Week One Headlines vs Reality

The first week of the NFL season is always a tricky time. After months looking forward to the year, we suddenly have actual football to react to. It’s just one game for each team, but it’s football all the same. And it’s impossible not to draw some conclusions, even if we know there is still a very long season ahead.

Each year I break down some of the things that happened in Week One to try to figure out if they are actually real or if they are just one-time flashes. A year these reactions included Mitchell Trubisky being terrible, the Browns heading for another disappointing season, and Baltimore being one of the best teams in the league. They also included New England being unstoppable once they added Antonio Brown, Gardner Minshew being the savior of the Jaguars, and the Vikings having one of the most dangerous offenses in the league.

For this year I’m going to run through some of the headlines that may be coming out of this past weekend’s games. In order from least to most reasonable, I will give my interpretation of whether we should expect these initial trends to continue.

Headline: Josh Allen is Ready to Break Out as a Star

Reality: Josh Allen Continues to Improve But Is Still Average At Best

Josh Allen had the best game of his career in the most Josh Allen way possible. He made plays with his legs and his arms, and he also left a lot of opportunities on the field. He set a career high in passing yardage, but the offense still only put up 27 points against a miserable Jets team. At times he looked efficient identifying targets and hitting them in stride. At others he missed open receivers in the endzone. He was a threat with his legs, and he also ended two drives in the red zone with ugly fumbles.

Allen is still a work in progress. He wasn’t as good last year as his supporters believed, or as bad as his detractors seem to want him to be. He was a below average quarterback and trending up. This past weekend he was average, which is an improvement. His development appears to be continuing on track, but it’s not going to be an overnight thing.

 

Headline: Washington and Jacksonville Might Not Be Terrible!

Reality: Philadelphia and Indianapolis Might Be Terrible

The two biggest surprise outcomes of this week were upset victories by a pair of teams that were expected to be battling it out for the top pick in the draft. Washington came from three scores down to knock off Philadelphia, while the Jaguars fought with the Colts to earn a victory of their own. They won in very different ways, but I think in both cases the outcomes of these games say more about the playoff hopes of the teams that lost than the teams that won.

Gardner Minshew had a very crisp, efficient day. He completed 19 of 20 passes for three touchdowns and started to raise questions about whether the Jaguars should continue their plan to try to tank and get a top quarterback in next year’s draft. But while it’s never easy to complete that many passes against an NFL defense, Minshew’s day was about as bland as it is possible to get. He averaged only 9.1 yards per completion, and he didn’t take a single shot down the field. He was able to work on easy passes because the Colts consistently surrendered easy passes. That’s a problem against a quarterback like Minshew, and it will be a disaster against many of the better quarterbacks they will face down the road.

Dwayne Haskins didn’t have a great game against the Eagles, but he was solid enough considering how much pressure he was under, and he stepped up late in the game to help them take the lead. The bigger concern for Philadelphia is their offense. They could not protect Carson Wentz at all against Washington’s formidable pass rush, and Wentz responded by playing what was likely the worst game of his career. Their line should improve when Lane Johnson gets healthy, but Wentz still shows no signs of taking the next step into the tier of elite quarterbacks in the league. And without him playing at a high level, this offense is basically lifeless.

 

Headline: Minnesota’s Defensive Reign Is Over

Reality: The Vikings Are Going to Need Time to Pull Their Defense Together

The most points scored in the opening weekend of NFL action was 43 by Green Bay against Minnesota. It wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise to see it from the Packers, but it was kind of shocking to see this allowed by a Vikings team that has been excellent on defense ever since Mike Zimmer was hired. Green Bay’s offense moved up and down the field at will on Sunday. They only punted once, and that came after a receiver dropped an easy first down reception. It only got worse as the game went on, as they scored touchdowns on their final three drives (not counting the knees they took at the end).

The issues for Minnesota’s defense were pretty obvious. They couldn’t get pressure on the quarterback, and they couldn’t keep up with Green Bay’s receivers. These are both things that should hopefully improve as the season goes along. Danielle Hunter missed the game with an injury, but he could be back healthy as soon as Week Four. Yannick Ngakoue didn’t do much, but he still isn’t fully in game shape after missing training camp. As they reach full strength, this pass rush should appear.

The secondary is a bigger concern. Their young cornerbacks will improve with more experience, but they are going to need a lot of improvement to make this defense functional. Mike Hughes and Holton Hill were both terrible, and they’ll have to work hard to hold off rookie Jeff Gladney. Even then this secondary is going to continue to be a weakness. It’s going to be on Zimmer to adjust his scheme to cover for this. If there’s any coach in the league that can pull this off, it’s Zimmer, but this will also likely take a few weeks to get sorted out.

 

Headline: Drew Brees and Tom Brady Are Washed

Reality: Brees and Brady Look Like They’ve Begun Their Decline, Though We Don’t Know How Much Yet

A division clash between two of the best quarterbacks in NFL history was bound to get a lot of hype, but it ended up being not quite the game we expected. The final score was decently high, but stylistically it wasn’t exactly a shootout. Both quarterbacks played below their usual standards, even if they did so in different ways.

