its most disruptive defenders while the calendar keeps moving toward a matchup that suddenly feels a lot more important. [Read more 🡒]
Rams Nearly Took A Very Different Path To Fix Their Pass Rush
The Rams spent part of their pass-rush search on a far more familiar kind of star power than the one they eventually landed, with Los Angeles initially exploring a trade for Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby before the rest of the market shifted around them. A proposed Raiders-Ravens deal had already fallen apart over concerns about Crosbys surgically repaired knee, but the pass rusher later indicated he wanted to stay in Las Vegas and the Raiders were not inclined to move him for anything less than full value.
From the Rams standpoint, the bigger takeaway is how close they came to taking a very different route to solve the same problem. Crosby has reportedly had no trouble with the knee since and is said to be in excellent health, which only sharpens the what-if for Los Angeles before it ultimately pivoted and landed Myles Garrett instead. [Read more 🡒]
Rams Fans Have One Big Reason To Watch The Giants Tonight
The Rams are heading into Week 2 still looking for a reset after dropping their opener, and the Giants offer an early-season measuring stick that Los Angeles fans will be watching closely tonight. New York is stepping into a new era with its first game under John Harbaugh, who arrives after leaving the Ravens this offseason, and the tone of this matchup could say plenty about how quickly the Giants adapt to a different voice on the sideline.
For Rams fans, the intrigue goes beyond a simple NFC opponent check-in. The Giants approach against Dallas in Week 1 pointed to a team trying to establish an identity on both sides of the ball, and tonights game should give a clearer read on how real that foundation is. Whether the Giants settle in quickly or spend the night working through growing pains, Los Angeles will have a useful glimpse at the kind of team its about to face. [Read more 🡒]