Opening Week Reactions

The first sixteen games of the NFL season are in the books, and now is the time to make snap judgments about how the rest of the season is going to go. Football is a game with a lot of volatility, but that has never stopped us from jumping to conclusions over a single week of action. Maybe this past week was just a bunch of bad breaks. Maybe teams will grow as the season moves along. Maybe Josh Allen will come in and save Buffalo’s season (okay, that one isn’t happening).

Below I’ve listed some of the headlines from the opening week, ranked in ascending order of how likely I think they are to continue. The first few are just flashes in the pan, while the last few I guarantee will keep up through the season. So we start of course, with the one we have seen so often before.

Same old Chargers

This was supposed to be the year that broke the Chargers curse. If it is, it isn’t off to a good start. It’s not that they played badly in the first game. They moved the ball comfortably for most of the game, and while their defense struggled some against the pass, they kept the Chiefs from beating them on the ground. They played well, and were just done in by the same mistakes that have killed them for years. They dropped easy touchdowns. They allowed a 91 yard punt return. They muffed a punt themselves.

It seems foolish at this point to say that the Chargers will stop making these mistakes, but I’m going to keep saying it. Sooner or later regression to the mean is going to hit them, and they are going to start winning games. The Chiefs have been a bad matchup for them for the past few years, and with four of their next five against the Bills, 49ers, Raiders, and Browns, I have a feeling this game will be all but forgotten a couple weeks down the road.

Ryan Fitzpatrick is the best quarterback for the Buccaneers

The biggest surprise of the weekend was Tampa Bay’s explosive victory over New Orleans. The Buccaneers raced out to 48 points, powered by 417 yards and four touchdowns through the air (plus a rushing touchdown!) from veteran backup Ryan Fitzpatrick. With Jameis Winston suspended for the first three weeks, the thought was that they would just have to hope to survive until he returned. Instead they were led to a stunning upset by their backup, leading people to question whether their mercurial young starter is worth the headaches he brings.

I’m going to stop this right here. We’ve seen this story from Fitzpatrick a half dozen times before, and we know how it ends. No one ever doubted that he was capable of what he did on Sunday. The question with him is always what he does to follow it up. Whether it happens next week, or the week after, he will have a game where he throws multiple costly interceptions.

There are reasons to question Winston. To this point in his career he has been a very similar player to Fitzpatrick, a liability just as often as he is an asset. But there’s a difference between an inconsistent 35 year old quarterback and an inconsistent 24 year old. Winston might not be the answer, but Fitzpatrick certainly isn’t, and it isn’t worth wasting time to learn what everyone who follows the NFL has known for years.

The Browns are back!

With an opening week tie of the Steelers the Browns not only snapped their 17 game losing streak, they are now off to their best start since 2004. Facing off against a division rival with Super Bowl aspirations, they came from two touchdowns back to force overtime, and even though they weren’t able to convert this into a victory they have to count this as a positive.

Unfortunately, I think this game said far more about the Steelers than it did about the Browns. Pittsburgh turned the ball over six times and racked up more than 100 yards of penalties, giving Cleveland opportunities over and over again. As Bill Barnwell pointed out on Twitter, before yesterday teams that had a turnover margin of +5 or better were 132-4 since 1999 (and the Browns account for two of those losses). Cleveland absolutely should have won this game, and the fact that they didn’t is an indictment of the talent on this team.

Were there positive signs? Yes, there were. Jarvis Landry was excellent, and Josh Gordon made a spectacular catch to tie things up late in the game. First round pick Denzel Ward collected two interceptions from a future Hall of Fame quarterback in the first game of his career, and Myles Garrett looked every bit the superstar edge rusher he was expected to be. This team still has a bright future, but it might take until later in the season to see it.

Aaron Rodgers can save the Packers from anything

Sunday night was a remarkable performance, and it served to remind anyone who might have forgotten during his absence last season that Rodgers is simply in a different league than any other quarterback in the NFL. The throw he made on the touchdown to Geronimo Allison was the sort that fewer than five people in the world can do, and he did it on one leg. The rest of his offense deserves credit for the help they gave him—Davante Adams and Randall Cobb both had great runs after the catch, and the offensive line did an excellent job keeping a clean pocket for a quarterback who couldn’t move—but this game came down to Rodgers being far and away the best player on the field.

The problem for Green Bay is that they won’t be playing the Bears every week. Their defense looked vulnerable against both the run and the pass for most of the game, and a more experienced quarterback will eat them alive. And next week they will be facing one of the most dangerous pass rushes in the league in Minnesota, who will make it much harder to protect an immobile quarterback. That’s if Rodgers plays, which is far from a certain thing. He was able to make it back into the game last night, but as the adrenaline (and painkillers) wear off and the knee starts to swell, it wouldn’t stun me if it ended up keeping him out the next few weeks. If that happens, the Packers could be in for a rough start to the season.

Atlanta’s offense is doomed

The Falcons to start 2018 looked a lot like the Falcons from 2017. They moved the ball, their offensive stars showed up, and yet somehow they failed to put points on the board. They failed repeatedly in the red zone, settling for field goals and failed fourth down attempts and only once punching it into the endzone. A 12 point performance is embarrassing for a team with this much offensive talent, even against a defense as good as Philadelphia’s.

