Beware of small sample sizes. That’s important to keep in mind after the first week of an NFL season. Remember how things looked after last year’s opening round of games? The Saints offense seemed unstoppable. The Cowboys defense was utterly dominant in a win over the Browns. And the 49ers picked up right where they had left off in 2023. They were all false flags. But there were some signs of what was to come over the course of the 2024 season, including Sam Darnold’s breakout game with the Vikings and Saquon Barkley’s magical debut with the Eagles.
There’s always a lot of bullshit to wade through after Week 1, and the goal in this piece is to determine what’s real and what’s not. In my Winners and Losers column I hit on some of the bigger surprises of the opening weekend—including Daniel Jones’s monster day and Justin Fields’s impressive outing in New York—but let’s take a deeper look at a few others and try to decide whether they’re meaningful or just the result of small-sample nonsense.
The Cincinnati Bengals are a ball-control team now.
The Bengals are 1-0 for the first time since 2021, having outlasted the Browns in a forgettable 17-16 win. But even though the final score was too close for comfort, it was kind of refreshing to see Cincinnati play a relatively drab game. Last year, the Bengals defense couldn’t have stopped a high school offense; this year, the team won its opener because of its defense, rather than by asking Joe Burrow to play Superman. Surely this model is more sustainable than last year’s, right?
I’m not so sure. Cincinnati’s defense may have won this game, but it did so via two fortunate bounces off Browns receivers that turned into interceptions … and a fourth-down drop by Jerry Jeudy … and a missed chip-shot field goal … and a missed extra point. The Bengals were awesome against the run, but they also let Joe Flacco cook a little in the passing game. That’s a concern! The defense may have played better against Cleveland, but it still looks like a potential weakness.
The offense also needs to be better and score more than 17 points. After an opening drive touchdown that was surprisingly sparked by the run game, Cincinnati’s offense slowed down. Burrow found himself in recurring third-down situations, which is apparently by design. Fox’s Kevin Kugler, who called the game, said that running more to get into third-and-short is a “huge emphasis” for head coach Zac Taylor this year. I think that’s a bad idea based on the strengths of the roster, but Taylor was committed to the bit on Sunday. He called passes on only 51.4 percent of early downs, per TruMedia. Last season, that number was at 61.5 percent. When the runs were working, the approach led to points. But then the runs stopped working, and the offense imploded. Burrow found himself in more obvious passing situations, and the Browns pass rush started getting home. Taylor’s plan played into Cleveland’s hands. The Bengals were up against the one team that isn’t afraid to play Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins one-on-one without safety help over the top. Higgins was able to make a few tightly contested catches, but nothing came easily.
“We just have to find a way to make some adjustments to help some guys get open,” Burrow said on Sunday. “Try to find a way to complete balls, [and] keep running the ball in the second half—like we didn’t do today.”
I don’t think that Burrow meant that as a dig at his coaches, but it is up to Taylor to find the adjustments Burrow’s referring to. If the Bengals are going to do the ball control, tough defense thing, they’ll have to get better at running the ball for more than one drive. Otherwise, Taylor’s insistence on keeping Burrow in third-and-manageable will lead to more third-and-unmanageable situations—and we could see a repeat of last year’s setup, where it’s up to the quarterback to solve all of the offense’s problems.
The Houston Texans offense is still broken.
Houston’s opening possession of the 2025 season played out like so many of its possessions in 2024. The first play was wiped out by a holding penalty that set the Texans back 10 yards. Then came a short run that was followed by a hurried C.J. Stroud pass to a covered Nico Collins, and that set up a third-and-17. The Texans were flagged for a delay of game before they could get the snap off, which pushed them back to third-and-22 from their own 8-yard line. First-year offensive coordinator Nick Caley waved the white flag and called a surrender run, and the series ended in a punt. Penalties, inefficient run plays, and poor pass protection sabotaged the offense last season and held the team back from meeting lofty preseason expectations. Now, following the offense’s dreadful performance in a 14-9 loss to the Rams, it doesn’t seem like much has changed.
