Congratulations to all on coming off the first week of NFL football with games scheduled the way they should be.
There was no Friday evening game played in another country, where one team gives up a home game. There were two Monday night games without overlap, with the first game between a team on the East Coast and one in the Central time zone, and the second game between two teams in the Pacific time zone. One of those teams in the late game was the Las Vegas Raiders, giving Tom Brady enough time to take care of his $375 million gig as an A-team broadcaster and then make it to the Raiders’ coaches’ box, which certainly creates no conflict of interest.
The only blip on the schedule was that the NFL apparently made scoring touchdowns illegal on “Sunday Night Football,” but we can let that slide. Let’s get into our third edition of What’s Trending in the NFL.
Bonus Five: The Mushy Middle
We’re usually all about the extremes in this space — who has the best chance to win the Super Bowl and who has the best chance at the worst record in the NFL — but let’s take a look at the teams at 1-1 through two weeks.
5. The Geno Smith-Sam Darnold–J.J. McCarthy triangle: Geno Smith is an upgrade from what the Raiders had at quarterback in 2024 between Gardner Minshew and Aiden O’Connell, even as he comes off a rough performance in Week 2. Sam Darnold is basically another version of what the Seattle Seahawks had in Smith for a few years. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Vikings seem to think that Kevin O’Connell’s brain and Justin Jefferson’s presence will elevate J.J. McCarthy, who had one good half of football and is now shelved with an injury. For all three teams, it’s a bold strategy. Let’s see if it works out for them.
4. Fun to watch: The Dallas Cowboys’ defense is in rough shape, as one would imagine it would be after losing Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence up front and being without injured stars DaRon Bland and DeMarvion Overshown. However, Dak Prescott is dealing, and the tandem of CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens, along with the surprising rise of Javonte Williams, is going to make this an entertaining team to watch, win or lose.
The Detroit Lions looked out of sorts in Week 1, but that may be equal parts a result of playing the Green Bay Packers as it was breaking in two new coordinators. Speaking of, Dan Campbell showed no mercy in his first matchup against Ben Johnson, the former Lions offensive coordinator who is now a division rival. This is going to be a fun head coaching battle to track over the years.
4. Genuinely mediocre: The New England Patriots couldn’t beat the Raiders at home and get no points for fending off the Miami Dolphins. The Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Carolina Panthers in Week 1 but couldn’t handle the Jake Browning-led Cincinnati Bengals. The Denver Broncos beat last year’s worst team, but then lost a game they should have won in heartbreaking fashion to the Indianapolis Colts. None of the wins for these teams was impressive, and the losses were games that serious contenders find a way to win. If the late missed field goal by the Colts had held up, they’d take the Broncos’ spot here.
2. The silver medalist potentials: The NFC East still appears to belong to the Philadelphia Eagles, but the Washington Commanders should have a good chance to get second place in the division, as long as Jayden Daniels returns quickly from his knee sprain and avoids further injury and the sophomore slump. Joe Burrow’s injury and the Cleveland Browns’ existence clear the way for the Pittsburgh Steelers to be runners-up in the AFC North, while the New Orleans Saints and Panthers being non-factors sets the stage for the Atlanta Falcons to finish at least second in the NFC South, if not battle Tampa Bay for the division crown.
1. Honorary 2-0: Yes, the Baltimore Ravens are 1-1 by virtue of their epic collapse in that epic game against the Buffalo Bills to open the season, but they’re in a class by themselves among this group. This is one of the most stacked rosters in the league and the quarterback is performing at an MVP level again. After playing the mighty Bills in Week 1 and the lowly Browns in Week 2, the Ravens have a Week 3 matchup against the Lions that should give us a better measure of how they stack up against the good-not-great competition.
Not ranked: Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They’re about as close as a 2-0 team can get to being 0-2, or at least 1-1. There are a lot of great personalities in the NFL, but few are more entertaining than the Baker Mayfield. A big run in the fourth quarter to convert a third-and-10, getting hurt at the end of the run, elevating trash talk to a defender over limping away on the priority list, and topping it off with a sarcastic eyeroll in the postgame news conference when asked about it is the full Baker Mayfield Experience.
The Buccaneers and Baker Mayfield are 2-0 but have been living on the edge to get there. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
Road to Santa Clara
The five teams with the best chance at winning the Super Bowl.
5. Los Angeles Chargers: The last time the Chargers were in sole possession of first place in the AFC West was 2009, when Patrick Mahomes was a freshman … in high school. The Chargers have prompted our first change in the top five this season, bumping the 0-2 Kansas City Chiefs out. There’s never been any question about Justin Herbert’s ability to be a franchise quarterback, but another year with Jim Harbaugh is making some folks reevaluate what they thought Herbert’s ceiling was.