For the majority of the game Brady was actually decent. He was particularly impressive throwing down the field, which was a big question for him coming into Bruce Arians’s vertical passing scheme. But two of the biggest plays of the game were the pair of interceptions he threw that led directly to Saints touchdowns. The first was arguably a miscommunication with his receiver, but even if Mike Evans continued his route, he wasn’t open and the throw wasn’t on target. The second interception was simply a bad read and a bad throw, the sort of mistake we're not used to seeing from Brady.

Brees is a different story. Late in the game he managed to hit a deep ball down the sidelines to Jared Cook, but for most of the game he looked unwilling to even try going down the field. One of Brees’s strengths has always been his short area athleticism that allowed him to move in the pocket, and that seemed like it was gone on Sunday. He was a sitting duck back there, and if he wasn’t able to get the ball out of his hands right away, there was nothing he could do.

Both of these quarterbacks disappointed in their debuts to the season. They were also both facing off against underappreciated defenses, and I think they will bounce back against lesser competition. But if these teams are going to make the runs they hope to have, they are going to need their Hall of Fame quarterbacks to play like Hall of Famers against excellent defenses.

 

Headline: Cam Newton Is A Superhero

Reality: Cam Newton Is Cam Newton, Both the Good and the Bad

Beating the Dolphins is never flashy, but the Patriots did everything they needed to in their first game. They showed they have some offense with their new quarterback, behind a scheme that leaned heavily on the running game and the threat provided by Newton’s legs. He was effective enough through the air with 15 completions on 19 attempts for 155 yards, but where he really boosted the offense was on the ground, with 15 carries for 75 yards and two touchdowns. Between all ball carriers the Patriots ran the ball twice as often as they passed it, a formula they will happily replicate going forward.

Sooner or later they will expand their passing attack out of necessity, but Newton is capable of doing what they need from him there. It was certainly refreshing to see him performing well again, after he was so hampered by injuries during his two games in Carolina a year ago. He’s healthy, and when he’s healthy he’s a very good starting quarterback.

Only time will tell though if he can stay healthy, and whether or not this was a worthwhile investment by New England. It’s a little troubling to see how much they are relying on him in the running game. 15 carries are a lot for anyone, much less a 31 year old quarterback who hasn’t played a full season since 2017. A few more weeks of effective and healthy performance will go a long way towards convincing me, but for now I’ll just be enjoying it with bated breath.

 

Headline: Aaron Rodgers is Back

Reality: Aaron Rodgers Has Fixed Some of His Issues

Rodgers was fantastic on Sunday. Much better than he’s been over the past couple years, though still not at his former MVP level. He still erred on the conservative side for most of the game. In the second half he took a couple more shots down the field, but for the most of the first half he rarely threw the ball more than ten yards past the line of scrimmage. On average he held the ball only 2.3 seconds before releasing it, which would have been the fastest time in the league a year ago. This worked against a Vikings team that was playing incredibly soft coverage out of fear of their young cornerbacks being beaten deep, but he may have to alter his style against stronger defenses.

The biggest difference from the Rodgers we’ve seen over the past few years was mechanical. He talked about working on his footwork over the offseason, and he did a much better job not fading away from throws or relying entirely on his arm strength. Last year the Packers wouldn’t have been able to move up and down the field in small chunks like they did against the Vikings on Sunday, because they couldn’t count on Rodgers to consistently hit these easy throws. Now that he’s started to take this part of his game seriously, defenses are going to have to change how they play the Packers, which will only open up more opportunities down the field.

 

Headline: Joe Burrow is Great, but the Bengals Are Still the Bengals

Reality: Cincinnati Desperately Needs to Nail the Next Couple Drafts

Burrow is the sort of player who can turn around the culture of an entire franchise. But it’s not going to happen in his first game, or likely even in his first year, as we saw in a Week One loss to the Chargers. Burrow was fine, and he’ll soon be very good. The Bengals will not.

A few years ago the Texans drafted a franchise quarterback, and from that point on they’ve made every mistake a franchise can make when building around him. And yet they’re still competitive, because they had some structure already in place around him when he got there. Players like DeAndre Hopkins and Jadeveon Clowney were given away, but they still have a supporting cast that includes a star like JJ Watt to support their young quarterback.

That isn’t the case in Cincinnati. They have some good receivers, but otherwise Burrow is operating on his own. That’s enough to keep them competitive against another mediocre team like the Chargers, but it won’t get them to the playoffs. Not this year, not next year, and not anytime in the future unless they can use their draft picks wisely to really build something around him.

 

Headline: The Jets Are a Crime Against Football

Reality: The Jets Are a Crime Against Football

Sam Darnold was bad, the offensive line couldn’t keep him upright, the receivers couldn’t get open, Le’Veon Bell got hurt, and they let an average Bills offense move at will on them. This was the worst performance by any team this weekend. It will not be the worst performance the Jets have this year.