The Rams defensive line, led by Jared Verse and Byron Young, bulldozed the patchwork Texans offensive line. The Texans’ run game averaged just 3.7 yards per carry, with a 28 percent success rate. The offensive line allowed eight unblocked pressures on Stroud, tied for the second most in Week 1, per Pro Football Focus. Houston’s seven pre-snap penalties were also second most. All that led to a high-stress day for Stroud, who played well, all things considered, even if the numbers don’t reflect that. Again, this all sounds like last season.
Caley and the Texans are giving Stroud more control at the line of scrimmage this season, in hopes that he can protect himself from faulty protection schemes by making adjustments before the snap. We saw a mixed bag from the quarterback on that front on Sunday. He missed a few opportunities to shift the protection to pick up an unblocked rusher, and other times, he sent the offensive line in the right direction, only for a free rusher to still get through.
There’s only so much that Stroud can do to fix the problems that are holding him and the offense back. He can’t keep his linemen from jumping early or holding defenders. He can’t block for his running backs. Until the Texans stop hurting themselves with penalties and start opening up holes in the run game, the offense will remain broken.
The Mike McDaniel era is beyond repair.
“I would say the good news and the positive is, I don’t see how it could be worse,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said after Miami’s 33-8 loss to the Colts in Week 1. He’s not wrong—his team was that bad on Sunday. But now’s probably not the time to be joking, with McDaniel’s job security in flux after an offseason of questions about his capacity to lead the locker room. The Dolphins aimed to get tougher this season and wanted their veteran leaders to hold their teammates accountable, which are hugely important parts of being a successful football team. But they don’t make a difference if the team stinks. And this Miami team reeks.
The Dolphins have a top-heavy roster with an expensive core. The defensive line is pretty good, there’s speed in the receiving corps, Minkah Fitzpatrick is a good safety, and Jordyn Brooks is a solid linebacker. But there’s not much going for them beyond that. The offensive line continues to be an issue, the running back room lacks a physical ballcarrier, the cornerback room is thin and just lost another starter to injury, and, most troubling of all, McDaniel has seemed to run out of ways to get the best out of Tua Tagovailoa, who turned the ball over three times on Sunday and threw for just 114 yards on 23 attempts.
After the game, former Dolphins player Xavien Howard, who’s now a cornerback for the Colts, said that the plan was to take away Tagovailoa’s first read and send him into “panic mode.” The Colts aced that assignment—mostly by packing the middle of the field. And the Dolphins quarterback still tried to force passes there, which resulted in two picks and some other close calls. I don’t know whether other defensive coordinators will be able to take away Miami’s offensive staples as cleverly as Lou Anarumo did on Sunday, but good teams have been able to force the Dolphins to come up with plan Bs since the start of the McDaniel era. Sunday’s game showed that he and Tagovailoa are still struggling to find one.
If mediocre teams like the Colts can expose the Dolphins this easily, things might get ugly against the better teams on their schedule. They’ll be in Buffalo a week from Thursday to face the Bills on national television. McDaniel says that things can’t get worse, but I’m not sure that’s true.
The Detroit Lions are lost without Ben Johnson.
It was a rough opening week all around for the three coaches who’d led the Lions’ resurgence over the past few years. Ben Johnson’s offense sputtered in his debut as the Bears’ head coach, Aaron Glenn’s Jets defense got cooked by a 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers, and Dan Campbell’s Lions had no response when they got punched in the mouth by the Packers in a 27-13 loss.
The fact that Johnson’s and Glenn’s new teams struggled in Week 1 wasn’t a surprise. They took over bad teams, and rebuilds take time. But Campbell’s Lions had been the favorites to win the NFC North before they got run off the field in Green Bay on Sunday. The Packers look like a powerhouse on both sides of the ball, so there’s a chance we’ll eventually look back on that result as Detroit just getting outclassed by a better group, but it was concerning nonetheless.
I’m most worried about the offensive side of the ball, where the unit that had powered Johnson’s machine—the run game—couldn’t get much going under first-year coordinator John Morton. Campbell seemed similarly concerned after the game. “I thought he did good,” the Lions head coach said of Morton. “There are a couple things that he wants back, certainly. But we got to be able to master bread and butter before you get to all the other stuff. The other stuff won’t matter if we can’t find a way to run the football for more than 2.1 per carry. That’s where everything starts for us.”