4. Baltimore Ravens: The most interesting thing to come out of the Ravens’ beatdown of the Browns was the reported news that Shedeur Sanders asked the Ravens not to draft him because he had no chance to get on the field over Lamar Jackson. Sanders has a point, but it is ironic that he may not have been interested in joining a team whose entire system is built around the quarterback. Instead, he landed on a team that is riding a multi-decade run of misevaluating quarterbacks.
3. Philadelphia Eagles: The Chiefs held the Eagles to their lowest offensive output since Week 6 of the 2021 season, and they would like you to know about it! In all seriousness, being able to pick up a road win at Arrowhead despite a subpar offensive output makes the Eagles even scarier. You know what the main characters on that offense are capable of, and there’s no reason to believe they all fell off the cliff at the same time. Philadelphia may be one of the more complete teams in the league.
2. Green Bay Packers: Thursday night was one of Parsons’ best games in his five years in the NFL. His impact was apparent, from drawing holding penalties (much to the eyerolls of Cowboys fans) to rushing the passer from the edge and up the middle. You had to feel bad for Commanders rookie right tackle Josh Conerly, who certainly had his welcome-to-the-NFL game. On the plus side, at least Conerly didn’t have the weekend that New York Giants left tackle James Hudson had.
1. Buffalo Bills: During the Patriots’ dynasty run for two decades, many folks would point to how easy the team had it six games a year. Now, the Bills are in that driver’s seat of the AFC East, and they get to come off a cruising win over the New York Jets and take on the Dolphins Thursday night. Looking at the Bills schedule, and assuming good health to key pieces, there appear to be only four or five losable games the rest of the regular season.
Not ranked: Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans — It’s only two weeks in, but I’m about ready to stick a fork in eight of the 10 teams that are 0-2. The only ones that have some hope to achieve that rare turnaround we love talking about are the Chiefs and Texans. The Chiefs have been quite unimpressive, but have also faced two of the top five teams in the league so far and are severely short-handed. As long as Mahomes is healthy and they aren’t mathematically eliminated, they have a chance, even if it’s as a wild card. As for the Texans, their schedule is not easy, but let’s just monitor how long the Colts can keep getting away with this. That division is still winnable.
Bottom five
The five teams with the best chance to land the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
5. New York Giants: The Cowboys’ defense made the ghost of Russell Wilson look like Prime Russell Wilson. Wilson even threw in a late, ill-advised, game-costing interception to really take you back to his glory days. The Jets and Panthers are right on the tail here, but the former gets to play the Dolphins twice and the latter gets the Saints twice.
4. Tennessee Titans: Some exhilarating plays from Cam Ward are the ceiling for good vibes for Titans fans this season, which is pretty much what you’d expect after you finish with the No. 1 pick the previous year. The key is seeing some growth from young pieces and building around Ward properly.
3. New Orleans Saints: Props to Spencer Rattler; he’s showing the Saints they have something in the quarterback room. Now, I still think that “something” is a high-level backup rather than the franchise’s next starter, but stranger things have happened. Also, throwback to last year, when the Saints entered Week 3 as 2.5-point favorites over the eventual champion Eagles.
2. Cleveland Browns: I would have loved to be a fly on the wall wherever Browns management was watching “Monday Night Football” when Nick Chubb, one of Cleveland’s 2018 second-round picks, ran in a 25-yard touchdown to give the Texans a late fourth-quarter lead, before Mayfield, 2018’s No. 1 pick by Cleveland, marched the Bucs down to win the game.
1. Miami Dolphins: To Miami’s credit, the Dolphins played a competitive football game and looked competent. As a reward, they get the Bills in prime time on a short week.
Not ranked: Cincinnati Bengals — For all of the stats being thrown out there about how the Bengals can’t win in the first two weeks under Zac Taylor, it’s quite ironic that a 2-0 start to the season has funeral vibes. As Paul Dehner Jr. wrote this week, the conversation surrounding how the organization has handled Burrow, and the Andrew Luck comparisons that have come fast and furious, including from yours truly, is a complicated one.
As somebody who considers Burrow one of my favorite players in the league, it’s hard to accept how much of a special player’s prime we’re losing, for one reason or another, every year. A two-game cushion is probably too much for the Bengals to ever truly crack the bottom five, but unless Jake Browning keeps them afloat and Burrow returns in December hitting the ground running, the Bengals’ hopes for a Super Bowl once again limped off the field.
(Top photo of Patrick Mahomes: David Eulitt / Getty Images)
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