Cincinnati Bengals – 27
Minnesota Vikings – 24An opening week loss to Cincinnati is causing a lot of people to hit the panic button about the Vikings. They certainly didn’t play well, in a game that saw them hit double-digit penalties before halftime and fumble away an opportunity to win in overtime. Kirk Cousins missed throws down the field, they allowed Ja’Marr Chase to run wide open through their secondary, and they struggled to generate any consistent pressure with their refreshed and rebuilt defensive front.
There are reasons to worry about Minnesota, but for the most part they are the same worries we had before last weekend’s game. Their offensive line is still a major problem area. Cousins always plays like garbage the first couple weeks of the season. They’ve turned over basically their entire starting defense from the end of last season, and it will take some time for that unit to come together. This is a team with very little margin for error, and they can’t afford to play a game as filled with mistakes as the one we saw last on Sunday. Perhaps those mistakes will continue to recur, but I’m more willing to bet on the track record of a team that has been among the ten best at avoiding penalties each of the past three seasons.
It isn’t a surprise that the Vikings stumbled early in the season. The bigger surprise was that Cincinnati was the team that took advantage of this. I expected Minnesota to get off to a rough start with games coming up against Arizona, Seattle, and Cleveland, but I expected even a mediocre effort to be able to wipe the Bengals off the field. It turns out Cincinnati may be a bit feistier than I expected.
The big key for Cincinnati this year is the growth and health of Joe Burrow, and on Sunday he was pretty solid. He didn’t do much in terms of remarkable plays, but he did a good job getting the ball out in rhythm and on target to open receivers. The Bengals asked him to do very little, especially late in the game after he’d taken some hits and looked to be limping on the knee he injured last year. It’s not the sort of performance to completely dispel the old concerns or to raise new ones, but it’s a start.
The real surprise came in a supporting cast that performed better than I anticipated. Chase was particularly impressive, with 5 receptions for 101 yards and a touchdown after the worst preseason imaginable. He was both physical and explosive, and he looked every bit the number one receiver they drafted him to be. The offense was further buoyed by a solid performance from the much-maligned offensive line. The interior still had some struggles, but the tackle duo of Jonah Williams and Riley Reiff locked down a talented Vikings defensive line and look like they may give the Bengals much-needed stability in their pass protection.
The defense was a pleasant surprise as well. Minnesota’s offensive line is hardly stiff competition, but the Bengals front deserves credit for absolutely shredding it nonetheless. In particular, defensive tackles BJ Hill and Larry Ogunjobi generated consistent pressure up the middle, to go along with an excellent performance from big money free agent Trey Hendrickson on the edge. Another free agent addition, cornerback Chidobe Awuzie, put together a solid day in coverage with a difficult matchup against Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen. It’s the sort of performance that suggests there is something to build on with this defense, which isn’t something I was expecting to see out of Cincinnati this year.
Houston Texans – 37
Jacksonville Jaguars – 21One of the biggest surprises of the day was Houston racing out to a dominant victory over Jacksonville. The Texans had just about the worst offseason imaginable, and they were my pick to finish with the worst record in the league this year. They have no proven stars and no young talent either, and this is about as grim a football team as I can recall, leaning on veterans that most other teams had little-to-no interest in like Tyrod Taylor, Mark Ingram, David Johnson, and Brandin Cooks.
And then they came out and ran away from the Jaguars to one of the easiest victories of the day. One thing I think we underestimated is the simple competence of players who have been around for a long time. It isn’t exciting to watch the players I named above, but there’s a basic floor for their performance, at least early in the season when they’re still giving full effort. They can be trusted with basic execution because they’ve been doing it for the past decade.
And against a team like Jacksonville, basic execution can look like a superhuman accomplishment. As easy as it is to get excited about their future under Trevor Lawrence, we overlooked just how terrible this team is at every other position. On defense in particular they have no real identity and no real plan, while on offense they’re dealing with a rookie quarterback and a bunch of receivers he has no chemistry with.
The performance Lawrence put together is about what we should have expected. He made some impressive throws, but he also threw three interceptions trying to force plays down the field. He’s going to have to continue to try to force these plays, because otherwise the Jaguars have no chance of competing against even the worst NFL teams. This offense should improve as the season goes along, as Lawrence adjusts to professional defenses and the receivers figure out how to work with him. The defense though—the unit that just allowed 37 points to this Texans team—there likely isn’t any salvation coming for them.
Pittsburgh Steelers – 23
Buffalo Bills - 16Buffalo did not look very good on Sunday, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. After averaging over 31 points per game last year, they barely managed half of that in their week one effort. Josh Allen’s stats from the game look more like something from his first two years—below 60% completion, 5.3 yards per attempt, multiple sacks including a costly fumble—than his breakout 2020 season. For people looking for regression from this team, Sunday appears on the surface to be the first red flag.
