If Week 1 is supposed to tell us who’s real and who’s already in trouble, the league has spent years proving that lesson is usually too simple. Last season was the freshest reminder.
The Seattle Seahawks opened with a loss to division rival San Francisco, then turned around and won the title. The New England Patriots also started 0-1 after a stunning home loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, and they still finished as champions.
Those two teams made history as the only Super Bowl matchup ever played between clubs that both began the season with a defeat.
That’s the kind of backdrop the Los Angeles Rams can lean on after their own rough opener. They were routed 27-7 by San Francisco in Australia last week, their lowest-scoring game with Matthew Stafford at quarterback. It was a jarring start for a team that came into the season as a heavy Super Bowl favorite, especially after adding Myles Garrett and Trent McDuffie to a roster that had fallen just short a year ago and was carrying plus-500 odds to win it all.
The broader numbers back up the idea that one bad Sunday rarely closes the book. Five playoff teams last season lost in Week 1, with Chicago, Houston and Carolina joining Seattle and New England in the postseason.
On the other side, seven of the 16 Week 1 winners missed the playoffs altogether, including Arizona, Cincinnati and Washington, each of whom ended up with six wins or fewer. Since the playoffs expanded to seven teams per conference in 2020, an average of 4.3 teams per season have dropped their opener and still made the field, while 6.2 Week 1 winners have gone on to miss it.
There is one thing the Rams would rather not copy, though: the size of that opening loss. Just 12 of the 60 Super Bowl champions lost their opener, and only one eventual champion, New England, was beaten by 20 points or more in Week 1. That Patriots team was blasted 31-0 by Buffalo in 2003 before ripping off 34 wins in its next 37 games across 2003 and ’04 to capture back-to-back titles.
New York had its own kind of Week 1 jolt. For a city that has spent the last decade near the bottom of the NFL standings - with the Jets owning the league’s worst record since 2016 and the Giants second-worst - Sunday was a rare clean sweep.
The Jets beat Tennessee 23-10, and the Giants stunned Dallas 28-20 at night. It was the first time both teams won in Week 1 since 2009, after each had lost its opener in five of the last seven seasons.
That also put both clubs at 1-0 entering Week 2, which is only the second time since the start of 2016 that the Jets and Giants have both had winning records at the same time. The other stretch came in 2022 and lasted 10 weeks before the Jets slipped to 7-7 and eventually finished 7-10. There have been just five seasons in which both New York teams reached the playoffs together: 2006, 2002, 1986, 1985 and 1981.
Week 1 also treated the league’s new coaches pretty well. Record-tying 10 first-year head coaches opened their seasons, and six of them won.
Two of those victories came against each other, with Mike McCarthy’s Pittsburgh Steelers beating Kevin Stefanski’s Atlanta Falcons and Klint Kubiak’s Las Vegas Raiders beating Jeff Hafley’s Miami Dolphins. The other winners were Arizona’s Mike LaFleur against the Los Angeles Chargers, Baltimore’s Jesse Minter against Indianapolis and Buffalo’s Joe Brady over Houston.
The four losers were Tennessee’s Robert Saleh against the Jets, Cleveland’s Todd Monken against Jacksonville, and the two coaches who fell in those head-to-head matchups.
The NFC South had a miserable start, too. Carolina, coming off a division title and a postseason trip as the fifth team ever to reach the playoffs with a losing record in a non-strike season, was blown out 59-37 by Chicago.
Tampa Bay lost 33-27 to Cincinnati, New Orleans dropped a 31-30 overtime game to Detroit, and Atlanta fell 20-13 to Pittsburgh. It was only the eighth time since the merger that every team in one division lost in Week 1, and the first since the NFC North in 2021.
The scoring was there - three teams topped 30 points, and the division combined for 107 points, the most ever for a winless division in a single week.
A few other Week 1 notes stood out around the league. The Philadelphia Eagles won their sixth straight opener, and Nick Sirianni became the only coach in NFL history to appear in at least six openers and win every one. That’s the longest active Week 1 winning streak, and the last team with a longer one was Kansas City, which won eight straight from 2015 through 2022.
Minnesota got a big day from Carson Wentz after Kyler Murray was injured. Wentz came off the bench and threw three touchdown passes without an interception in a 39-22 win over Green Bay. Since starts were first tracked in 1950, the only other quarterback to enter an opener as a replacement and post at least three TD passes and no picks was Fran Tarkenton, who did it in the first game in Vikings history in 1961 against Chicago.
Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt kept building his own unusual résumé with two sacks and a pick-6 against Atlanta. He now has 117 sacks and 10 interceptions, making him and Hall of Famer Julius Peppers the only players with at least 100 sacks and 10 picks.
And in Atlanta’s loss, Bijan Robinson was almost the whole show. He ran for 83 yards, caught passes for 90 more and scored the Falcons’ only touchdown.
Robinson accounted for 65.8% of the offense and drew 10 of the team’s 19 targets in the passing game. The last running back to handle at least half of his team’s targets was LaDainian Tomlinson, who had 15 of 28 for the Chargers in Week 17 of the 2003 season against the Raiders.
In Other News...
Seahawks May Have A Surprise Week 2 Spark Fans Will Love
Sam Darnolds hip and glute issue has opened the door for a different look under center in Week 2, with Drew Lock expected to start for Seattle. It also puts Jalen Milroe in position as the backup, and that alone gives the Seahawks a little extra intrigue heading into the matchup with the Arizona Cardinals.
Dan Graziano of ESPN noted that Milroe could be sprinkled in for gadget or trick plays, which makes sense given the value his running ability can add to an offense looking for an edge. Even if he is not taking over the game plan, the possibility of Milroe popping up in a key spot gives Seattle a wrinkle worth watching as it tries to create opportunities against Arizona. [Read more 🡒]
Seahawks Suddenly Have A Week 2 Availability Problem Against Arizona
Tory Hortons return to full practice was one of the brighter notes in Seattles build toward its Week 2 meeting with Arizona, a welcome sign after he spent much of his recovery away from the field following a tibia fracture. After missing so much time since last season, simply getting Horton back into a full session matters for a team trying to settle into the early part of the schedule.
The injury report, though, was hardly clean. Sam Darnold was held out with a glute injury, Nick Emmanwori was limited by ankle and hip issues, and Ty Okada and Cooper Kupp were among the other players who were limited or did not participate. For a Seahawks team trying to sort out its availability picture before facing the Cardinals, the bigger question now is how many of those names will be ready when the game arrives. [Read more 🡒]
Mike Macdonalds Defense Is Changing How Fans See These Seahawks
Mike Macdonalds defense is starting to change the way people look at these Seahawks, and Sunday offered another reminder of why. Seattles unit came up big late, turning the fourth quarter into a showcase with three interceptions and three sacks, the kind of closing stretch that can flip the mood around a team in a hurry. Macdonald credited both his coaching staff and his players for the way they adapted and carried out the defensive plan, which has become a defining feature of this group.
The bigger picture is just as striking. Seattle has now gone 29 straight games without allowing a 100-yard rusher, a run that speaks to how consistently this defense has controlled the ground game. And with uncertainty still hanging over the return of starting quarterback Sam Darnold, the Seahawks may need that edge on defense even more as the season moves forward. [Read more 🡒]