Most of the blame has gone to offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, particularly for his play calling in the red zone. And while I take issue with his decision to slam the ball into a brick wall on the initial fourth down, I didn’t think his play calling in the red zone was that bad throughout the game. In fact, that fourth down never would have happened if Matt Ryan had hit the open receiver in the endzone on the previous play, instead of lofting it over his head and nearly being intercepted.

That was the real issue for Atlanta on Thursday, and it is even more troubling than coordinator issues. Ryan looked completely ineffective throwing the football, with every pass floating as if the ball was filled with helium. When they got down to goal to go at the end of the game, he couldn’t even keep the ball in the field of play to give his receivers a chance to score the winning touchdown.

I don’t know what is going on with Ryan. If he’s hurt, I haven’t heard anything about it. But at only 33 years old, he seems too young to be suffering a Peyton Manning like loss in arm strength. It’s something we will have to watch closely going forward, because if Ryan plays like he did on opening night, one of the top teams in the league will suddenly find themselves flailing just to make the postseason.

The Bears are ready to compete. No wait, they still suck.

It’s hard to predict what Bears team we will see going forward, since they were really two different teams on Sunday night. Will they be the team that was explosive and dynamic on both sides of the ball that they were in the first half, or the limp and inept team that lost the game in the second? The answer is both. We got the complete experience from the Bears in week 1, and we’ll keep getting it going forward.

This team is young, and young teams are inconsistent. They have a young quarterback and a young coach, and both showed their inexperience in the second half. Mitch Trubisky looked sensational through the scripted plays at the beginning of the game, and he had nice throws even through to the end. But he also had plays where he looked completely lost, dropping his eyes and running straight into pressure. Matt Nagy designed a creative opening script, and then fell into a bland rhythm that culminated with a poor decision to kick a field goal rather than going for it on fourth and short late. You would expect both to learn from their mistakes, but there are still plenty more mistakes for them to make along the way.

Jimmy Garoppolo isn’t the best quarterback in the league

Last season was pure magic for Garoppolo. Traded in the middle of the year from New England to San Francisco, he took over as the starting quarterback once he was familiar with the offense and went on a run for the ages. He completed 67% of his passes and averaged 8.8 yards per attempt, leading a team that had to that point won only two games to five straight victories to close the season. This earned him a huge extension in the offseason, making him (briefly) the highest paid player in NFL history despite having only seven starts under his belt.

Expectations were high coming into 2018, and it’s hard to imagine him falling flatter than he did against the Vikings. He completed less than half his passes and threw three ugly interceptions, earning the first loss of his career. There were some mitigating factors. He was facing one of the best defenses in the league, lost his top receiver and two of his top six offensive linemen during the game, and his receivers let him down with a couple costly drops. And he did have a spectacular touchdown throw on the run late in the game to at least give the 49ers a chance to come back. But on the whole this was a bad performance, definitely the worst of his career.

Some regression was inevitable, but it’s a bit concerning how this happened. Garoppolo was running for his life the entire game behind an offensive line that was supposed to be a strength, having been heavily invested in this offseason. Most teams he’ll face won’t have a defensive line as stacked as Minnesota’s, and this line will come together with more experience, but he will face a lot of pressure this year, and he has to handle it better than he did against Minnesota. The biggest criticism you could have had against him coming into the season was his propensity to throw the ball to the wrong team, and when pressured on Sunday he made that mistake over and over. If he doesn’t become better at protecting the ball, it’s going to be a long season for the 49ers, and potentially a long five years as his new contract drags along.

No one will stop Kansas City’s offense this year

It was easy to fall in love with this offense on paper, and the opening game of the year backed that up. They moved the ball effortlessly against a good Chargers defense, primarily through the air powered by their young quarterback. Their offensive line kept the passer clean. Tyreek Hill has completed his growth from a one dimensional gadget player into a complete receiver. And they racked up over 250 yards through the air without really getting Sammy Watkins or Travis Kelce involved.

The questions about Kansas City’s offense were always about Pat Mahomes, and his opening performance certainly allayed a lot of those fears. His accuracy and ball placement were a bit spotty, but he made enough plays both down the field and with his legs to make this offense lethal. Andy Reid designed the perfect game plan integrating college style concepts with his typical west coast scheme. There’s plenty of time for things to fall apart (and Reid is notoriously worse when he doesn’t have multiple weeks to prepare for an opponent), but through the first game this team looks capable of competing with any in the AFC.

Case Keenum might not be the savior in Denver

Keenum was successful in Minnesota last year with a very simple formula. Avoid turnovers, and take just enough shots down the field to score points while the defense shuts down the opposition. He was brought into Denver to do the exact same thing, and even though the Broncos won their opening game against the Seahawks, they have to be worried about Keenum’s performance. After throwing only seven interceptions all of last season, he threw three in his very first game in Denver, setting Seattle up for easy scores and nearly costing Denver the game.

The thing is, this isn’t something new with Keenum. He avoided turnovers in Minnesota last year, but it was more luck than anything to do with him. He has a habit of flinging the ball up and just hoping it works out. The fact that it did so repeatedly in Minnesota was a testament to both the Vikings receiving corps and how much things broke Keenum’s way last year. It turned around more quickly than I expected in Denver, but I think his performance going forward will be closer to what we saw on Sunday than what it was in 2017.

The Bills are not going to score a touchdown all season

Probably not.