The thing is, they were facing a Steelers defense that is going to make a lot of offenses look terrible. The combination of TJ Watt and Cameron Heyward absolutely destroyed Buffalo up front, as they will do to pretty much every offensive line they face this season. Despite some turnover in the secondary, Pittsburgh’s defense looks every bit as lethal as it was a season ago, perhaps even more so with the addition of Melvin Ingram screaming in on designed pressures. They had the perfect gameplan for Buffalo, and they had talent on that side of the ball that no other defense in the league can match.
If anything this opening weekend victory told me more about the Steelers than it did about the Bills, and not in a good way. The defense remains elite, and that is certainly a positive sign. But the concerns I had about their offense showed up in a big way against Buffalo.
The hopes for Pittsburgh’s offense were twofold: that an offseason of recovery would revitalize Ben Roethlisberger’s aging arm, and that the rebuilt offensive line and draft selection of Najee Harris would bring their running game back from the dead. On this last point, the line looked decent in pass protection, but still opened up no lanes for Harris. He finished the day with 16 carries for 45 yards, barely finding any daylight to get to the second level where his physicality could punish opposing linebackers.
And when the Steelers tried to throw the ball, Roethlisberger looked every bit as lifeless as he did at the end of 2020. He held the ball too long, and he missed several open receivers with his passes. His attempts to push the ball down the field led to balls that flopped far short of his intended receivers, and his only real edge was recognizing when a defender was playing too physical and targeting him to draw a penalty.
After a scoreless first half, the Steelers offense did show a little life in the second half. But the big difference in this game was a touchdown scored off a blocked punt, which isn’t something they can rely on going forward. They did a good job to escape Buffalo with a win against a quality team, but the way it happened doesn’t bode well for the next 16 games.
Arizona Cardinals – 38
Tennessee Titans – 13This game ended up being a lot less competitive than I expected. Arizona blasted Tennessee off the field, impressing on both sides of the ball against a team that is expected to make the playoffs this year.
It was a tough start to the season for the Titans, showing off their vulnerabilities on defense and making their offense look totally lifeless. The failures of their offensive line are particularly glaring, both in allowing Chandler Jones to demolish them as a pass rusher and in their inability to establish anything on the ground.
This last part is a key to how this game turned out so ugly. Tennessee is not a team built to play from behind. They need to keep things competitive so their offense can stay on schedule, and once they fall behind they are forced to shift their strategy to a pass-first attack that doesn’t play to their strengths. Only 58 yards for Derrick Henry is ugly, but only 17 carries for him is maybe the more concerning number. Going forward I expect they'll be in more competitive games, which will help their offense stay within their gameplan.
Tennessee’s defense is bad, but it’s still impressive the extent to which Arizona managed to capitalize on it. The Cardinals offense we saw this past Sunday was everything they hoped to see when they brought Kliff Kingsbury up from the college ranks in 2019. They spread the field from sideline to sideline, they attacked with vertical shots and underneath, and they found clever ways to use the collection of weapons they’ve built up, particularly rookie receiver/running back/magician Rondale Moore. After a couple years of disappointing blandness, it was refreshing to see this offense live up to hopes.
Of course, a huge part of that was the performance of Kyler Murray. If they handed out MVP awards based on a single week of games, he’d be the easy choice. He distributed the ball accurately and on-time when everything was running on schedule, and he was even more impressive when things broke down. He made precise throws under pressure, and he used his unique athleticism to extend plays when the pocket broke down. This was the ideal version both of Murray and of the Cardinals as a whole, and if they can keep it up they have the potential to compete with the top teams in the NFC.
New Orleans Saints – 38
Green Bay Packers – 3This was definitely the most stunning outcome of the opening weekend. The Packers were expected to be Super Bowl contenders, while the Saints were expected to take a step backwards as they transition to life after Drew Brees. They still have talent, and it wasn’t out of the question they’d be able to squeeze a tight victory out of the Packers. But I don’t think anyone saw this coming, the most dominant performance of the opening week against one of the presumed best teams in the league.
And yet, strangely, I don’t feel all that different about either of the teams involved. This was a strange game that felt like it could have been a lot more competitive than it ended up being, if just a few things had unfolded differently.
The first half of this game was a story of ball control. At halftime the Packers had controlled the football for just over eight minutes of game time, thanks to a pair of 15 play Saints drives that ended with touchdowns. Green Bay had two drives that ended in punts and one where they were forced to kick a field goal at the end of the half, and other than that they were never on the field.