That’s certainly where the problems started against Green Bay. Detroit’s 2.1-yard-per-carry average would have been much worse if not for Jahmyr Gibbs’s skill at evading tackles. The Lions averaged minus-0.05 yards before contact against the Packers, per TruMedia. And because their linemen struggled to win their matchups at the line of scrimmage, Green Bay linebackers Edgerrin Cooper and Quay Walker were left unblocked for most of the afternoon.
The Lions had just one explosive run all game, per TruMedia. They averaged more than three a game in 2024. Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley deserves some credit for that. He had his defensive line stunting and twisting to confuse Detroit’s blocking assignments, which contributed to that yards-before-contact stat I mentioned above. But the Lions also made plenty of mental mistakes, which we didn’t see very often under Johnson’s coordination. On this play, tight end Sam LaPorta just straight-up forgets to carry out a trap block, leaving Gibbs to deal with an unblocked defensive lineman as soon as he takes the handoff.
The sputtering run game also had a trickle-down effect on the passing attack. Jared Goff found himself under pressure more often than not, and he, unsurprisingly, did not cope with it well. His interior line was an issue, which was to be expected after the Lions lost center Frank Ragnow to retirement and guard Kevin Zeitler in free agency during the offseason. While losing Johnson was viewed as the biggest setback for the reigning NFC North champs, the talent drain on the team’s best unit may prove even more difficult to overcome this season. I doubt that Johnson’s reputation for play calling and offensive design would be as strong if he had been working with this version of the offensive line during his time in Detroit.
Caleb Williams doesn’t fit in the Ben Johnson offense.
This new era of Bears football could not have gotten off to a better start on Monday night, with Caleb Williams and Co. marching down the field for a 10-play touchdown drive that was capped off by a 9-yard scramble. Unfortunately, that was not a sign of things to come. Chicago’s offense cooled and didn’t find the end zone again until the game was nearly out of reach. But that initial drive did offer up some clues about how the evening would go for Williams and his new coach. Even the impressive opening possession required several ad-libbed plays by the second-year quarterback, including this audacious display of arm talent to convert on third-and-5.
Johnson’s system in Detroit was built around Goff’s timing and precision, so when he was hired by Chicago, many questioned how that would work with a quarterback who is known—and revered—for his scramble-drill plays. And with Williams running all over the field in Monday’s 27-24 loss against the Vikings, it seemed like those concerns were warranted. But a review of the tape showed that Williams wasn’t turning down many open throws while scrambling. Chicago’s run game had a rough night on Monday, so Johnson’s pass calls weren’t springing receivers open in the same way they did in Detroit. Here are all 12 of the plays in which the Minnesota defense moved Williams off his initial spot in the pocket, per Pro Football Focus. Count how many open receivers you see running downfield before he starts to move. There aren’t many!
And there are two important numbers that can’t be ignored: (1) Williams was sacked only twice even though he faced pressure on 44 percent of his dropbacks, which was the second-highest rate for any quarterback in Week 1, and (2) the Bears offense averaged 0.49 expected points added per play when Williams was moved off his spot, per PFF. Williams went off script out of necessity, and it was the most productive aspect of the Bears offense on Monday night.
Now, Williams’s deeply concerning accuracy issues when throwing downfield contributed to that. He left at least three big plays on the field because of wildly missed throws. And that’s been a problem going back to last season.
But we’re still talking about three plays in a game in which Williams finished with a decent stat line against a defense that’s considered to be among the NFL’s elite. His 63.8 QBR from the game was the 13th-best mark of the week, per ESPN. He ranked 14th in success rate, per TruMedia. It wasn’t a terrible performance. But it was a terrible loss for the Bears.
Going forward, Johnson will be responsible for ironing out the major issues with his offense, like getting the run game going after it produced just 61 yards on 20 non-scramble attempts or improving Williams’s protection so that he can hang in the pocket longer. As Campbell said of the offense that Johnson left behind in Detroit: It all starts with the run game. If Johnson can’t get that going or improve the pass protection, we’ll see more scramble drills from Williams. Not necessarily because it’s in his nature as a quarterback—but just because it might be the only way the Bears can move the ball consistently.
The NFL has revived the kickoff.
The NFL has a mixed track record with rule changes aimed at improving the on-field product. The new emphasis on penalizing taunting—which exactly zero NFL fans were concerned about heading into this season—is a good example of a bad adjustment. The new kickoff rule, though—which led to the highest leaguewide return rate (75.6 percent) in well over a decade—is an example of the positive impact that a good, simple tweak can have.
This season, a touchback brings the ball out to the 35-yard line. It had been the 30-yard line in 2024, which wasn’t enough of an incentive for kicking teams to put the ball in play. That’s changed now, and the feeling that you might miss something by running to the bathroom after a score has finally returned.
Over the course of Week 1, the increase in returns led to a rise in long returns, with nine going for at least 40 yards. That’s tied for the most we’ve seen in a given week since 2015, per Josh Dubow of the AP. But, for the most part, the rule change favored the kicking team, with the average return getting to the 29-yard line. That represented a slight drop from last season, when the league debuted its “dynamic kickoff.”
It’s always hard to say whether a trend that emerges in Week 1 will stick, but the numbers make this an easy call: Until return teams discover better tactics that lead to a better starting field position, the rate of returns will remain high—and you’ll have to speed up those bathroom breaks in between drives.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ dynasty is over.
Through one week, the Chiefs have already lost as many Patrick Mahomes starts as they did during the entire 2024 regular season. And don’t let the 27-21 final score fool you; the Chargers were far and away the better team on Friday night in Brazil. They dominated the stat sheet across the board.
Chargers vs. Chiefs, Week 1 (TruMedia)
What’s more concerning for the Chiefs than getting thoroughly outplayed by a good Chargers team was how similar to last season’s this offense looked. Outside of a few moments of Mahomes magic, this was another painstaking outing for that group. The Chiefs did hit on two deep passes, which had been a point of emphasis for the team for a third consecutive offseason—but one of those came on a desperation heave from Mahomes on fourth down, and the other required an absolutely perfect throw. Mahomes’s other deep attempts didn’t come close to connecting.
Once again, Kansas City’s offense centered on the quick passing game. Mahomes averaged 2.31 seconds per throw—only Rodgers threw more quickly in Week 1, per TruMedia—and his 6.9 average depth of target ranked 21st. The run game was virtually nonexistent, at least in the mind of Andy Reid, who called only 11 designed runs. That was probably an appropriate number given that only three rushing attempts produced more than 5 yards. For a second consecutive season, it appears that quick passes from Mahomes will act as the team’s running game.
Mahomes looks as sharp as ever as a decision-maker. And if he can combine that quick trigger with the remarkable playmaking we saw on Friday, I wouldn’t rule him out in this year’s MVP race—especially if he can lead Kansas City to an impressive record. But he’ll have to be more precise than he was against Los Angeles. He was uncharacteristically inaccurate in Brazil—although I wouldn’t expect that to continue.
The offense should be fine going forward, even if the deep-ball problem doesn’t go away, but I’m not sure that Steve Spagnuolo’s defense will be OK. The unit struggled in many of the same ways it did a season ago. It showed that it can still beat up a power-run game in a phone booth, but the pass defense had no answer for Justin Herbert. The pass rush failed to get home without extra rushers and creative pressure, and they left too many receivers open downfield. Over the past few seasons Kansas City has lost a lot of talent in its secondary—L’Jarius Sneed, Justin Reid, and Tyrann Mathieu—and the front office has yet to find adequate replacements. Defensive success now seems to be entirely contingent on Chris Jones having a dominant day. Jones remains one of the NFL’s best interior pass rushers, but that’s a lot of pressure to put on a 31-year-old defensive tackle. It’s also a lot of pressure to put on Spagnuolo, whose schemes can make up for only so much. The same can be said of Mahomes and Reid on the other side of the ball.
I wouldn’t bury the Chiefs after an opening week loss against a quarterback who put on a virtuoso performance, but they no longer look like a lock for a spot in the AFC championship game. Forget about teams like the Bills, Ravens, and Bengals. Kansas City could have trouble holding on to the top spot in its own division after getting outclassed by the Chargers.
Steven Ruiz
Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.