The Saints put up 38 points, but their offense wasn’t exactly blowing Green Bay off the field. Jameis Winston finished with only 148 yards passing, and while their running game was decently effective, they averaged only 4.4 yards per carry and weren’t gashing the Packers on the ground the way we’ve seen some teams do in recent years. I still have questions about how effective this offense will be going forward, but this was at least a good start.
The Packers fell behind early, and this is a team that has always struggled at playing from behind. Their mediocre run defense makes it difficult for them to get opposing teams off the field, and that was borne out by New Orleans’s 5/10 success on third downs (which gets even better when you factor in two of those failed attempts turning into successful fourth down conversions).
On the other side, one criticism of Rodgers has always been his relatively weak record in games where his team has fallen behind. He’s been better in recent years, but early in his career he was known as a quarterback who almost never produced comeback victories. He’s always been a very risk-averse passer, and that works wonderfully when the Packers can jump out to a lead and can afford to let a drive or two go to waste. When they absolutely need to score however, he doesn’t ramp up his aggression the way other greats like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have done.
Oddly though, this game turned into a bit of an exception that proves the rule. Rodgers did get more aggressive in this game, and it did not work out in his favor. He threw two ugly interceptions, and the Packers converted only one of their ten third down attempts. And that’s how a minor deficit turns into a humiliating blowout.
The reason this final score was so surprising is because we aren’t used to seeing this sort of performance from Rodgers. Typically if the Packers are down a couple scores at halftime, they’ll be steady but a little cautious on offense in the second half, and end up losing by one or two scores. In this game Rodgers embraced the aggression I’ve spent years criticizing him for lacking, and it led to a 35 point loss instead. Of course, a loss is still just one loss, and I don’t think Rodgers made a mistake trying to make plays when they were down big in this game.
As far as what this means for the Packers going forward, I don’t think there’s much to read into it. Maybe this will make Rodgers a little more cautious the rest of the year, or maybe this is a sign of him deciding to cut loose in what he intends to be his final year in Green Bay. I don’t really think we’ll have many chances to see, since I doubt the Packers will fall into many double-digit halftime deficits the rest of the year. It took a lot of odd circumstances coming together to produce this result, and it’s probably better treated as a one-off occurrence.
Los Angeles Rams – 34
Chicago Bears – 14The Matthew Stafford era in Los Angeles got off to an explosive start, with 34 points on Sunday Night Football and multiple touchdown passes of over 50 yards. The Rams offense showed off the vertical threat it’s lacked the past couple years with Jared Goff, and they look ready to challenge the best of the NFC.
Of course, that’s what it looks like on the surface. But I’m still not convinced this Rams offense will be all that different from the one we saw the past two seasons. Those two big passes were major points that helped them turn this from a competitive contest into a blowout, but they also came on two receivers running wide open past blown coverages. Maybe Stafford’s arm will unlock this offense, but I’d like to see it against someone other than the Bears first.
I found this game more telling about exactly where the Bears are now, particularly on defense. For pretty much my entire lifetime the Bears have endured a mediocre offense with splashes of incredible defense, including over the past few seasons. They leapt to the playoffs in Matt Nagy’s first season thanks to the best defense in the league, with elite players on every level and a masterful scheme from coordinator Vic Fangio.
The past couple years have not been as kind to them. Time has begun to sap on stars like Khalil Mack and Akiem Hicks, diminishing them just enough that they aren’t able to carry a defense on their own. Quality role players like Kyle Fuller, Bryce Callahan, Adrian Amos, and Leonard Floyd have departed in free agency, and Fangio left as well to take the head coaching job in Denver. Roquan Smith looks like a developing star, but so far they haven’t been able to add other young players to step in and replace the lost talent.
All the conversation in Chicago the past few days has been about the quarterback position, but the truth is that Andy Dalton was just fine on Sunday. He threw an ugly interception and lost a fumble when he held the ball too long, but outside of those plays he typically delivered the ball accurately and on-time to the correct receivers. The problem is, those correct receivers were never far enough down the field to actually hurt the opposing defense. The Bears tried to bite their way down the field in small chunks, and the Rams responded by flying over their heads.
Dalton actually would have been a decent option at quarterback a couple years ago. His style can work in low-scoring games where field position becomes key, where they can afford to let a couple drives stall because the defense is just going to get the ball right back. But right now Chicago isn’t in a place to play that style. They can’t count on their defense to hold the opposition to nothing, so they need someone on their offense to provide explosive plays, someone like the rookie quarterback who spent most of Sunday’s game watching from the sideline.
No comments:
Post a Comment